The two cases are therefore distinct, yet equally facts. In 1771, during the floods which swept away Tyne Bridge, Newcastle, a vessel took up at sea a cradle in which was a child alive and well.
Chap. III. (B).—The Rev. Joshua Brookes comes into my pages naturally—no story of Manchester life at the commencement of this century would be complete without him. I have endeavoured to do justice to a little-understood man. Many of his eccentricities are on record. At my own baptism and my mother’s churching, occurred the scene which I have endeavoured to reproduce; that delicate lady pushed and pulled about was a stranger to my mother and sponsors. A characteristic anecdote, which I have not met with in print, may not be out of of place here.
A printer, of republican tendencies, named Cowdroy, took his son to the font, and on the child’s name being required, answered “Citizen!”—“Citizen?” growled Joshua, “that’s no name. I shall not give the child a name like that!” “I’ve a right to call my child what name I please, and I dare you to baptise him otherwise,” boldly asserted Mr. Cowdroy. “Oh, you may call him Beelzebub if you like!” testily responded the chaplain, and Citizen the boy was accordingly baptized: and the large signboard of C. Cowdroy, Printer, overlooked the Old Churchyard long after Joshua Brookes was laid low in dust and ashes.
His odd friendship with old Mrs. Clowes is matter of fact. Similar scenes to those I have described took place at funerals and weddings when he officiated; and his last contest with the Grammar School boys may be found in Harland’s “Collectanea.”
Chaps. IV. and V. (C)—The little girl who made her way into the presence of Prince William, sat on his knee and amused him and his suite with details of toilettes in progress at home, to be rewarded with a plain shilling, the required information, and a bow as the cortége passed down Oldham Street, was Amelia Daniels, in after years my own mother. The incident of the falling platform on Sale Moor is noted in history.
Chap. VII.—Mrs. Clowes was as eccentric in her way as Parson Brookes; but beyond her dealings with the chaplain and school-boys, her journey to Liverpool, her Sabbath dinners to the poor, and her attire, her place in this story belongs to the region of fiction. Her shop passed to a relative, but the date of her death is unknown to the writer.
Chaps. XVIII. and XIX.—Peterloo is rapidly passing out of remembrance, and those who were not themselves eye-witnesses may accuse me of exaggeration. To such I can only say that I have had my details from actors or spectators. The house I have assigned to Mr. Chadwick in Oldham Street, was occupied by my maternal grandfather, John Daniels, and he was the paralysed old gentleman in charge of his servant Molly, who, but for the timely interposition of a young man named Tomlinson, one of his own weavers, and Mr. Mabbott, would have been cut down. His daughters, anxious for his safety, looking out for his return home from the warehouse, saw from their open window more than I describe; for one thing—a woman passed with her breast cut off; the two vaunting officers who reared their steeds against the house with threats, were a cousin and a fiancé; the man who was shot down in Ancoats Lane, whilst bidding his girls to retire, was, I believe, my grandfather’s tenant. The female sabred on the hustings was a Mrs. Fildes when I knew her. Her son, Henry Hunt Fildes, was in my father’s employ; and either that same son, or a grandson, is now an artist not altogether unknown to the world. From Miss Hindley I had nine years ago the story of her father’s fall. The author of the satire on the yeomanry was my paternal grandfather, James Varley, of Pendleton.
For the purpose of my narrative, I have antedated an occurrence in the Theatre Royal. I was myself the little miss who cried out in alarm that Edmund Kean was “killing Mrs. McGibbon,” but it was a few years later. Mrs. Broadbent’s school occupied the next box to our party on that occasion. I need scarcely add that I have drawn that lady, her school-room, &c., from information and observation. The broken collar-bone is not an invention.
Chaps. XXIX. and XXX.—The skating incident on Ardwick Green Pond was an episode in the early life of the same John Daniels before-named. Blindness followed his long immersion, and when all remedies known in the last century failed, he regained his sight by swimming across the Mersey, as related. I owe it to his memory to say that he must not otherwise be confounded with the man whom I have called Laurence Aspinall.