A History of Lancashire

by Henry Fishwick

Crompton’s “mule” was at once a success; but instead of securing himself by a patent, he vainly endeavoured to work with it in secret, but was at length reduced, he tells us, “to the cruel necessity either of destroying my machine altogether or giving it to the public. To destroy it I could not think of; to give up that for which I had laboured so long was cruel. I had no patent, nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying I gave it to the public.” In taking this step he was acting under the advice of a large manufacturer of Bolton, who was doubtless fully aware of the merits of the machine, and, in order to induce Crompton to make this valuable concession, some eighty firms and individuals of that town promised each to pay to him one guinea; but, as a matter of fact, the total sum received did not much exceed £60, or scarcely enough to cover the cost of the construction of the model, which he also gave up.

Leaving Crompton for the moment, we must note that in 1784 the Rev. Edmund Cartwright took out his first patent for the invention of a power–loom, for which he obtained a grant from Parliament of £10,000. This loom never came into general use. It was not until some years later, and after several futile attempts, that a power–loom was made adaptable. Crompton, after much trouble and anxiety, did ultimately get from the House of Commons £5,000, which he afterwards lost in the bleaching trade, which was at that time making considerable progress. When he had reached his seventy–second year, some friends raised for him an annuity of £65, which he only enjoyed for a short time, as he died in Bolton on June 26, 1827, aged seventy–four years. Thus was treated another of Lancashire’s greatest benefactors, who, whilst he lived, was left to feel that “chill penury” which “froze the genial current of his soul,” but who after his death was thought worthy of a statue in copper–bronze, which cost nearly £2,000, and now forms one of the chief monuments of the town of Bolton.

So rapid was the result of these various means of developing the manufacture of cotton that in 1787 there were over forty cotton–mills in Lancashire, and seventeen in Yorkshire; those in other parts of England increased the aggregate to 119, whilst the value of cotton goods manufactured rose from £600,000 in 1766 to £3,304,371 in 1787, showing the increase in twenty–one years to be five and a half fold.

In the last decade of the century a stop to further progress appeared imminent, as nearly all the sites where water–power was available had been utilized to the utmost; but fortunately, while Arkwright and Crompton had been perfecting the machinery for cotton manufacture, Watts was completing his labours to render steam–power available for rotative motion.

Before 1782 steam–engines had been used exclusively for pumping water out of mines, but in 1785 Boulton and Wall erected a steam–engine to work the cotton mill of Messrs. Robinson, at Papplewick, in Nottinghamshire, and four years later Manchester had its first steam–engine applied to cotton manufacture. In 1790 in Bolton a cotton mill was turned by steam, and before the end of the century this motive power was adopted in a few other places in the county. Cotton–mills worked by horse and water power were now common enough in all the large towns where textile manufacture formed part of the trade carried on. This enormous increase in local textile manufacture led at once to a similar development of the manufacturing of machinery, the raising of coals, and of all other industries required to carry on the now staple trades.

Before closing the account of Lancashire in the eighteenth century, some reference must be made to its press, and this must always afford some clue to the character of the people. In the time of Elizabeth there was in Lancashire a secret press from which were issued a few Roman Catholic books; this was probably located at Lostock Hall, near Bolton. There was also the wandering press from which came the Martin Marprelate tracts; this press was seized by the Earl of Derby at Newton Lane, near Manchester.[234] In 1719 Roger Adams was established in Manchester as a printer; from his press came “Mathematical Lectures: being the first and second that were read to the Mathematical Society at Manchester.” Adams also, in that same year, printed and published the Manchester Weekly Journal, which in 1737 became Whitworth’s Magazine; this periodical enjoyed a run of twenty years. Whitworth published a considerable number of books, some of which were of more than local interest. In 1738 a second Manchester periodical was published entitled The Lancashire Journal, of which only about sixty numbers were printed. After this date, Manchester–printed books were pretty numerous.

A newspaper called Orion Adams’ Weekly Journal was started here in 1752; it was followed by Harrop’s Manchester Mercury and Whitworth’s Manchester Advertiser. Liverpool probably began to print a year or two before Manchester; the first book known to have been issued there is a volume of “Hymns sacred to the Lord’s Table,” by Charles Owen—“Leverpoole, printed by S. Terry, for Daniel Birchall, 1712.” After this very few books can with certainty be placed to the credit of the Liverpool press, but in 1736 appeared Seacome’s “Memoirs of the House of Stanley,” and subsequently many other works bearing the imprint of Liverpool. Terry in 1712 published the Leverpoole Courant, and in 1756 appeared Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser. Its price was originally 2d., the stamp being one halfpenny. It appears to have had a considerable circulation; on the first page of the issue for October 17, 1760, is the following announcement: “The publisher of this paper begs leave to return his grateful thanks to his friends and readers in the northern parts of Lancashire for their kind indulgence in promoting and encouraging this paper; and, as he has been at the continued expense of expresses to meet the London post, in order to be as early with the news as possible, and messengers to distribute the paper, which have entirely taken away all profits arising from the sale, he presumes that his customers in Ormskirk, Preston, Lancaster and adjacent neighbourhoods, will further indulge him by advancing the price of the paper to 2½d., as no other newspaper in England of the same size and make is sold under that price.” Its size was small folio, and it consisted of four pages; it contained no leading article, and did not report the meetings of Parliament.

In 1799 Liverpool had three weekly newspapers. The smaller towns were somewhat later in setting up the printing presses, but the following names of places, with the dates of the first issue of books with their imprint, will give some idea of the respective rate of progress in this direction: Warrington, 1731; Preston, 1740 (and probably a little earlier); Wigan about 1760; Bolton about 1761; Prescot, 1779; Lancaster, 1783; Kirkham, 1790; Blackley, 1791; Blackburn, 1792; Bury, 1793; Haslingden, 1793; Rochdale, 1796, and Burnley, 1798. At Preston several attempts were made to establish newspapers in the eighteenth century, but neither the Preston Journal, in 1744, nor the Preston Review, in 1791, proved successful.

From the literature of Lancashire we may turn to its amusements. In Liverpool, a theatre was opened in 1772. Manchester’s first theatre was built of wood, which was afterwards, in 1753, superseded by a regular theatre, which stood somewhere near the top of King Street; but this proving too small, forty gentlemen subscribed £50 each, and, having obtained an Act of Parliament, erected a larger playhouse in 1775 in Spring Gardens, which was burnt down in 1789, but was rebuilt and again opened in 1790.

Towards the close of the century Rochdale had its theatre, and probably several other towns; and where such buildings did not exist, the strolling players, during the season, acted their parts in assembly or other convenient rooms. Horse–races were now very popular, and meetings were regularly held at Manchester, Preston and Liverpool. Kersal Moor Races, near Manchester, were begun in 1730. Cock–pits were also found in nearly all our large towns, and bull–baiting was a common amusement. But there was not wanting evidence of a higher taste. Subscription libraries were being established, and few towns were without regular organized musical, literary or scientific societies.