The Children of James Dunkerley and his wife Emma, nee Coop. 
William Dunkerley
James and Emma were married on June 20th 1874 at Christ Church, Glodwick, in Oldham. They were probably in something of a hurry for their first child, William (later to be called ‘Billy’ or ‘Bill’) – named after his paternal grandfather – was born less than six months later on 12th December of the same year. He was my grandfather and his story can be read here. What follows is the information I have about his six younger brothers and sisters.
Alice Ann
More than seven years passed before young Billy was to have a sibling to play with, and then when one eventually came, it was a girl! The new arrival first saw light of day on August 30th 1881 and was baptised ‘Alice Ann’, perhaps named after her mother’s sister, Alice, or conceivably after James’ American cousin Alice Ann Gregory. The 1891 census gives her no occupation, so presumably she was then a scholar. By 1901 she was a ‘cotton worker’. In the photo below it appears that Alice Ann has very work-worn hands, so it is likely that her life was always hard. In 1904 she married Arthur Sykes at the Salem Moravian chapel near to her home at 455 Lees Road, Oldham, and her occupation was then given as ‘Cotton Weaver’. Arthur was a ‘Journeyman Baker’, working for his father, George Sykes, who had a confectionary business at a shop situated at 586 Lees Road(see photo below). In time Arthur and Alice Ann took over the shop and lived there until at least 1940. Arthur died about 1944 and Alice Ann later moved to Spring Lane in Lees, where she died in 1956. She has been described as being only about 4 feet 9½ inches tall. Both Arthur and Alice Ann are buried in Lees cemetery.
Alice Ann and Arthur had two sons, George who was born about 1905 and Arthur Jr., born about 1915. George married Norah Marler at Salem Chapel in 1935 and the couple had one son (living) who has children and grandchildren. George went into the cotton industry; at the time of his marriage he was a ‘Cotton yarn agent’s Warehouseman’ and later became a Winding Overlooker – a supervisory position in a cotton spinning mill. He died in 1967, in Oldham. After that Norah moved to Kent, where she died in 1976, but she is buried in Oldham.
Arthur Jr. married Ethel Middleton in 1940, also at Salem Chapel, but the couple had no children. When they married Arthur was an electrical fitter and Ethel a cotton winder. They took over the confectioner's shop, which was located near to the gates of Lees Brook cotton mill but has now been demolished. Arthur eventually sold the confectioner's shop and went to work at Ferrantis, a large electrical company, 
before moving to Kent in 1950. There he became a civilian Chief Superintendent of the Royal Marine Barracks at Deal, a civil service position, and bought a garage at Upstreet, and a thatched cottage. He apparently later moved to Eythorne where he had a smallholding and lived at 5A Beech Street, Deal, opposite the pier. Arthur was an avid fisherman with a boat on the beach. He died of a heart attack in 1978 when he was only 62 years old and was cremated at Folkstone crematorium. Ethel was still living in 2005, apparently in Oldham.
Sarah Hannah Dunkerley
Billy didn’t have much luck either when his next sibling appeared, for that too was a girl, baptised as Sarah Hannah, probably after her father’s sister of the same name. This would one day cause family historians some considerable confusion.
Sarah Hannah arrived on January 14th 1884 and Billy probably didn’t get very close to the fire that winter as his mother nursed the new baby.
At the time of the 1891 census Sarah Hannah would have been a scholar, but the cotton industry beckoned and by 1901 she was a ‘cotton reeler’ – not some sort of cavorting teenager, but a girl tending winding machines in a cotton spinning mill. We know that by 1904 Sarah Hannah had met her future husband, John Butterworth, as the two of them were witnesses at Alice Ann’s wedding to Arthur Sykes. Sarah Hannah and John married in June 1909 at what had evidently become their family church, the Salem Chapel.
John was the son of Abraham Butterworth and Elizabeth Fry Crowther, who must have been Dissenters for they were married at Hope Chapel, in 1873. They had three children, James Meredith Butterworth, Edith and John. Now you’ll need to pay attention here because things get complicated. I’ve already said that John married Sarah Hannah, but his older brother, James Meredith married a sister of James Dunkerley who was also called Sarah Hannah. Thus the two Butterworth brothers married two Sarah Hannah Dunkerleys, but the older Butterworth opted for the Aunt, while the younger one opted for the niece. Got it? Since, for reasons unknown, the younger Sarah Hannah, subject of this paragraph, picked up the nickname ‘Bert’, I’ll refer to her from now on as ‘Auntie Bert’ and I’ll refer to the older Sarah Hannah as ‘Aunt Sarah Hannah’. James Meredith and Aunt Sarah Hannah gave rise to a line of living relatives with the name Brocklehurst.
When Auntie Bert married John she was a ‘Cotton Yarn Twister’, which does not mean she was a cheat but probably does mean that she was attending a machine producing cotton warps. John Butterworth – or ‘Jack’ as he was known – was an ‘Iron Fitter’.
There is some information to suggest that Jack was badly gassed during the First World War and eventually died of the effects, probably in 1918.
It seems that Jack and Sarah Hannah had one child, a boy called Jack Butterworth, possibly registered in the September quarter of 1911 in Oldham. Sheila Rose has information that young Jack died towards the end of 1923, aged twelve. Peter Brocklehurst tells of a 'Little Jack', who was probably this boy. Apparently ‘Little Jack’ had the habit of singing in the toilet, which was down the yard from the house where he lived. His repertoire was mostly hymns, and he seems to have had quite a good voice. His speciality was to sing 'All things bright and beautiful' when he had finished his 'job' and was ready to return to the house! No other Butterworth/Dunkerley children appear on the FreeBMD on-line database in the years following 1911.
When Little Jack died he and his mother were living at Latimer Street in Glodwick (Oldham). Later Auntie Bert went to live in a bungalow at Church Road, Marsh Mill, Thornton-Cleveleys. It seems that she went to live near to her Uncle James Meredith and Aunt Sarah Hannah Butterworth who moved to Cleveleys in about 1932.
I do not know when Auntie Bert died; she was a nice-looking lady as shown on one of the photos below.
Edmund Dunkerley
On September 1st 1885, when he was nearly ten years old, Billy Dunkerley finally got a brother. It was a shame that it was going to be too late to play with him down Lees Brook, chucking stones, climbing trees and generally getting into scrapes. Nevertheless the arrival of Edmund – soon to be called ‘Ned’ proved to be a good thing, for he and Billy certainly maintained contact throughout much of their lives. Edmund was presumably named after his mother’s brother of the same name.
On the 1891 census they got Ned’s name wrong, calling him ‘Edward’, but undeterred he pressed on through life and the wrong was righted ten years later when as ‘Edmund’ he was listed as a ‘cotton piecer’. This means that he had been spirited away, like his older brother and his sisters before him, into the confines of a cotton mill, there to be given the task of mending loose ends of cotton that split as the spinning mules recoiled to draw out the yarn. You had to be nimble and have quick fingers to be a piecer, but with luck you might eventually rise to become a ‘minder’, operating the mules, which was a skilled and well-paid job.
Ned met and married Mary Hannah Street, nicknamed ‘Molly’, who was the daughter of James Street and Eliza nee Dodd. If Billy had been made to wait for a brother, it was nothing to what James Street had been through, for Mary Hannah was his sixth daughter and he had no sons! According to the 1901 census, James was a mule spinner and all of his daughters worked in the cotton mills; Mary Hannah was a ring frame minder – but the ring she liked most was probably her wedding ring.
At the time of Ned and Molly's marriage in 1914 James had become a Beer Seller, the licencee of the ‘Bowlers Arms’ at 76 Huddersfield Road in Oldham. He kept the licence from 1908 to 1926, so he must have known a thing or two about parties, and perhaps the wedding breakfast was therefore a ‘good ’un’. The wedding took place, of course, at the Salem Chapel.
Ned seems to have missed his calling as a ‘minder’ and instead had become a ‘Cotton Warper’. This didn’t mean there was anything wrong with Ned, 
only that he probably operated a piece of equipment known as a ‘warping mill’ that prepared the long threads that would be wound onto a beam to be placed into the back of the power looms. Ned might have met Molly at his place of employment, for when they married her occupation was that of ‘Cotton Beamer’, so she was responsible for the stage of the process that followed Ned’s. Perhaps he liked to smile and crack a joke or two as he passed his warps on to her.
Ned would have been about 28 years old when the First World War broke out, so he may well have served in the army, but I have no knowledge of this. On the other hand his name appears on the Oldham Jury List for both 1914-15 and 1915-16 as a 'Confectioner’, renting a property at 106 Yorkshire Street, near the centre of Oldham. There is some evidence that Ned actually continued working as a warper at this time, so perhaps Molly ran the confectionary business while he was ‘up at th’ mill’. Kelly’s Directories for 1918 and 1924 list Ned still as a ‘Confectioner’ at 106 Yorkshire Street. In 1920 Ned subscribed for shares in the New Regent Mill Ltd. in Failsworth, where Billy was a senior manager, and the share register listed him as a ‘warper’; further information about the Regent Mill can be found here. In common with most of the Lancashire cotton industry, the venture was to fail and no doubt both Billy and Ned much regretted their participation, and both certainly lost money.
Molly and Ned never had children, but Hilda Harris remembered that she spent time with ‘Auntie Molly’. They went together to sell eggs and cheese on a market 'Ashton way', probably that at Hyde, perhaps in the 1930s. Hilda remembered that Ned and Molly had a car.
Ned and Molly probably never moved from 106 Yorkshire Street. I do not know when Molly died, but Ned died towards the end of 1968, still at that address, aged 83. His death was registered by his niece Ella McKeown, the daughter of Molly’s sister, Eliza Street who had married John Winterbottom.
Emma Dunkerley
On September 13th 1888 a third daughter was born to James and Emma. Billy was by now a teenager and his relationship with his younger siblings must have had something of that of adult with child. Baby Emma was, of course, named after her mother.
We know less of Emma than perhaps any of her brothers and sisters. She was only two years old at the time of the 1891 census, and on the 1901 census no occupation is specified, so at age 12 she was presumably still a scholar. Her father, though, had died in 1898 and from that time on the whole family, including young Emma, must have looked to Billy, then in his twenties, as the main breadwinner.
In March 1912 Emma married John Stott at the Salem Moravian chapel. Emma had evidently followed the rest of her family into cotton manufacturing as she was described as a ‘Cotton Reeler’; her husband was a ‘Flyer Maker (Iron Spindle Maker)’ – which means he was making the mechanism that put the ‘twist’ into cotton yarn during the spinning process. His father, also called John, had similarly worked in engineering, as a ‘Strap Piecer (Ironworks)’, but had died before his son married. The witnesses were Billy, Ned and Molly Street. Hilda Harris thought that John used to be called ‘Jack’.
I have found no evidence from either Lancs BMD or FreeBMD that Emma and John had any children. On the 1919 Electoral Register there is a John Stott at 586, Lees Road, where Arthur Sykes was then a Baker/Confectioner, but I have not found John or Emma in records after that date. However I know that Emma was still living in April 1936, for she attended Billy’s funeral.
Hilda Harris said that Emma and John Stott had a (news) paper shop on Pitt Street Glodwick, round the corner from Waterloo School and they also lived on Prince Albert Street which ran between Lord Street and Horsedge Street in the centre of Oldham. It has to be more than coincidence that James Meredith Butterworth set up a newsagent’s business at number 147 Pitt Street, at the junction of Hardy Street (in Glodwick), so it seems likely that John and Emma took over the shop when James and his wife Aunt Sarah Hannah moved to Thornton-Cleveleys.
Running the newsagent’s shop would have been very hard work. Based on what required of James, John would have risen at 4.30 am to haul the heavy packs of newspapers up the street from where they were dropped off by horse and cart. He would then have had to prepare the rounds ready for the delivery boys who came at 5.30 am. The shop would close at 10 pm every day.
John and Emma appear to have eventually retired to Grains Bar from the paper shop. Curiously, Grains Bar lies just north of Sholver, the old Dunkerley area of Oldham, but almost in the adjoining parish of Saddleworth, Yorkshire. It would be worth looking for John and Emma in the Oldham electoral registers at Pitt Street, at Grains Bar, and perhaps also in the Yorkshire records. I do not know how long either John or Emma lived.
Elizabeth Dunkerley
Elizabeth was born on 18th December, 1891 at 404 Lees Road, Oldham. I have found no clue to where Elizabeth’s name came from – perhaps it was an early expression of the frivolity that was starting to grow up in the naming of babies, such that Billy and his wife Selina named three of their children ‘Gladys’, ‘Leslie’ and ‘Clare’ not many years later! Hilda Harris was able to tell me that Elizabeth was generally referred to as ‘Lizzie’.
I know nothing of Lizzie’s early life, except that from the age of six she was brought up in a home without a father’s presence. That home was 455, Lees Road, where her father had died, and it was to be Elizabeth’s home for the whole of her life.
Elizabeth no doubt attended the Salem Moravian Chapel, which was close by her home, and it was there that in August 1918 she married Joseph Oates. The marriage certificate tells us that, like all her siblings, Elizabeth too was steeped in the work regime of the cotton mill, for her occupation was ‘Cotton Cardroom Hand’. In effect this was a tough and dirty job attending the carding machines that took the raw cotton from the bales, cleaned it and prepared it into a loose ‘sliver’ (rhymes with ‘driver’) preparatory to spinning into yarn. Joseph was the son of Samuel Oates and Miriam nee Barnes and had two brothers and a sister called Florence. When Joseph married he was living at 752 Middleton Road in Chadderton, and Florence continued living there, single, until at least 1967. Samuel was a beer brewer in 1901 but was described as a ‘General Labourer’ on the marriage certificate. Joseph's own occupation was more interesting – ‘Motor Driver’. Ned and Molly Dunkerley were the witnesses.
According to Sheila Rose, Joseph later worked for Armitages, a wood shop at the bottom of Wellyhole Street, Salem, for a number of years. He was Armitage’s driver and delivered 'Hen houses and other wooden shed-like buildings' all over the country and sometimes would be away for a few days at a time. He also seems to have worked for a fruit and vegetable wholesaler, apparently called Oakles, off Huddersfield Road. Sheila remembers going to see him there with her mother.
A series of Electoral Registers show Joseph and/or Elizabeth living at 455 Lees Roadfor many years. Elizabeth was there in 1968, but by 1969 only Joseph was listed, and in fact Elizabeth died on 8th March 1968 aged 77, apparently ‘after long suffering’ from pernicious anaemia; she is said to have always looked pale and sickly. Joseph continued to be registered at 455 Lees Roadup to 1974, but the house was empty in 1975, and he seems to have died in the September quarter of 1974.
Searches of Findmypast.com and of FreeBMD from 1918 to 1928 found no record of any Oates/Dunkerley children, and Hilda Harris thought that there were none; she thought that there might have been one child, but it didn’t survive.
James Dunkerley
There is a lot more information about James – or ‘Jim’ as he was known, kindly provided by his daughter. He was born on August 28th 1896 at 455 Lees Roadbut would never remember his father who died when he was only about 18 months old. No doubt he saw his oldest brother, Billy, as a fatherly figure, for Billy was more than twenty-one years his elder. My cousin Jean told me that Billy held off getting married (and leaving home) until Jim was old enough to take home a wage. This suggests that Jim was working at age 14 because Billy married on the first day of 1901.
Jim was 18 years old when the First World War broke out, and he served in it. A photo shows him in the ‘3rd/10th Manchesters’, probably a unit of the Manchester Regiment, although I have no information about it. Fortunately he survived the experience and after he was demobbed he returned to live at 455 Lees Road, appearing there in 1919 on the Electoral Register together with Joseph Oates and Fred Coop (likely to have been a relative of his mother).
It fell to Jim to register his mother’s death in May 1922, but a happier event took place three months later when he married Millicent Foster, aka ‘Millie’, at the parish church of St. Mark’s in Glodwick, close to where his grandfather William and great grandfather Joseph Dunkerley and their families had lived for many years. Jim’s occupation at that time was ‘Warper’, like his brother Ned – and this proves that every child of James and Emma Dunkerley had ‘earned their daily bread’ in cotton, Oldham’s greatest industry.
Millicent was probably living at the time at 50, Savoy Street, close by St. Mark’s, and her father, Walter, was a ‘Brick Setter’. He had probably learned his trade with his father who, according to Sheila Rose, built quite a number of houses in the Glodwick and Clarksfield areas of Oldham, including Savoy Street. ‘Foster Street’ in Clarksfield is named after him.
The witnesses at Jim and Millie’s wedding were William Foy and Annie Dunkerley. It appears that Annie Dunkerley was only a friend, not a relative, but she and William Foy married later the same year in Oldham.
Jim and Millie had two children. Hilda was born in 1926 when the family were living at 584 Lees Road and the birth registration shows that Jim was then working as a ‘Cotton Ball Warper’. In this role he worked at various cotton and silk mills as and when required, and seems also to have been a member of the 'Ball Warpers Union'.
The second child, Jack, was born in 1933 at Millicent’s brother’s house in Limeside, but sadly died of diphtheria only four years later on February 1st, 1938.
Jim was clearly a very sociable man. When he and Millie were living on Lees Road, Jim was the greensman, barman and team captain at Clarksfield Bowling Club. Later he was greensman and barman at Glodwick Bowling Club in Tate Street, Glodwick, round the corner from where the family then lived on Mustard Street. A photo of him, taken in 1928, shows him sitting proudly with a trophy as captain of the Clarksfield Bowling Team. Clarksfield covers the area of the lower part of Lees Road, and the Salem Movavian chapel, and although Jim and Millicent had married in Glodwick the indications are that they later frequented the Salem chapel.
Jim and Millicent appear to have managed quite well financially and were able to enjoy holidays to the coast during the August Wakes. A photo from about 1930 or 1931 shows them with Hilda enjoying sitting in deck chairs on the sands at Blackpool, Jim dressed in a smart suit and tie, with a fetching broad flat-cap on his head and a newspaper spread across his knees. What fun it was to be able to relax!
Some time before Jack died in 1938 Jim and Millie split up and Hilda spent time living with both her mother and her father. When Jack died Millie and Hilda were living in Beever Street off Yorkshire Street, at Millie's sisters’.
Like so many of her family before her Hilda also worked in the cotton industry, at Bank Top mill in Lees; initially she was a winder and later a beamer. In spite of the breakdown of the marriage it seems likely that both Jim and Millicent would have been present in March 1949 when Hilda married Donald Harris at the Salem Moravian chapel. On the marriage certificate Jim’s occupation was given as ‘Warper’ and Hilda’s address was 119, Wellyhole Street, which was close by. In time Donald and Hilda were to have two children who were to have children of their own.
Sadly Jim lived only until 1955, dying at the relatively young age of fifty-nine. Millicent married a second time, in 1946, to James Davies. She died in September 1970 at Freckleton near Blackpool.
Thus ends the story of a generation of my Dunkerley forebears. With the exception of my grandfather Billy Dunkerley it appears that the rest of the family lived for the whole of their working lives in Oldham – and Billy moved only a few miles away to Failsworth. Nevertheless, Billy’s move seemed to break many of the family ties such that my father was most uncertain about many of the facts of the families of his Dunkerley Aunts and Uncles.
What is quite remarkable is the extent to which all seven of the Dunkerley siblings earned their livings in the cotton industry of Oldham – the greatest cotton spinning town the world has ever seen. In this they were following in a long family tradition, going back at least four, quite probably more than seven, generations to the cottages of some of Lancashire and England’s first handloom weavers on the hillsides north of Oldham. The collapse of the Lancashire cotton industry after 1921, however, meant that this was to be the last generation of the Dunkerley family to earn their living from ‘King Cotton’.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Jean Sykes, Peter Brocklehurst and Sheila Rose for providing me with information and several of the photographs used in this article, and others that I have on file.
Footnotes
I have looked on the Lancs BMD website, which takes note both of the surname of the father (Dunkerley) and mother (Coop) for any evidence of children that might have followed William's birth, but none are listed. It therefore seems that James and Emma, having gone off half-cock with their first child, either waited for a time until they could afford more children, or had difficulties in conceiving. It would not seem that they had children which were either still-born or died in infancy.
A ‘ball warper’ tends a machine of the same name and, according to http://www.job-descriptions.org/ball-warper-tender.html, the role is: ‘Tends warping machine that gathers and winds strands of yarn in rope form into ball form preparatory to mercerizing, dyeing, or bleaching: Pieces up ends from supply package to leader to thread machine. Sets yardage counter to record amount of yarn wound and starts machine. Inserts and ties lease strings at prescribed intervals. Observes operation to detect yarn breaks. Locates and ties broken ends. Doffs ball warps. May also tend machine with singeing attachment to remove lint from yarn.’ So now we all know and you probably, like me, feel some sense of awe at Jim’s evident skills!