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Billy Dunkerley (1874 -1936) and Selina Martin (1872 - 1955)

Early Times

William (Billy) Dunkerley’s parents, James and Emma, were only nineteen years old when they married in some haste at Glodwick parish church at Oldham in Lancashire and he was born less than six months later, on December 12th 1874 at 10 Mount Street, Glodwick. The houses in Mount Street had been built by the owners of the Greenbank mills for their workers, so James presumably worked there. They were tiny back-to-back dwellings – the only access being via the front door and probably with a single room on the ground floor and another upstairs. At least, it seems, James and Emma had a house of their own to start their married life.

It may be that Emma’s father, Edmund Coop, lived in the same street, at number 7 (or at least that is where he and his family was living at the time of the 1871 Census). Edmund was a cotton spinner – which means he would have minded the spinning mules – and would also have worked at the adjacent Greenbank cotton mill complex. Emma too may have worked there, for the 1871 Census shows her as a ‘piecer’ – perhaps working for her father, mending broken threads on his mules.

By 1879 when Billy was four years old he was enjoying much nicer accommodation in a newly built more conventional terraced house at 3 Nugget Street, a short distance from Mount Street down Glodwick Road. The new house would have had two rooms on the ground floor and two bedrooms – yet the family still comprised only three people. Of course they could have been sharing the house, but it may be that James and Emma were doing quite well. Two years later the family had moved again, this time quite a distance across Oldham to the newly-developing district of Busk, in Chadderton, where Billy’s father must have obtained a new job. Curiously Billy does not appear with his parents in the 1881 Census, when he would have been six years old. James and Emma appear at 76, Busk Street but on the night of the census Billy seems to have been staying with his grandmother, Sophia, across town in Glodwick. Some months later, while the family was still living in Busk, Billy’s first sibling, Alice Ann, was born.

Over the following few years Billy moved house with his parents several times; they perhaps struggled for a while because by 1884 they had returned to live in the inferior accommodation of Mount Street in Glodwick – at number 2 this time - suggesting that he was back at the Greenbank mill. The family grew further when Sarah Hannah was born at Mount Street and perhaps by now Emma had to stop work to dedicate herself to bringing up the family. However in 1885, at a time when there was a shortage of work, they were back living in a conventional terraced house at 6 Rudding Street in Royton where Billy’s gained his first brother, Edmund. By 1888, when trade was generally good, they had moved to 404 Lees Road not far from Glodwick at a locality called Salem and it was there that Billy’s sisters Emma and Elizabeth were born.

Soon after, in 1892, much of Oldham’s cotton industry was paralysed by a strike that lasted for over twenty weeks, and was not finally settled until March of the following year. This period was the most difficult that the cotton workers had experienced since the Cotton Famine thirty years earlier. By the end of the strike, hunger and nakedness were to be seen in the streets of the town, and it is difficult to think that this event did not affect Billy, 17 years old at the time, and his family, and it must have lived long afterwards in his memory. The difficult times lasted through 1895, but from 1896 trade began, once more, to improve.

Billy’s second brother, James was born after James and Emma had moved for a final time, to a modern terraced house at 455 Lees Road some time between 1893 and 1895. It was there that Billy’s father, James, died in 1898.

At that point, Billy was left, aged 23, as the main breadwinner for his mother and six siblings. However the family got by and eventually all six of Billy’s brothers and sisters married local people, five of them in the neighbouring Moravian chapel, where they must have established a significant local presence. Billy’s oldest sister, Alice Ann, married Arthur Sykes in 1904 and had two children, George and Arthur, but none of the other siblings is known to have had children.

Such frequent house moves may have made it difficult for Billy to have any continuity in his friendships and his education. He probably started school when about five or six year old and would have continued full-time until he was ten in 1884. Thereafter it is likely that he would have started work, half-time, in a local cotton mill, perhaps alongside his father, and moved to full-time employment in 1888 when he was 14 years old. At that time work started at 6 am and ended at 5.30 pm on weekdays or 1 pm on Saturdays, a 56½ hour working week.

Billy would have risen about 5 am and joined the throng in the street all hurrying to their work in the cotton mills, the engineering or other factories, or the coal mines, anxious not to be late, under threat of a fine. All the workers wore clogs and Billy would have known the barrage of sound made by innumerable clog irons on stone sets and flagstone pavements. Besides clogs, Billy would have worn the rough wool and cotton clothes of the cotton worker. Based on what we know of Billy in later life, it seems certain that after finishing work at the mill he must have attended evening classes 'to better himself', in the tradition of many of the workers of the Lancashire cotton districts. He must certainly have known what 'hard work' and 'self help' were all about.

Billy would have been taught standard English at school, but it seems likely that he, his family and his friends would have spoken in the Lancashire dialect of Oldham in his daily life. Certainly as he rose to positions of respectability and public office he, like Ben Brierley and other Lancashire writers, would have used standard English in public, but there is evidence that he could always lapse into the vernacular in private. My father had a substantial collection of Lancashire dialect books, including  a number of them printed in the nineteenth century, and it may be that he inherited them from his father, although there is no proof. What is certain though is that Billy paid to support the publication of at least two Lancashire dialect books, one by Joseph Burgess (mentioned below), the other by Ammon Wrigley, entitled 'O'er the Hills and Far Away', for his name is recorded as a subscriber in them both. Billy’s generation was almost certainly the one in which Lancashire dialect passed from being the common speech to becoming the talk of the older generation. We can only sorrow at its loss. (See discussion).

For the first time, in 1891 we learn what work Billy was doing. The Census of that year shows him at the age of 16 working as a ‘knotter’ in a cotton mill. This apparently involved tying the ends of broken warps on the looms and was usually done by youngsters, with a leather strap on the wrist and a loop of wire through which the broken ends were threaded. It was surely not the most interesting of jobs, but perhaps a stimulus to better himself in later life.

Life perhaps continued on a fairly even keel for Billy during the 1890s until 1898 when his father died of pneumonia, aged only 43. Suddenly Billy, aged 23, was the man of the house, responsible for looking after his mother and six siblings, only one of whom, Alice Ann, was old enough to be earning a wage. Times must have been hard, but would have slowly improved over the next two or three years, aided by a meliorating business outlook and as Sarah Hannah and Edmund reached working age and began to bring in wages of their own. The 1901 Census record shows the family (all born in Oldham) as follows:

- Emma Dunkerley, Head of Family, age 46, widow, no occupation
- Alice Ann, daughter, single, age 19, cotton worker
- Sarah Hannah, daughter, single, age 17, cotton reeler
- Edmund, son, single, age 15, cotton piecer for mill
- Emma, daughter, single, age 12
- Elizabeth, daughter, single, age 10
- James, son, single, age 4

Married Life

By the time Billy was 26 we know that he was courting Selina Martin, nearly three years his senior, who lived at 152 Manchester Road, Roaches, Mossley, two or three miles from Salem over the hills. By this time, Billy was a warehouseman, like James his father had been, possibly at the Lees Brook or some other local cotton mill, and it is easy to picture him and Selina walking in Lancashire clogs over the hills and down the valleys that separated them as they began to plan a life together.

Selina was a cardroom hand, as had been her father before her, so both she and Billy depended on textiles for their daily bread. Selina was born on February 28th, 1872 in Broadcar, Hartshead, near Mossley, the daughter of Robert Thomas Martin, a blowing room operative in a cotton mill, and Alice Martin, nee Faith. Selina was the second of four daughters, of whom the oldest was Polly and the younger two were Clara and Annie.

Selina’s father, who came from Liverpool, died in 1880 while the family was young. Following his death the 1881 Census shows that Alice and her brother, Charles, 13 years her junior, were living with their mother, Betty Faith, in Ashton under Lyne. The 1891 Census shows the family and Betty all living on Manchester Road, Roaches, in a four-roomed house, likely to have been number 152 (see picture). 

There is something of a puzzle here, for my father, Leslie, told me that after Selina's father died, her brother Charles kept the family from destitution by providing them with a roof over their heads at Roaches in Mossley yet neither the 1891 or 1901 Census support this. Perhaps he helped with the rent. The home was a two-up two-down stone-built cottage, one of a terrace, the front door opening directly onto the pavement of a main road (see photo). Although Charles seems to have helped, Alice was her daughters’ breadwinner. According to my father, she would walk from Mossley over Hartshead, to the cotton mill at Werneth where she worked. This was a distance of 6 to 8 miles and a climb of more than 400 feet, and she had to arrive to start work at 6 a.m. When there was snow she is said to have walked along the top of the stone walls that formed the field boundaries in order to get through. My cousin, Jean, told me she also used to bake bread to order and took in curtains from the big houses to wash, all to help earn a living for her and her four daughters.

Salem, where Billy lived, is spread across a hillside that descends to the valley of the River Medlock and its houses are built mostly of brick, but Mossley is tucked into a deep cleft of the hills where buildings jostle for space with the River Tame, a canal, roads, and a railway line. Everything in Mossley seems to be built of stone and when you’re not struggling up a hill you seem to be jarring your knees going down one. To the east of Mossley the rough grit edges of the soaring Pennine Hills poke through in rugged valleys below peat mosses, where heather and cotton grass grow and grouse hide.

Billy decided not to marry until his younger brother, Edmund, was old enough to work. By 1901 Edmund was 14 and working as a piecer in a spinning mill, so Billy and Selina were free to tie the knot and did so at St Thomas’s parish church, Lees, on what was technically the first day of the new century – Tuesday, January 1st, 1901. The church itself, although appearing long established, was a product of the spreading cotton prosperity, built of sandstone in the 1840s in mock-medieval style, complete with gargoyles. It was there to minister to the needs of the growing local population as the cotton industry expanded. Among that population there were a number of Dunkerley families, as there are to this day.

The witnesses at Billy and Selina’s wedding were Albert Batty and Selina’s sister Annie. Albert was then a cotton spinner who had married Selina’s sister, Clara, and the couple lived next-door-but-one to Selina’s mother. Certainly Billy and Albert must have been friends; perhaps Billy named his eldest son after his brother-in-law.

After they were married Billy and Selina went to live at 30 Quail Street, a few minutes walk from Emma’s house. Although on his marriage certificate Billy’s occupation was given as ‘Warehouseman’, like his father before him, on the 1901 Census, taken on 31st March, Billy gave his occupation as that of ‘Cotton bundle maker up’, which may suggest he had lost his job and taken what sounds like a much inferior one. However, things improved, for by 3rd December 1901 when his first child, Gladys, was born Billy was a ‘Cotton mill warehouseman’ again, and he and Selina had moved to live at 2 Dawson Street, literally just around the corner from Emma. Gladys was christened at Leesfield church. By 16th June 1903, when Billy’s first son, Albert, was born, the family had moved across Oldham to Chadderton and was living at 3 Castleford Street. Trade in the Oldham area was now booming, and fifty-five new cotton mills were built in the Oldham district between 1900 and 1908, a number of them in Chadderton.

For those unfamiliar with the way Oldham was at this time, when it had become the greatest cotton-spinning town in the world, this may be a good moment to make a small digression. Everywhere across the hillsides of the town great blocks of buildings - the cotton mills -  five and six stories high, marked the landscape. They were seemingly made of brick but there was more glass than brick in the structure, as was evident after dark when the great rows of windows blazed yellow against the black of the night. In fact it was rows of cast iron posts and beams that held them up, supporting spacious open work floors covered with vibrating machines whose dull murmur pervaded the whole working environment, but a constant racket for those attending them. By each factory stood one, or more, lofting dark brick chimneys, each marking an installed coal-driven steam engine together with its boilers, making thick black smoke when fired, or more gentle smoke during normal operation. There were also some ashtonishigly extensive, and many smaller, machine works, plus metal foundries and other workshops, all with their own chimneys, engines and boilers, and pit-head gear might be seen from place to place marking shafts of the collieries that underlay and surrounded the town. Rare chuch towers and spires, like everything else blackened by smoke, showed that God had not entirely ceded the town to Mamon. There were few 'flewers' and little 'shade from leafy trees', but Oldham, putting up with the dirt and bustle of industries that 'addled brass', with tongue firmly in its cheek, reckoned it did not 'need 'em'. All of which is covered in a poem by the mysterious 'H', that you can - that  you should - read here: 'Owdham'.

Billy must have had ambitions and studied hard at night school after long days at his job in the cotton mill. Perhaps he attended one of the mechanics institutes that had sprung up to provide help for those prepared to make the effort. It paid off, however, for by 1908 he had obtained an appointment as an overlooker at the prestigious new Regent cotton mill, located in Princess Street in nearby Failsworth. This meant another move for his family – one that was to be permanent. Failsworth is situated about half way between Oldham and Manchester and in contrast with Oldham is nearly flat. Initially the family lived in another brick terraced house at 60 Old Road, only a minute’s walk from the mill, but soon afterwards the family did another ‘flitting’, although only next door to number 62, where the last member of the family, Clare, was born in 1913. Both houses had front doors that opened almost directly onto the pavement and there were back yards and a ‘backings’. Number 60 is a typical ‘two-up two-down’ terrace, but 62 has an extra bedroom and a back kitchen, which, seen in 2002, looks as if it might have been an original feature. If so, it would explain the motive for the ‘flitting’. The Failsworth Industrial Society (the local Co-op) adjoined the terrace to the south and no doubt the family shopped there and Selina looked forward to her ‘divi’ to allow her some little extras to help the family budget. Failsworth railway station is a minute’s walk round the corner. Both houses were almost certainly rented.

The Regent Mill was a state-of-the-art spinning mill and following research in various locations, including the National Archive, I have compiled a history of its development and the part that Billy Dunkerley played in it. It was incorporated in 1906 by a group of Oldham entrepreneurs as The Regent Mill Company Limited (RMCL) and built on a prime site along the west bank of the Rochdale canal. Directly opposite, on the east bank of the canal, was the Failsworth mill, constructed in 1897. Compared to the Failsworth mill, the Regent mill was a fine-looking building of a striking red-colour, due to the high-quality Accrington brick of which it was made. It has four storeys surmounted by a tall tower containing a water tank in case of fire and on which its name was proudly emblazoned. There was a great flagpole atop, still there in 2004. Alas, its mighty factory chimney was demolished in about 1966.

The Regent mill was part of Oldham’s last great building boom – the Edwardian boom – of 1900 to 1908. Power was supplied by one of the largest inverted ‘marine’ engines from Buckley and Taylor of Oldham. The architect was G. Stott, who was also a substantial shareholder. The number of spindles in 1915 was 60,000 and they were the modern ‘ring spindles’ made by Platts of Oldham. Ring spinning technology was developed in the USA and first came to Oldham in 1877. It was a continuous process, unlike the more traditional mule spinning, and was high-speed and more productive. Ring spinning entailed modification in the construction and equipment of mills, reducing their elevation – so accounting for the distinctive appearance of the Regent mill – and requiring improved ventilation. Ring frames could be tended by cheap semi-skilled labour rather than by the highly paid labour of the mule spinners and were thus opposed by the increasingly strong trades unions. The number of ring spindles in Lancashire exceeded the number of mule spindles only in 1952. The Regent mill was a fine venture and you can read it's story here. It is pleasing that it has been listed as one of only five cotton mills in the Oldham area as worthy of preservation.

Raw cotton was brought by barge along the Rochdale canal and unloaded directly onto the Regent wharf. Unusually, the Regent mill did not have a basement, which is normally where the blowing room is located. The first floor, however, was called the ‘basement’ and there the raw cotton store and the finished goods warehouse were located. Carding took place on the first floor, spinning was carried out on the second floor on the ring frames and then the yarn was sent for preparation to customer specifications on the top floor. The main products were warp beams, for insertion into automatic looms, bundles, cheeses and chains.

According to Leslie, Billy worked under the mill manager, who may have been one of the controlling share holders, but who was in fact ineffectual; Billy actually ran the place and his job must have been prestigious. He appears to have been a no-nonsense manager; if one of the workers asked him the time Billy would tell him it was "Ten to!" "Ten to what?" came the somewhat puzzled response. "’Ten to thi wark!" said Billy.

Initially Billy’s pay at the Regent mill was £2 per week in gold sovereigns and he felt ‘like a king’ the first time he was paid. This would have been good pay. Leslie remembered that the family used to go to Southport or Knott End (opposite Fleetwood) on the Lancashire coast for a full week’s holiday during Oldham Wakes (which started the last Saturday in August – the preceding Friday it always seemed to rain hard!) and they were considered to be well off by their contemporaries.

At different times Billy’s children Gladys and Albert worked in the Regent mill, and also his sisters-in-law Polly and Annie (who was widowed around the age of forty). Gladys’s future husband, Bob Stott, is also said to have worked there.

Further evidence of Billy’s good standing with the Regent mill’s managers comes from a story that in 1914 he went home with a whole side of bacon and a 1 cwt sack of flour to "see them through the War".

It was during the First World War, in about 1915, that the Dunkerley family made the short move to 5 Firs Avenue, a terraced house near Oldham Road built in 1894. The accommodation comprised two downstairs rooms (front and back) and a back kitchen with three bedrooms, one of them small. There was the usual back yard and a backings, but the house must have been considered nicer than any the family had known until then because its front opened directly onto the drive and gardens in front of Firs Hall, a park-like area of relative tranquillity set back from the main road. At Firs Avenue Billy was even closer to the mill than he had been in Old Road! The family probably lived there until 1935.

The home at Firs Avenue was the one where the children grew up, and would later look back on as being the family home. Later Gladys and her husband Bob also lived there for a time.

We have, unfortunately, very little specific information about Billy’s life from 1908 to 1919 but it must have been a time of hard work at the mill to put bread on the table for a young and growing family amidst the concerns of German rearmament and the subsequent upheavals of the First World War. It was a worrying time to be bringing up a family. But for Billy it was also a time of integration into the local Failsworth community, as shown by later developments.

Billy’s children attended school up to age 14 and then sought work. Lewis, Leslie and Clare all became members of the newly established Boy Scout movement in the 7th Manchester (St. John’s) troop.

From the time that Billy moved to Failsworth until the First World War there was considerable industrial unrest and it was clear that Labour were becoming a growing political force. Activity in the cotton industry peaked in 1913, both in number of employees and output, and thereafter generally declined. It is hard to overstate the importance that the cotton industry still had for Britain at this time; to help put it into context, in 1913 over 25% of all Britain’s exports, by value, were cotton manufactures.

However, the mighty Lancashire cotton industry was about to enter into irreversible decline. The war brought the first shock. Production controls were imposed by the government, increasingly men were called away to fight and women took their places at the spinning frame or loom. Then, too, there were disruptions to supplies caused by the depredations of the much-feared German U-boats, which played a major part in sinking over nine million tons of British shipping.

Billy himself was not called upon to fight in the war although in 1918, when he was 43 years old, the new Military Service Bill raised the maximum age for conscription to 50. His position at the Regent mill exempted him from service, and the family was also spared a loss of sons because Albert, the oldest, was only 15 in 1918.

The Regent mill made a reasonable start after it began production in 1906. The first available balance sheet, at May 1909, shows a small surplus on the Profit and Loss account, but there then followed three years of losses before profitability was re-established just before the outbreak of the First World War. Possibly the Regent mill was at an advantage compared to the mule spinning mills, as its ring frames could be run by women whereas the mule mills really needed skilled men spinners who would have been prime material for the army. In any case, notwithstanding the difficult circumstances, increasing profitability was achieved at the Regent mill as the war progressed. By the time of the armistice, in November 1918, the Lancashire cotton industry was anxious to take advantage of what it was sure were favourable circumstances to make money and the shareholders of the Regent mill were caught up in the general euphoria.

The Re-Flotation Disaster

As the celebrations that greeted the peace died away, the cotton industry excitedly embarked on a series of new developments that were to permanently scar the industry and its people, and which was to have a lasting effect on Billy Dunkerley. To describe this important and fascinating episode I can do no better than quote extensively from Brian Law [1], where the situation at the end of 1918 is described thus:

"Huge pay awards, a restless and militant workforce, and the problems of reinstating returning servicemen notwithstanding, the local cotton industry was full of optimism, raring to go. After all, the principal markets of the world had been starved of goods for years. And competition, at least from Continental Europe, had been removed. Another consideration which confirmed this confidence was the demand by the cotton trade unions for a shorter working week, for 48 hours in place of 55½, with a late start at 7.45am replacing the unsociable 6 am, a vast improvement to the mill worker’s life. When this was introduced in July 1919, effective capacity was reduced by over 13 per cent.

"These were the circumstances of the boom of 1919 and 1920. The strength of demand and worldwide inflation masked the huge increase in labour, fuel and other costs that was taking place. Mills could not fail to make huge profits. The Chronicle in January 1920 was apt; "no sooner did a man in this neighbourhood get his hands on a bale of cotton than he had his feet in a motor car". The workforce, in the circumstances, demanded a further increase in wages; they received bonuses early in 1920 and in May an advance of about 30 per cent, taking rates to three times what they had been before the war, well ahead of the increase in prices. Forgetting the tragedies of the war, life in Oldham seemed very good; the going-off clubs in the summer paid out £253,080 [for holiday spending], well above pre-war totals. Charabanc trips to the coast, uncomfortable as they must have been, were a regular event in 1920.

"High profits meant hugely inflated share prices, hugely increased values for existing mills. And such an increase in value seemed warranted by the huge increase in the cost of creating new mill capacity, building costs, land values, machinery costs, higher costs across the board; mills that before the war had cost £1 a spindle to build, would now cost at least £4. The stage was set for a huge re-flotation and re-capitalization boom to realize for existing shareholders the enormously enhanced value of the cotton spinning mills they owned.

"Thus ensued perhaps the most sordid and tragic episode in the history of the Oldham Limiteds. Once the opportunity was perceived, throughout late 1919 and into 1920, in an intoxicated and euphoric atmosphere, enterprising, plausible and unscrupulous businessmen, assisted by loans from profit-seeking banks, began to bid for the shares of the many Limiteds, offering values far in excess of what the market had ever provided. An auction developed and prices were driven even higher, with bids as high as £5 per spindle. Not all the Limited companies succumbed but well over two-thirds in the Oldham district sold out; many of the old private companies … were also sold at this time.

"Once acquired, at an inflated value, a company was re-floted with new shares being offered at an even more inflated value, in most cases the nominal price being only partly paid. A gullible public, not merely local, fed with the promise of large dividends and aware of the continuing surge in share prices, scrambled to buy the new shares, usually at premiums, at least while the gambling fever lasted. Huge profits could be made by the promoters involved, not least from the differences in value between the shares acquired and the new shares offered in the re-floted company. There were all kinds of sharp practices yielding many other pickings for the insiders along the way. So active was the dealing in shares that a second share market developed, the Oldham and District Stock Exchange, with eighty members. It met daily in a basement at the Lyceum while the older Lancashire Sharebrokers met in a main room. Many of those involved, warned the Chronicle, were "not of the highest probity".

"The re-flotation boom ended in tears. The supposed market conditions that would benefit Oldham were short lived. Immediate post-war shortages were quickly met. In the course of 1920 markets became more difficult, demand slackened, profits shrank, share prices began to fall. Trade collapsed in 1921. Slowly it began to be realized that this was not merely a return to the ups and downs that Oldham had always known but a new situation. The world market had changed; Lancashire, with its huge inflation, had become high cost. Large traditional markets like India and China, many of their mills fitted with Platt’s machinery [from Oldham], were beginning to supply themselves; Japan, enjoying cheap labour and also the benefits of Lancashire-made machinery and mill practice, was emerging as a formidable low cost competitor, having doubled its capacity since before the war.

"So began Lancashire’s agony. There were to be huge consequences for those who owned the industry, the mills of the Limiteds; for those who worked in them and depended on them for their livelihood; and for those who serviced the industry with its capital equipment or supplied its requirements. For Lancashire read Oldham; the decline of cotton, meant the decline of Oldham. People in the town were bewildered after all they had been told. …

"Oldham did not mind seeing the mills when ablaze with light morning and evening, their chimneys belching black smoke; what the town did not like were silent mills."

The owners of the Regent mill took full part in the re-flotation boom. In 1919 they decided to wind up the RMCL and sell the assets to a new company, to be called the New Regent Mill Limited (NRML). For their trouble they were able to pocket about £18,500. The major shareholders of the NRML were to be essentially the same as those who had run the old company, but in addition among the founding shareholders, each initially with one share, were the former mill engineer and also its overlooker, Billy Dunkerley. As the new capital was raised so Billy became the owner of 500 shares of £1 nominal value in the enterprise, 50% part paid. Billy’s brother Edmund, then a warper living in Oldham, also became the owner of a similar holding (see figure).

At first the new venture did well and paid a maiden dividend of 10 (old) pence per share in 1921 – a return of 8.33% on the part-paid £1 shares. By 1922, however, in common with most of the spinning mills of Oldham, the Regent was in difficulties and it was forced into an agreement with its banks, effectively signifying loss of control by the shareholders.

Brian Law continues:

"The extent of Lancashire’s – and Oldham’s – decline can be measured by raw cotton consumption. In the five years up to and including 1914 this had averaged close to 2,000 million lbs. In 1920, after the wartime decline, there was a recovery to 1,726 million lbs; in 1921 consumption fell to 1,066 million lbs; for the rest of the 1920’s it averaged less than 1,500 million lbs.

"1921 saw unemployment rise, and extensive short time working. The employers’ main response was to force down wages, massively in July 1921 (following a lock-out) and with three further reductions to November 1922; rates were then at 90 per cent above pre-war levels. Prices were also falling, but allowing for the incidence of short time, cotton mill workers were significantly poorer than during their short-lived prosperity. On-and-off throughout the Twenties this remained the situation, with earnings savagely depleted by short time; in 1922 and 1923, for instance, most Oldham mills worked no more than three or four days a week. Where mills closed, permanently or temporarily, their operatives became unemployed. There was one difference in the post-war situation; whether on short time or unemployed, the insured worker [National Insurance] could sign on and draw a modest dole. But conditions were so bad that the Mayor [of Oldham] made an appeal for the relief of acute distress, raising £2,667 and promises of sixty-five tons of coal; there were similar distress funds in Crompton and Lees. Attempts were made in 1922 to carry out public works to provide employment, building new sewers and improving the park, but these ceased when government funds were exhausted. A new road through the meadowlands of Chadderton, Broadway, was started in 1922, partly at least to provide work for some 600 unemployed men.

"The strongly individualist Oldham spinning industry with large numbers of competing firms, each with separate managements, all producing much the same kind of yarn, was slow to understand the changed situation, its causes or its permanence. It was divided in its response. Price cutting, weak selling from too much capacity, plagued the industry. Attempts to agree minimum prices or co-ordinate short time working had limited and short-lived success. Mill profits disappeared, and many companies traded at a loss financed by bank borrowings; share prices collapsed accordingly."

"So the bitter desperate agony began of those who had purchased, inherited or held on to shares in the failing re-floted companies. Their shares were worthless and un-saleable; they were faced with inescapable calls for money to provide unpaid capital; where shares could be sold it was often at a negative price, that is the buyer had to be paid to take them and assume the risk of further calls. Mortgaging the mills, where it was possible, was the only alternative source of funds to struggling mill managements. Then there was the status of all the loan capital; after 1926 much of it ceased to receive interest nor could it be withdrawn; effectively, it was lost. This was the travail of Oldham, with many ruined and thousands in hardship as they lost their savings, struggled to meet new demands and adjust to new circumstances. [See poem by J. T. Taylor].

"Some of those erstwhile heroes, who had made their fortunes and misled thousands in the post-war boom, were caught in the trap of their own misjudgement, their ‘greed and swollen heads’. The outspoken Billy Hopwood, knighted in 1921 by Lloyd George, was ruined by the collapse in value of his shares and his inability to meet the guarantees which he had given to support the bank debt of some of the companies he had re-floted; Shaw gave him no honours at his funeral in 1936. Other ‘millionaires’ reduced to bankruptcy or comparative poverty included Harry Dixon and Samuel Firth Mellor. Mellor, an Oldham stockbroker, had been involved in twenty-four re-floted companies; apart from his wealth on paper, in the re-flotation period he enjoyed an income of £4,000 a year; in 1938 when he died at Prestatyn it was claimed that as an un-discharged bankrupt he still owed, mainly in unpaid calls and bank debt, £400,000. Dixon lived until 1947; he had been vigorous in remonstrating against the market as it brought down the value of re-floted company shares; when bankrupt in 1931 his debts arising from unpaid share calls were £284,000. John Bunting’s son, who died in 1929, seems to have lost his father’s fortune. There were a fortunate few who had sold out in the boom and taken their money out of the industry and out of Oldham, but for most, boom wealth had melted like snow. Elisha Bardsley, Mayor in 1932, himself a big loser in the cotton collapse, was to say that Oldham was ‘financially smashed and pulverized’.

"So far as the problems of the industry were concerned, short time working was only a temporary expedient to cope with unwanted capacity. Some took the view that the only answer was to reduce costs materially, by lowering wages and working hours, the better to compete with Japan and others and win back markets. This was entirely unacceptable, and not merely to the trade unions. But if loss of markets was to be regarded as permanent, then Lancashire and Oldham needed fewer mills, and fewer mill workers. Although mills were closing and more and more Limiteds and private companies were going into liquidation, market processes were a slow and painful means to achieve such a contraction.

"The Bank of England now became involved because Lancashire’s banks were deeply committed to loss-making mills with virtually worthless assets. Maynard Keynes, close to the Bank and the Treasury, began to offer his opinion on the way forward, outspokenly critical of the suicidal behaviour of the many competing enterprises and calling for co-coordinated mill closures; he attracted savage attacks as an academic outsider. After much debate and many reports, plans evolved for a large-scale merger of mills, eliminating separate independent managements, and reducing capacity by closing older mills and concentrating production on the most efficient. This led to the formation in 1929 of the Lancashire Cotton Corporation, amalgamating many hitherto independent companies…"

Eventually the Lancashire Cotton Corporation (LCC) acquired 140 mills, of which it had scrapped 74 by 1935. It concentrated production at the most efficient mills and ran them full-time to produce standard products and so minimize costs. It also centralized purchasing and management. Trading losses were eliminated and eventually a small profit appeared in 1934.

Other industries, such as coal and shipping that were closely tied to cotton, were also in decline and there was much poverty and bitterness among the working classes. The labour force in cotton fell by more than half between 1912 and 1938 (from 621,000 to 288,000). In 1931-32, at the peak of unemployment, 43.2% of cotton operatives were out of work. It would take another war to provide employment for all.

At the NRML the losses of 1922 continued, probably exacerbated by the mill having to work only part-time. By 1926 losses had spiralled to £125,000 and the banks had forced the shareholders to pay up that part of their share capital until then unpaid. By 1927 losses had reached £153,326.

Billy Dunkerley paid the calls on his by-then worthless 500 shares – as, presumably, did his brother Edmund – effectively throwing £250 each of good money after bad. Although it appears that Billy was hard-pushed, he survived and, according to my father, Leslie, he took pride in having met his obligations. One can only imagine his feelings of bitterness, perhaps especially in relation to the situation of his younger brother Edmund who Billy had persuaded, directly or indirectly, to invest in the NRML and with such disastrous consequences.

The NRML succumbed to the LCC on 10th December 1930. As one of the more efficient and modern mills it was eventually put back into production and its spindles did not finally stop turning until 1966.

Billy’s 500 shares in the NRML were converted to shares in the LCC and Leslie preserved several of the certificates (see figure). The earliest is dated February 13th 1931 and is for 52 Deferred shares of One Shilling each, fully paid. Other certificates for 100 and 50 additional Deferred shares of One Shilling each, fully paid, are dated November 22nd 1934 and November 25th 1935. By 1937 there were 302 LCC Deferred shares of One Shilling each, fully paid, in Billy’s name.

In 1937 the LCC undertook a Scheme of Arrangement and Reorganisation of Capital which saw Billy’s 302 Deferred shares converted into £1-5-2d of Ordinary Stock, of nominal value £1 (see figure). Since fractional shares were not permitted, the LCC paid out the five shillings and two pence in cash and issued a share certificate for one share of the new Ordinary Stock.

In February 1940 the Lancashire Cotton Corporation reached the milestone of being able to pay a dividend on its shares and Billy’s one share earned one shilling and six pence, of which the sixpence was deducted as income tax. Other dividends followed up to at least number 7 of January 1946, all at the same rate.

In fact by then Billy had died and the cost of having the share made over into Selina’s name was more than the share and dividends were worth. The end result was that Billy’s total return on £500 committed in hope in 1919 was the one shilling and six pence paid out to him on consolidation of his Deferred shares to Ordinary Stock. He lost over 99% of his money. Something similar would have been experienced by the vast majority of the small investors in the cotton industry of Lancashire in the twentieth century. It is hardly surprising that Selina swore that no member of her family would ever again work in the cotton mills.

An Interest in Politics

Billy served as the secretary of Failsworth’s ‘Mowbray’ Conservative Club from at least 1916, and as the re-flotation boom was getting underway, so Billy began to be more active in local politics. The ‘Mowbray’ Conservative Club stands on Oldham Road and had been established in 1892. (Incidentally, Billy could have walked from his home at 5 Firs Avenue to the Mowbray Club in about 30 seconds! He seems to have had a knack of keeping everything close at hand and it is easy to understand why he never bought a car!).

In 1919 Billy stood as a candidate for the Conservative party in the Lower Ward for Failsworth Urban District Council and was elected on obtaining 211 votes. He was re-elected several times and stayed in continuous service as a council member until 1934. As the re-flotation bubble went up he became Chairman of the Council in 1920, was Chairman again in 1921 when the bubble burst, and then twice more in the difficult years of 1925 and 1931. His friend Robert Stott (father of Gladys’s husband) was Chairman three times, but nobody else was ever in office four times.

The Local Government Act of 1894 had established that the Chairman of the Council, during his term of Office, would also rank as a County Magistrate (i.e. Justice of the Peace - JP) and Billy was indeed a JP. However, according to Leslie, Billy was ‘permanently’ a JP, sitting at Strangeways Court in Manchester. When he was proposed as a candidate for Ben Brierley Chapter in 1936, although not in office as Chairman of the Council that year, he was a JP .

Being a member of the council involved a great deal of work. In 1920, as Chairman of the Council, Billy was also Chairman of the General Purposes Committee and on sub-committees for Accounts and for Street Lighting. He was also ‘Overseer of the Poor’ and a representative on the Elementary Education District Committee for Area 35 for Council Schools and Non-Provided Schools. Council meetings seem to have taken place most Wednesdays.

There must have been many civic events with which Billy was associated, but three of the most interesting were the inauguration of Failsworth’s New Pole, the official opening of the Broadway project, and a commemorative programme on the occasion of the centenary of Ben Brierley.

There has been a pole at Failsworth since at least 1746 and from time to time, as the old pole deteriorated, it was necessary to replace it. The fourth pole for which there are historical records was erected in August 1924. It stood 82 feet high and lasted until 1950. Although not in office that year, Billy appears in a ‘photo, together with other worthies, at the inauguration ceremony (see left).

As has been explained, 1922 was a difficult year in the economy of the Oldham area with very many unemployed men and the construction of Broadway, as described above by Brian Law, was undertaken to help the jobless. Broadway was a fine new dual-carriageway road from Failsworth through the meadowlands to Chadderton. The project was started in 1922 with support from government funding and provided work for some 600 unemployed men. The road was inaugurated on 20th January 1925 and Leslie Dunkerley always said that it was opened by Billy in his capacity as Chairman of Failsworth Council.

Arguably the most famous son of Failsworth is Ben Brierley, of whom more below. The centenary of Ben’s birth fell during Billy’s third term in office, on June 26th 1925. On behalf of Failsworth Council Billy hosted a gathering at the Secular Schoolroom in Failsworth on Saturday 27th June of that year. Following an address by the Chairman of the Council there was a talk on Brierley and songs and recitals of works by Brierley, Edwin Waugh and other Lancashire poets. A programme was printed, price two pence.

Billy’s public service with Failsworth Council continued until 1934 during much of which his private life was filled with difficulties. However he was a man of character. Leslie told me that if someone said they couldn’t do something Billy would tell them "Put can’t at th’ back o’ th’ dur and try again!" He was also a man to keep a tight hold on the reins of public expenditure. In 1934, when times generally were hard, Billy opposed any pay increases for council employees and when these were voted through in spite of his opposition he walked out of the meeting. He later tried, unsuccessfully, to have them overturned!

However Billy also had a ready wit. Although not apparently a regular church attendee, he was happy to go from time to time and while in Failsworth he was quite closely connected with St. John’s parish church. On one occasion a political adversary, also none too regular in his devotions, happened to meet Billy as they were both leaving an evening service. The other chap, thinking to get one over on Billy, said "Ah don’t see thee much at church Billy". Billy replied, quick as lightning, "No, tha should coom moore often!"

The adversary might have been Joseph Burgess, for whose autobiographical book, 'A Potential Poet?', Billy subscribed. Burgess, a Failsworth man and local poet, became a labour activist and a founder member of the Independent Labour Party, a forerunner of the present Labour party. Clearly he and Billy had very different political ideas. Burgess published another book, a copy of which was dedicated by him to Billy. It seems that Billy was prepared to cross party lines where friendship was concerned. There is a ‘Burgess Drive’, almost certainly named after Joseph Burgess, on the Lord Lane estate in Failsworth.

Billy’s outstanding service to Failsworth over fifteen difficult years, in four of which he had undertaken the onerous duties of Council Chairman, were recognized by his fellow councillors in 1933 when they proposed that Fairbrother Street, leading on to the Lord Lane estate, should be re-named ‘Dunkerley Avenue’ in his honour. No objections were received to this proposal from the townspeople and the name of the road was duly changed. It remains today in tribute to him.

An Interest in More Speculative Things

As Billy’s interest in local politics waned, it was replaced by an interest in Freemasonry.

Freemasonry, otherwise known as the Craft, is a fraternal society concerned with spiritual values, illustrated through ritual drama. Membership is open to men who believe in a Supreme Being and are of good repute. Its basic principles are Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. The movement probably arose in England and certainly existed by the 17th century. By the eighteenth century it had attracted royalty to its ranks. In December 1874, the month Billy was born, Albert Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, became the Grand Master (supreme leader) and did much to promote the Craft. Thus Billy’s lifetime coincided with a period of great growth in the popularity of Freemasonry.

In 1908 a number of local men decided to found a new lodge in Failsworth and called it after Ben Brierley, the local Lancashire dialect author, poet, wit, politician and social reformer referred to previously. Brierley, who had also been a Freemason, died in 1896. The lodge was given the number 3317.

Billy joined Ben Brierley Lodge, whose meeting place at that time was, conveniently for him, in the upper room of the Mowbray Conservative club where he was so active (see picture above). It may be that his interest in Freemasonry was kindled through contacts at the Mowbray Club, but no other Council Chairman from 1919 to 1934 figures as Worshipful Master of Ben Brierley Lodge. Billy must have been well known to Harold Andrews, his Proposer, and William Jones, a Founder Member and former Worshipful Master of the lodge, who seconded his application for membership. As a councillor and magistrate he would certainly have been well known to the other members when they voted to accept his application in 1920. He was Initiated on December 13th of that year, Passed on January 10th and Raised on April 11th of 1921. These events took place during his first two years in office as Chairman of Failsworth Council.

Initially his progress in the lodge was slow – perhaps there were too many other members with prior claims ahead of him – but by 1930/31 he had become Inner Guard. Thereafter his progress was more rapid and he became Junior Deacon the following year, then successively Senior Deacon, Junior Warden and Senior Warden before being installed as Worshipful Master of the Lodge on 14th October 1935.

It had been Billy’s intention to initiate his son, Leslie, into the Lodge during his year in office as Worshipful Master, but events conspired against him as described below, such that Leslie’s initiation into the Craft was deferred until March 1937. Billy wanted to progress beyond the Craft and there is reason to believe that he became a member of Ben Brierley Chapter on 16th March 1936, for his name appears on the summons as a candidate to be balloted and admitted on that date.

Family Sorrow and Joy

Billy had weathered a series of difficulties in the 1920s, but in 1930 he was faced with a family tragedy that affected him very deeply. Lewis, Billy’s dearly loved second son and a very close brother for Leslie, became ill and died very suddenly on 15th August of peritonitis. At the time he was Group Scout Master of the 7th Manchester (St. John’s Failsworth), was engaged to a young lady from the Lake District and was doing well in his work as a qualified plumber at the local firm of J. W. Newton and Son. The funeral and burial at Failsworth cemetery were both attended by the Scouts and Guides and ‘the streets were filled with those who wished to show their respects’. The Clerk to the Council was instructed to send a message of condolence. Lewis was ‘an ardent worker at St. John’s church and school’ and was sadly missed. (The story can be read in greater detail here). Something of the emotion of the time is captured by the dedication inside a copy of ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern’ given as a 56th birthday present to Billy on 12th November 1930: "To dear Dad, from Leslie, with best love". Leslie was living away from home at the time, in Leeds.

The following year was much better. On the last day of July Billy’s oldest son, Albert, married Muriel Knott at St. James’ church in Oldham and a scant five weeks later St. John’s in Failsworth witnessed the happy occasion when Billy gave away his only daughter, Gladys, to Robert (Bob) Stott. Bob was the son of Councillor Robert Stott, who was Chairman of Failsworth UDC, in 1927, 1933 and 1937 and Billy’s good friend, which no doubt added to the happiness. The wedding was attended by members of the council (Billy was in office for the fourth time that year) and there was great interest and a large gathering at the church. Leslie was the best man. Eighty-six guests were entertained at the reception, held at the Mowbray Conservative Club (where else?) and the happy couple later left for their honeymoon in the Isle of Man.

Although Gladys and Bob did not have children, on 4th July 1932 Muriel gave birth to Hazel Jean (‘Jean’) and Billy had the happy experience of becoming a grandfather. About a year later, when her sister Maureen was born, Jean’s faltering pronunciation provided her grandparents with the names ‘Ampa’ and ‘Nana’. I never knew ‘Ampa’, but my grandmother was always ‘Nana’ to me and to her other grandchildren.

A Home of Their Own

Although times were tough for manual workers the early years of the 1930s saw a boom in the construction of houses for the lower middle classes.

"The ‘white-collar’ worker was about to enjoy his finest hour, and with him would arise a new phenomenon – the burgeoning social order of the lower middle class. The engine of change was the building society mortgage. Before 1930 the societies had expected mortgagors – the borrowers – to lay down a deposit of 25 per cent of the agreed price of their homes. In 1930, adjusting to the shallower financial waters of the slump, they trimmed their demands to 5 or 10 per cent. The result was the heaviest deluge of bricks and mortar history had ever seen. Houses would never be so cheap again, nor readily available." "Anyone with an income of £200 a year – well within the expectations of skilled manual or white-collar workers – could qualify for a mortgage, with repayments as low as 9s a week. The building boom accelerated, and by 1933 the developers were aiming their products, and their advertising, directly at the lower end of the market. Suburban streets lined with three bedroom semis grew and multiplied."

It just so happened that Failsworth Urban District Council owned about 6 acres of land at Bardsley Fold, off Lord Lane, and in 1931 when Billy Dunkerley was Chairman of the Council for the last time a proposal was received from H. W. and G. J. Froggatt to purchase the land for the construction of houses for ‘the working classes’. It would have made sense to support this proposal because not only was house buying affordable but there were also huge numbers of unemployed and hungry men in the cotton districts in general and Failsworth in particular. A large house-building project would provide opportunities to utilize some of the surplus labour, stimulate the local economy and eventually bring new residents who would be able to contribute to the community.

Billy and his Conservative grouping supported the proposal, but it was fiercely opposed by the opposition Labour group. The reason why the Labour group mounted such opposition is not clear, but there were interesting interplays of personalities. For one thing Leslie Dunkerley had just become the secretary (administration manager) at Froggatts and Harry Froggatt was a Conservative member of the Council. However, the price to be paid for the land had to be approved by the District Valuer of the Inland Revenue as ‘fair and reasonable’ and also by the Minister of Health, so there is no reason to believe that the Council was proposing to do Froggats any favours. After a delay of about 18 months the sale took place and the development went ahead.

Some of the houses were actually built along Lord Lane, but a considerable number of new roads were developed, such as Burgess Drive and Wrigley Crescent. The properties were all semi-detached houses often with bay windows, stained glass embellishments and fancy brickwork, to distinguish them from the council houses that were being widely built at the time.

In due course Billy and two of his children each become owner-occupiers on this development. Billy’s property was number 28 Lord Lane and he had moved in by 15th October 1934. Albert and Muriel, now with two children, bought 54 Dunkerley Avenue and Gladys and Bob purchased 16 Lord Lane (on the corner of Burgess Drive next to the Lord Lane playing fields).

The houses were not especially large and the accommodation was similar to that at 5 Firs Avenue, viz, three downstairs rooms and three bedrooms, one of which was small. However there was electricity, an indoor bathroom and toilet with running water (which the family had possibly not previously experienced) and there were front and back gardens where it was possible to plant flowers, vegetables and trees. It must have seemed a greener and more pleasant land. My mother, Irene Dunkerley, estimated that the house may have cost about £150 at the time.

There must have been great excitement and happiness in the family as three of the Dunkerleys achieved the milestone of home ownership.

Hard Times and Goodbye to Cotton

At this point it will be useful to return for a last time to ‘Oldham Brave Oldham’. Brian Law writes:

"In 1930 and 1931, worldwide depression compounded Lancashire’s competitive decline. Cotton consumption in the latter year fell to 985 million lbs, half its pre-war total. It recovered subsequently but averaged only 1,100 million lbs in the Thirties. Company failures and mill closures rose sharply and the numbers unemployed now soared. In June 1929 there were about 14 per cent of the insured population [those with a right to claim benefits under the National Insurance scheme] wholly or temporarily unemployed in the Oldham district, defined as the Borough, Failsworth, Chadderton, Crompton, Royton and Lees. A year later the total had risen to over 34 per cent of the insured, about 34,000 people; it reached the worst point in the winter of 1931–1932 when for brief periods as many as 50,000 or about 50 per cent of those insured in Oldham district were out of work. A high proportion of those employed at any one time, between half and two-thirds, were "temporarily stopped", that is their mill was on short time or shut down but not closed permanently; there was a little more hope in this situation although the immediate effects were the same. The plight of the long-term unemployed was far more severe, especially that of older men, and minders who refused to accept work as piecers.

"As 1932 dragged on there was slight improvement; by June 1933 the unemployed percentage was down to 27 per cent, continuing to fall slowly as the cotton trade picked up modestly, to 12 per cent in 1937.

"For those in work, the acute position in the cotton industry brought further sharp wage reductions in September 1929 and again in November 1932; at the latter date wage rates (but not earnings) were about 60 per cent higher than they had been in 1913-14. Lower prices were a partial compensation; the inflation of the immediate post-war period was out of the system, prices were falling although the cost of living was still 25 per cent higher than it had been in 1913-14.

"That the Failsworth Urban District Council hereby record their very great regret at the death of Mr. William Dunkerley, J.P, a former member and for many years Chairman of the District Council, and desire to place on record their appreciation of the many public services rendered to the district by Mr. Dunkerley during his lifetime, and their sense of the loss which the townspeople of Failsworth have sustained by the death of one of their most respected and useful citizens; and at the same time desire to express their sincere sympathy with Mrs. Dunkerley and family in their bereaved circumstances."