Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester

Subject: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 09:37 AM

I understand that their will be a presentation of "The Lancashire Cotton Famine" at the Portico Library in Manchester on Sat 2nd Dec for the Lancs and Cheshire Antiquarian Society.

Any more details?

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Scrump
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 10:31 AM

Any links Les?

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 12:13 PM

This is a performance that myself, Sid Calderbank, Mary & Norman Wilson and Mike Bartram have done a couple of times at Four Fools and Fylde festivals over the past couple of years. Sid's got the details but I know it starts about 2-00pm in the afternoon

The Portico Library & Gallery
57 Mosley Street
Manchester, M2 3HY

Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Staff Contact Details:

Librarian - Emma Marigliano
[e-mail]

We made a recording of the performance at Four Fools available on CD and I gather one of the members of the L&C Antiquarian Soc. picked one up when Chris Harvey and I did a performance of "Manchester Ballads" at the Central Library last February and recommended it to his fellow members.

Maybe see some 'catters there.

Cheers
Mark

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 18 Nov 06 - 05:23 AM

Folk on a Saturday afternoon? We went to see Mark and Chris at the Central Reference Library earlier this year. Fascinating account of Manchester Broadside Ballads and the work of Harry Boardman.

I feel sure this will be another unforgetable day. Is this the third "Revival"?

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Nov 06 - 06:31 AM

And the Portico Library is a supremely interesting venue - One of the few private collections left. We did the Pace Egg play there following a presentation on Pace Egging in Lancashire by Dr Eddie Cass. I will certainly try to come along. Nothing like a good show about the cotton famine to cheer me up for Christmas:-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 18 Nov 06 - 04:19 PM

Sadly, I'm in the wrong part of the country to get to Manchester on 2 December, and will be at Haddenham festival anyway.

But it sounds like the sort of show that ought to be at the National if only there was a venue for the National to be at!

(I've just heard a bit of Harry Boardman on the Archive Hour programme about Paul Graney, but that's another thread.)

Kitty

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 06 Dec 06 - 07:52 AM

We had a belting afternoon in the Portico last Saturday. Couldn't get any more in to see it. Yet again nearly two hours of people sitting and listening to the story and songs. We thought that with such a learned audience as the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society we might get someone coming up and telling us that we'd got some facts wrong but that wasn't the case - thankfully!

Good to see Les from Chorlton there - thanks for coming Les.

Saturday afternoon in Manchester three weeks off Christmas is not the place for the faint hearted when you're walking through the streets with guitar and shoulder bag full of kit! Well worth it though and the show has potential for an audience other than the folk world.

Cheers
Mark

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: karen k
Date: 06 Dec 06 - 08:17 AM

Could someone share the story of the cotton famine or provide some resources. I'm in Connecticut and would love to know about this. Would have liked to see the performance.

Thanks,
karen

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Dec 06 - 08:48 AM

It was when the South was blockaded in the American Civil War. The Lancashire cotton trade was devastated for lack of supplies- Egyptian and Indian cotton proved inferior substitutes for American.

There was widespread unemployment, which meant starvation for many. The mill oweners were strong in their support for the Confederacy- they wanted their mills running again, and their profits back. But despite the deprivation, the mill workers remained mostly in support of the promised abolition of slavery.

Subject: Lyr Add: BONNY BRID (Sam Laycock)
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Dec 06 - 08:55 AM

Wikipedia page that gives a little more detail.

If I recall aright, this Lancashire dialect poem was written at the time:

BONNY BRID

by Sam Laycock.


Th'art welcome, little bonny brid,               (1)
But shouldn't ha' come just when tha did;
Toimes are bad.
We're short o' pobbies for eawr Joe,             (2)
But that, of course, tha didn't know,
Did ta, lad?

Aw've often yeard mi feyther tell,
'At when aw coom i' th' world misel'
Trade wur slack;
An' neaw it's hard wark pooin' throo —            (3)
But aw munno fear thee, iv aw do
Tha'll go back.

Cheer up! these toimes'll awter soon;
Aw'm beawn to beigh another spoon —               (4)
One for thee;
An', as tha's sich a pratty face
Aw'll let thee have eawr Charley's place
On mi knee.

God bless thee, love, aw'm fain tha'rt come,
Just try an' mak' thisel awhoam:
Here's thi nest;
Tha'rt loike thi mother to a tee,
But tha's thi feyther's nose, aw see,
Well, aw'm blest!

Come, come tha needn't look so shy,
Aw am no' blamin' thee, not I;
Settle deawn,
An' tak' this haupney for thisel,
There's lots o' sugar-sticks to sell
Deawn i' th' teawn.

Aw know when furst aw coom to th' leet,
Aw're fond o' owt' at tasted sweet;
Tha'll be th' same.
But come, tha's never towd thi dad
What he's to co thee yet, mi lad —
What's thi name?

Hush! hush! tha mustn't cry this way,
But get this sope o' cinder tay
While it's warm;
Mi mother used to give it me,
When aw wur sich a lad as thee,
In her arm.

Hush-a-babby, hush-a-bee,
Oh, what a temper! dear-a-me
Heaw tha skrikes!
Here's a bit o' sugar, sithee;
Howd thi noise, an' then aw'll gie thee
Owt tha likes.

We've nobbut getten coarsish fare,
But, eawt o' this tha'll get thi share,
Never fear.
Aw hope tha'll never want a meal,
But allis fill thi bally weel
While tha'rt here.

Thi feyther's noan been wed so long,
An'yet tha sees he's middlin' throng
Wi' yo' o.
Besides thi little brother Ted,
We've one upsteers, asleep i' bed,
Wi' eawr Joe.

But tho' we've childer two or three,
We'll mak' a bit o' reawm for thee,
Bless thee, lad!
Tha'rt th' prattiest brid we have i' th' nest,
So hutch up closer to mi breast;
Aw'm thi dad.

(1) brid=bird
(2) Pobbies = bread and milk sops
(3) pooin= pulling
(4) Aw'm beawn to beigh another spoon = I must buy another spoon

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 07 Dec 06 - 06:37 PM

Just for the record:

From http://www.stalybridge.org.uk/samuel_laycock_tribute.htm

Bonny Brid was written before the birth of his daughter, Hannah, on December 8th, 1864. It was written during the Cotton Famine and is a touching comment on the problems of bringing up a child born during a depression.   Laycock was expecting a boy so the poem is addresses to a 'lad'. Bonny Brid grew up to marry Sim Schofield, another Lancashire poet and many anniversaries in her life were comemorated by poems written by her father, her husband and their friends.   Bonny Brid died on 13th July, 1939 in Torquay.

Cheers
Mark

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 07 Dec 06 - 09:44 PM

Wouldn't a workshop dealing in some depth with both the Cotton Famine (from the British point of view) and the blocade that caused it (from the American point of view) be spectacular?

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 03:53 AM

'Twould Dick.
There's a wealth of material in Manchester Central Library and in Eddie and Ruth Frow's Working Class Library in Salford.
Does anybody still sing 'The Shurrat Weaver's Lament'?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Scrump
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 04:20 AM

I'm pretty sure Mark Dowding does!

(btw it's Shurat, named after the inferior cotton from Shurat in India, that was used during the famine).

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 04:46 AM

Yes I do Scrump!
It's in the show along with two other Sam Laycock songs/poems
Laycock is famous for his 12 lays of the Cotton Famine and we included the "Shurat Weaver's Song", "The Sewing Class Song" and "God Bless 'Em It Shows They've Some Thowt". The last poem is a dig at Edwin Waugh - one of Laycock's contemporaries whom Laycock accuses of not doing anything in the times of crisis to help the situation but in reality Waugh was travelling round the county documenting what was going on in factories, workhouses and people's homes during the period of the Cotton Famine for people like Sid Calderbank to read 100 years after the event and write shows about. His accounts are available in his book "Among The Cotton Operatives" which is downloadable for free. We include an extract of his account of the Preston soup kitchen in the show.

The word Shurat became synonymous with anything inferior. However when it was thought that this cotton was going to be the saviour of Lancashire, a local brewery named one of its beers "Shurat Ale" in celebration. This soon was withdrawn when it was realised that the cotton was rubbish!

Cheers
Mark

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 07:24 AM

Shurat cotton wasn't rubbish- it was used by the fine Indian textile industry, which the East India Company had deliberately set out to destroy, so that they could profitably import Lancashire cotton goods. Being machine- made, these were usually far inferior to the hand- woven native product. But the mill machinery was set up for American cotton, which could stand the less gentle handling given by the mechanised spinning machines and looms.

It was only a generation or so earlier that the last of the Lancashire handloom weavers had been driven to the workhouse, and to me one sad feature of the affair is the silence of Sam Bamford. He had been a radical forty-odd years before, leading one of the contingents to St.Peter's Fields in Manchester in 1819, to the meeting that ended in the Peterloo Massacre.

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 07:51 AM

Shurat cotton was a shorter fibre which would make mechanical handling difficult but what was coming from India at the time was dirty, contaminated with seeds and other material, badly packed and prepared, bales were damaged during the voyage at sea. Maybe Lancashire mills got the sweepings off the floor sent to them but it was difficult to work with and spin into yarn because the thread kept twisting and breaking and if they found it difficult to spin then it's near impossible to weave with. The operatives were on piecework and got payed on what they produced. There were also fined for faults in their cloth and the Shurat cotton that they were working with produced many faults in the finished cloth.

From "Handloom v Powerloom"

The weavers' turn will next come on for they must not escape
To enlarge the masters' fortune they're fined in every shape
Thin places or bad edges, a go or else a float
They'll daub you down and you must pay threepence or a groat

That song was written sometime between the transition from home weaving to factory production of cloth but the practice of fining bad workmanship had been going on for a long time and would continue.

Bamford was in his 70's during the period of the cotton famine. I'll see if I can find out if he did contribute towards the cause.

Cheers
Mark

Subject: RE: Lancashire Cotton Famine - Manchester
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 11:59 AM

Samuel Laycock - Marsden's dialect poet.

Samuel Laycock was born at Intake Head in 1826. Laycock's father was a hand loom weaver, and Samuel was brought up on the isolated farm above Marsden. The only education he had was at Sunday School, and at the age of nine he started work in the mill.

When Sam was 11 the family moved to Stalybridge in Lancashire, and he worked in a cotton mill. The Cotton Famine of the 1860s threw him out of work, and he responded to this by publishing poems about the crisis.

After this he worked as a librarian at the Mechanics Institute, as a Curator in Fleetwood, selling books on Oldham market, and as a photographer. He died in Blackpool in 1893.