Leaving for Canada in 1849 .... a momentous step

I think you would have to be really poor of imagination not to feel something at seeing the marriage certificate of an ancestor.

I am staring at the marriage certificate of James Hampson and Sarah Tildsley who were married on December 9th 1838 in the parish church of Eccles.

Now strictly speaking they are not family but belong to my cousins in, Ontario, but Pendleton where they were both born and lived is just five miles away from Chorlton and they began their married life during the time I been writing about our own township.

And sometime just a decade after their marriage they took the momentous step and left for Canada with their five children the eldest of whom must have been no more than eleven and the youngest just about two years old.

James Hampson was born in 1816 and Sarah a year later and they reflected something of the changes that were happening to Pendleton.  Both came from families which were connected with the new Pendleton which was a place of cotton mills, dye works and coal mines.  Sarah’s father was an engineer and both James and his father were cotton dyers. By the 1840s this part of the northwest had become a centre for the manufacture of cotton.  In 1842 there were 412 cotton mills employing thousands of workers in what is now the Greater Manchester area while Manchester alone had 41 factories.

And cotton dyeing is an essential part of the cotton process.  Many of the dye works were situated along the banks of the River Irwell utilising the steady flow of water.  Before the 1850s the process still relied on natural dyes using the flowers, berries, leaves, barks and roots of plants and herbs.  As such the work would not have been as dangerous as it was to become with the introduction of chemical dyes.

But it must still have been very uncomfortable.  James would have constantly been exposed to hot and cold water and dyes which left his hands stained different colours.  He would also have worked longer hours than other cotton workers.  Long after the government had begun to regulate working hours in the cotton industry a Royal Commission in 1855 found that many bleaching, dyeing and printing workers  regularly put in fifteen or sixteen hours a day and often continued for several days and nights without stopping.

The family lived on Ashton Street within a few minute’s walk from cotton mills, a dye works and a coal mine with the newly built railway and the slightly older canal close by.

Looking out from their home the Hampson’s would have been faced with a row of one up one down back to back houses which backed on to Miners Row.  Theirs might have been a slightly bigger house but the detailed 1848 OS map shows that their nearest water pump was some distance away.

And while there are was sill dotted with plenty of open land it must have been obvious that in the next few decades all of it would be developed for more industrial and residential use.

The rural appearance of where they lived should not blind us to the fact that it must have been a hard life.
Hours were long and wages were low. Engels quotes from the Factory Inspector, Leonard Horner in October 1844

“The state of things in the matter of wages is greatly perverted in certain branches of  cotton manufacture in Lancashire; there are hundreds of young men, between twenty and thirty, employed as piecers and other wise who do not get more than eight or nine shillings a week, while children under thirteen years, working under the same roof, earn five shillings, and young girls from sixteen to twenty years, ten to 12 shillings per week” *

Wages fluctuated with the trade cycle.**  In 1833 the highest wages were paid to men between the ages of 31 to 36, with huge disparities recorded for women and children. Their wages could also be docked for minor misdemeanours ranging from lateness to leaving a window open.***

Now trying to make sense of wages one hundred and sixty-years later is always fraught with difficulty. However Engels living in 1845 was in no doubt that the above wage levels were not good.  And this had a direct impact on the standard of living.  Their food was basic and monotonous. The staples were bread, oatcakes, watery porridge, potatoes, and a little bacon. Sometimes the porridge was flavoured with onions. Porridge was also made in thick lumps so it could be eaten with the hands at work. Tripe (sheep stomach lining), slink (calf born too early), and broxy (diseased sheep) were regarded as treats by the poorest.

Many workers were still paid on a Saturday evening and by then the quality of food at the markets was poor.
“The potatoes which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted and the cheese old and poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough, taken from old , often diseased cattle”****
An observation Engels followed up the report that on January 6th 1844 eleven meat sellers had been fined for selling tainted meat.   Added to this there was the adulteration of food as this report from The Liverpool Mercury shows
 '
Salt butter is moulded into the form of pounds of fresh butter, and cased over with fresh. In other instances a pound of fresh is conspicuously placed to be tasted; but that pound is not sold; and in other instances salt butter, washed is moulded and sold as fresh...pounded rice and other cheap materials are mixed in sugar, and sold at full monopoly price. A chemical substance...the refuse of the soap manufactories...is also mixed with other substances and sold as sugar...chicory is mixed in good coffee. Chicory, or some similarly cheap substance, is skilfully moulded into the form of the coffee berry, and it is mixed with the bulk very liberally...cocoa is extensively adulterated with fine brown earth, wrought up with mutton fat; so as to amalgamate with portions of the real article...the leaves of tea are mingled with sloe levies and other abominations. Used leaves are also re-dried, and re-coloured on hot copper plates, and sold as tea. Pepper is adulterated with dust from husks etc; port wine is altogether manufactured (from spirits, dyes etc.), it being notorious that more port wine is drunk in this country than is made in Portugal. Nasty things of all sorts are mixed with weed tobacco in all its manufactured forms.” *****

Hard work, long hour’s poor housing and a poor diet left its mark on the health of people.  In 1842 the average life expectancy of the working class in Manchester was just 17 years of age.  There is no reason to suppose it was any better in Salford.  Indeed infant mortality in Salford in 1850 was much higher than the national average.******

All this took its toll as this description of mill workers by a medical worker in 1833 is horrifyingly unflattering:
'...their complexion is sallow and pallid--with a peculiar flatness of feature, ...their stature low--the average height of four hundred men, measured at different times, and different places, being five feet six inches...their limbs slender, and playing badly and ungracefully...a very general bowing of the legs...great numbers of girls and women walking lamely or awkwardly, with raised chests and spinal flexures...nearly all have flat feet, accompanied with a down-tread, differing very widely from the elasticity of action in the foot and ankle, attendant upon perfect formation...hair thin and straight--many of the men having but little beard, and that in patches of a few hairs...' *******

Given all this it is easy to see why a family might choose an alternative and 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.

Location; Salford, Greater Manchester

*Horner Leonard Factory Inspector quoted by Engels Frederick The Conditions of the Working Class in England 1845 page 170

**Frow, Edmund & Ruth, Radical Salford 1984 page 34

***Frow, page 4

****Engels page 101

*****Liverpool Mercury quoted in Engels, Friedrick page 102

******In 1850 infant mortality was 175 per thousand compared to 150 nationally

*******Gaskell P, The Manufacturing Population of England, London, 1833

Pictures; Marriage certificate from the collection of Jacquie Pember-Barnum, 1848 OS map for Lancashire and Union Street Mill,Ancoats, Austin and Gahey, 1835, m52534, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

Making a new start, Canada in 1851, an introduction to a story of immigration

James Hampson was born in 1816 and married Sarah Tildesley in December 1838 at the Parish Church of Eccles.

In 1841 he described himself as a cotton dyer and in that year was living in Pendleton.  Sometime after 1849, James, Sarah and their children left for Canada which was a popular destination for emigrants.  Now I can be fairly certain of this because their last child was born in  England in 1849 and the Canadian census of 1851 records them as there.

Thousands of people, many of them from Ireland left these shores in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Most hoped that a new country would mean a fresh start with new opportunities and a better life.

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.

The main sea port for their departure was Liverpool.  In the hundred years from 1830 to 1930 over nine million emigrants sailed from to the US, Canada and Australia.  I don’t think we will ever know exactly why the Hampson's left and there is no record of when they went but they were part of a steadily rising number of people which  reached a high point in 1849.

Even today the decision to emigrate cannot be an easy one to take, but a hundred and sixty years ago the cost, the problems and the very real dangers must have weighed heavily.  A ticket for just one person travelling on the cheapest passage might be three to five times James’s weekly wage, and of course there were four of them.**

Then there were the ever present threats from unscrupulous dealers, ship owners and the crew who might cheat the passengers at every turn of the journey. Lastly there was the sea passage itself, a trip of a month in a sailing ship at the mercy of an unpredictable weather on the open sea, crammed together with people some of whom were ill with disease.

So, taking that decision was as much an act of faith as it was a rational choice with a secure conclusion.
The ships might hold up wards of four hundred passengers although some like the Isaac Wright could carry 900 people. The Hampson's could expect a fairly basic diet on the journey.  Each passenger was given a weekly ration of bread, rice, tea, sugar as well as oatmeal flour, molasses and vinegar and one pound of pork.   Passengers could however supplement this with their own provisions but there was an upper limit.  There are contemporary stories of passengers being cheated of their rightful ration either because it was delivered late or just not at all.

Conditions on board were not ideal.  Packed together there was the ever present threat of disease and death.  All the passengers were by law inspected by a doctor before they embarked but this did not always prevent the outbreak of illnesses.  In one month in 1847 twelve ships making landfall at Grosse Island reported a total of 198 dead passengers out of just over 3,000.  Some ships arrived safely with no deaths others like Bark Larch from Sligo lost 108 of its 440 passengers with another 150 reported ill.  

Location; Salford, Greater Manchester

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

** In 1847 a ticket might cost between £3.10/- and £5. From a newspaper article The tide of emigration in the Illustrated London  News July 1850

Picture; detail of Pendleton from OS Lancashire 1841 courtesy of Digital Archives Association www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

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,

---

*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