The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #152284 Message #3560833
Posted By: Will Fly
24-Sep-13 - 10:44 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: The 'Good Old Days' - hmm...
Subject: RE: Folklore: The 'Good Old Days' - hmm...
It's the contemporary false sentiment that grates - people singing with sincerely screwed up faces about the working class dignity of the mills - when they've never seen the inside of a mill in their life. My memory of factory life is of hard bloody graft for not much cash - and that was in the 1960s!
I've nothing against the dignity of labour, by the way - just sadness that most of the poor buggers didn't get a decent wage for what they did.
Not so long ago I was looking at the rate books for the Haigh area of Lancashire in the 1840s - courtesy of a local public record office - to see what rates and rents my g-g-g-grandfather William paid for his little cottage (William was a miner in the cannell coalfields). It was no surprise to see that he was frequently in arrears. What was most instructive was seeing page after page of listed properties - cottages, mills, farms, villages, etc. in the area all owned by the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres.
No surprises there - just some sobering thoughts. Perhaps there's a real song in there somewhere.