Handloom weavers – starvation in Carlisle
In my previous post, I contrasted the ‘bright lights’ of Christmas 1854 in Carlisle with the plight of families who were dying from starvation and related disease.
The plight of handloom weavers was raised by Dr Henry Lonsdale MD, in a letter to the two Carlisle newspapers.
‘You want the proof? Go with me to the suburbs, enter the shops and dwellings of the weaver, examine his food and clothing, and see how humanity is prolonging wretched and miserable existence!’
Henry Lonsdale, ‘accompanied by Councillor Simpson and Mr William Coulthard’ had visited handloom weavers’ shops and homes, in Caldewgate and Botchergate. And been shocked at their findings.
‘If this is the highest…’
The net earnings of the hardest-working, ablest handloom weavers, working 13-14 hours a day, were 6s 8d (six shillings and eight pence) a week. But few could manage this, and work wasn’t constant. So the average earnings were 5s (five shillings) a week. Add anything his wife could earn, and a handloom weaver could have 5s 10d (ie just short of six shillings) a week. With a family to support from that.
‘Let us look to the weekly disbursement of 5s 10d. amongst five people (two adults and three children.) The house-rent will average 1s 1d., and coals and candles at this season 8d per week…
This left 4s (four shillings) a week for food and clothing. Or 7d (seven pence) a day.
‘The food the weaver consists coarse wheaten or barley bread, porridge of Indian meal, tea and coffee of the poorest quality and generally without sugar or milk, a scanty supply of potatoes, an occasional herring, and very rarely a taste of butchers’ meat.’
And worse
‘I have been speaking the working weaver and his wife, but it must not be overlooked that great numbers are unemployed—probably one-third or more of the looms stand empty at this time. And how do these waiting for work contrive to live? No man sayeth how!’
A call to action
Henry Lonsdale says that a Mr. Head ‘kindly gives a quantity of boiled rice daily to several hundreds’ (actually, 1,000 people per week) but while justly appreciate, it is far from enough.
Soup kitchens and the distribution of coals ‘would a great boon to tbe starving poor’ (though what the weavers really desire is paid work, not charity)
‘To save time, I am led to think that the townsfolk would not find fault with a self-supported committee, consisting Mr. Head, the Dean, the Mayor and some of the Council, the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Guardians, and others of our citizens who may volunteer their services.’
Henry Londsdale and a number of others wrote to Carlisle mayor Robert Ferguson, who held a public meeting on the topic.
The Dean of Carlisle, A C Tait, said the weavers wanted work, not to be Paupers, forced to turn to the Poor Law Guardians for Relief.
The ‘undeserving poor’
Not everyone was sympathetic. And to show things haven’t changed much in 167 years, the Reverend J Thwaytes spoke of weavers being lazy, ‘lying in bed till eight o’clock’. And the ‘indolent’ costing the hard-working money. The masters should set up weaving sheds and make them work fixed hours, ‘like other honest men’. That was the ‘only thing that would benefit the working classes of Caldewgate’.
His real beef seems to have been their ingratitude to him over 16 years, and the fact less than a dozen Caldewgate weavers attended church. But as the (Conservative) Carlisle Patriot was to point out, the sins of the father were no reason to abandon ‘his helpless connections’ to ‘slow and sure starvation’.
Others said this might be partially true, but was far from universal. The Rev W Rees said weavers who had been earning 18 shillings to £1 a week now couldn’t earn more than 4 shillings because the work wasn’t there.
‘Give a man a fish…’
Henry Lonsdale reiterated that temporary help such as soup kitchens wouldn’t solve the long-term problem. The workhouses were filled with weavers, and he wanted more done than ‘the mere relief of the immediate distress’.
He also wondered why no manufacturers were at the meeting, despite living off the labours of the weavers.
Handloom weavers and new technology
Joseph Hanson said he represented the weavers, who on the whole were an industrious class. But they couldn’t compete with the power loom. They wanted other employment – or the funds to emigrate.
In 1828, there were 2,000 looms in Carlisle ‘and its vicinity’. It was now down about 1,300, of which 600 were idle (due to lack of work). Pay had gone down, while the cost of food had gone up.
Well-meaning, but…
The meeting decided to start collecting funds and to determine the best use for them. And Carlisle Corporation was to provide temporary employment to some, in raising the river banks at the Sorceries (or Sauceries and strengthening the banks elsewhere. (This didn’t work out too well for anyone). A sub-committee was formed, to inquire as to what could be done to help those who wished to emigrate to Australia. However, on December 23, the Patriot opined that all this was of little use to most of those suffering, and reports in February 1855 make it clear the weavers were still struggling.
By now, they were unfit (from hunger) to work, and also wanted for clothing, bedding, and fuel.
‘Over to you’
With funds running out, the Distress Relief Committee passed things over to the Board of Guardians, calling on them to provide poor relief to those in need. Which started a whole new argument between those who didn’t want to ‘reward the idle’ and those who said ‘people are literally starving’.
In the end, it was agreed the handloom weavers should work for their poor relief when this was possible, but would still get aid immediately.
They also agreed no relief should be given to people who were in work, on low pay, as this would be contributing to the employers’ profits.
Soup kitchens after all
In one week in March 1855, around 800lb of beef was converted into soup for the ‘distressed poor’ of Carlisle. The kind folk of Carlisle, by the ways, donated a total of £660 to the relief fund.
The stories seem to stop after that spring, and it would seem that work picked up for those who stuck to weaving. While others were able to change occupation: some moving to the collieries of the north-east.
A true Cumbrian Character
Raise your Christmas glasses to G H Head, of Rickerby House, who so generously supplied all that rice. And who also provided currants, raisins, and coal at Christmas 1854. (John Hewson and Samuel Blaylock, of Hewson & Blaylock, cotton manufacturers, provided the use of their steam engine to cook the rice).
George H Head, by 1851, was a banker and High Sheriff. He and his wife Maria lived at Rickerby House with ten servants.
When he died on December 12, 1876, the probate entry reveals he was George Head Head. His grave at St Michael’s, Stanwix, adds that he was born on August 29, 1795.
George (the son of Joseph Monkhouse Head and Elizabeth) had married Maria Woodrouffe Smith in 1833. They married in a Quaker meeting house. She was ‘an heiress, through whom he received a large fortune’. There were to be no children.
Oddly, having been baptised a Quaker in 1795, George was baptised in a Church of England church in 1852.
Maria Head died in February 1854. George married 2 Sarah Gurney, in 1858. Sarah, also from a Quaker family, the daughter of a banker, and 16 years his junior, died a few months before George, in April 1876.
His obituary says he succeeded his father in the banking firm J M Head and Co, later the Cumberland Union Banking Co. He served as a magistrate, served on the committees of various charitable institutuions, and established the ragged schools in Caldewgate and the Reformatory (school) at Stanwix.
Dr Henry Lonsdale is another honourable Cumbrian Character, whose life has been chronicled by others.
He features on Cumbrian Characters in this post on drains, this post on burials and this post on the dreadful state of many Carlisle lodging houses.