The expansion of coal production depended on cheap transport. Once the coal reached the sea ports, it was taken inland by river and canal craft via a network of waterways, though the final few miles might need to be by horse and cart or by packhorse. From the early eighteenth century canals were built to join rivers, and rivers themselves were canalised to make them navigable. Canals were increasingly regarded as the solution to the problem of transporting heavy and bulky goods, including coal, though one canal between Stourbridge and Dudley, designed to carry cheaper coal to the Stourbridge-based industries, was not universally welcome:
an act [of Parliament] was obtained for carrying the plan into execution, though not without great opposition from the coal-owners upon the Birmingham canal, and the owners of the mills upon the river Stour: the first because this canal would enable the coal-owners upon it to under-sell the others at the market, and the latter upon account of the supposed loss of water to their mills, for which they had very little reason, for nearly all the water…must be raised out of the mines.41
First proposed in 1775, this canal was given parliamentary assent the following year and was operational by the end of 1779.
The success of canals saw an explosion in canal building and speculation in the 1790s – such that it became known as ‘canal mania’. There were no mechanical excavators because steam engines were not easily moved about, and so canals were formed by hundreds of labourers digging with hand tools and shifting the spoil in wheelbarrows. These workmen were drawn from all over the country, some through advertisements, such as one that appeared in an Exeter newspaper in 1810:
To CANAL CUTTERS &c.
WANTED, TWO or THREE HUNDRED good WORKMEN on the WORCESTER and BIRMINGHAM CANAL, where liberal Prices will be given to Agg Masters [subcontractors]; and good Wages to Workmen that are ready and deserving encouragement, by applying to Mr. Charles Holland, at Tibberton, near Worcester.42
With increasing numbers of canals being cut, gangs of labourers moved from job to job, setting up camp wherever they went. They were originally called ‘canal cutters’ or simply ‘workmen’, but because canals were known as ‘inland navigations’ and the engineers who oversaw the projects were called ‘navigators’, this term was eventually extended to the labourers and then abbreviated to ‘navvies’. The better-known gangs of Victorian railway navvies evolved from these bands of Georgian canal navvies.
Relentless effort and skill were needed to wield tools like picks, mattocks, shovels and loaded wheelbarrows, and not all labourers could work sufficiently fast to earn a living, because it was piecework – a set price for digging a certain distance of canal or tunnel, such as the £7 per yard paid to the subcontractors cutting the Sapperton tunnel in Gloucestershire on the Thames and Severn Canal. When the Basingstoke Canal began to be constructed in 1788, this problem was witnessed by the Reverend Stebbing Shaw at the Greywell tunnel, some 13 miles from Steventon where Jane Austen was then living:
I…saw above 100 men at work, preparing a wide passage for the approach to the mouth, but they had not entered the hill…The contractor, agreeable to the request of the company of proprietors, gives the preference to all the natives who are desirous of this work, but such is the power of use over nature, that while these industrious poor are by all their efforts incapable of earning a sustenance, those who are brought from similar works, cheerfully obtain a comfortable support.43
The absence of safety measures was especially evident to John Byng during an uncomfortable visit to the tunnel being constructed at Sapperton:
Nothing cou’d be more gloomy than…being dragg’d [by sledge cart] into the bowels of the earth, rumbling and jumbling thro mud, over stones, with a small lighted candle in my hand, giving me a sight of the last horse…When the last peep of day light vanish’d, I was enveloped in thick smoke arising from the gunpowder of the miners, at whom, after passing by many labourers who work by small candles, I did at last arrive: they come from the Derbyshire and Cornish mines, are in eternal danger and frequently perish by the falls of earth. My cart being reladen with stone, I was hoisted thereon…and had a worse journey back, as I cou’d scarcely keep my seat…I understand that they have made an equal progress (½ mile) at the other end, and hope to meet in 3 years; when the first passage thro’, in a barge, must be glorious, and horrid.44
When it opened in 1789, the Sapperton Tunnel was the longest in England at over 2 miles, and the canal running through it linked the Thames and Severn rivers.
Travelling near Bath over a decade later, Richard Warner commented on the growing canal network:
At a short distance from hence [South Stoke], in the bottom below, we meet with the canal, a recent undertaking, intended to convey the coals of the Timsbury, Paulton, Camerton, and Dunkerton pits to Bath. The course of this cut, which is not yet compleated, will embrace in its various windings, to its junction with the Radstock cut, a distance of ten miles, and pass through a country as highly picturesque as any in the kingdom.45
New canals provided an increasing amount of work for the many thousands who ran boats, but with real wages falling, it made sense for a boatman’s family to live on board rather than pay rent for lodgings. In 1815–16 one Christian organisation undertook a survey of the Grand Junction Canal’s floating population:
It appeared upon inquiry, that the number of boats was between four and five hundred; that the number of men on the line of the Grand Junction Canal, the collateral branches, with the engine and lock houses, might be estimated at six thousand; and that, including their wives and children, the number of persons to be taken into consideration was probably not less than twenty thousand. These may be said almost to live upon the water, and, by the peculiar nature of their occupation, are precluded from all opportunity of attending public worship on the Sabbath-day.46
Once it became cheaper and easier to transport coal inland, there was a greater incentive to develop steam engines to power machinery of all kinds, from which the woollen and cotton textile industries in particular benefited. Since the Middle Ages textile manufacture based on wool was a major element of England’s economy, organised and funded by businessmen dealing in finished cloth. Each process needed to transform raw sheep’s wool into a saleable product was carried out by thousands of scattered individual workers, usually paid on a piecework basis. Middlemen bought and supplied the materials, such as spun yarn to the weavers or woven cloth to the fullers, afterwards collecting the finished work. They might even lend or lease looms and other equipment. Spinning was done by hand, mostly by the women of farming families or those who worked in the textile trade, and by the end of the seventeenth century the term ‘spinster’, originally meaning a female spinner, had become the term for an unmarried woman. Weaving was a task more often done by men. By the late eighteenth century none of the textile processes was particularly well paid, but being piecework with such a loose organisational basis, families could live and work together at home, taking off as much time as they wanted.
The introduction of machines made some workers redundant and forced many more into the factories, which were considerably more efficient and yielded higher profits for their owners. However, the factory hands found that not only did they need to work more hours for the same money, but they lost the old freedom to choose when to work and when to rest. They even had to arrive punctually or lose wages. Although some factories installed a bell or whistle to signal shift changes, it was the individual’s responsibility to get to work on time, and so a new job sprang up – that of the ‘knocker-up’, who for a small fee went round and roused workers for their shift.
Some workers owned pocket watches, and wealthier households might possess one or more clocks. William Holland had a seven-day clock, which he wound every Saturday evening, as he noted in October 1800: ‘The evening by ourselves, and spent as we usually do the Saturday evenings, poring over sermons, winding the clock and to bed.’47 The chiming of the church clock was also an important indicator of time, but most
people estimated time by the level of daylight. In towns, night watchmen often called out the hour, and William Darter in Reading praised one watchman who was always helpful: ‘I remember well Norcroft’s features, and the sound of his voice “Past two o’clock and a cloudy morning,” &c.’48
Another great change for the new factory workers was the necessity to travel to work, which could add significantly to the length and effort of an arduous day. Some began to view the recent past as a golden age, cruelly stolen from them, and a contemporary song lamented the changes:
So come all you cotton-weavers, you must rise up very soon,
For you must work in factories from morning until noon;
You mustn’t walk in your garden for two or three hours a day,
And you must stand at their command and keep your shuttles in play.49
The textile industry thrived and remained the second largest employer in the country after agriculture, despite the job losses due to mechanisation. In 1800 Warner described the changing woollen cloth production in Somerset:
Frome has for many years been famous for working Spanish and English wool into broad-cloths and kerseymeres…The quantity of wool manufactured here is since considerably increased, but the number of people employed is diminished, the introduction of machines having lessened, in a prodigious proportion, the call for manual labour. At present there are in the town of Frome twenty-seven manufacturers of cloth, who make…about one hundred and sixty miles of cloth, in length, every year.50
The cotton industry was also on the rise, rapidly adopting the new ways of working, although it would not dominate British manufacturing as ‘King Cotton’ for many decades to come. In June 1790 at Cromford in Derbyshire, John Byng observed Arkwright’s water-powered spinning mill: ‘These cotton mills, seven stories high, and fill’d with inhabitants, remind me of a first rate man of war; and when they are lighted up, on a dark night, look most luminously beautiful.’51 On a tour from Oxford to the Lake District a few years later, Johnson Grant stopped at nearby Bakewell, where he was concerned about the effects of such factories on the health of workers:
[I] passed a cotton manufactory; the people all coming out to dinner, for it was already one o’clock. From the glance I had of their appearance, the observations I made were these: They were pale, and their hats were covered with shreds of cotton. Exclusive of want of exercise, the general bane of all manufactures, the light particles of cotton must be inhaled with their breath, and occasion pulmonary affections. Owners of factories should consider this…Let every such person, then, order his work-people to bathe every morning, and let him have a piece of playground for them, wherein some athletic and innocent exercise might be enjoyed for an hour or two, each day. In cottonworks, let them drink much water.52
Grant was a clergyman, traveller and prolific writer, and he was afraid that the factory workers might question the class system and therefore the established order. Wages, he argued, should not be exorbitant, though limited education was desirable: ‘establish a Sunday-school, where they might be instructed orally, without being taught to read. This I deem a necessary precaution, as they would have all the advantages of improvement of mind and morals, without their common banes – low political club-rooms, with their idleness, their liquors, and neglect of families.’53 In his opinion, too much education might encourage the realisation that there was no natural or God-given basis to the inequalities in society, and this might be a road to revolution. He feared that factory hands already went unwillingly to work, ‘discontented, and cursing all laws, human and divine, which have so arranged matters, that yon stately house [nearby Chatsworth], and the gilded coach in which its owner rides, should belong to what the Corresponding Society, the illuminati and illuminantes of this country, have deluded him…is an individual with no better title to it than himself.’54 This particular individual was the immensely wealthy Duke of Devonshire.
Many workers were already pushed to the brink of destitution and starvation and were increasingly aware of injustices in society. The song called ‘The Hand-Loom Weavers’ Lament’ was written sometime between 1807 and 1815 and was about those made unemployed by the advent of the factories. Two verses in particular addressed their so-called superiors:
When we look on our poor children, it grieves our hearts full sore,
Their clothing it is worn to rags, while we can get no more,
With little in their bellies, they to their work must go,
Whilst yours do dress as manky as monkeys in a show.
You go to church on Sundays, I’m sure it’s nought but pride,
There can be no religion where humanity’s thrown aside;
If there be a place in heaven, as there is in the Exchange,
Our poor souls must not come near there; like lost sheep they must range.55
The ‘Exchange’ was the Royal Exchange in London, equivalent to the modern shorthand of ‘the City’, meaning the financial establishment. If these verses caused discomfort, the chorus caused alarm:
You tyrants of England, your race may soon be run,
You may be brought unto account for what you’ve sorely done.56
Popular at the time, and intermittently popular ever since, this has been labelled a Luddite song, and it certainly arose at a time and place where the Luddites were active.
‘Luddite’ was the name given to a shadowy group of workers who reacted to the new practices within factories by destroying the machines. Their initial target was the wide knitting frames that were introduced to cut costs. These machines produced large pieces of cloth from which stockings were cut and then sewn into shape. Previously they were knitted into shape and the woven edges joined in a seam. The new process was faster and needed less skilled labour, but the resulting stockings were inferior, tending to lose their shape and unravel where the seams were formed from the cut edges. The drop in quality gave the whole trade a bad name and affected prices.
Several stories arose that tried to account for the Luddite name, and according to John Blackner in Nottingham, the Luddites ‘assumed this appellation from the circumstance of an ignorant youth, in Leicestershire, of the name of Ludlam, who, when ordered by his father, a framework-knitter, to square his needles [adjust the machine because his knitting was too loose], took a hammer and beat them into a heap.’57 Those factory owners and middlemen who did not produce the substandard stockings tacitly approved of the machine-breaking. Blackner recorded how Luddites operated in Nottinghamshire: ‘The practice of these men was to assemble in parties of from six to sixty, according as circumstance required, under a supposed leader, that was stiled General Ludd, who had the absolute command of them, and directed their operations; placing the guards, who were armed with swords, firelocks, &c. in their proper places, while those armed with hammers, axes, &c. were ordered to enter the house and demolish the frames.’58 Blackner also described the Government’s frantic response:
In consequence of these outrages being continued, a considerable military force was brought into the neighbourhood; two of the London police magistrates, with some other officers, came down with a view of assisting the civil power in discovering the ringleaders; a considerable sum of money was also placed at the disposal of a secret committee, for the purpose of obtaining private information; but…these deluded men [the Luddites] continued their course of devastation for several months, and at the end of February, 1812, it was found that no less than six hundred and twenty-four frames had been destroyed.59
More concerned with crushing dissension than promoting justice, the Government passed an Act in March 1812 making machine-breaking a capital offence, but the Luddites then attacked machines in other areas. In July that year Nelly Weeton moved from the Pedders in the Lake District to take another post as governess in Yorkshire. Her new employer was Joseph Armitage, a wool manufacturer, and she confided in a friend about the fear of reprisals there from machine-breakers:
Mr. A is engaged in the woollen trade, has a handsome fortune of
his own, and had another with his wife, though their parents are all living; at whose death, I suppose, they will have considerably more. They have no carriage, no indoor manservant; there are four women servants. They kept a man till lately, but as Mr. Armitage’s house at Lockwood was one of the first that was attacked by the Luddites a few months ago, he has not ventured to keep a man in his house, as many gentlemen have been betrayed by their servants, who have been discovered to be of the Luddite party.60
Very few men were arrested and tried for being Luddites. A few were hanged, more were transported, but the Government was unsuccessful in its attempts to crush the movement. It gradually faded away, having gained little more than a temporary halt to mechanisation. Rather than meaning someone who resists oppression, the word ‘Luddite’ nowadays refers to a person who holds back progress.
Improved machines had not yet made much impact on agricultural work, which was still labour-intensive. Over one-third of the population worked in farming, which was still England’s largest employer. The work was long and hard.61 In a single day a ploughman might walk upwards of 11 miles behind a horse-drawn plough just to plough one acre. In October 1784 Woodforde’s servant hoped to join their ranks: ‘Jack [Wharton, about nineteen years old] told me this morning that he is advised to get another place, being too old for a Skip-Jack [servant boy] any longer. He wants to be a Plow Boy to some farmer to learn the farming business as he likes that best. I told him that he was very right to try to better himself, and at Lady Day next he is to leave my house for that purpose.’62
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