Writing in 1776, Thomas Pennant thought Whitehaven

is as populous as it is elegant, containing twelve thousand inhabitants, and has a hundred and ninety great ships belonging to it, mostly in the coal trade.

The tobacco trade is much declined: formerly about twenty thousand hogsheads were imported from Virginia, now scarce a fourth of that number; Glasgow having stolen that branch: but to make amends, another is carried on the West Indies, hats, printed lines, hams &c are sent. Last week was a melancholy and pernicious exportation of a hundred and fifty natives of Great Britain, forced from their natal soil, the low lands of Scotland, by the raise of rents, to seek an asylum on the other side of the Atlantic.

The workhouse is thinly inhabited; for few of the poor choose to enter. Those whom     necessity compels, are most usefully employed: with pleasure I observed old age, idiocy, and even infants of three years of age, contributing to their own support, by the pulling of oakum.

 

Sources

Thomas Pennant, A tour in Scotland, and voyage to the Hebrides; Part I (London: 1776)