Dr Tony Shaw: William Hoyle in Manchester and Blackpool

This post updates and corrects a former one I made last year on William Hoyle, and I'm very grateful to Frances Mary Clifford for pointing out the problems with my post, and for sending me so much information about her great-grandfather and the other William Hoyle I'd confused him with. Both Hoyles were Victorians and both were concerned with drink and its many problems, but they were broaching the topic from very different angles: William Hoyle (1831–86) was a temperance reformer and a statistician who published a number of his essentially scientific findings on drinking behaviour; William Hoyle (4 September 1834 – 14 November 1895), who was Frances's great-grandfather, was more a writer of hymns and songs, often telling of the evils of drink.

William Hoyle, hymn- and song-writer, is the author of the above book with the title-page Daisy Ballads and Recitations (1891), but which (unusually) has the different title 'Hoyle's Popular Ballads and Recitations' on the cover. The word 'Daisy' is interesting, as it suggests the very popular Ben Brierley's (originally fictional) Daisy Nook: a recreational area between Failsworth and Drolysden (now Greater Manchester) which retains that name. Surely the adjectival use of 'daisy' (which Brierley intended as a holiday term) is at the root of Hoyle's use of the word? Please let me know if you have any information on this, either by email or by a simple comment to this post.

In 1863 William Hoyle founded what was to be the biggest regional branch of the Band of Hope: The Lancashire and Cheshire Band of Hope Union, which was immensely popular. Two years later he established the monthly publication Onward: The Organ of the Lancashire and Cheshire Band of Hope Union, which was heavily slanted towards the younger reader. It too was extremely popular and was published in both Manchester and London. Although Hoyle appears to have just contributed to this periodical rather than edited it, he edited the more modest Band of Hope Treasury (1869–90), also a children's temperance magazine.

William Hoyle also published, in many different editions, Hoyle's Hymns & Songs for Temperance Societies and Bands of Hope (the first being in about 1869), and Hoyle's Reciter: Fifty-four original Recitations and Dialogues (date unknown, and some of these being in the Lancashire dialect). He also wrote 'William Foster: a life story' (1895), a brief biography about a man he greatly admired, although this work was never published.

Above is a group photo of the Bennett Street School (Manchester) Superintendents from 1880, which shows William Hoyle seated fifth from the left. Hoyle was a commercial traveller by profession, and like the mysterious William Foster (who died on 5 February 1879 aged 63 years) was a member of the Manchester Independent Order of Oddfellows.

Willam Hoyle now lies in Layton Cemetery, Blackpool.