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.
