WILLIAM ADAMS
1772-1829
CHAPTER X.
STEAM POWER AND STRIKES.
As the nineteenth century advanced, steam power gradually replaced hand and water power on the pot-banks. Before 1800, steam had been introduced to drive the flint mills; the glaze-grinding mills, the pumps and lawn sifters came next. But lathes and throwers’ wheels were still driven by hand, and so were the “jiggers”—revolving moulds on which flat bats of clay were “flat-pressed” to make plates and saucers. A tramway was laid about 1815 from Longton and Fenton to the canal wharf at Stoke; but transport along both tramway and canal was still drawn by horses. With the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, however, in 1830, a new era began in transport, as important as the first canal for the potting industry.
Land transport had, of course, become thoroughly organized and cheapened, and coaches, carrier carts and wagon transport had kept increasing in speed and numbers. In the 1818 Directory, for instance, we find that no less than eleven coaches passed through the district each way every day. Every afternoon the “Light Post Coach,” from Liverpool to Burton and London, ran through the Potteries from the “Red Bull” at Lawton to Lane End; and two hours later the “Prince Coburg” from Liverpool passed through, branching off from the other route at Stoke, and going through Trent Vale, Stone and Lichfield to London. The “Regulator” too, on three days of the week, ran through the Potteries by the same route on its journey from Liverpool to Birmingham. In addition to these coaches three others ran from Liverpool to London, and one from Manchester to London, passing through Newcastle, as did also one from Liverpool and two from Manchester on their way to Birmingham. You could travel from Newcastle at 6 a.m. to the “Swan with Two Necks,” in Fetter Lane, in fifteen hours.
In 1833, however, the Bill for the Grand Junction Railway, from Birmingham to Manchester, was passed, and by the completion of this railway in 1837, Whitmore, the nearest station, five miles from the Potteries, was brought within seven hours of London by four trains a day.
Coal gas had been introduced in 1826 into Burslem, and by 1840 the beginnings of a water supply were visible. At this period, just before modern sanitation, locomotion, economies and “civilization” took root, John Ward, in his “Stoke-on-Trent,” gives us a table showing the dimensions of the trade. It runs as follows:[177]
A Table, showing the amount of conveyance of Goods and Merchandise to and from the Boro’ of Stoke-upon-Trent, by the navigation from the Trent to the Mersey, for one year ending 30th June 1836.