The cotton trade of Lancashire was now fairly established; steam was just beginning to be commonly used as the motive power instead of the old water–wheel, and consequently the sites suitable for factories were no longer limited, and this at once led to a further very great development of textile manufactures. This rapid growth was not unattended with intermittent periods of depression, which the working men of the day were not always prepared to attribute to the right cause, and thus riots and disturbances were of frequent occurrence in the manufacturing districts. One of the most serious of these terminated in what has ever since been known as “the Peterloo.” In 1816 the staple trades of Lancashire were in a very depressed state, and this led to the formation of political union societies, one of the chief objects of which was to obtain annual parliaments and universal suffrage. These societies met in St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester, in October, 1816, when all passed off quietly and orderly, but on March 10 following a larger meeting was held at the same place, at which about 1,000 men appeared with blankets over their shoulders, and with the avowed intention of marching to London to lay their grievances before the Prince Regent. This meeting was dispersed by the military, and several of the Blanketeers (as they were called) were taken to prison. The popular feeling was, however, not appeased, and the turn–out for an advance of wages of the spinners, weavers and colliers, towards the end of 1818, added fuel to the fire. Led on by Henry Hunt of London and others, it was decided to hold a mass meeting in St. Peter’s Fields on January 18, 1819, which meeting was held, and a resolution passed calling for the immediate repeal of the Corn Law. In the August following, the borough reeve and constables of Manchester refused to call a public meeting to consider the best means of obtaining a reform of the House of Commons, although 700 householders had signed the requisition. The result was that the requisitors themselves summoned the meeting, which was held near St. Peter’s Church on August 16, Henry Hunt being called upon to preside.
This meeting was attended by members of the societies from Oldham, Rochdale, Middleton, Ashton, Stockport, and all the surrounding villages, each contingent being accompanied by its band of music. The magistrates, being determined to disperse the vast assembly, called to their aid 200 special constables, the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, the 15th Hussars, and a detachment of the 88th Regiment of Foot, some pieces of artillery also being ready if required.
The mob was unarmed, but carried a plentiful display of banners with inscriptions more or less revolutionary. Acting under the orders of the magistrates, the Manchester Yeomanry and the hussars, with drawn swords, dashed through the crowd in the direction of the temporary platform, where they captured Henry Hunt and others. The would–be reformers fled in every direction, and the arrival of the Cheshire Yeomanry assisted rapidly to clear the field. After this onslaught—for it could not be called a fight—three or four people were found to have been killed, and twenty–two men and eight women were carried off to the infirmary; but it subsequently transpired that eight persons were killed and several hundreds were wounded. Henry Hunt was tried for sedition, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, but some of his friends got off with a lesser penalty.
When the times again became settled, there was a vast increase in the population of the towns and villages where factories and workshops were established, and this increase came from all the surrounding districts and from other counties, whose sons, hearing of the rise of new trades and industries, came with their families and settled in Lancashire.
A careful study of the surnames of any of our manufacturing towns will show that about this time a very large number of names now for the first time appeared in these districts, a small percentage of which were of foreign origin, but the greater proportion were English. The tendency was, therefore, to concentrate the scattered population around certain centres; thus it came about that in some parishes which remained purely agricultural, the population for years remained stationary, or even decreased. Thus we find, in the extensive parish of St. Michael’s–on–Wyre, the population between 1801 and 1871 had only risen from 1,197 to 1,290, whilst that of Goosnargh shows an actual decrease of 545 inhabitants between 1821 and 1861. The railway system was first introduced into Lancashire in 1830, when the line between Manchester and Liverpool was opened, which ceremony was marred by the fatal accident to William Huskisson, which happened at Parkside, near Newton–le–Willows. The cost of this railway up to June 30 previous to its being opened for traffic was £820,000, but before the end of 1838 the total expenditure had reached £1,443,897; other railways soon followed, and before a generation had passed away the county was intersected in every direction by these iron roads. Steam packets were in use before the railways were started; they first plied on the canals in 1812.
The sudden progress in commercial affairs could not be accomplished without some inconveniences and evils following in its course. The overcrowding of towns brought a condition of social life which took all the powers of the local authorities to grapple with. Some of the sleepy old towns with ill–lighted and worse–paved streets, with their old tumble–down dwellings and their utter want of anything like sanitary arrangements, were ill adapted to receive suddenly large additions to their population. Then, again, the time–honoured grammar schools and the few sparsely endowed free schools were all inadequate to meet the educational requirements.
Very early in the century a few schools were started on Dr. Bell’s system, and subsequently what were called national schools became common in large towns, and to supplement them the Sunday–schools (which were first started about the year 1782) were giving an elementary education to many who did not or could not give regular attendance on the week–day. Another great evil rising out of the increase in manufactories was that men, women, and especially children, all worked too many hours a day, which, had not a wise Legislature stepped in to arrest, would soon have told dreadfully on the physical, moral, and mental condition of the labouring classes. With the necessary improvements of the sanitary condition of our towns came the introduction of the use of gas for illuminating purposes, and our streets became safe by night as well as by day.
To trace the growth of the various towns and villages of Lancashire during the present century is outside the scope of the present volume, and if it were not so, it would be quite impossible to do anything like justice to the subject within the limits assigned to this series of “Popular Histories.” It must therefore suffice to say that in all the grand movements achieved by Great Britain in the nineteenth century, Lancashire has done its share, and that in trade, commerce, education, and every modern advance in moral, religious, or social life, the county has been in the van. Before closing this very brief notice of the present century, a few statistics may with advantage be given which will serve to illustrate the enormous growth of material progress and the ever–increasing numbers of its teeming population. Preston, in the first twenty years of this century, doubled its population, and between 1821 and 1868 it rose from 24,000 to 90,000, and in the latter year there were in the town seventy–seven cotton–mills, which gave employment to 26,000 persons. Through this important centre—just before the railways were opened—there passed daily seventy–two stage coaches. In Bolton the population rose from 11,000 in 1791 to 105,414 in 1881. Wigan, through the large coal–fields in the neighbourhood, advanced from 25,500 in 1801 to 78,160 in 1861, and about the year 1831 6,000,000 tons of coal were annually raised in the parish; other of the now large towns increased in the same proportion. But Liverpool and Manchester were the two centres in the county.
Liverpool, very early in the century, began to exhibit that spirit of enterprise which soon placed that city in the foremost rank in the maritime world. It was only in 1815 that the first steamer appeared on the Mersey, yet in 1835 there had been constructed docks which extended for two miles along the shore, with a water area of 90 acres; these docks have now a frontage of considerably over six miles.
In 1834 the total number of bales of cotton imported into this country and landed in London was 40,400, whilst at Liverpool the number was 839,370; in 1868 at the latter were landed 3,326,543 bales, and it has been estimated that in 1834 the value of the export trade of Liverpool reached £20,000,000, the goods mostly consisting of woollens, linens, and cotton goods; the imports in the same year were put down as being worth £15,000,000. The dock dues paid in 1812 amounted to £44,403, and in 1862 to £379,528. The number of vessels which entered the port in 1802 was 4,781, with a tonnage of 510,691; in 1832 there were 12,928 vessels, with 1,540,057 tonnage; and in 1862 the vessels numbered 20,289, their tonnage being 4,630,183. The population of Liverpool in 1801 was 77,653; in 1861 it was 269,742.
Manchester and Salford, though one is now a city and the other only a borough, are in some senses almost inseparable: they both made rapid progress, following the rise of the staple trades, and both received their charters of incorporation as Parliamentary boroughs in 1832; their united population in 1801 was only 112,300, in 1831 it was 270,963, and in 1861 it had risen to 529,245. Manchester has been well described as the centre of the largest and most populous area in the world; it has on all sides large and increasing towns and villages, all of which are engaged in the staple trades of the district. The following figures will illustrate: In Manchester itself there are 2,708,000 spindles, in Oldham 11,500,000, Bolton 4,860,000, Ashton–under–Lyne 2,013,000, Rochdale 1,914,000, Blackburn 1,435,000, and there are some other towns in the neighbourhood each of which has close on a million spindles. Without detailing the marked progress in the other districts, it will perhaps equally well show the fact if we quote the population returns for the whole county.
In 1801 there were 673,486 persons, in 1851 there were 2,026,462, being an increase in fifty years of 1,352,976 persons; this is considered one of the most remarkable features in the official returns of England in 1851. In 1831 the population was 1,336,854, so that in twenty years it was nearly doubled. According to the returns of the last census (1891) Lancashire is the most densely populated county except Middlesex, and to every square mile of its surface there are 1,938 people.
We have now traced the history of the county palatine of Lancaster from the time when it was first inhabited by mortal man, through all its varied and not uneventful course, until we now leave it with, we may hope, a bright future dawning upon it—a future that will still find it, as it for so long has been, an important power in that great kingdom on whose domains the sun never sets.