Act 17
John Farndale’s account of the
painful transition through the Industrial Revolution
The times, they are a changin’
|
Dickens’
imagination of the industrial revolution Coketown was a town of red
brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had
allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black
like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and
never got uncoiled.[1] |
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Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don’t criticize What you can’t understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin’ Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand For the times they are a-changin’ [2] |
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1066 and all that, The Industrial Revolution Many very remarkable discoveries and inventions were made.
Most memorable among these was the discovery (made by all the rich men in
England at once) that women and children could work for twenty four hours a
day in factories without any of them dying or becoming excessively deformed.
This was known as the Industrial Revolution and completely changed the faces
of the North of England. At the same time there was an Agricultural Revolution which
was caused by the invention of turnips and the discovery that Trespassers
could be Prosecuted. This was a Good Thing too, because previously the Land
had all been rather common. [3] |
John Farndale
first wrote about Saltburn-by-the-Sea
and the surrounding area at a time when it was evolving from a small fishing village, well known for its
smuggling history, into a Victorian seaside resort, with its own railway
station and grand hotel. John’s work, which has a Victorian flamboyancy about
it, is a contemporaneous record of the transition from a nostalgically
remembered rural landscape, to the excitement of industrial revolution. Though
clearly regretting the loss of a romantically remembered past, John was no
critic of technological innovation. Indeed his own life embraced a new world of
opportunity and risk.
Scene 1 - The end of a rural idyll
John wrote When
only four or five years of age I remember my father’s father telling what was
done in those days and the old time before them. Many things then told were
deemed most important to those of us who then lived together in a state of
primitive simplicity, far removed from the occurrences which now surround us.[4]
|
1791 to 1878
The Author A man of sphinxian
complexity who wrote extensively and has passed down stories of the family
and of change in early Victorian Yorkshire |
|
The
transcripts of John Farndales books about a time of industrial change |
Janet Dowey later wrote The
Kilton John Farndale
knew and loved had changed beyond belief. Several of the very old and large
estates were less crowded than they had been, the small cottages had given way
gradually to shape a farm worthy of the person having such money to improve it.[5]
The
industrial revolution was slowly changing life in Kilton and the rural
communities of Cleveland. Craftsmen left small villages to meet new centralised
opportunities in the towns. There was a revolution in farming methods and
farming machinery. Gradually towns replaced villages as magnets for moving
populations. During the Napoleonic Wars the price of food had been kept at a
fairly high level. After the war ended, the price of grain fell to one of its
lowest levels, along with falling meat prices, and disastrous harvests. This
provided an impetus to new methods of agricultural efficiency. Landlords
enlarged the farms and attracted tenant farmers with the resource for
modernisation. The mechanisation of farming practice and the progressive growth
of urban factories together drastically altered rural life. Turnpike roads, the
new railway and the canal networks brought revolutionary economic and
technological change. Enclosure and amalgamation of the Kilton village farms accelerated by the
1860s, changing the village forever.
Kilton’s fate was fundamentally changed by
the combined forces of the monstre farm and
Industrial Revolution.
John Farndale
lamented, And now dear Farndale, the best of friends must part, I bid you
and your little Kilton a long and final farewell. Time was on to all our
precious boon, Time is passing away so soon, Time know more about his vast
eternity, World without end oceans without shore.[6]
Yet, amidst
his nostalgia, John
Farndale was an admirer of Victorian innovation. Now much has changed,
we oft times have looked and looked again, but no corner of this large farm has
been neglected. Witness, this rich stack yard of 100 acres of wheat, the staff
of life, and 100 more, oats, beans, peas, hay, clover, potatoes and turnips
piled up against the winter storms. In the fold are housed 100 head of sheep, a
stable with 14 farming horses, besides the young horses, pigs and geese in
abundance, carts, wagons, ploughs and harrows and all implements.[7]
John
recalled Kilton’s pre industrial past when
spinning wheels and woollen wheels were industriously used by every housewife
in the district, and long before there were such things in the world as Lucifer
match boxes and telegraphs, or locomotives built to run, without horse or
bridle, at the astonishing rate of sixty miles an hour.[8]
Lucifer
matches were early chemical matches which replaced fire lighting by flint
John Farndale wrote in 1864 that from Saltburn south east there is a fine drive on a fertile ridge
of land to towering Huntcliff, where the scenery on all sides is of the most
delightful character, where “every prospect pleases”, and the eye may gaze with
rapture on a vast expanse of sea, land, woodland and moorland. On this ridge
stands the village of Kilton, the author’s
birthplace. The picturesque appearance of this place, its antique
character, and the great longevity of its inhabitants strike home to my fondest
and earliest recollections. I frequently imagine I still hear sounding in my
ears the things our father’s fathers told us, and which were done in their day
and in the old time before them. The days of ignorance, however, have departed.
Our privileges are much greater than our father’s fathers of old enjoyed; and,
therefore, as the march of intellect moves on at that rapid pace, more is
expected at our hands. Yea, during the last fifty years Reform has been
actively at work, and through the length and breadth of the land Improvement
has advanced with rapidity far beyond all preceding times. We can now by
telegraph communicate intelligence to all parts of the world – we can breakfast
in Edinburgh in the morning, dine in London the same day, and proceed to
France. What a contrast to what was done seventy years ago! Men at that time
had to grope their way, as it were, in the world – though many persons even
then as now rose to eminence and wealth.[9]
John Farndale
recalled that the little farms were joined together, about 150 acres each.
Every farmer had to move to a new farm. The sons of Robert Jolly each moved
away at this time, one became a lifeguard to George III and the other
eventually became a minister. William Bulmer was another native of Kilton and
married with nine children, he made his living buying and selling, but all his
children moved away into 'respectable' situations.[10]
Significant numbers of children of Kilton
farmers moved away from the district and from agriculture. John Farndale
wrote and now they disappear, but where are they gone, I know not.[11]
Scene 2 - The Cleveland Innovators
Changin’
times for Cleveland were signalled when Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan formed a
new industrial partnership in 1840. In 1846, Bolckow and Vaughan built their
first blast furnaces and ironworks at Witton Park, west of Bishop Auckland,
where coal from Witton Park Colliery was at hand to make coke, and ironstone
was easily imported from Whitby on the
coast. The pig iron from Witton was transported to Middlesbrough for further forging and
casting[12].
John Farndale
wrote, Long live Messrs Bolcklow & Vaughan, the
first high spirited gentlemen, and others also, who by their skill and capital
are bringing out resources of this greatly favoured district, and thus giving
employment to thousands.[13]
John Farndale
was also deferential of Mr Joseph Pearse who has long since earned for
himself a good name and independence. He is a friend and a friend indeed, and
as a useful member of Society, as an active and intelligent worker for the
benefit of the public at large, and lastly, as a worthy man, whose acts of
charity have done much to lessen the amount of human suffering, his name will
be handed down from generation to generation with every mark of honour and
respect.[14]
Henry
Bolckow John
Vaughan George
Stephenson Edward Pease Joseph Pease Henry Pease John Marley
Joseph Pease
was a Quaker, born on 22 June 1799 into a wealthy family. He initially worked
in the wool factories at Darlington
which were owned by his father, Edward Pease, sometimes known as the Father
of the Railways, who also partnered George Stephenson in his engine factory
at Walker, Newcastle, and was a board member of the Stockton & Darlington
Railway (“S&DR”).[15]
Joseph
became treasurer of the S&DR at the age of 25. This was a time of expansion
of the railway with the objective to link the Durham coal fields to a port on
the North Sea. The company sought a site for a terminus on the lower Tees.
Further up, the river was treacherous and almost unnavigable, and only small
craft of shallow draught could reach Stockton
and Yarm. A new port was identified, to be called Port Darlington. However
there was heavy opposition from Stockton
and Yarm industrialists, who knew a new port lower down the river would steal
much of their business. It was Joseph Pease who led the lobbying of parliament
to grant the necessary Act for the Middlesbrough Railway Extension.
With his
five sons and his brother Henry, Joseph formed a company called Pease &
Partners. He offered Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan land Middlesbrough on easy terms and gave
them letters of introduction to start their iron business.
Joseph was
elected to Parliament in 1832, representing South Durham, and became the first
Quaker to sit in the Commons. He campaigned against corruption and slavery and
was a proponent of human rights and religious freedom. He pursued a clause in
the Metropolitan Police Bill prohibiting bull and bear baiting, and also sat on
many committees dealing with industry. Re-elected in 1835 and 1837 he
eventually resigned from parliament in 1841 because of his heavy business
commitments.
In 1850,
Vaughan and his mining geologist, John Marley, discovered iron ore near Eston
in the Cleveland Hills. In time it would transpire that Eston was located over
a vein which formed the Cleveland Ironstone Formation, which was already being
mined in Grosmont by Losh, Wilson and Bell. To make
use of the ore being mined at Eston, in 1851 Bolckow and Vaughan built a blast
furnace at South Bank in Middlesbrough.
This was the first blast furnace to be built on Teesside, on what was later
nicknamed the Steel River.
As the
railways pushed east beyond Redcar, Pease & Partners expanded into ironstone mining. In 1853
they opened the Hutton Lowcross mine near Guisborough.
Soon, they owned Upleatham, Skinningrove and Hob Hill (Saltburn) mines, between
them annually producing almost a million tonnes of ore. By 1875, eight and a
half million tonnes of ironstone, limestone, coal and coke were being
transported, most of which was used in Teesside’s iron industry.
Shortly
after retiring from parliament, in 1844 Joseph Pease bought several fishermen’s
cottages on the seafront at Marske, demolished them and then used the site to
build Cliff House where his family spent their summers.
It was from
there one afternoon in 1859 that his brother Henry took a stroll over the
sandbanks to discover the old village of
Saltburn. He followed the coastal path towards Old Saltburn and saw a
prophetic vision of a town arising on the cliff and the quiet, unfrequented and
sheltered glen turned into a lovely garden[16].
Returning breathless, he stated his intention to build a new town on top of
the cliff. With some help from brother Joseph and the S&DR, he succeeded,
naming it Saltburn by the
Sea. The Pease family formed the Saltburn Improvement Company (“SIC”),
which purchased land from the Earl of Zetland. They employed George Dickinson
as their surveyor who designed a grid-iron street layout, with as many houses
as possible having sea views. The best locations were secured for the company
and plots were then sold to private developers. The S&DR was being extended
and reached Saltburn from Redcar in 1861.
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Saltburn by the Sea, Victorian new town John
Farndale focused much of his writing on the new seaside town of Saltburn by
the Sea, built beside the Old Saltburn of smuggling repute. It was a place of
Victorian optimism and inspiration, driven by the arrival of the railways and
the richness of Cleveland’s ironstone deposits |
|
Huntcliff, Saltburn by the Sea Find a vantage point on the towering Hunt Cliffs to
look down over Saltburn and Cat Nab, and the alum mines. It was here, John
tells us, that when a French Napoleonic ship threatened out to sea, a band of
local women dressed in red along the cliffs to make the French believe that
an army of redcoats was ready to welcome any attack |
Middlesbrough grew at an astonishing
rate from 40 inhabitants in 1829 to 7,600 in 1851, 19,000 in 1861 and 40,000 in
1871. Bolckow and Vaughan’s business drove the dramatic growth of Middlesbrough and the production of coal
and iron in the north-east of England in the nineteenth century.
By 1864,
when John
Farndale was writing, the assets of Bolckow and Vaughan included iron
mines, collieries, and limestone quarries across Cleveland, County Durham and
Weardale, with iron and steel works extending over 700 acres along the banks of
the River Tees. The business was incorporated that year as Bolckow, Vaughan
& Co Limited with capital of £2.5 million, making it the largest company to
have been formed up to that time.
Vaughan died
in 1868. Of the relationship between Vaughan and Bolckow, the Institution of
Civil Engineers wrote that there was indeed something remarkable in the
thorough division of labour in the management of the affairs of the firm. While
possessing the most unbounded confidence in each other, the two partners never
interfered in the slightest degree with each other's work. Mr. Bolckow had the
entire management of the financial department, while Mr. Vaughan as worthily
controlled the practical work of the establishment.[17]
Scene 3 - A Brave New World
Change is a constant
through Britain’s history. It was not exclusive to the industrial change of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Change had influenced this family’s story
since and before the Middle Ages. There was significant change between the
Norman eleventh century and the Tudor fifteenth century, which we have
witnessed in earlier Acts. There was economic change in England after the Black
Death and the improvements in living standards that followed. Populations rose
across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and growing demands
were met by intensification of agriculture and new diverse economic activities.
The period immediately after Restoration in 1660 was also a period of economic
change.
By the
eighteenth century Britain and Holland were the wealthiest nations, even though
India and China were the main exporters of manufactured goods. From the late
eighteenth century new innovations including mechanisation and artificial
fertilisers enabled exponential growths in population. Britain was about to
experience a technological revolution which was unique in the world. Disraeli
would call Britain the workshop of the world[18],
while William Blake would emphasise the dark, satanic mills[19].
The
subsistence economy which dominated our family story up to the late eighteenth
century was subject to regular famine, plague and other disasters.
Technological advantages brought new choices for individuals and the potential
for some surplus cash with which to seek new options and experience. Since
Norman times, there had been but a tiny proportion of literate people, but slow
educational changes brought
a higher level of literacy, and the new ideas of the Enlightenment brought a
steady realisation of counter arguments to ideas which had been long accepted
without debate.
However the
centralisation of populations on factories and towns led to new levels of urban
poverty. Technical advance enabled the
control and organisation of society. In time it would also lead to military
mechanisation and industrial killing power. Warfare has always been brutal. Our
medieval military ancestors
lived in a world of hacking with swords, of air filled with arrows, and poor
medical care. Life as a soldier on the medieval battlefield was brutal. Yet
mechanisation and railway transportation would soon bring a new scale of
devastation, which we are yet to meet in future accounts of our
family history.
As this
period of rapid change came about, it was accompanied by a longing for
unspoiled nature and rural scenes, which emerged in art, literature and music.
The poet James Thomson wrote I hate the clamours of the smoky towns, but
must admire the bliss of rural clowns[20]
and a sylvan life till then the natives led[21].
John Farndale
was clearly a proponent of Victorian innovation, but he missed a primitive
simplicity, far removed from the occurrences which now surround us[22].
The
Industrial Revolution might have been perceived differently by those who lived
through this period of change. It was sometimes experienced as periods of sudden
innovative bursts and times of rapid change. Sometimes it was witnessed as
change which evolved more slowly over generations.
Success in
Britain’s ongoing struggle against France had provided its dominance of trade.
It accompanied an expansionist period of Britain’s history. Over 80% of
Britain’s tax revenue was spent on war in the eighteenth century. The Royal
Navy received 10% of national income. However, it is difficult to say that
victory in war, and foreign and imperial trade, caused the industrial
revolution. Holland, Spain and France also had significant imperial interests,
but did not witness a concurrent industrial revolution.[23]
There was
also a domestic element. The political and legal system provided an arena for
rapid change. That said, the high level of taxes and trade regulations would
not today be thought to be conducive to growth.
The
revolution was no doubt given impetus by land owners and capitalist interests.
It may also have been the product of improvements in standards of living. From
the late seventeenth century, there was a new appetite among populations beyond
basic needs, but with appetites for comfort, novelty and pleasure. They sought
clocks, comfortable furniture, mirrors, earthenware and china.
Watches became a fashion item, and by the 1790s there were 800,000 silver and
400,000 gold watches in England.
There was a
particular revolution in clothing. New regional styles emerged. Clothing became
an important mark of social status, and whilst unwritten rules frowned on
dressing above status, folk did wear clothes to demonstrate that they were as
good as their fellows. Cotton was adopted for its colour and brightness. Goods
were bought for enjoyment and self invention. There
was a move away from Protestant thrift and saving to a more romantic work ethic
driven by self expression and ambition.
People
consumed more tobacco, sugar, coffee, fresh bread, alcohol and particularly
tea.
Spending
more required people to work longer hours. More married women took jobs.
Working hours reached 65 to 70 hours a week compared to 40 to 50 hours today.
It was often the new earnings of young folk and married women which enabled the
acquisition of new luxuries.
The
Industrial Revolution was driven significantly by domestic demand. The
revolution also coincided with cultural, political and scientific liberties
arising out of the Enlightenment. There was a new interest in science,
experiment, literacy and education. Britain started to acquire an unusually
high level of literacy and education. Working class children often received at
least some schooling. The majority of workers were able to sign their names.
Two thirds of boys took apprenticeships in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, which required the prospect of high wages to make the cost
worthwhile. An Ealing gardener paid 6d a week to educate his two children.
Enlightenment science generally had little connection with industrial
technology. However industrial invention arose out of the Enlightenment.
This was
also a period of discovery of new sources of energy, particularly coal. Since
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Francis Bacon had opened up
a tradition of scientific thinking and systematic observation in Britain that
spurred a period of surprising impetus in technical advance. New innovative and
labour saving technologies thrived in Britain because wages were already high.
Spinning jennies and other innovations were not taken up in France where wages
and demand were low, skills were basic, and expensive technology was wasted.
A new home
grown economy evolved primarily to harness the energy of coal. This allowed
Britain to overtake its nearest economic rival, Holland. There were significant
coal deposits across Britain. Early steam power, such as Newcomen’s atmospheric
engine created a vacuum by heating and cooling steam, but it used so much coal
that it was only really viable at the pit head. However there were continual
improvements, including Watt’s condenser, which extended the use of steam.
James Watt’s condenser of 1769 increased the efficiency of Newcomen’s
rudimentary steam engine of 1716, which provided the basis for new energy
efficiency in the nineteenth century. The innovations in technology themselves
spurred on the extraction of coal, as the source of power.
Change
was significantly driven by technological changes. The ten macro inventors
of the eighteenth century were
|
Abraham Darby I[24] |
Iron smelting with coke |
1709 |
Bypassed the need for charcoal |
|
Thomas Newcomen[25] |
Steam engine |
1712 |
Allowed the pumping out of deep coal mines |
|
John Kay[26] |
The flying shuttle |
1733 |
Sped up weaving |
|
James Hargreaves[27] |
The spinning jenny[28] |
1765 |
Multiplied the effectiveness of hand spinning |
|
Richard Arkwright[29] |
Water Frame |
1769 |
Used power for spinning with rollers |
|
James Watt[30] |
Condenser |
1769 |
Provided economical steam power |
|
Samuel Crompton[31] |
Mule |
1779 |
Allowed mass production of high quality yarn |
|
Henry Cort[32] |
Rolling Mill |
1783 |
Sped up the production of iron |
|
Edmund Cartwright[33] |
Loom |
1787 |
Enabled water and steam power to make cloth |
|
John Smeaton[34] |
Engineering |
1724 to 1792 |
The father of modern engineering, founded the Society of Civil
Engineers in 1771 |
|
Josiah Wedgewood[35] |
Pottery |
|
|
New methods
for the extraction of useable iron from iron ore including the development of
coke-fired blast furnaces during the eighteenth century and of the puddling
process in 1783[36],
together with Bessemer and Siemens open-hearth processes[37]
for making mild steel, developed in the 1850s and 1860s which together with the
expansion of railways to transport materials, led to advances in metallurgy.
The combined
efficiencies in a power source, engines to convert the source into energy, and
metallurgical advances to build more engines were symbiotic.
James
Hargreave’s spinning jenny relied on his newly noticed possibilities of
multiple spindles operated by a single wheel multiplying the output of cotton
yarn by eight. Quality and efficiency was then improved by Samuel Compton’s
spinning mule and Edmund Cartwright’s loom powered by water and later adapted
to steam provided efficiency in weaving yarn into textiles.
Two
centuries later, it would be realised that these new technologies posed a significant
environmental threat.
In the
northeast of England, Cleveland saw rapid change. Its rural landscape was soon
dominated by a new appetite for minerals and ironstone mines emerged in
the landscape across John Farndale’s
childhood home. Towns like Middlesbrough
and Stockton became engine houses of an
industrial machine connected by railways into the new national effort.
Ambitious Victorian aspirations drove the emergence of entirely new towns like
the seaside resort of Saltburn-by-the-Sea.
To the southwest, a mechanised textile industry emerged in Leeds, Bradford
and Wakefield which would also start to
draw in our family story.
This was a
brave new world of opportunity, and the possibility of greater earning power to
meet new aspirations, especially if the resource of the whole family, men and
women, and children, were committed to these new opportunities. The rewards
could be impressive and there was generally more food available to those who
picked up work. Malthusian restrictions that populations followed an eternal
cycle of growth and then regression as finite resources were reached, seemed to
have been overcome. With the opportunities though came new risks. A tenant
farmer worked long days, but was generally in control of the hours he worked in
the fields. The same was true of rural artisans. The discipline of the new
factories insisted on high productivity from long working days often for
relatively low pay. Many factories employed women and young children, who
tended to be less trouble than men, as their traditional obedience in the home
environment transferred to the factory. Concentrations of populations in the
towns created new social tensions. Those who found new careers as small
businessmen, such as grocers, or agents, sometimes found a new cycle of
bankruptcy and debtor’s prison, from which to pick up and start again.
In a world
of new opportunities, those still relying on their traditional agricultural
livelihoods faced new challenges of falling prices and global competition,
whilst those who moved to the towns found new risks with which they would need
to learn to cope.
|
Aspiration
and achievement in the Victorian Age |
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How
agricultural practices changed over time |
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Our
family history includes experiences of high infant mortality in Victorian
times, often extreme poverty, and struggle |
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The
education of our forebears |
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The
evolution of medical care |
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Opportunities
for work as servants in households |
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The
life of children in seventeenth century to Victorian Yorkshire |
or
Go Straight to Act 18 – The
Ironstone Miners
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