Produced byWigan Museums & Archives Issue No. 73 August-November 2016

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Cabinet ofCuriosity:Treasure atthe Museum

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Contents4-5 Treasure – The extraordinary

to the everyday

6-7 The life of ‘The BlackKnight’ and other visitors to Victorian Leigh

8-9 All Saints Parish Church,Hindley

10-11 A Talbot Road Celebrity

12-13 Jane Sullivan: An IrishWoman in Scholes

14-15 News from the Archives andLocal Studies

16-17 A Life in Westleigh: JamesWilliam Slater

18-20 Lawrence Cox –Soldier and Policeman

21 The National Coal MiningMuseum – Heroes andHeroines Exhibition

22-23 Wigan Piers and Docks

24-25 The Burnden Park Disaster

26 Society News

27 Memories of School –Leigh Boys’ and Girls’Grammar Schools Project

28-29 Magistrates against Miners,Wigan 1844

30-31 When General Patton “gave it to them doubledirty” at Ashton

32-34 Mam and Dad. Anotherworld, Thomas and Frances

35 Events and Activities

FRONT COVER Writing tablet decoratedwith gold crowns andinscribed 'James T' (James III) Information for contributors, please see page 20

Letter from the

Editorial TeamWelcome to PAST Forward Issue 73.Our new exhibition at the Museum of Wigan Life – and the subject of the first article of this edition – takes visitors (andreaders) into the more unusual parts of the Museum’s wonderfuland varied collections.

The Museum team have followed up the wonders of the AncientEgypt Rediscovered exhibition with a recreation of a ‘Cabinet ofCuriosity’. The well stocked display cases show some of the mostbeautiful and unusual objects from across the borough and faroverseas, everything from relics of the Old Pretender to thePennington glass collection and a well preserved pufferfish…

Elsewhere in this edition we head back to the Crimean war andmark Black History Month with a look at the visits to Leigh ofReverend J H Hector; Ted Dakin takes us back into his family historyand we mark the 375th Anniversary of All Saints’ Church, Hindley.

We feature a two final articles from the 2015 Essay Competition, byAnthony Pilgrim and Derek Winstanley, and we’re pleased to remindwould-be Past Forward writers that the Essay Competition willreturn for 2016 thanks to the generosity of Mr and Mrs O’Neill.

The Essay Competition is a great way to get involved with localhistory writing and there are prizes ready to be won! You can findall the details on how to submit your entry on the opposite page.

Finally, we are launching a major project to redevelop the Archivesat Leigh Town Hall and need your support. We will be working on a second round application to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) toexpand and modernise both the Archives’ public research facilitiesand specialist collection strongrooms in the building. Key toconvincing the HLF to invest in our project further will be publicsupport – so please have a look at the details on page 14 and let us know what you think.

If you have any ideas for new features, things you’d like to seemore of – or less of – please contact us atpastforward@wigan.gov.uk

We hope you enjoy reading Issue 73.

Alex MillerArchives Manager

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receipt of material for publication is Sunday, 16 October 2016.

Write 1000 words - Win £100!Do you have a passion for localhistory? Is there a local historytopic that you would love to see featured in Past Forward?Then why not take part inWigan Borough Environmentand Heritage Network’s LocalHistory Writing Competition?

Local History WritingCompetition

1st Prize - £1002nd Prize - £753rd Prize - £50Five Runners-Up Prizes of £25

The Essay Writing Competition is kindly sponsored by Mr andMrs J. O'Neill.

Criteria• Articles must be a maximum of 1000 words.• Articles must focus on a local history topic

within the geographical boundaries of Wigan Borough.

• By entering the competition you agree to your work being published in Past Forward. The winning article will be published in Past Forward and other submissions may also be published. If selected for publication the Past ForwardEditorial Team may edit your submission.

How to enter• Articles must be received by e-mail or post by

Thursday 1 October 2016.• Electronic submissions are preferred although

handwritten ones will be accepted.• You must state clearly that your article is

an entry into the Local History WritingCompetition.

• You must include your name, address,telephone number and e-mail address (if applicable). We will not pass your details on to anyone.

• It will not be possible for articles to be returned.

• You are welcome to include photographs or images however they cannot be returned.

Submit topastforward@wigan.gov.uk

OR

Local History Writing Competition, Past Forward, Museum of Wigan Life, Library Street, Wigan WN1 1NU

Winners from the Wigan Borough Environment & Heritage Network, Essay Competition 2016, with the FormerMayor of Wigan Borough and Councillor Susan Loudon.

Follow us on twitter: @WiganMuseum

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The new exhibition at the Museumof Wigan Life, ‘Treasure - TheExtraordinary to the Everyday’,reveals a huge range of art andartefacts. The show presents themuseum collection as a unique‘Cabinet of Curiosity’ with manyspecial objects from our borough.

From the Renaissance to theeighteenth century, wealthyindividuals created collections ofweird and wonderful objects fromnature, science and art. Their‘Cabinets of Curiosities’ containedthe eccentric and the obscure: birdskulls; paintings; clocks andscientific instruments; alongsidecrocodiles, ‘mermaids’ andshrunken heads.

These ‘Wunderkammer’ or ‘WonderRooms’ were early museums, theircreators attempting to categorise theworld around them in a new age ofglobal exploration and colonisation.Cabinets of Curiosity often containednew and old artefacts side by side.Ancient Greek and Roman art wasdisplayed alongside modern scientificinstruments like clocks andautomaton (self-moving machines).In the later nineteenth century theVictorian passion for categorising theworld into separate academicdisciplines in public museums wouldmake ‘cabinets’ seem quirky andunscientific and many faded into obscurity.

Today there is a new passion for‘cabinets’ and artists areincreasingly using taxidermy in theirwork or drawing inspiration fromunusual collections held bymuseums. The new exhibition at theMuseum of Wigan Life presents a‘Cabinet of Curiosity’ with some ofthe most beautiful and quirkyobjects, many of which have notpreviously been on display, fromacross the borough and furtherafield. The exhibition includesartefacts from collections includingthose of Captain Edwin Kerfoot,

Pennington Hall and the LeylandLibrary and Museum in Hindley.

Some of the most fascinating itemsin the exhibition are ‘JacobiteRelics’, donated to Wigan Library by the Historic Society of Lancashire& Cheshire in 1940. The objectsinclude a gold and enamelmourning ring with cameo of skulland crossbones, a locket containinga lock of hair thought to be fromJames III (the Old Pretender) and aset of ivory writing tablets in afiligree case bearing the name ofthe Old Pretender in monogramform, ‘James T’. The tablets werepresented by James to WilliamDicconson (1655-1718) ofWrightington. Dicconson wasunder-governor at James’ court inexile at St Germain and chevalierduring his minority (1700-1708), as well as later holding office astreasurer and receiver-general toQueen Mary, widow of James II.

Artefacts from the museum’s popularAncient Egypt Rediscovered exhibitionare now on permanent display at theMuseum of Wigan Life.

Exhibition curated by Joan Livesey,Exhibition Officer and GraphicDesign by Kevin Lloyd Design.

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Lynda Jackson, CommunityHistory Manager

‘Wonder is the beginningof wisdom’ Socrates, Ancient Greece

‘Treasure – The Extraordinary to theEveryday’ opened on Saturday 2 July andis FREE to enter. For more information,please contact us at the Museum atwiganmuseum@wigan.gov.uk or on

01942 828128.

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.

Portland Vase19th Century

This is a nineteenth century copyof the ‘Portland’ or ‘Barberini’vase by Josiah Wedgwood

(1730-1795). Wedgwood’s vasewas itself a copy of the

Roman vase (1-25AD) in theBritish Museum.

Writing tablet With ivory writing surface set in agilt filigree case decorated with

gold crowns and inscribed 'James T'(James III). James Francis was theson of James II, who was replacedon the throne by William of Orange.

He was nicknamed the ‘OldPretender’ and sought to regain his father’s throne through the

Jacobite Rising. He was followed byhis son, Bonnie Prince Charlie.

LocketGold Jacobite mourninglocket containing a lockof hair, thought to befrom the Old Pretender. The ‘Old Pretender’ was the nickname for the sonof James II who sought to regain his father’s

throne after the GloriousRevolution. The back has ablack enamel base with aforget-me-knot in gold set

with rose diamonds.

Greek Bronze Figureof Aphrodite

1st - 2nd Century ADProfessor Joann Fletcher, author and academic, picked this fine quality bronze as one of her favourite artefacts in the museum’s collection

Gold ring with skull andcrossbones

Jacobite mourning ring withcameo of skull and crossbones.

The ring is thought tocommemorate EdwardDickinson who is buried

in Standish. The Dickinsonfamily may have been involved

in the Jacobite Rising.

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The population of British port towns and citiesincluded black residents during the Victorian period.In some cases, in Merseyside and in Cardiff andBristol for example, small black communitiesdeveloped. However, the textile and mining towns ofthis part of Lancashire are not obvious candidates forbeing localities with a historical black presence.

Nevertheless, although I have only been researchinglocally for a matter of months, I have already foundexamples of black visitors and possible residents inthe Victorian and Edwardian eras. One such personwas Harry Miller, an African-American singer at theLilford Hotel in Leigh in 1900.

However, it was in the areas of religious evangelismand fund-raising that I have found the largestnumber of black visitors so far.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were a group of African-American performers of spiritual and plantationsongs, originally formed in 1871. Their purpose wasto raise funds for the impoverished Fisk University forblack students in Nashville, Tennessee. The group’sAmerican tours were popular and they performed forPresident Grant in the White House in 1872.

They undertook several British tours. On one Sunday evening in October 1899 they performed atLeigh Baptist Chapel. The singers repeated this forthe next few evenings at Leigh Assembly Rooms,Tyldesley Conservative Club and the Volunteer Hall in Atherton.

Well-known songs such as ‘Swing Low SweetChariot’ and John Brown’s ‘Body’ were performedalongside hymns such as ‘The Old Ark’s A-Moving’and ‘I’ve Been Redeemed’.

The Leigh Chronicle’s opinion was that: “The most weird native melodies are wedded to thewords of revival hymns, and the effect is at once

inspiring and grotesque...The audience was evidentlyhighly charmed.”

The Fisk Singers were not alone in their fund-raisingambitions. The Canada Jubilee Singers performed atAtherton Mission Hall in July 1885 to get moneywith which to build a college in Chatham, Ontario. It was hoped that the young black men trained therewould undertake missionary work in Africa.

Charismatic black preachers also lectured locally. TheReverend Peter Stanford, the son of slaves who wasVirginian by birth but Canadian by adoption, hadsettled in Britain. He conducted a lecture tour in1886 and had a successful fourteen day mission inthe Leigh area. He then moved to Westhoughton fora further two weeks.

THE LIFE OF‘THE BLACK KNIGHT’

AND OTHER VISITORS TO

VICTORIAN LEIGHBY BRIAN JOYCE

TO MARK BLACK HISTORY MONTH IN OCTOBER

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Stanford’s usual lecture appears to have been entitled,‘The Past and Present Condition of the Negro Raceand Wedded Life Among Them’.

The following year in Birmingham, he became the firstblack pastor appointed to a Baptist Church in Britain.

Perhaps more overtly entertaining for local residentswas the so-called ‘Black Knight’, Reverend J H Hector,who was described by the Leigh Chronicle as, ‘a realblack orator of pure African descent.’ He performeda fund-raiser over two evenings at the LeighAssembly Rooms in September 1896. He returned tothe area the following year with two evenings atBedford Wesleyan Chapel.

As a child of former slaves, Hector began his lectureswith dramatic accounts of his parents’ experiences,their escape into Canada and his own upbringing inthe USA after the Civil War and abolition of slavery.He apparently fell victim to the demon drink but wasredeemed and became a Methodist minister. The‘Black Knight’ then railed against the evils of alcohol,calling for prohibition.

Clearly, though, Hector delivered his message in anentertaining way. “He has a fund of what may becalled Yankee humour and his audience onWednesday laughed loud and long at some of hisefforts in the wit and humour line”, were the wordsof the Leigh Chronicle in 1896.

Hector had then turned his guns on tobaccosmoking, “...in forcible if not exactly elegantlanguage”. He argued that smokers should not beallowed to become clergymen or teachers and,

ahead of his time, the ‘Black Knight’ claimed thatsmoking increased the risk of heart disease. Even so,the local press believed that it would take more thanthis to detach the people of Leigh from their pipesand cigars.

On the second night of his engagement at theBedford Wesleyan Chapel in 1897, the Black Knight’slecture was intriguingly entitled, “A Good Wife andHow to Get One.”

Some former white missionaries, who lectured ontheir experiences in Africa, brought Africans withthem. A preacher did just that at the Baptist Chapelin Golborne in 1898. The Leigh Journal told itsreaders that, ‘...an African student spoke in Englishand sang several native tunes’. Earlier, in 1887, twoAfrican boys had accompanied a white Congomissionary, the Reverend W Hughes to his talk atTyldesley Assembly Rooms. The boys sang hymns inthree languages, including Welsh, the latterpresumably designed to appeal to the many minersfrom Wales living in the town.

My research into the historical black presence in thispart of Lancashire is still in its early stages and isongoing. Even so, I have been able to reach sometentative but provisional conclusions. Most localpeople did not attend the lectures by the ‘BlackKnight’ or the Fisk Singers’ performances.Nevertheless, it is possible they would have seen thevisitors around their towns. At the turn of thetwentieth century, black people would not have beenunfamiliar to the residents of Leigh and the townsand villages around it.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers

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ALL SAINTS PARISH CHURCH, HINDLEY

BY YVONNE BITHELL

This year celebrates the 375th Anniversary of All Saints’Church – originally known as ‘Hindley Chapel’.

There has been a church on the site since 1641, withthe present building dating back to 1766; hence it is250 years old this year.

The church has had a rich and colourful history since itsinception during the English Civil War (1642-1651)when Hindley was considered ‘no man’s land’, lyingbetween the Royalists of Wigan and Parliamentarians ofBolton, so it was viewed with suspicion by both parties.

It was built to be a ‘chapel of ease’ to the parish church of Wigan so that local folk did not have to walk so far to attend an Anglican service. The churchgrounds were consecrated for burials as Hindley’s only cemetery for all denominations, and the firstrecorded entry in the chapel’s burial register was that of“an unknown souldier beinge a stranger slaine” andburied on 11 December 1642.

It was said to be one of the last chapels to be builtanywhere in England before the outbreak of the CivilWar. In Lancashire this was mainly a religious conflictbetween the Presbyterians and the Anglicans, whowere supported by Roman Catholic gentry.

Against all this turmoil, the Chapel’s early years weremarked by division and strife, which continuedthroughout the Civil War and Commonwealth andflared up again at the close of the century.

By 1643 the Chapel was already in the hands of thePresbyterians and remained so until 1662 when the Actof Uniformity led to the ejection of the minister alongwith all other Presbyterian colleagues in chapels andchurches throughout Wigan. From 1662-1668 thechapel stood vacant and from 1668-1690 the Livingwas held by numerous conformist ministers. After seven years of wrangling and litigation, on 7 March 1697 the Duchy Court at Westminster issued adecree stating that the Chapel had been built for

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Anglican worship and that its founders and donors had been conformists.

In the mid seventeenth century, alterations andadditions to the old building had proven to be atemporary solution, so permission was granted todemolish and rebuild the Chapel on a larger scale. Thiswas done in 1766 with the total cost of the rebuildbeing £789 13s 3½d, which was met by the sale ofland, the sale of pews and subscriptions.

Records show that workers enjoyed the customarybonus of a pint of ale (2d) to mark the completion ofthe major work – an incentive even in those times!

Whilst some commented that the Georgian Churchbuilding was “rude and crude…with many weavingsheds presenting a finer appearance”, the author,Nikolaus Pevsner, in his recorded ‘Buildings of England’speaks of All Saints as:“…this delightful red brick chapel which faithfullyreflected the religious thinking of its age, in which thepulpit mattered more than the communion table and inwhich the accommodation of a congregation and not aritual was foremost in the architect’s mind. The oblongbuilding with galleries is the Georgian standard, as thebox pews.”

One writer in the Wigan Examiner of 5 May 1875comments that:“…the worst kind of Pewsyism sticks to this church (All Saints). There is the rich man’s pew, cushioned andclosed, replete with its furniture, luxurious but for itsdirt. There is also the poor man’s perch, wherein hemay pray under the gaze of better dressed sinners.”

Services and sermons were, by today’s standards, verylong with a strong emphasis laid on preaching and thelarge, three decker pulpit, which obscured the altar, wasthe focal point.

One story told is about a preacher whose sermon wasso long that the congregation began to leave thechurch until only one person was left. When theChurchwardens went to him – they found he was dead!

Another story tells of the ‘Bobber’ whose official dutywas to walk the aisles during the sermons and to ‘tap’or ‘bob’ with his stave those who had dozed off andwere snoring too loudly!

After the rebuild of 1766 five rows of seats in the westgallery were reserved for the choir. The instrumentalsection consisted of two violoncello, bassoon andclarinet, but on great occasions fiddles, French hornsand hautboys (oboe) were requisitioned – showing that

music groups in worship are no ‘new thing’. An organwas installed in 1840 replacing the musicians.

A few notable wealthy families including the Leyland,Eckersley and Penningtons, who were generousbenefactors of Hindley, have graves in the churchyardand thanks to Ralph Peters, All Saints became one ofthe first churches to establish Sunday Schools, whichlater became the nucleus of our church day schools.

In 1868 an explosion occurred at Springs Colliery,Hindley Green, in which 61 men and boys were killed.Forty-two were buried at All Saints and the wholecommunity was in mourning. Seventeen were agedbetween eleven and sixteen. There were several fathersand sons buried together including two sets of brothersaged fifteen and thirteen, and fifteen and twelve. Theirnames are recorded in church.

Throughout its history All Saints’ Church has had itsproblems, divisions and controversies, but it has servedthe community well – not only the spiritual welfare butalso the educational and social needs of the parish. Aspart of our anniversary celebrations we have produceda time-line from 1641 to 2016, from the reign of KingCharles I to the present Queen Elizabeth II.

The time-line incorporates various displays from ourschools, Scout and Brownie organisations, the localhistory society, who have displayed items relating to ourcotton and coalmining heritage and many otherinteresting facts and figures. We are holding numeroussocial events from April through until November, withmonthly speakers.

Our history is something that belongs not to the ‘deadpast’ but is very much part of our life that makes uswhat we are today and we are delighted to share itwith others.

The writer is indebted to:Mr J Lowe, ‘The History of All Saints’ Church, Hindley’Mr J Leyland, ‘Memorials of Hindley’

The Church is open to visitors every:Wednesday – 9.00am until 12 noonSaturday – 10.00am until 12 noon

Extended opening on our Heritage Day, Saturday10 September (10.00am until 3.00pm) when the

parish registers will be available to view.

Please see local newspapers/posters/programme of events from Church or check the website. For further information, telephone the church

vestry on 01942 700166.

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Talbot Road, a row of terraced houses at the pitend of Plank Lane, would not generally be notedfor having a celebrity connection, but a certainJack Fort, born in 1888 at number 26, certainlychanged all that.

Young Jack started a promising junior footballcareer with St Andrew’s Mission Youth Team atMorts Field, Plank Lane - the field being where theold Plank Lane Working Men’s Club was built inlater years. By 1907 he had moved up the ladder toplay for Atherton Football Club in the LancashireCombination and stayed for three years. Hisparents moved to 128 Plank Lane in 1911.

Jack then made another step up and moved southto join Exeter City, then of the Southern League,who were part time professionals. By 1914 hewas on the move again to Millwall but not beforehe had toured Argentina and Brazil with Exeter.The team won eight matches on tour, with onedraw and two defeats. The draw, with no scorefor either side, was against the Argentine nationalteam. A 2-0 defeat to the first ever Braziliannational eleven was bad enough but as they leftthe field news reached them of the outbreak ofthe war in Europe. On their return to Britain, theirship came under attack from a German battleshipand had to divert to another port.

Another of the games in Brazil was againstCorinthians, a team then formed of mainly Britishexpats. Exeter won 5-3 but the centre forward ofthe Brazilian team was another local lad from StHelens, Harry Welfare. After a short career with StHelens Town, Liverpool and Tranmere Rovers,Welfare took up a teaching post in Brazil. Hescored a hat trick that day and his efforts in the

game did not go unnoticed by the Brazilians,soon after signing to play for Fluminense, who tothis day are one of the top Brazilian teams whoturned out for home games at the Maracanastadium with crowds of 150,000 in the 1960s.

Harry Welfare later became a hall of famemember for the club after scoring 163 goals in166 games; he passed away aged 77 in 1966. Another player to make his mark locally was theExeter goalkeeper Dick Pymm, who in 1920signed for Bolton Wanderers and played in theiconic 1923 FA Cup Final, as well as winning three England caps in 1925. Dick Pymm died in1988 aged 95 and is still the longest livedEngland player.

Jack Fort, like thousands of others did his bit inthe First World War but still managed to playgames in the war time league with his new club,Millwall, who he joined in 1914. By 1920, theprofessional game was on the rise and Millwallbecame a fully professional member of the Third

By Alf Ridyard

A Talbot RoadCelebrity

Harry Welfare

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Division South. The club competed well, finishingthird in 1922, 1924 and 1925. Jack Fort continuedto rise. In 1921, he was selected to play forEngland against Belgium, the result being in a 2-0 win in Brussels. It was a rare occurrence evenin those days for a third division player to beselected for England.

Jack still holds the Millwall club record forappearances with 332 games. His last appearancewas in 1930, aged 42. He continued with the clubuntil 1965 giving 51 loyal years of service asplayer, coach, trainer, groundsman and finallychief scout. He passed away on 23 Novemberaged 77, a few weeks after leaving the club.

Jack is also a member of the club’s hall of fame.His Plank Lane connection doesn’t end therethough; his nephew Bill Fort, who was thesteward of the Working Men’s Club in the1950s, says the club was built on the spotwhere young Jack started his epic footballingjourney. Bill Fort proudly wore Jacks 1927

Third Division Championship winners medal onhis watch chain.

Not a bad career for a lad born on Talbot Road, Leigh.

Exeter in Brazil

Jack Fort

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The problem with researching poorpeople is that apart from thebirths, marriages and deaths oftheir families and perhaps a fewstories, they don’t leave muchevidence behind them.

They were often illiterate and thereis little in the way of letters, diariesor photographs. Poor women don’ttend to feature very prominently in social life, so their stories inparticular can only be uncovered byinference and guesswork.

Jane Sullivan was my greatgrandmother. I knew very littleabout her apart from a few sketchydetails passed down as familystories by my mum, WinifredHollingsworth. I didn’t even knowher name was Jane until I startedexamining records such ascensuses, marriages and deaths.

I knew she was of Irish descent,from somewhere in the north andthat she had walked barefoot withher three sisters to Dublin, fleeingthe potato famine. They stayed inLiverpool with relatives to beginwith before moving to Wiganwhere they lived for the rest oftheir very hard lives.

I understood that there hadbeen brothers but that they had emigrated to America whilethe parents and the girls stayed in Wigan.

Jane liked to sing about the‘mountains of Mourne’ sweepingdown to the sea and died young.

She was very well respected by herneighbours in Scholes and on theway to St. Patrick’s for her funeralservice they all lined up on JohnStreet to pay their respects. Shewas said to have been very kindwith a heart of gold, always readyto help anyone in need.

I first found Jane aged 18 on the1871 census and living at 48 JohnStreet. There were twelve living inthe house. Those of you whoremember the houses in Scholeswill appreciate how crowded thatmust have been!

Properties were basically one mainroom with a scullery downstairs andtwo small bedrooms upstairs, withshared toilets outside at the back.

In the house were three separatebut related families. Jane’s sister

Mary had married Thomas Maloneand they had three daughters. Hermother Ann and her sister Bridgetwere there, plus Thomas Malone’sbrother Philip, his widowed sisterand her two children.

Thomas was a tailor; Bridget andJane were cotton factory workersas was Mary, Philip’s widowedsister. Philip was an agriculturallabourer. Where they all slept, I can’t imagine!

Jane must have arrived between1861 and 1871. It is interesting tonote that by 1861 Wigan hadsettled into an industrial pattern ofcoal, cotton and steel. In 1861 theworkforce was comprised of24,000 male workers and over9,000 coal-miners, 2,000 cottontextile workers and nearly 1,500farm labourers. 7,000 more

Jane Sullivan An Irish Woman in Scholes

BY HILARY BARKER

The Manor House, Scholes c.1890

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women and girls worked in thecotton mills.

This demand for workers is whatdrew the migrants to the town.Immigrants came from all overBritain including Wales andIreland. They had ten good years with relatively high wagesbefore disaster struck with thecotton famine.

The cotton workers had been welloff compared to most workingclass people with wages for a 60 hour working week of 18s 6dfor a man, 10s 2d for a woman,7s for a boy and 5s for a girl.

Then the effects of the AmericanCivil War began to be felt. A reporter from the ManchesterExaminer and Times visitingWigan described some pitiful scenes, especially in andaround Scholes.

Amy Lane and Fleece Yard weredescribed as unhealthy placeswhere poverty and dirt united tomake life doubly miserable. Hedescribes a family of elevenwhere no one was earninganything except the father whoworked for 1s 3d per day.

People sold and pawned nearly alltheir clothing and ran into debtin order to feed their families.This had a knock on effect onlocal shops causing distress toshopkeepers. There was nosewage or drainage system inScholes; no wonder disease brokeout so often!

Proper piped water had notarrived so imagine what it musthave been like for the women

trying to keep their families andhomes clean! Water had to bebrought from a well which wasoften contaminated. 10,000people were dependent on BoysWell alone. Combine that withovercrowded houses, generalpoverty and a lack of food; it wasa hard life in Scholes at this time.

Scholes was known as LittleIreland because so many poorIrish migrants lived there. Theytended to congregate in extendedfamily groups in order to supporteach other through the hardtimes they experienced. Themajority of women and girlsworked in the mills.

Both Jane and her sister, Bridget,worked as cotton factory workers.Her older sister, Mary, alsoworked as a semi-skilled mill girleven when she had a one monthold child. I’m guessing that her50 year old mother looked afterthe baby and took it to her atdinner time to be breast fed. In old films young girls can beseen taking babies to theirmothers at the factory to be fedat dinner and tea time andprobably kept quiet in betweenwith sugar water.

Jane met a young welsh minercalled Thomas Morgan and theywere married at St Patrick’sChurch by Father HughMcCormick, one of the longestserving parish priests of StPatrick’s; McCormick Street wasnamed after him.

They married in April 1872, aged22 and 21 respectively. I hadwondered about how they might

have met. After I wronglyassumed that Thomas, beingWelsh, was probably non-conformist, I in fact foundevidence of him being baptised in St David’s Roman CatholicCathedral, Cardiff. It seems that social life such as it washappened around the church andthat was where they likely met;there were no cinemas or dancehalls and respectable women didnot frequent pubs, so that onlyleft the church socials.

I found on one census return thatJane was born in County Louthand others in the family wereborn in Meath. On a holiday toTrim I visited the local archives onthe off chance they might havesomething on the family and wasastounded to find they did!Sullivan is an unusual name in thenorth of Ireland and it confirmedto us that she did have brothers,Patrick and James, but we don’tknow at this point whathappened to them.

Jane died suddenly at the age of45 of apoplexy (stroke), whilstliving at 26 John Street, leavingbehind her husband Thomas andfour children, one of whom,Elizabeth, was my grandmother.

Jane is buried in Lower InceCemetery and (like most workingpeople of the time¬) is laid in apaupers grave along with sevenother people.

As with many of our Irishancestors in Wigan she rests along way from the ‘mountains of Mourne’.

References:‘Wigan Through Wickham’sWindow’, A D Gillies‘100 years of St Patrick’s Church1847-1997’, Colin Blake andGerald Fairhurst‘A Terrible Nightmare’ Fred Holcroft, Wigan HeritageService Publications

Marriage certificate for Jane Sullivan and Thomas Morgan, 1872

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NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES& LOCAL STUDIES

Regenerating Wigan Archives

We are in the process of formingexciting plans for developing theArchives and Local Studies in Leigh town centre.

We are delighted to have received initial support fromthe Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for the RegeneratingWigan Archives and Local Studies project.

The project aims to redevelop the Borough’s Archives, based at Leigh Town Hall, with the creation of a new public searchroom, heritage exhibition spaceand expanded specialist storage strongrooms for thearchive collections.

Initial funding of £51,000 towards professionaldevelopment of the plans has been awarded to helpWigan Council and the Archives progress plans to applyfor a full grant.

The project aims to develop a full scheme to carry outwork in the following areas:

• The creation of a new modern searchroom for accessto the archives for customers and volunteers on theground floor of Leigh Town Hall;

• A new museums and archive exhibition space andcommunity room in the vacant shop units on theMarket Street side of the Town Hall;

• New and renovated storage to increase archivecapacity within the Town Hall for the Borough’s 800 year old collection of historic records;

• New conservation facilities for new and existingvolunteers to help us conserve, catalogue and digitisecollections cared for by the Archives;

• A new cafe space in the foyer of Leigh Town Hall;

• Facilities for groups, talks, workshops and schoolswishing to visit the Archives;

• A programme of outreach and engagement activities,helping the Archives to both raise awareness of theBorough’s history and to encourage people to donaterecords to the Archives for preservation.

This project web page is now live, so if you would like tofind out more or learn about how you can support theproject, please have a look at the page or get in touchwith a member of the Archives team,http://www.wigan.gov.uk/regenerationproject

Made in GreaterManchester

For many people around the world, Greater Manchesteris synonymous with industry. The Greater Manchesterthat we know today was built upon the foundations ofindustry, and the growth of the region went hand inhand with the arrival of people of many nationalities andethnic groups who were drawn to an area that promisedemployment and prosperity.

These industrial businesses have left a legacy of archivesand photographs which document not only businesstransactions, products and industrial processes but theworking lives of men, women and children across theregion. Unfortunately many of these important businessarchive collections are currently uncatalogued, and as aresult are inaccessible to the public.

This is why we are thrilled to announce that WiganCouncil have been awarded a grant of over £70,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to catalogue and digitise a selection of business records from acrossGreater Manchester.

The project is being implemented on behalf of theGreater Manchester Archives and Local StudiesPartnership. Each of the ten services within thepartnership has selected one collection of businessrecords which they believe to be historically important.

These collections will be catalogued, digitised andtranscribed by groups of volunteers, and then madeavailable to the public for the first time via our onlinecatalogue, Greater Manchester Lives. Volunteers will alsohave the opportunity to put together blog posts for ourMade in Greater Manchester blog, as well as researchand write articles for a book which we intend to publishabout local business histories.

Archives+, based at Manchester Central Library, will becataloguing and digitising Manchester Ship Canal andBridgewater Canal records. These collections are vital inillustrating how and why the North West became such animportant centre for industrial growth over the last threehundred years.

Tameside Archives & Local Studies will be digitising andtranscribing the fascinating ‘Manchester StudiesCollection’, a series of oral history tapes covering issuessuch as domestic service, health, poverty and the cottonindustry. They will also be taking a look at the records ofthe Senior Service cigarette company, which was formedin Manchester in the 1920s.

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Bolton Archives & Local Studies will be cataloguing anddigitising the records of Magee, Marshall and Co. Ltd., afamily-owned brewery established in Bolton in 1888, andBury Archives will be focussing on the records of ThomasRobinson & Co. Ltd. of Ramsbottom, bleachers and dyers.

Trafford Local Studies have chosen a collection ofphotographs relating to two major industrial areas -Broadheath, located in Altrincham, and Trafford Park,which at its height employed 75,000 workers. Oldham Local Studies & Archives have chosen the recordsof the leather roller manufacturers Clegg and Mellor, andRochdale Touchstones will be cataloguing and digitisingthe records of Petrie and McNaught, manufacturers ofsteam powered engines.

Stockport Archives will be concentrating on the recordsof Robert Arundel, a textile machine manufacturer fromStockport. Not only does this collection provideinformation on how the textile machinery worked andwas developed, it also gives a brilliant insight intoindustrial unrest in the 1960s.

Wigan Archives & Local Studies have chosen to catalogue the records of Walker Brothers Ltd., a majorheavy engineering business in the Wigan area. At theirpeak, Walker Brothers employed hundreds of people attheir Pagefield Ironworks and designed andmanufactured machinery that was sent around theworld, from the Peruvian Railways, to South Africanmines. There are currently three pallets worth of WalkerBrothers’ engineering drawings, plans and blueprintswaiting to be listed in the basement of Leigh Library.These records are vital to the understanding of Wigan’sindustrial history, and once catalogued will be a fantasticresource for researchers.

Overall, we hope that the Made in Greater Manchesterproject will bring together volunteers, researchers and

archive professionals across the ten Greater Manchesterdistricts to conserve, catalogue and digitise ourimportant business archives and make them available foreveryone to use and enjoy.

New Accessions and Collections

Wigan Archives

• Records of Golborne Cricket Club [Acc. 2016/47]• Records of Astley Methodist Church [Acc. 2016/44]• Bedford Church School and Bedford National School

[Acc. 2016/43]• John Brown of Wigan, publications, 1815-1816

[Acc. 2016/42]• Alderman Kearney Mayoral Photograph Album

[Acc. 2016/39]• Alan Davies Mining Collection [Acc. 2016/35]• Highlea Secondary School/Tyldesley Highfield School

[Acc. 2016/33]• Lowton, St Mary's Church, Church magazines,

1899-1904 [Acc. 2016/30]

Wigan Local Studies

• Michael Bold, ‘A Consideration of the Property Rights of the Stallholders Occupying the Indoor Retail Market Hall in Wigan’

• Chris Heaven, ‘Wigan Dispensary, 1824-1873, Charitable Healthcare Provision Prior to Wigan Infirmary’

• Heritage for Health, Trenchers Times,• David Jackson, ‘The Industrial Relations Implications

of Management Re-structuring of Higher Education in Wigan, 1988-1992’

• David Long, ‘British Ambulance Flotillas of the Great War. The use of barges by British and French forces to treat and transport WWI casualties, Waterways Journal, Volume 18

• NCB North-Western Division No. 2 (Wigan) Area Safety• Souvenir Programme of the 69th Annual Procession

of the Catholic Parishes in the County Borough of Wigan, Monday 3 June 1968

• Walker Brothers (Wigan) Ltd., The Walker 6 Ton Cruiser Type Mobile Crane. Operating & Maintenance Instructions

Please check our online catalogue for more itemsavailable at Wigan & Leigh Local Studies,http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/wigan/home

16

‘My name is James William Slater.I was number three in a family offive, born 30 March 1940.

We lived at Hill View, number 10;they were very old houses.

An old lady who was in her 90scalled Hill View the ‘old row’when she was a girl.

The houses were ‘two up twodowns’. They were wet, dampand cold and had only onefireplace, as well as one tap thatprovided cold water.

We had only one gas light in thefront room and candles for light inthe bedrooms. The toilet was 15yards away across the backs awayfrom the house and we had potsunder the beds for night time.

Due to poor nutrition in my earlylife I had brittle bones and wasprone to bad fractures. When Iwas very young I fell and brokeboth legs. They had to be set intraction at Leigh infirmary.

The nurses used to shout at meand say to my mother I was a badchild because I was always crying.When they took the cast andtraction off I had pressure soresnear down to the bone; that’s whyI had cried in agony when thenurses tightened the traction. Thescars are still visible even now.

As I was sickly as a child I missed much schooling. When I went to senior school, WestLeigh, I couldn’t read or write.However, I developed my learning,learned to read and write and

discovered I was good withnumbers and math.

I also discovered I was a goodrunner and won the cross-countrychampionships, running againstboys two years older than myself.During the race I ran in cut offwellington boots whilst otherboys were running in bare feet aswe were that poor. Out ofembarrassment the school laterprovided spikes for us to run in.

My mother had a very hard lifebringing us up. She also had bothpoor eyesight and hearing. It ledto complete blindness in later life.She was a good mother and caredfor us as well as she could despiteher disabilities. When my fathergot injured in the pit, we hadsome very hard times but we werealways looked after with my mam.She often went without for us.

Grandma Slater was the midwifefor a lot of women in Westleigh.She told me how she had a cleanpillow slip and a clean bed sheetfor any women to have theirbabies on. She always kept thisfor the poor women who haddidn’t have any for themselves.

She also laid the dead out -another thing she did for thepoor families within Westleigh.

Later on in her life she would putshows on for the old agepensioners in Westleigh LabourClub and put food on as well.How she did all of these things Ido not know but she was wellknown around the area.

Grandma’s name was AnnieRhodes before she married. Sheoriginally came here around 1885-1886 from Ashton-under-Lyne.She had very little schooling.

When she was twelve years oldshe went to live with two spinsteraunts on a sheep farm. Byseventeen she had gone to workas a kitchen maid in the largehouse of a solicitor in Manchester,where she worked her way up tobecome the housekeeper.I do not know how she met

James’ father and grandmother

A Life in Westleigh:James William Slater

AS TOLD TO HIS GRAND-DAUGHTER, JADE SLATER

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Grandad Slater but he came fromAtherton. I think his name was JoeSlater. They had three children,James, William and Annie, andthere may have been one morethat died soon after birth.Grandad Slater went to fight inthe First World War and grandmawas left to live in a very poor placein Westleigh called ‘Physic’.

I remember the houses on thePhysic. They were in bad repairwhen I was young. The Ring O’Bells pub was at the back of thehouses. I was told by my dad thatthey did not have ale on pumpbut brought it out in jugs. I thinkthat the council still moved thenight soil at this time for some ofthese houses.

The houses were very old even atGrandma Slater’s time. She hadnothing when she went to livethere. She told me she wentdown to Leigh Market and gottwo small wooden boxes, oneused as a table and the other as achair. She slept with the two ladson the floor and the baby had adrawer for a cot.

My Dad looked after William andAnnie, the baby, when GrandmaSlater went out to work at Leighcable works. I think they made‘ammo’ there for the war.

They sent Grandad Slater homewith shell shock. He had his rifleand ammo just as he had comefrom the war. I do not know thedate this happened. Grandad didnot live much longer. He killedhimself in one of Hayes’ factorylodges. Grandma took the rifleand ammo and gave them in toLeigh Town Hall.

Sometime later grandma was wedagain to Jim Ashall. He was verygood to her. He was a crowngreen bowler and won the oldage pensioner cup at Blackpool,the Waterloo Cup.

My Dad James Slater was theoldest of the three children. Healways worked in the pit. He

worked at Howe Bridge pit for some 33 years as a drawerand a packer. He went to work at 7.00pm down the pit and came up again at 2.30am the next morning.

I never knew my Grandad Slater.Grandad Ashall was the Grandadin knew when I was a child. WhenGrandad Ashall died I would goand sit with Grandma and shewould tell me all of the history ofour family.

My Mother came from Twist Lane,Leigh. She was a Fairhurst beforeshe was married. I do not knowwhat happened to Grandad

Fairhurst. My Mother’s Mother hadre-married again to Mr Dyke. Thiswas the Grandad I knew. He was aWelshman. He was a man whocould go out without any moneyaround Leigh and could come backdrunk – because he was a verygood singer he would sing in thepubs in return for his drink.

He also made fishing rods andbirdcages which he then sold. Hetoo was in the Great War and hisname is on Leigh Cenotaph but Ido not know how this cameabout – other than to say he wasposted as missing but he latercame home.’

James as a baby with his brother Joe and sister Lily

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Lawrence CoxSoldier & Policeman by John Hesford

In the first of a two-part article, John Hesford explores thelife of a remarkable local character. The first part of the taletraces his military career; the second in the next edition ofPast Forward will look at his life as a policeman in Leigh(1875-1889), where his strict attention to duty, his genialityand good nature, combined with his admirable socialqualities gained him hosts of friends.

Many volumes have been written on military campaigns by both retired and serving officers but by virtue ofwidespread illiteracy, little is recorded of the trials andordeals of the common foot soldier. Lawrence Cox,however, was the exception to the rule, when in 1890 he related his life as a soldier and later policeman ingraphic detail.

Lawrence was born on Christmas Day, 25 December 1837 atBoyne, North Roscommon, Ireland. His father was a soldierand he travelled with his parents to wherever his father wasstationed in the British Empire. Immersed in military life itwas inconceivable that he would choose any other careerthan that of a soldier. On 15 July 1851 at the tender age ofthirteen and a half he enlisted as a boy soldier in the 1stBattalion 14th Regiment stationed at Dublin. In March 1852he transferred to his father’s old regiment, the PrincessVictoria Royals Own Irish Fusiliers, known as Blaney’sBloodhounds from their perseverance in tracking down theIrish rebels in 1798, when the commanding officer wasLord Blaney.

His first detachment was to Hanlbowline a small islandand naval victualing station for the navy near Queenslandand from there, on the 25 April 1854, he embarked forGibraltar on the sailing ship Gomelya. This was a penalstage where long term prisoners would spend one tothree years repairing public works before being sent toAustralia. Up to 900 convicts were housed in a threebuilding fortification and were guarded with bayonet andloaded gun. While he was stationed here he wasrecommended for the Humane Society Medal for savingthe son of the gaol keeper who had fallen into theharbour; sadly the boy died a short time after.

Following the outbreak of war, Cox, together with the 94thand 17th foot embarked for the Crimea and on arrival atConstantinople they replaced their old Minnie rifles withthe new 1853 pattern .577 Enfield. On landing at Balaclavathey found that the battles of Alma, Inkerman andBalaclava had already taken place. They were supplied onthat first night with two blankets, but they were of littleuse due to the muddy conditions. To make things worsethere was a heavy storm, during which time they were

attacked by the Russian light cavalry which was quicklyrepulsed. They got no sleep that night and in the morningthey marched to the front. Each man had to carry hiscooking utensils, 56lb of luggage and 60 rounds ofammunition and before setting off each soldier was giventwo drams of rum.

The ground was so bad here that only three and a halfmiles were covered on the first day and although it wasonly seven miles to the front, it took two days to arrivethere, somewhat tempering Cox’s excitement of the actionto come.

The formation of the lines saw the French occupying theright of the English, with the Sardinians on the Balaclavaplains and Cox’s regiment forming part of three divisions.During that winter, the soldiers were in the trenches twelvehours a day without food or drink and were generallytreated very badly.

Daily rations consisted of 1lb of hard biscuit and 1lb ofpork with a little coffee, the latter being green andunground. There was nothing to cook the food with andthey had nothing warm to eat or drink for several days,living on biscuits and sugar; they also got two drams ofrum a day, three when in the trenches.

There was no one to tend the sick and injured, cholera anddiarrhoea raged, the infected just sickened away and died;there were initially eighteen to a bell tent, but this numbersoon dwindled to six or seven. The weather was so severethat many died from exposure and frostbite. The tent flapopening froze as hard as iron and could not be closed atnight and the drifting snow swept into the tents. Cox did

Map of Sebastopol Lines 1855

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not take his clothes off for three months and only surviveddue to his strong constitution. Coming off duty he couldonly tell if his sleeping comrades were alive or dead byputting snow flakes on their lips to see if they melted.Those that had died were sewn in blankets and placed in ahole in the ground with no chaplain in attendance.

The cavalry were mainly used for transporting provisions.When a horse died it was dragged to a brook or stream. Itsoon became frozen hard and became a stepping stone.Out of the 900 men of Cox’s regiment, after the secondmonth only 50 were in modest health. Come spring lifebecame better; they received drafts from home and weresupplied with flannel shirts, drawers and sheepskin coats,some soldiers even received wellington boots that reachedthe knees. In summer, the men worked hard to prepare forbombardment. Shot and shell were carried from the paradeground to the trenches.

The bombardment of Sebastopol began on Easter Monday1855. Cox at that time was in the second parallel and forthe next few days the air was darkened by shot and shell.The Russians replied by making sorties and keeping up aheavy bombardment on the British lines to raise the sailors’battery to the ground.

That night the French advanced in glittering lines to takethe Malakoff, but although they gained temporarypossession of the fort the enemy fire made the positionuntenable and they had to retreat with heavy losses. On thenight of 17 June, 300 soldiers including Cox marched out toa place called ‘the graveyard’, situated in front of the Redanwhere they waited as a work party until a storming partyhad taken the Redan. The burst of a rocket was the signalfor the assault and the British storming party advancedunder murderous fire. They were repulsed and Cox’s partywere forced to fall back into the main body. Cox spentthree nights in the trenches as they expected a great sortieand on 17 June the Russians attacked the Allied positionsbut were repulsed at every point.

On 5 July Cox was reunited with his father in the trenches,but the latter was so badly wounded he was shipped backto England. Cox himself had many narrow escapes fromdeath. On the night of the bombardment, he and threeothers were all sat down in a circle. A man named Perry

was telling a tale when they saw a shell alight some 100 yards away. They went to find cover and got clear just as a huge piece of shell struck the exact place wherePerry had been sitting, deep into the earth.

One night he returned back from the trenches to his tent.He was the youngest of three, and consequently slept inthe middle, by far the most uncomfortable place. One ofhis comrades got up for night guard and never returned as he was seized with cholera and died at his post.

Discipline was rigorously maintained. If a man was founddrunk he was court-martialed. His regiment would form asquare so the men could see what to expect. The prisonerwas stripped to the waist, tied to a triangle and floggedwith a cat o’ nine tails. Two dozen lashes was the generalrule, at the end of which the soldiers back was a mass oflacerated wounds.

The battle of Tchernaya almost cost Cox his life. TheSardinians who occupied the plain were driven back by acombined attack. The Russians got to within one and a halfmiles of the town of Balaclava where the British stores werestationed. The 300 British and French (including Cox) werecut off from the army and death or imprisonment staredthem in the face. The aide-de-camp was very nearly killedand they had to flee leaving everything behind. For eightmiles they had to run at the double with the grey coatedRussians close behind them, until they reached the Turkishlines in safety. They then manned a battery, but theRussians never arrived, so still fearing an attack the partytook up a position on the Heights of Balaclava. When theygot to the Height they observed the Russian army beneaththem. No wonder Prince Gortchakoff saw fit to withdrawhis men, well did he remember Alma, Inkerman andBalaclava where he erected a stand so that the Russianladies might see him drive the British women (as hedescribed the kilted Highlanders) into the sea and howthese terrible men in skirts bounded up the hills like deerand smote the gunners hip and thigh.

After his narrow escape Cox and his comrades did duty inthe trenches until the 8 September 1855. That day,following a terrible struggle in which many lives were lost,they captured the Malakoff. At the same time, the British

British Monument Great Redan Crimean War 1856

Siege of Sebastopol

Information forContributorsWe always welcome articles and letters forpublication from both new and existingcontributors.

If you would like to submit an article for PAST FORWARD, please note that:

• Publication is at discretion of Editorial Team

• The Editorial Team may edit your submission

• Published and rejected submissions will bedisposed of, unless you request for them tobe returned

• Submissions may be held on file forpublication in a future edition

• Articles must be received by the copy date if inclusion in the next issue is desired

Submission Guidelines• Electronic submissions are preferred,

although handwritten ones will be accepted

• We prefer articles to have a maximum lengthof 1,000 words

• Include photographs or images wherepossible – these can be returned if requested

• Include your name and address – we will notpass on your details to anyone unless youhave given us permission to do so

We aim to acknowledge receipt of all submissions.

CONTACT DETAILS:pastforward@wigan.gov.uk or The Editor at PAST FORWARD, Museum of Wigan Life, Library Street, Wigan WN1 1NU.

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attempted to take the Redan but the Russians werereinforced by the men who had lost their positions andretreated. The captured Malakoff was the key to taking theRussian positions; the enemy was well aware of this andblew up the Redan with mines.

The town of Sebastopol with all its wealth was now at themercy of the allies. To maintain discipline a ring of soldierswas placed around the town to prevent looting. With theFrench this was different, it was harvest time and they rushedinto the town carrying off whatever they could lay their handson, while the English looked on. After the capture ofSebastopol, Cox’s regiment was sent to the Heights ofBalaclava where it remained during the winter of 1855-1856.It left Balaclava in May 1856 and returned to the old quarterson Windmill Hill, Gibraltar, where to the lasting disgrace ofthe British Government they were supplied with new kit attheir own expense - their own kit being lost in the Crimeaduring the hasty retreat from the plains of Balaclava. They were stationed at Gibraltar until July 1856 when in

company with another regiment, the 89th Foot, they weredespatched to combat unrest in South Africa.

They came to anchor at East London, a town on the EasternCape at the mouth of the Buffalo River, but the surf was sodangerous they had to land in boats. They made campabout three quarters of a mile from the shore and foundthat the heat was so great they had to get a light suit ofsummer clothes, again at their own expense.

The duties were very severe and the food consisted of 1lbof boiled beef and coffee sweetened with treacle. Thepresence of the soldiers prevented the black South Africansfrom breaking out in open insurrection but the Africanswere by no means deterred in picking off stragglers.

One morning a soldier was found dead near a village – orkraal – on the sea shore. The dead man was one of fourbrothers named Farrell who were very popular in the campand the soldiers swore to have their revenge. The menmarched into the village and burned down all the huts theycould find. When this affair was circulated amongst thenative population, word came to the camp that they weremustering in their thousands and were only waiting for afavourable opportunity to annihilate the British. Whetherthey feared the military was not known, but they did notattack the British camp and never attacked another soldier.

After some thirteen months stationed in Africa, Cox and his regiment were ordered to depart for India to quell a mutiny.

The second part of Lawrence Cox’s story will bepublished in the next edition of Past Forward.

Sources: Leigh Chronicle, 1890Encyclopaedia Britannica

Balaclava

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Who do you consider a hero of mining? Maybeit is someone who showed you the ropes whenjust starting out in mining, or a relative thatworked hard all their life to provide for theirfamily. Perhaps it is someone that you have readabout; an inventor, a social reformer or a rescueman going above and beyond.

This year the National Coal Mining Museum for England is celebrating the heroes andheroines of coal mining. We want yournominations and the tales behind them to fillour special exhibition with the inspirationalstories and memories of men and women fromacross the coalfields.

There are lots of ways to nominate your hero. If you come to the Museum, why not fill out anomination card or talk to a member of staff. If you can’t make it onsite, visit our websitewhere we will be launching our Hero’s hub,which includes lots of information such as ourhero of the week and of course, a link tonominate your hero. If you are on social media,

you can nominate on the Museum’s Facebookpage or on Twitter at #WhatIsHeroism.

Visit the Museum from 28 May 2016 to discovera wealth of unsung mining heroes you maynever have heard of and add your nominationto them. We want to hear your stories.

You can also submit stories, memories orphotographs to Wigan Archives to pass on tothe Museum. Please send any information toarchives@wigan.gov.uk or pop in to see us atthe Museum of Wigan Life or Wigan Archives(at Leigh Town Hall).

We will certainly be submitting the names of our mining heroes, including Margaret Park,who was Mayoress of Wigan from 1882 to1887. In 1887 she led a group of pit browlasses to London to protest about plans to ban them from working on the surface of coal mines. The protest was successful and pit brow lasses continued to work at Wigan’scoal mines.

THE NATIONAL COALMINING MUSEUM:

Heroes and Heroines Exhibition

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Wigan Pier gained notoriety throughmusic hall songs and jokes by GeorgeFormby Senior, George Formby Juniorand George Orwell’s 1937 book, ‘TheRoad to Wigan Pier’.

One story about Wigan Pier is thaton pulling out of WiganNorthwestern Station, FormbySenior looked down on Wigan andobserved a long, wooden, pier-likestructure. This could have been thelarge wooden viaduct on the Bury to Liverpool Railway that thenextended from Miry Lane across theLeeds and Liverpool Canal and theRiver Douglas.

Another story is that passengers on a train from Wigan to Southport sawa long wooden structure thatreminded them of Southport Pier.This probably was the 1,050 yardlong wooden, overhead gantry fromLamb and Moore’s Newtown Collierythat crossed the River Douglas, canaland railway line to Meadows Collieryby Frog Lane. As Wigan is some 20 miles from the coast, these storiespoked fun at Wigan.

George Orwell searched in vain for a real railway pier head in the canalbasin but it was demolished in1929. A symbolic replica of a railwaytippling mechanism installed on thecanal wharf in the 1980s remembersthis Wigan Pier.

In researching Wigan Pier’s history,we find that there were in fact,three real waterway piers and adock. These structures were integralparts of Wigan’s transformationfrom a medieval market town withcraftsmen and merchants to a leaderin the Industrial Revolution.

Wigan’s success was founded oncoal. Coal production in the Wiganarea in the early 1700s was only afew thousand tons per year and thepopulation of the town only a fewthousand. In 1882, Sinclair wrotethat Wiganers ‘…were shut up inthemselves by the spirit of

protection, and enterprise had beenforeign to their nature.’

Change was realised by a fewWiganers, such as Alexander Leighand an increasing number of‘foreigners’, such as LiverpudliansJonathan Blundell and John Clarke.They began to break downtraditions and barriers.

The pace of change becameoverwhelming as laissez-fairecapitalism shaped Wigan’s economy,society and environment. Peasantsand yeomen in the old manorialsystem were pushed and pulled intobecoming workers ─ some sayslaves ─ in mines, mills andfactories. The populationmushroomed and the landscape wasdefiled with spoil heaps, flashes andcoal dust.

The history of Wigan Pier and dockreflects sequential improvements intransportation that began nearlythree centuries ago. The dock, piersand early railways facilitatedrevolutionary changes in the exportof coal from Wigan and the import

of goods from around the world.The first major transportdevelopment was the opening ofthe Douglas Navigation in 1741,allowing boats to carry coal andother goods to the Ribble Estuaryand beyond.

Around 1735, when the navigationwas being constructed, a 250 -300yard channel was dug ‘from thetermination of the dock to the point of pool-bridge’ [Parson’sMeadow Bridge].

An 1802 map shows two canalisedchannels branching northwardsfrom the River Douglas. Thebuildings at the terminal point ofthese canalised sections formed theend section of the DouglasNavigation and what must havebeen Wigan Dock. The Leeds andLiverpool Canal was finished in 1794and by the end of the eighteenthcentury the navigation waseffectively abandoned.

Goods were transported to andfrom the navigation and canal byhorse and cart but as more pitswere sunk, the need to transportlarge quantities of coal stimulated construction of private colliery railways.

In 1822 Thomas Claughton, aWarrington coal mining speculator,sold a portion of his mines andmineral rights to John Daglish,brother of Robert Daglish, who since 1813 operated his steamlocomotive, ‘The Walking Horse’, in Winstanley and Orrell.

John Daglish entered intopartnership with Peter Brimelow, acoal master of Wigan, and togetherthey operated Stone House Collieryin the Worsley Mesnes area. It wasaround 1822 that Daglish ‘madeand erected a weighing machine, apier head and tippler upon or nearto the banks of the Leeds andLiverpool Canal in Wigan aforesaid’.

By Derek Winstanley & Wigan Archaeological Society

Wigan Piers & Dock

Map of Wigan

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This was the first Wigan Pier, where the current symbolic tippler is located.

In 1840, Daglish sold his railwayleading to the Pier Head, includingthe weighing machine and tippler,to Meyrick Bankes of WinstanleyHall. In 1845, Meyrick Bankesextended the railway line to hisWinstanley pits forming a three anda half mile railway to the Pier Head.

The Daglish-Bankes railway was fourfoot narrow-gauge and utilisedgravity and horse power to

transport coal down to the canal. In1882, Meyrick Bankes introduced anarrow-gauge steam locomotivecalled, ‘Louisa’.

In 1886-1887, the railway wasconverted to standard gauge and a new standard gaugelocomotive, ‘Eleanor’, wasintroduced and later joined byseveral other locomotives.

The 1890 town plan suggests thaton the south side of the canal basinthere are two shunting lines to theeast of the Pier Head line. The Pier

Head is shown as a promontoryonto the canal. On the line to the Pier Head is a weighing machine and at the Pier Head is awindlass for tippling coal wagonsinto canal barges.

Independent railways fromGermans’ Colliery, in the GooseGreen-Newtown area and Blundell’sPemberton Colliery were constructedaround 1825-1828 along whattoday is Victoria Street, to separatepier heads on the Canal near SevenStars Bridge.

Both railways were narrow gaugeand worked by gravity and horsepower; they did not use steamlocomotives, nor did they convert tostandard gauge. The mainlinerailway began to transport Blundell’s coal around 1848 andboth colliery railways wereabandoned in the 1860s; no remains survive.

Mechanization dramatically changed Wigan and created aworking class that Orwell saidpanted at the heels of engineers and speculators marching along amechanical road of ‘progress’.Today, we can ponder whether weare designing the future of ourchoice, or are at the mercy of‘progress’ made by scientists,engineers and speculators world-wide. Only time will tell.

Wigan PierDismantling Wigan Pier by Calderbanks Ltd, 12.1929

Wigan Town Plan

This year is the 70th anniversary ofthe Burden Park Disaster, where,on Saturday 9 March 1946, 33local soccer fans were crushed todeath and some 400 more injured.

The occasion was a second leg,sixth round, FA Cup tie betweenBolton Wanderers and Stoke City,Bolton having won the first leg 2-0. The match attracted hugeinterest; this was the first post-warFA Cup competition and with theirfirst leg lead, Bolton had a goodchance of reaching the semi-finals.

Another attraction was thepresence in the Stoke team ofStanley Matthews, the famouswinger whose presence in a teamwas said to add an additional7,000 spectators to a match. Onthat March Saturday afternoon it

was estimated that over 80,000people descended on Burden Parkhoping to see the match, far inexcess of the previous bestattendance of 68,912 in 1933, andmany of whom were from Wigan,Atherton and Leigh. The bestattendance previously in the 1946season had been 43,000.

Three sides of Burnden Park hadcovered accommodation for thespectators whilst the northern end,where the disaster occurred, wasan open embankment stretchingthe width of the pitch behind thegoal. This was crudely terracedwith dirt and flagstones anddotted with tubular steel crushbarriers. It was backed by theBolton to Bury railway line, henceit being known as The RailwayEmbankment. It was separatedfrom the railway by a fence ofupended railway sleepers set in the ground.

In normal times, admission to thispart of the ground was throughturnstiles at each end of theembankment. However, during the war parts of the ground,including the turnstiles at the east end of the embankment hadbeen requisitioned by the Ministry of Supply, who stillretained possession, thus rulingout their use.

With admissions restricted to oneend the early arrivals claimed the

best viewing positions half wayalong the embankment, behindthe goal. However, as more andmore people came through theturnstiles this block of spectatorswas gradually pushed further andfurther along the embankment.Naturally, they resented losingtheir prime positions and therewas much pushing and shoving asthe congestion increased.

Eventually, at 2.40pm, 20 minutesbefore kick-off, the decision wastaken to close the turnstiles and itwas at this point that thingsstarted to go wrong. Thethousands of fans locked outbegan to take matters into theirown hands; some clambered overthe turnstiles, others climbed uponto the railway line and ranalong the track to a point wherethey could climb over into theground. The situation was nothelped by a man inside the groundwho, concerned for the safety ofhis young son, picked the padlockon an exit gate to escape from thecrush and in the process let inhundreds of gatecrashers.

When the game kicked off therewas a surge in the crowd aspeople strained to get a betterview and such was the pressurethat two of the tubular steel crushbarriers collapsed. There was thena domino effect with peoplefalling forward only to betrampled on by those behind them

The Burnden ParkDisaster By Bill Melling

24

Burnden Park disaster 1946. Courtesyof The Bolton Evening News.

being pushed forward. The crowdspilled over on to the tracksurrounding the pitch but thegame went on for twelve minutesuntil a policeman ran to thereferee and told him that a fatalityhad occurred. The referee calledthe two team captains who thenled their teams off the field. Thedead and injured were removedfrom the terracing with the deadbeing laid out along the touchlinecovered with coats.

The pressure in the crowd on theRailway Embankment terraces waseased by allowing severalthousand spectators from there tomove to another, less congestedpart of the ground. At around3.30pm play was resumed withcorpses still lay out along thetouchline. At half-time the teamschanged ends and continued toplay without a break and thematch ended as a 0-0 draw. Thedead, dying and injured wereferried to Bolton Royal Infirmary ina fleet of ambulances and atemporary overflow mortuary wasset up at the Ambulance Station.

An inquest on the thirty threevictims was opened within a few

days by the Bolton Coronerassisted by Mr Hopwood Sayer, the Wigan Coroner. The victims,apart from one woman and a 14 year old boy, were all menbetween the ages of 19 and 65,many of them from townshipswhich form part of what is nowthe Wigan Borough.

The picture that emerged was that although thousands ofgatecrashers gained access to theRailway Embankment Terrace,conditions on the greater part ofit, although very crowded, werenot particularly dangerous. Thefatalities and injuries occurred in arelatively small section of thecrowd near the turnstiles and a bar operated by Magee’s, thelocal brewery.

Police on the touchline, on hearingscreams had rushed to the sceneand proceeded to demolish thefence so that people could spillout onto the pitch to allow accessto the dead and injured.

In 1946 there was no publicaddress system, radios ortelephone system linking variousparts of the ground so

communication was by word of mouth and the dense crowds, particularly outside the ground, made it almostimpossible for officials and thepolice get a picture of what washappening and to orderappropriate action.

Many spectators in other parts ofthe ground were unaware of thefatalities that had occurred andonly learned of the tragedy fromthe evening papers or radio news bulletins.

The inquest reached a decisionwithin a few weeks of the tragedyreturning verdicts of ‘AccidentalDeaths’ on all 33 victims. Anenquiry, headed by JusticeMoelwyn Hughes was ordered bythe Home Secretary, which openedon the 22 March 1946 andreported on the 25 May 1946. Itrecommended that LocalAuthorities should inspect allsports grounds capable of holding10,000 spectators or more andthat agreed safety limits for themaximum number of spectatorsallowed should be set.

It also recommended thatturnstiles should mechanicallyrecord the numbers admitted andthat grounds should have internaltelephone communication systemsso that a check could be kept ofthe size of the crowd.

Whilst the Home Office orderedthe report, no official body waswilling to take responsibility or toput the recommendations intoeffect and on another spring dayin 1989, 96 people died inSheffield, in circumstances thatsadly echoed those of BurndenPark 43 years before.

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Crowds at Burnden Park. Courtesy of The Bolton Evening News.

26

SOCIETY NEWS

Aspull and Haigh Historical Society

Meetings are held on the second Thursdayof the month at Our Lady’s RC Church Hall,Haigh Road, Aspull from 2pm to 4pm.All are welcome, contact Barbara Rhodesfor further details on 01942 222769.

Atherton Heritage Society

Monthly meetings held on second Tuesdayof each month in St Richard’s Parish Centre,Mayfield Street, Atherton at 7.30pm.Admission – Members, £1.00, Non Members, £2.00, includingrefreshments.

Contact Details: Margaret Hodge, 01942 884893.13 September – The Tunnellers of WWI andTheir Story – Richard Sivill11 October – The Buccaneers – Brian Halliwell8 November – Venice, The Lake andDolomites – Malcolm Tranter

Billinge History andHeritage Society

Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of the month at Billinge ChapelEnd Labour Club at 7.30pm. There is adoor charge of £2.

Please contact Geoff Crank for moreinformation on 01695 624411 or atGcrank_2000@yahoo.co.uk

Hindley & District History Society

Meetings are held on the second Mondayof the month at 7.00pm at Tudor House,Liverpool Road, Hindley. Please contact Mrs Joan Topping on 01942 257361 for information.

Leigh & District Antiquesand Collectables Society

The society meets at Leigh RUFC, BeechWalk, Leigh. New members are alwayswelcome and further details available fromMr C Gaskell on 01942 673521.

Leigh & District History

January saw the launch of an exciting new,

free, local history website, covering Leighand the surrounding districts. Still in itsinfancy, it already boasts a list of births,marriages and deaths, 1852-1856,including cemetery internments,nineteenth century letters from soldiersserving abroad, a scrapbook of interestingarticles, local railway accidents and anembryonic photograph gallery. There arealso links to other sites covering historicand genealogical interest.

Leigh Family History Society

The Leigh & District Family History HelpDesk is available every Monday afternoon(except Bank Holidays) from 1.30pm to3.30pm.

There is no need to book an appointmentfor this Help Desk, which can be reachedby lift.

Monthly meetings held in the Derby Room,Leigh Library at 7.30pm on the thirdTuesday of each month (except December),contact Mrs G McClellan (01942 729559)20 September – Archives & Local StudiesRedevelopment Project – Alex Miller18 October – George Lyon, UphollandHighwayman – Marianne Howell15 November – Lancashire Online ParishClerks – Lynne Ayton

Local History Federation Lancashire

The Federation holds several meetings eachyear, with a varied and interestingprogramme. For details visitwww.lancashirehistory.org or call 01204 707885.

Skelmersdale & UphollandFamily History Society

Meetings held at 7.30pm on the fourth Tuesday each month at Hall Green Community Centre, Upholland. There are no meetings in July or August.

For more information contact Sue Hesketh (Secretary) 01942 212940 or Suehesketh@blueyonder.co.uk

Wigan Civic Trust

If you have an interest in the standard ofplanning and architecture, and the

conservation of buildings and structures in our historic town, come along and meet us. Meetings are held on the second Monday of the month at 7.30pm.The venue is St George’s Church, Water Street, Wigan WN1 1XD.

Contact Mr A Grimshaw on 01942 245777for further information.

Wigan ArchaeologicalSociety

We meet on the first Wednesday of themonth, at 7.30pm, in the Standish Suite at the Brocket Arms on Mesnes Road (except January and August). There is a car park adjacent on the left. Admission is £2 for members and £3 for guests. For more information call Bill Aldridge on01257 402342.

You an also visit the website atwww.wiganarchsoc.co.uk

Wigan Family and Local History Society

We meet on the second Wednesday ofeach month at St Andrew’s Parish Centre, 120 Woodhouse Lane, Springfield, Wiganat 7.15pm.

Attendance fees are £2.50 per meeting forboth members and visitors. Our aim is toprovide support, help, ideas and advice formembers and non members alike. Formore information please visit,www.wiganworld.co.uk/familyhistory/ orsee us at our weekly Monday afternoonhelpdesks at the Museum of Wigan Life.

14 September 2016 – The History ofGarswood New Hall, Ashton-in-Makerfield

12 October 2016 – How to start tracingthe history of a house – Marianne Howell

9 November 2016 – Where does thatsaying come from? – Louise Wade

Wigan Local History &Heritage Society

We meet on the first Monday of eachmonth at Beech Hill Book Cycle at 6.30pm.Admission to the meeting is £2.50.

For more information please contact Sheila Ramsdale atsheila.ramsdale@blueyonder.co.uk

Memories of SchoolLeigh Boys’ & Girls’ GrammarSchools ProjectIn 2015, Healthy Arts (a local not-for-profit artsorganisation) received Heritage Lottery Fundingfor the Lilford Park 100 project. We researched,recorded, and explored through dramaticperformances, the history of Lilford Park andrecorded local peoples’ memories, resulting in thecentenary weekend celebrations and the heritageboards now installed in the park.

In 2016 we would like to apply for HLF fundingto undertake a project about both of theGrammar Schools in Leigh. This year will be the 40th anniversary of the schools closing and we feel that it is important to recordmemories about both schools, particularly as the youngest ex-pupil will now be in their fiftiesand ex-teachers are now in their seventies (and beyond).

We would particularly like to involve the pupils ofBedford High School (now occupying the formerLGS building) in the project as researchers andperformers, and use the results to prompt awider discussion about the nature, style anddelivery of education.

The project could also include research intoformer old boys and girls and their resultingcareers which could be used to inspire localschoolchildren. However, before we put in a bidwe need to produce evidence of need and findsupport for the project from local people. If youwould like to express your support for the projector, as an ex-Grammar school pupil or teacher,offer to contribute memories then please emailHealthy Arts contactus@healthyarts.org.uk orring Martin on 07542 114383.

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Tony AshcroftAs we went to press we learnt the sad newsof the passing of Tony Ashcroft on the 12 July2016. Tony, a former Local History Officer,looked after the Leigh Local Studies collectionsfor over 20 years and was a regularcontributor to Past Forward. Tony was anextremely popular, well-liked gentleman, witha huge knowledge of, and passion, for thehistory of our borough.

We would like to send condolences andfondest wishes to Tony’s family.

28

The appalling reality of nineteenth century miners’working and living conditions is now commonknowledge. What is less well known is how legal andpseudo-legal practices were used to create and recreatethese conditions.

In 1840s, despite rapid industrialisation and urbanisation,Wigan’s legal, organisational and public order structuresremained rooted in the hierarchical patriarchal structuresof a rural town. A number of magistrates, who were oftenlarge employers, assumed as an unquestioned right theirauthority to exercise absolute power over their workforce.This article looks at how employers and magistratesabused Britain’s legal system to consolidate their powerand at efforts to counteract their worst excesses.

Challenges to the Status Quo

In the attempt to improve their conditions, Wigan minerswere unionising, and agitating for change. Miners’Association and Chartist leaders held mass meetings and

miners went on strike. In 1844, between eight and tenthousand gathered at Amberswood Common nearHindley; approximately 10,000 miners gathered on AspullMoor, opposite unpopular Lord Balcarres’ strikeboundKirkless Colliery, arriving behind bands, waving flags andcarrying banners whilst wearing light blue ribbons (themembership badge of the Miners Association).

At Lamberhead Green, 3,000 met. Speakers at thesemeetings included Miners’ Association leaders, Chartistsand William Prowting Roberts. These protesting minerswere at risk from the power of the magistracy. Individualstriking miners could be summarily arrested andimprisoned and large groups could be dispersed byarmed troops prepared to use violence.

One of the most powerful pieces of legislation thatmagistrates used to maintain their control over minerswas the Master and Servant Act of 1825. These actsenabled magistrates to arrest and imprison miners for upto three months with hard labour for leaving their placeof work without permission. Miners could be arrested,sentenced and imprisoned, without written or evenverbal indictments of their crime, and denied hearings orlegal representation in court.

However, the Wigan court was being challenged. WilliamProwting Roberts was a particularly irritating thorn in theside of the magistrates. Known as the ‘Miners AttorneyGeneral’, he challenged, case-by-case, the everydaysidestepping of legal proceedings that enabledmagistrates to use arbitrary imprisonment to controlminers. William Roberts was particularly adept atidentifying procedural omissions sufficient to halt trialsand challenge verdicts. After Roberts applied to theQueen’s bench for a writ of Habeas Corpus manysentences were declared illegal and prisoners released.

Magistrates were at liberty to arrest and imprison theirown employees. James Lindsay, Colliery owner,magistrate and son of the Earl of Balcarres wasparticularly keen to retain the status quo. In 1844, asmagistrate, Lindsay had his employee William Leigharrested for leaving work at Lindsay’s Ince Colliery.

In court, Lindsay denied Leigh the right to speak in hisdefence and his request for adjournment to prepare hiscase. Lindsay sentenced Leigh and a man named Morris to two months hard labour within minutes.

Magistrates againstMiners: Wigan, 1844

BY YVONNE ECKERSLEY

Moot Hall

29

William Roberts took up the case, proved Lindsay had acted illegally, successfully applied to the Queen’sBench for a suspension of Habeas Corpus and the menwere released.

In April 1845, Roberts successfully sued Lindsay atLiverpool Assizes for Leigh’s false imprisonment. Again in 1844, Roberts successfully challenged Lindsay’s sentencing of three of his employees – John Gray, Hugh Blaney and John Howard – to threemonths hard labour for not giving sufficient notice oftheir intention to quit. After his success Roberts wasescorted through Wigan in an open carriage by aprocession of miners waving banners and a bandplaying ’See the Conquering Hero Comes‘.

Miners’ Successes

During the strike-riven year of 1844, influential MPsattempted to enlarge the powers of magistrates byextending the Master and Servant Act. New powersauthorised magistrates to imprison workmen for, ‘anymisbehaviour concerning service and employment’. TheMiners’ Association held mass meetings and its officers,including Wigan’s John Berry, organised the collectionof two million signatures on 200 petitions, presentingthem to Parliament. The bill was defeated at its thirdreading.

1844 saw colliery owners of South Lancashireattempting to introduce the employment bond. United union action led to the defeat of an attempt by coal owners in St Helens to tie a wage increase withthe introduction of an annual Bond hitherto unused inLancashire collieries. Bonds usually ran from April toApril. Before hiring time, colliery owners created anatmosphere of fear and want. They stockpiled coal,sacked a number of their workforce and with the threat of importing labour from elsewhere insisted the impoverished local miners accept a lower wage for

the year. What was particularly advantageous toemployers was that the bond was legal and bound mento their pits.

William Roberts, defending miners accused of breaking their Bonds, emphasised the dubious legalityof their contracts. He argued that illiterate workmenoften did not know what they were signing; if it was averbal agreement, because there was no written bond the coal owners were culpable by default.Consequently, he argued that as employers had notfollowed legal procedures the offending miners had nocase to answer.

Women underground workers

After the 1842 act had banned the employment ofwomen underground, the single Inspector employed topolice the act recorded that around 200 women werestill being employed in Wigan. The same Inspector hadrecorded that in 1842 there were 794 women workingunderground in the Wigan, Bolton, St Helens andWorsley districts.

From these figures one can presume that the bulk ofWigan colliery owners felt sufficiently safe fromprosecution to disregard Parliamentary Statutes.However, prosecutions did occur. Just one was recordedfor 1844. John Bleasdale, a Wigan Colliery owner wasprosecuted for employing two women underground.Magistrates John Lord and Samuel McClure finedBleasdale £10. Interestingly when the ManchesterGuardian reported a young woman’s death in ananonymous Wigan colliery, there was no comment onthe company’s illegal practice. Although Wigan womenminers were killed underground – Wigan’s Coroner’sReport for 1844 lists deaths of Jane Gore and AnnLawson – I could find no reference to a prosecution.

Exceptions

Not all Wigan’s magistrates were draconian in theirsentencing. At the Wigan Quarter Session in January 1845, magistrates exercised discretion andbound 27 men to keep the peace for six months afterthey had been arrested for violent disorder offences. As sentencing records show these men were triedwithin a fortnight and the majority were miners Iassume the disorder was in some way connected withindustrial unrest.

References:Wigan Quarter Sessions Records, 1844-5 [Wigan Archives] The Pitmen’s Collection [Wigan Archives, D/DZ/A/39/94]‘Law and Order in Early Victorian Lancashire’, E C Midwinter‘The Miners’ Association: A Trade Union in the Age ofthe Chartists’, Raymond Challinor and Brian Ripley‘A Radical Lawyer in Victorian England: W P Roberts andthe Struggle for Workers Rights’, Raymond Challinor‘Chartists, Trades Unions, Radical Lawyers and theMaster and Servant Laws’, Christopher Frank

William Roberts

30

When General Patton“gave it to them double

dirty” at Ashton

BY ANTHONY PILGRIM

General Patton

The 1970 film ‘Patton’ opens withactor George C Scott, in the titlerole, delivering a version of thefamous pre-D-Day speech withwhich the General sought toinspire his troops. Like mostdramatic portrayals of historicalevents it is not wholly accurate.The words General Patton usedwere far more lurid and profane,his speech liberally sprinkled withexpletives and ‘blood and guts’imagery.

As he later explained, ‘When I wantmy men to remember somethingimportant, to really make it stick, Igive it to them double dirty. It maynot sound nice to a bunch of littleold ladies, at an afternoon teaparty, but it helps my soldiers toremember.’ He delivered the

speech not just once but onnumerous occasions betweenFebruary and June 1944 as hetoured the UK meeting the soldiers who would make up hisThird Army. In fact, since Pattonspoke without notes, it wentthrough several iterations beforeattaining the form of which anapproximation is given in the film.

I spent the early part of 2015researching the US Army units thatwere billeted in and aroundAshton-in-Makerfield in the lead-up to D-Day. Mostly these werecomponents of the 79th InfantryDivision commanded by MajorGeneral Ira T Wyche. I wasintrigued by several references inthe regimental histories andpersonal diaries to the men

having heard an address byGeneral Patton during their stay.The published biographies madeno mention of a visit to Ashton and I set out to establish precisely when and where this had occurred.

My first lead came from the diaryof Colonel Walton Van Arsdale,311th Field Artillery, who in 1944was billeted at Golborne Park. Herecords how, ‘one day, officers andhigh grade non-commissionedofficers were marched to a theatrewhere we heard speeches from Lt.General George S. Patton [andothers]’. According to Patton’sbiographers, most of his speecheswere given in the open air.Evidently that had not been thecase at Ashton.

31

My next point of enquiry was thelibrary at East Carolina University,repository of the Ira Wyche papers.Several interesting facts weregleaned from Major GeneralWyche’s diary, in particular that avisit originally due to take place on11 May had been cancelled. Thetiming is significant because, on 25 April, Patton had made adiplomatic gaffe by appearing torule out any post-War role for theUSSR outside its own borders. Hisreported comments embarrassedthe Allied governments, promptingSupreme Commander GeneralEisenhower to order Patton to‘keep your…mouth shut’.

Patton wrote in his own diary: ‘Inconsonance of this order, I amunable to talk with either the 79th,80th, 83rd, or 7th ArmoredDivisions, a restriction that willsurely cost lives.’ By the middle ofMay, however, Eisenhower’s tonetowards Patton had softened. Hewrote: ‘I expect you to…exerciseextreme care to see that while youare developing the morale andfighting spirit, you will not beguilty of another indiscretionwhich can cause any furtherembarrassment to your superiorsor to yourself…Go ahead and trainyour Army.’

I inferred from subsequent entriesin Major General Wyche’s diarythat Patton had actually spoken tothe troops at Ashton on 16 May.Confirmation of this came later inthe form of staff meeting reports,the report for 15 May alsoconfirming that the venue was TheQueen’s Theatre on Wigan Road.

A scan of the relevant extract fromGeneral Patton’s diary, which Isubsequently obtained from the USLibrary of Congress, adds nofurther detail. It was neverthelesspleasing to see a record of theday’s events written in Patton’sown hand, knowing as I now didthat he was referring to a visit tomy home town.

So, what did those gathered in TheQueen’s Theatre on 16 May 1944actually hear? Almost certainly it

was a version of what biographerTerry Brighton calls ‘the greatestmotivational speech of the war andperhaps of all time, exceeding (inits morale boosting effect if not asliterature) the words Shakespearegave King Henry V at Agincourt’.John Beatty of the 310th FieldArtillery, then billeted at GarswoodPark, recalled how, ‘back in Ashton,General George Patton haddelivered one of his fire andbrimstone speeches to the officersand NCOs saying, ‘The Third Armywas going to fight, not dig its wayto Berlin!’’

The official history of the 313thInfantry Regiment – also atGarswood Park – records that, ‘inhis usual fiery manner, [GeneralPatton] impressed upon thenoncoms the importance of theirjob, and told them in no uncertainterms that the time was soon tocome when they would be calledupon to actually lead men in battleagainst a determined and viciousenemy. [He] emphasised the factthat when that day came it wouldbe a case of ‘shoot to kill . . . andshoot first.’ At the same time hepraised the men for the excellentjob they had done to date, andassured them that he wasconvinced they would more thanshow their worth when the bigmoment actually came’.

Despite having undergoneintensive training, the troops underGeneral Patton’s command weremostly untested in battle andneeded to be prepared mentally aswell as physically for the comingstruggle. The effect on theaudience at Ashton is confirmed inthe regimental history of the 314thInfantry, then camped alongsidethe 311th Field Artillery at

Golborne Park: ‘His famous brand of brimstone oratory, while it was nothing for a familynewspaper, was just the sort ofblunt locker-room talk the men had wanted to hear’.

As one said after the War, ‘wewould have gone to hell for Pattonbecause we knew he would havegone to hell for us. And he did’.

Note on sourcesI am hugely indebted to Professor Ralph Scott, AssistantHead of Special Collections at theJoyner Library, East CarolinaUniversity, who patiently compliedwith each of my several requests torevisit the archives in search of thisor that document. Likewise toPatrick Kerwin at the Library ofCongress in Washington DC, and to James Van Arsdale of SantaBarbara, California, for extractsfrom his grandfather’s diary. This material is copyright to theVan Arsdale Family, quoted herewith permission.

Additional information wasobtained from the official historiesof the 313th and 314th InfantryRegiments and J C Beatty’s ‘ThePolitics of Public Ventures: AnOregon Memoir’ (Xlibris, 2010). I also consulted several Pattonbiographies; in particular those by Martin Blumenson (Da Capo,2009), Carlo D’Este (Harper Collins,1995) and Terry Brighton (Penguin,2009). The latter includes acomposite version of GeneralPatton’s speech based on survivingnotes and transcripts.

Extract from Patton’s diary regardingthe talk at Ashton in 1944

Date of Patton’s talk in staff meeting minutes.

32

Mam and Dad: AnotherWorld, Thomas and Frances

BY TED DAKIN

In the first of a three-partrecollection, Ted Dakin remembersthe lives of his family in Wigan.

My Dad, Thomas Dakin, was born ina canal cottage at Spencer’s Bridge,Newburgh, seven miles from Wigan,on 24 March 1899. His parents,Richard and Margaret, were illiterate‘water gypsies’ who worked a canalboat on the Leeds to Liverpoolcanal. Both Richard and Margaretcame from long established boatingfamilies. Richard, was born on acanal boat at Top lock, Runcorn,Cheshire, in 1865.

With the advent of improved railand road transportation, life andwork on the canals fell ondesperate times. Richard, in a life-

changing decision, packed hismeagre belongings and his familyon to his boat and came to Wigan.Dad was 10 years old. They movedin to 21 Horsefield Street, acobbled cul-de-sac at the bottomof Miry Lane.

The street was brought to anabrupt stop with a ditch and ahigh wooden perimeter fence thathid railway sidings and locomotiveworkshops from view. Nearby,situated between the street andthe canal, stood Gallagher’s glueand hide factory (known locally asthe ‘boneworks’), a foul-smellingplace that traded wholesale in theproduction of all parts obtainablefrom dead cattle and pigs; glue,hides, bonemeal and pig guts

(known as ‘rops’ and used in thosedistant days as sausage skins).Hordes of rats thriving on fat andbonemeal and drinking from anearby stagnant pond call ‘OwdNicks’ lived and bred there. It wasfrom this dead-end paradise, thatDad, a country lad at heart, beganhis second life.

For a little while, St Thomas’sChurch of England School at thebottom of Clayton Street, taughtDad the rudiments of school-work;later, more schooling at the seniorschool in Caroline Street, gave himthe abilities to read, write and dohis sums, skills that his parentsnever mastered. Even so, afterleaving school, work was hard tocome by and a wage, however

Ted’s ‘mam and dad’

33

meagre, was essential to a familywho had ‘nowt’. Ironically though,with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and the needfor fighting men, work becamemore abundant.

Aged 15 and tall for his age, Dadmanaged to find employment at alocal abattoir and continued towork there until, on the 10 May1917 and barely 18 years old, heenlisted in the Welsh Regiment andafter a few months training wasshipped out to France. It was nearthe village of Estaires that Dad fellto a machine-gun bullet to his neckwhich missed his wind-pipe by amere fraction.

The bullet, lodged in his oppositeshoulder and was found later by amatron and removed. The woundwould keep him away from thefront line until his discharge on 14 January 1919. With a warpension of seven shillings andsixpence and dressed in a thinhospital blue suit, his hopeful returnto the only work he knew proved tobe futile. His job had been taken.However, after a spell of dolequeues and walking the streetsknocking on doors prepared to doanything, a tram ride to Hindleyfinally brought success. He wastaken on as a labourer at abrickworks.

My Mam, Frances Leach was bornon 6 June 1902 at Low Hall, a dairyfarm in Hindley. She was theyoungest daughter of staunchCatholic parents, Richard andBridget. She attended St Benedict’sCatholic school, on Castle Hill,Hindley. Her parents were strictdisciplinarians and insisted thatMam and her two sibling sisters,Agnes and Annie, do their share ofmilking cows and delivering milk tothe local community.

Soon, though, Mam who hadstudied shorthand became curiousto know what lay beyond the otherside of a cow’s backside, andbecoming somewhat adventurous,found secretarial work at the same

brickworks as Dad. So, two people,both rural bred and destined bycircumstances beyond their control,meet amongst a romantic setting ofnewly baked house bricks and oneyear later are married at St Benedict’sCatholic church, Hindley on 20 May1922. Mam’s wedding ring, a goodone, 22ct, cost Dad £5. It was aceremony that also gave Dad a newfaith to abide by: Catholicism.

Seven months later, on 11December 1922, my sister Kathleenwas born. It appears that Thomasand Frances had been rathernaughty. Perhaps too, this hastymarriage had been frowned upon,because I have never seen anyphotographic record of what shouldhave been a happy occasion.However, their marriage enduredand in those early years of poverty,tears, illness, and even death, itnever faltered. Right through to old age and better times, theystayed together.

Married for life.

Their first home (a rented terracedhouse) was 102 Miry Lane, Wigan,just around the corner from Dad’sparents. The house was owned by aMiss Ballard, and was forever in astate of disrepair. Luckily, Dad wasin work, just a few hundred yardsaway at Gallagher’s glue and hidefactory where, for 8 hours a day,protected by a long rubber apronand rubber boots, he worked as a‘Rop-man’ cleaning pig guts with arazor-sharp knife that was kept withsharpening-steel in a woodenscabbard strapped to his waist.

The ‘rops’ were cleaned incontinuous running water. Thefirm’s produce gave off anobnoxious stench that crept intosurrounding properties like a lethalgas. In the summer months itbecame even more unbearable, withswarms of flies that invaded homesand businesses alike, attacking foodand drink, with sticky yellow fly-catchers. Thankfully, the rats neverstrayed from their salubriousresidence; and Dad became awalking stink bomb.

After the birth of my sister,Kathleen, Mam did some familyplanning: Thomas 1925; John 1927;Frances Mary, April 1929 but sadlydied of bronchial pneumonia 9 June1930, aged 14 months and buriedin a communal grave at Wigancemetery; and last in line, me,Edward, 23 March 1931.

These were precarious times.Bringing up a family of four in atwo-up-two-down, humble terracedhouse, with one cold water tap andan outside lavatory 40 yards fromthe backdoor wasn’t easy. AuntieAnnie, Mam’s older sister had donewell in the marriage stakes; she wasmarried to a farm manager andlived in Shevington.

She used to call at our crumblingresidence, bearing baskets of foodfor a hungry brood of unruly kids. Itwas on one of these mercy tripsthat Auntie Annie gave Mam theidea of moving house. Apparently,there was a house for rent not farfrom the farm. Mam, keen to raiseher family in a clean and healthyenvironment, convinced Dad that abetter life was waiting just a fewmiles away. Miss Ballard wasinformed, arrangements were made. Then disaster. Dad wouldn’tbudge. On the last minute hechanged his mind. Miss Ballard was hastily contacted and we stayed put, still putting up with thestench and grime. Mam must havebeen seething.

The Dakin brood

34

Mam never went out to work, butshe did take in washing and thefew bob earned went with Dad’smeagre wage into an old tea caddyon the mantelpiece. Like mosthousewives in those times, Mamwas the one who suffered most.Her working day, every day, wasdrudgery. She toiled slavishly frommorning till night. For a womandedicated to the needs of herfamily this meant she had very littletime to herself. I never saw hersettle down to read a book, uselipstick, rouge or perfume, but Iwould often see her knitting,sewing, crocheting and patchingclothes, all done to ease the familyburden of poverty.

She was tolerantly mindful to herfamily’s needs in every waypossible, giving Dad and us asmuch comfort as she possiblycould. Even with a lack of moneyshe was never submissive. Dad, in the early days had alreadyrelinquished his war pension ofseven shilling and sixpence, for alump sum of £10, and now thatwas just a memory. Their livingstandards and conditions hadn’t improved much and herfavourite quote was, ‘we’ll manage somehow’.

She took in extra washing, using adolly tub, dolly leg, rubbing boardand mangle, she washed Mondaysand Tuesdays and ironed onWednesdays. At that time her iron

was a gas operated one. She wouldclimb on a chair, then on to oursolid wooden dinner table in thecentre of the living-room, removethe gas mantle and connect arubber tube from the fitting downto the iron itself.

Mam was the pivot, the centre ofall that was essential to ourchildhood. Our house may havebeen rented but she made it hers.Sparsely furnished it may havebeen, with odd square pieces ofcarpet on the floor and a black-leaded fire range for heat andbaking bread and cakes, but shepolished, black-leaded and beatthose carpets relentlessly until theplace smelled and shone like acountry mansion. God knows howshe found time for visitors, but shedid, and always with a cup of teaand slice of homemade cake.

It was always Mam who wentwithout and we, the family, Dadand all, never appreciated her love,tolerance and dedication, until itwas too late. We never kissed or

hugged her and never said ‘thanksMam’. But deep down, we lovedher and in later years we came torealize and appreciate howunselfishly she had given her verylife to us.

So where does that leave Dad? Tobe brutally honest, on his own Dadwouldn’t have lasted a week. Hewas honest and firm and a familyprovider, handing over a labourer’swage but he never did anyhousehold chores. I don’tremember him ever making a cupof tea. He decorated (using colourwash) and soled and heeled ourshoes, renewed the irons on ourclogs and cut our hair. He never hitus. Mam did the clouting at ourhouse. Dad was still a force to bereckoned with. One look from himwas sufficient enough to deter anyroistering or bother. Dad believedabsolutely in physical exercise.Walking and gathering herbs fromthe countryside was his favouritepastime. Later (in the better times),Dad spent precious money on avariety of body building courses.Burough’s club (heavy ones)swinging course, T W Standwell’sdeep breathing exercises, CharlesAtlas’s ‘Have a body like mine’ andso it went. Mam persevered.

The years rolled on. Dad’s siblingsmoved on. Grandad became poorlyand died in bed in 1946 stillwearing a knitted skullcap Mamhad made. Dad and Uncle Dickwashed his lifeless body and hewas buried, like his wife Margaretnine years later, in Newburghchurch-yard.

It was the end of an era. In theearly 1960s a slum clearance orderbrought in the demolition men tobulldoze Miry Lane, HorsefieldStreet and the surrounding area.Mam and Dad, in their dwindlingyears found some reasonablecomfort and contentment in aplace, that back in the dark days of poverty and want, they couldonly have dreamed about: amodern bungalow.

From left to right : Ted’s grandma, Ted’s mum, Ted’s sister Kath holding herfirst born and his brother Tom’s girlfriend Kathleen

Hand drawn plan of Ted’s home in Miry Lane

35

EVENTS/ACTIVITIES

Leigh For All: Heritage Open DayLeigh Town Hall & Civic Square, Saturday 10 September

Free to visit – some activities may have a charge.Join us for our annual heritage open day celebrationsin Leigh town centre, including tours of historicbuildings, vintage bus rides and car rally, First &Second World War displays, local history fair, musicand much more.

On The Go Theatre: Someone’s SonsLeigh Library, Turnpike Gallery, Saturday 10 September, 1.00pmTickets free but reservation required, contactarchives@wigan.gov.uk or 01942 404430

A new local play about the First World War, by JosieByrne and Kath Bateman, exploring the lives of thewomen and families left behind when their loved oneswent off to war. The play tells the story of theopening of the German Prisoner of War Camp in Leighand the problems this causes for the Sheffield familywhen a girl gets involved with a German soldier.

All talks are £2.50 per person (includingrefreshments) unless otherwise stated. Booking isrequired; to book your place please call 01942828128 or email wiganmuseum@wigan.gov.uk

Life in the Victorian Workhouse by Peter Park

12.00-1.15pm, Tuesday 20 September

Did your ancestors end up in the workhouse? What happened to the poorest in society? Ourperception of the workhouse is influenced by OliverTwist but what was it really like to be an inmate?Learn more about conditions in the workhouse andlife for the inmates.

Leeds Liverpool Canal Bicentenary by Mike Clarke

12.00-1.15pm, Friday 21 October

When the Leeds Liverpool Canal was completed on22nd October 1816 it was Britain’s longest singleman-made waterway. The canal gave access to theWigan coalfields to help power the IndustrialRevolution. Celebrate with this fascinating talk thenview the ‘Kennet’ boat retracing the original firstvoyage along the canal.

Museums at Night7.00-10.30pm, Friday 21 October, £3 per person

Forget what you think you know about museums.Come and see culture in a different light wherehistory collides with the digital era. Visit after darkfor a drink and see the museum transformed withnewly commissioned art installations and cuttingedge live music. Try ‘speed dating’ with our expertsor explore the quirky corners for new art works, lightshows and soundscapes.

Dead and Buried: The Wants andWorries of the 19th CenturyDeceased by Charlie Guy1.00-2.00pm, Monday 31 October

Join us on Halloween to dispel the dark myths of theVictorian dead and shine a light on some of theforgotten, outdated and downright creepy funerarypractices, traditions and superstitions of the age.From booby-trapped coffins and bodysnatchers tophotography and funeral souvenirs, come andexplore the fascinating world of the Victorian deadbrought back to life.

Victorian Prostitution and theContagious Diseases Act by Brian Joyce12.00-1.15pm, Tuesday 29 November

While not illegal, prostitution was regarded as athreat to the health, morals and stability of VictorianBritain. Contemporary estimates were of 50,000 –350,000 prostitutes but no-one really knew theextent of the “Great Social Evil”. Who were thesewomen? Why did they go on the streets? And wasthe Home Secretary (1901) right that “So long ashuman nature is what it is, you will never entirely getrid of prostitution”?

Your Country Needs You - TheLocal Experience of First WorldWar Military Tribunals by Alex Miller

12.00-1.15pm, Friday 11 November

Join us on Armistice Day to find out more about theMilitary Tribunals which were set up across thecountry as men’s conscription was introduced inJanuary 1916. Find out more about Wigan Archives’unique collection of records.

How to Find Us

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Museum of Wigan Life & Wigan Local StudiesLibrary Street, Wigan WN1 1NUTelephone 01942 828128heritage@wigan.gov.uk

Archives & Leigh Local Studies

Leigh Town Hall, Leigh WN7 1DYTelephone 01942 404430archives@wigan.gov.uk

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MILL ENGINEMILL ENGINETRENCHERFIELD

MILL ENGINE

Trencherfield Mill EngineWigan Pier Quarter, Heritage Way, Wigan WN3 4EFTelephone 01942 828128b.rowley@wigan.gov.uk

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