
The Lancashire Cotton Famine of the early 1860s was caused by falling sales of cotton, leading to a sharp rise in unemployment among textile workers. Lancashire, in which about 20 per cent of the population had been working in the industry, suffered enormously (Oddy, 1983). The crisis was notable for the efforts made to bring the stories of the poor to the attention of the wealthy. These attempts include Edwin Waugh’s reports in the Manchester Examiner and Times, the letters of ‘Lancashire Lad’, John Whittaker, to The Times and Ellen Barlee’s book, A Visit to Lancashire in December 1862. All of these accounts allow hungry people to speak for themselves – they are often quoted verbatim albeit with their accents represented in an eccentric orthography which would be considered rather patronizing today.
‘Con yo help us a bit?’ was the request of a group of factory girls (of unspecified age) who approached Whittaker on the street. (Waugh, 1867, p. 211). However, it is always worth remembering that these are voices mediated to us by middle-class philanthropists. In the words of a ‘Manchester Song’ included in Barlee’s book: ‘How little can the rich man know/Of what the poor man feels… He never heard that maddening cry/’Daddy, a bit of bread!’ (Barlee, 1862, p.103).
These accounts include plenty of descriptions of hungry children: the authors would surely have been aware that this was an effective way to tug on the heartstrings and purse strings of their readers. We are therefore able to learn what it was they were eating when there was often very little to go round. Waugh described one family of seven children desperate for soup, one of younger ones being (affectionately) described as a 'villain' for his enthusiasm. Their mother felt it was their high spirits that was keeping them warm: 'God knows it's little else they have (Waugh, 1867, p.39). Whittaker reported that some families could only afford two meals a day of porridge made of ‘Indian meal’, coarser, and cheaper, than the customary oatmeal (Waugh, 1867, p.212). Barlee met a family, which included a child of twelve with consumption: the doctor recommended that she be given milk and meat, but there was only money for bread (Barlee, 1862, p.38). In Wigan, Waugh saw a collier’s family of ten having their ‘noontide meal’, where the children had to share plates as there were not enough to go round. They were eating portions of a pudding known as ‘Berm-bo’, made of flour, yeast and suet. Their mother has chosen to make this because it would ‘stick to their ribs’ better than anything else (Waugh, 1867, pp.166-7). Food that fattened children up was of course seen as an unalloyed good in times when malnutrition was far more common than obesity.
The Lancashire population are portrayed as proud and independent, hardworking and thrifty. They are reluctant 'to ask for relief… until thoroughly starved to it’ (Waugh, 1867, p.35). Similarly, the children were brave and cheerful: in one family, living in a ‘hovel’ and wearing ragged clothes and no shoes, ‘ the children ‘seemed quite unconscious that anything ailed them. I never saw finer children anywhere’ (Waugh, 1867, p.37). This was a crisis not of their making but ‘a national calamity’, as Barlee called it (p.59). The readers were definitely being invited to see these people as the deserving poor. Naturally, they would be incredibly grateful for any assistance that could be provided, despite their general unwillingness to accept Poor Relief through the usual channels. (Barlee, 1863).
The accumulation of reportage about the famine did indeed provoke pity and the resulting charitable impulses led to tangible and positive results. The letters of the Lancashire Lad in particular led to the creation of the Mansion House Fund, or the Lancashire and Cheshire Operatives Relief Fund, which worked to relieve distress (Vernon, 2007). Although these writers were calling for charity, it was nonetheless clear that systems were failing. The Poor Law which was then in place to avoid families falling into absolute destitution was simply not adequate for the task in hand. People were suffering through no fault of their own. The case for state action to relieve the pain of hungry children and their families was strengthening.
Picture Credit
Illustration from newspaper of people in line for food and coal tickets at a district Provident Society Office during the Cotton Famine, 1862, Wikimedia Commons.
References
Barlee, E. (1863) A Visit to Lancashire in December 1862, London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday.
Oddy, D. (1983) ‘Urban Famine in Nineteenth Century Britain: The Effect of the Lancashire Cotton Famine on Working-Class Diet and Health’, The Economic History Review 36 (1), pp.68-86.
Vernon, J. (2007) Hunger: A Modern History London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Waugh, E. (1867) Home Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk During the Cotton Famine, London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co.
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