Robert G. Hall and Stephen Roberts (eds): William Aitken: The Writings of a Nineteenth Century working Man (1996)

Hall and Roberts's William Aitken: The Writings of a Nineteenth Century Working Man is dedicated to an unfairly forgotten man of Greater Manchester. Aitken (1812– or 1814–69) was born in Dunbar, Scotland, although his family moved to Ashton-under-Lyne when he was a child. He began work in a cotton mill at the age of twelve and was largely self-taught. He opened a school in Ashton in 1833, where he and his wife Mary taught mainly working-class children. He had a strong sense of justice and spent much effort on the Chartist cause and fighting for the ten-hour working day.

After the Chartist defeat of 1842 Aitken left with two friends for America for a year, and wrote the short book A Journey up the Mississippi River from its Mouth to Nauvoo, the City of the Latter Day Saints (1845).

Depressed, he died by slitting his throat at his home.

This book briefly details Aitken's life in the Introduction, and then moves to Aitken's unfinished autobiography, which was called 'Remembrances and Struggles of a Working Man for Bread and Liberty', and the first paragraph is concerned with a kind of revisionism:

'It has not been by timidity or fear that the battles of liberty have been won, but by a moral courage equalling, if not surpassing, the hero who marches to victory over his slaughtered enemies and vindictive foes.'

History now remembers some of those fighting for freedom against an oppressive state – such as the Chartists and the suffragettes – as heroes. (Let's hope that at some time in the future it will see in the same light the often highly dangerous efforts of asylum seekers to escape from tyranny.)

Slavery is also tyranny of course, but Aitken – very wrongly, in my view – supported the American South because the blockade on Southern ports exporting cotton was causing hardship to English workers such as those in the cotton town of Ashton.

Aitken's autobiography unfortunately ends at 1840, the point he had reached before he killed himself, thus leaving out twenty-nine years of his life. Unsurprisingly, it is full of the injustices meted out by the more fortunate on the less fortunate, and of Aitken's and others' concerns to eleviate the conditions of working people. As might be expected, Aitken speaks of the roles played by such Chartist activists as Feargus O'Connor and Joseph Rayner Stephens, but two lesser known activists were Aitken's friends Dr Peter Murray McDouall, and John Bradley from Hyde. They were both imprisoned for 'seditious' activities in 1840, as was Aitken, who in a note before his utopian prison poem 'The Captive's Dream' – printed here along with several of his other poems – wryly states that the meaning of 'seditious conspiracy' means 'haters of poverty and oppression'.

I was surprised that this book is still on sale eighteen years after publication. And this is the first publication of the autobiography since the original instalments in the Ashton News. Very interesting it is as well.

I find the front cover a little surprising too: it shows a cropped, reverse image of a portrait reproduced in greater detail on the title page, where Aitken's buttons can clearly be seen in the correct position!

Samuel Laycock in Stalybridge, Tameside

The above title is slightly misleading because the photos were taken in the Portland Basin Museum, Ashton-under-Lyne, and this of course is a representation of a nineteenth-century print shop. But what really interests me is the copy of the old poster hanging up in the middle of the picture:

'SAMUEL LAYCOCK
LANCASHIRE POET
TO HONOUR THE MEMORY AND RECORD
THE CONNECTION OF SAMUEL LAYCOCK
WITH THE TOWN OF STALYBRIDGE THE FOLLOWING
PROGRAMME HAS BEEN ARRANGED AS A
LAYCOCK CELEBRATION
IN WHICH THE GENERAL PUBLIC OF STALYBRIDGE
ARE INVITED TO TAKE PART'

 The specific details of the event are brought to the fore:

'Saturday next, Sep. 23

3.0   Reception at the Free Library.

3-30  Unveiling of Portrait of Samuel Laycock in the Free Library.

Unveiling Ceremony by Mrs. Bowness of Blackpool, Daughter of the Poet.

4-0   Unveiling of Bronze Tablet outside the Mechanics' Institution.
Unveiling Ceremony by Mrs. ? Schofield, Thronton-le-Flyde, ?, Daughter of the Poet.

6.0   PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENT and Laycock Celebration, at the
Mechanics' Institution.

Splendid Programme by Dialect Entertainers, including Lancashire Sketches, Recitals,
and Songs of Laycock and Waugh. Programme by Lancashire Authors' Association.

NO CHARGE FOR ADMISSION TO ENTERTAINMENT COLLECTION FOR EXPENSES

Geo. Whittaker and Sons, Printers, 50 Market Street, Stalybridge Tel. 794'

My Samuel Laycock posts:
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Samuel Laycock: Layton Cemetery, Blackpool
Samuel Laycock in Stalybridge

Donkey Stones in Ashton-under-Lyne

This building is on Lower Wharf Road close to the B6170 on the outskirts of Ashton-under-Lyne, Tameside, and has an interesting history.

 

 'ELI WHALLEY
DONKEY STONE MANUFACTURERS

The firm of Eli Whalley, the last mass producer of donkey stones
in the country, closed early in 1979 and was based here
at Donkey Stone Wharf.

Donkey stones are scouring stones, named after the trade-mark
of one of the earliest firms, Reads of Manchester,
and were cream, brown and white.

Originally used to put a non-slip surface on greasy
stone staircases in the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire and later
by proud housewives, who made stoning the front door step
a form of decoration and competition.

Eli Whalley's trade-mark, the "lion-brand", impressed
on the stones was taken from a photograph of
a live specimen in Belle Vue Zoo.'

Jane Rogers: Mr Wroe's Virgins (1991)

As I mentioned in my slightly earlier post about John Wroe's former gatehouse in Ashton-under-Lyne, Mr Wroe's Virgins is a fictional recreation of the events after members of Wroe's Christian Israelite flock have granted him the seven virgins he's asked for.

The story consists of a multiple narrative told from the point of view of four of the women (who incidentally are not all virgins):

– The saintly Joanna, the 'head' sister who initially believes implicitly in the genuineness of Wroe's preachings, even to the point of sexually giving herself to him under the illusion that she will be bestowing a holy child on the community.

– The cynical and sexually supercharged Leah, who already has a child by a casual relationship, but who (with the collusion of Wroe) introduces her son Thomas into the church as an unknown mother's abandoned baby.

– The highly intelligent and socially conscious atheist Hannah, who first sees Wroe as an unwitting charlatan, but comes to view him in a far more negative light on discovering the damage he's done to Joanna.

– The disturbed Martha, who has suffered extreme abuse at the hands of her father and until the end sees Wroe as a kind of (non-religious) saviour.

The remaining three women – the handicapped Dinah (who dies), and the sisters Rachel and Rebekah – only have minor parts in the story, briefly being mentioned in passing by the narrators.

The women act as servants-cum-slaves to Wroe, although they are free anytime to go back to the parents or relatives who have already rejected them, or to test their own survival skills in the harsh economic climate outside.

In the end it is Leah who swiftly brings about the demise of the community: sexually rejected by Wroe, she falsely accuses him of rape. And although the internal enquiry finds its leader not guilty, the tale has quickly leaked through to the citizens of Ashton, who only narrowly escape meting out the 'justice' of the mob.

An intelligent and very imaginative construction.

Below is a link to another post I made about John Wroe:

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John Wroe in Ashton-under-Lyne

John Wroe in Ashton-under-Lyne

This building in Park Square, off Mossley Road, was threatened with demolition in 2003 but was given a Grade II listing because of its historical interest.

'PROPHET JOHN WROE
(1782–1863)

 

Founded the Christian Israelite Church and declared that
Ashton-under-Lyne would be the new Jerusalem.
Four gatehouses were built of which this building
was one. Later banished for alleged indecent
behaviour, he went to Australia where
the Christian Israelite Church
still survives today.'

Wroe was born in Bradford the son of a woolcomber and it was during an illness that he had visions which led to him establishing the Christian Israelite Church. He conducted baptisms in the River Medlock. The Sanctuary was built in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1825, and later became the Scala cinema. The gatehouse here became Ashton's cholera hospital, and later the Odd Whim pub.

In 1830 Wroe asked members of his flock for seven virgins, two of whom were to accuse him of indecent behaviour. Although acquitted, this spelled the end of his church in Ashton. In the novel Mr Wroe's Virgins, Jane Rogers  gives a fictional account of the virgins' story.

 

Below are links to John Wroe's three-part autobiography, plus a link to my review of the novel:

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Private Communications, Given to John Wroe, Vol. I (1845)
Private Communications, Given to John Wroe, Vol. II (1846)

Private Communications, Given to John Wroe, Vol. III (1853)
Jane Rogers: Mr Wroe's Virgins (1991)

Tameside Central Library, Ashton-under-Lyne

 

I've not yet found anything out about this semi-transparent reading man, but it's attractive and blends in well with the building.

 

One blue plaque here is just before the entrance, although it's only really visible at opening times:

 

'Raymond Ray-Jones

1886–1942

 

A highly talented artist born in Ashton-under-Lyne.

 

He was a student in this building

when it was the Heginbottom School of Art.

 

Unveiled by his son, Philip Ray-Jones

17th February 1996.'

 

And the other plaque is in the library itself:

 

James Keogh

1915–1938

 

In honour of James Keogh of Wellington Street,
Ashton-under-Lyne, who died in March 1938 at Calaceite
in the Province of Aragón in Spain, fighting for freedom
and democracy in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39
and those other volunteers from this borough
who also fought in Spain.

 

Unveiled by Councillor Jackie Lane

25 November 2011'

Hannah Mitchell in Ashton-under-Lyne

43 Elizabeth Street, Ashton-under-Lyne.

 

'HANNAH MARIA MITCHELL

1871 – 1956

 

A working class woman who became a

local leader in the Suffrage and Labour

movement in the North of England.

She lived here from 1900–1910.'

 

Hannah Mitchell was born into a farming environment in Hope Woodlands in the High Peak area of Derbyshire and it was on her early move to Bolton as a seamstress that she became engaged with the socialist movement. An early influence was Robert Blatchford, and she became a feminist and a pacifist. She began her autobiography before the end of World War II, although it was not published until twelve years after her death: The Hard Way Up: The Autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, Suffragette and Rebel, was edited by her grandson and published in 1968.

Francis Thompson in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester

This plaque remembering Francis Thompson is at 226 Stamford Street near Brook Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, above a former jeweller's shop:

'FRANCIS THOMPSON 1859–1907
"The Poet of Catholicism" moved to this
address with his family in 1864 and lived
here until 1885. His best-remembered
work, "The Hound of Heaven", was
published in 1893.'
Thompson's father Charles was a homeopath and (along with his wife Mary Turner Thompson (née Morton)) was a Catholic convert. The family moved here from Francis's birthplace in Preston. Charles sent his son to Owens College, Manchester, with hopes for his future in the medical profession. However, Francis hated it and preferred to spend his time reading poetry. Following a fierce argument with his father, he fled from home for London, and the wretched consequences are related in the book in the link below.

ADDENDUM 1: Yesterday's Manchester Evening News (28 March 2014) contained an article with several photos of the building: this historic structure has now collapsed in on itself.
ADDENDUM 2: This is what the hole – where Francis Thompson's house used to be – looked like on 24 April 2014:
 

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Francis Thompson: The Preston-Born Poet (1912), by John Thomson

H. V. Morton in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester

This plaque commemorating the writer who wrote as H. V. Morton is on a low raised stone in Henry Square, Ashton-under-Lyne.

  'HENRY VOLLAM MORTON
(1892–1979)

International Journalist and Travel Writer born in Ashton-under-Lyne.   Morton's work captured the spirit of England and other countries
from the 1920s to the 1960s and provided a great literary
contribution throughout those five decades.

He reported the discovery of the Tutankhamun tomb in 1923
and the historic meeting between Winston Churchill and
President Roosevelt in 1941.

He has 'travelled around like a magpie, picking up
bright things that pleased him' and
recorded them for our pleasure.

Unveiled by
the Morton family on
21st May 2004'