Leaving for Canada in 1849 part two

Today I have decided to try and recreate a journey, well to be more accurate a series of them spanning many weeks.  Together they were to take the Hampson family from their home in Pendleton to Canada.*

Now even today this is no easy thing to do but in 1849 in the age of sail it must have been a daunting undertaking.  I say that but in fact the evidence is that countless people were crossing the oceans of the world for new lives in distant countries and in many cases doing it more than once.

I have no way of knowing why the Hampson’s chose to go.  The 1840s were a hard time for all but the rich and there were schemes to resettle working families across the Empire. This was a policy that was actively pursued by the Poor Law Commissioners with parochial aid or assistance from local landlords.   The Commissioners reported that over 2, 000 had gone to Canada in 1841 which was an increase on the year before, and that assistance was also being given to move to Australia and New Zealand. **  

Leaving Salford the Hampson's had a choice of how to get to Liverpool.  And at this stage I have no idea if any scheme to assist them to Canada would have included their fare to the sea port and so what follows might might well have to be amended in the light of more research.  Equally they may have had to make the journey on their own.

The road network had slowly been improving during the last hundred years.  No longer was such a trip to be endured on roads which were a sea of mud in winter and pitted with wheel ruts in summer both of which made the journey uncomfortable and slow. But by the 1840s regular coach services from Manchester to Liverpool had ceased because of the competition from the railway.

It is just possible that they walked the 30 or so miles, tramping the roads in search of work was to go on through the 19th century.

By water would have taken seven hours and cost above 2/- each for a back room and 3/- each for a front room.

So it might have been that they chose the new railway link.  The Liverpool and Manchester Railway had been opened in 1831, and from the very beginning had been built with passengers in mind.  It was fast, exciting and in its first five years the number of passengers had risen dramatically. ***  

James and his family would have travelled in the cheapest carriages.  Indeed at first the railway company had no intention of carrying poor people.  A director said they might run trains for the poor but it would be in the cheapest wagons and at night.****  So, if they had travelled by train it would have been in open trucks with the smoke and cinders from the locomotive causing havoc with hair and clothes. 

Not that this could have diluted the excitement and wonder of a form of transport that whisked its passengers along at the unbelievable speed of 35 mph and took just one hour and forty minutes from Manchester to Liverpool.

“..swifter than a bird flies … you cannot conceive what the sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible …when I closed my eyes, this sensation of flying was quite delightful and strange beyond description…” *****

Even so this could be expensive.  In 1841 the cost of a ticket in an open box carriage was 4/6d which might be about one third of James’s weekly wage. After 1844 railway companies were obliged to put on at least one train per day running at a minimum of 12 mph and with a fare of not more than 1d per mile. ******* 

This would have meant that the cost of the one way ticket for each family member would have been 2/6d.

By the time they arrived in Liverpool they would have taken in many different sights and experiences.  Pendleton was small, and still open to the fields.  Manchester was a large fast growing city which attracted visitors from all over Europe.  They came to gawp and marvel of this new type of city based on manufacture and steam power.

“The cloud vapour maybe observed from afar.  The houses are blackened by it.  The river which flows through Manchester, is so filled with dye-stuffs that it resembles a dyer’s vat.  The whole picture is a melancholic one.  Nevertheless, everywhere one sees busy, happy and well nourished people, and this raises the observer’s spirits.” ********

And Liverpool would have been just as dramatic. 

Pictures; Cost of travelling by canal from Pigott & Slater’s Directory of Manchester & Salford 1841 and The Liverpool and Manchester Railway circa 1831,

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*Canada in the 1850s https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Canada%20in%20the%201850s

**The Eighth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, HMSO 1842, Page 37 Google edition page 58

*** In 1830 71,951 passengers were carried, by 1835 it risen to 473,847 passengers

**** “I think we will allow the poor to travel on our trains but it will be at night and in open boxes.” A Director of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway 1829

***** Letter from Fanny Kemble 1831 quoted by Wolmar. C in Fire & Steam 2007

****** Railway Regulation Act 1844, known as Parliamentary trains by 1845 more than 50% passengers were paying the third class fares of a penny a mile.

******* Letter from Fanny Kemble 1831 quoted by Wolmar C in Fire & Steam 2007

******** Fabriken-Kommissarius On Manchester May 1814 quoted Hobsbawn Industry & Empire chap