Category: Staffordshire

George Haslehurst (c.1792–c.1866), Nail Maker, Uttoxeter

By Peter Collinge

George Haslehurst, born in Eckington, Derbyshire, c.1792, probably the son of  George Haslehurst of Eckington a nailer who, in 1791, had been fined £20 for poaching (reduced to £10 on appeal). He first came to attention through the surviving overseers’ vouchers of the parish of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. Subsequent research had uncovered a complex life of multiple marriages, infant deaths and criminal activity.

On 10 September 1821 he married Hannah (I) Wood (c.1800–22), a spinster, at St Mary’s parish church Uttoxeter. The witnesses were James Appleby and Thomas Osborne. It was a brief marriage as Hannah died and was buried on 4 February 1822. George was not a widower for long, for he married for a second time on 22 October 1822. His wife was Hannah Cotterill (née Appleby), the recently widowed wife of Thomas Cotterill (1795–1821). Their marriage had taken place on 17 April 1820 and had as been equally brief as George and Hannah Haslehursts’. It is interesting to note that one of the witnesses of the Cotterill marriage had been Thomas Osborne.

George and Hannah (II) had a son Thomas born 8 February 1823, either meaning a very premature baby or Hannah (II) had become pregnant very soon after the death of George’s first wife, Hannah (I). Thomas was baptised at Uttoxeter’s Wesleyan chapel. He died aged four months in early June 1823. A Mary Haslehurst, possibly George’s and Mary’s second child, was buried in Uttoxeter on 23 June 1823, aged three months. In 1827 a third child, Elizabeth was born and in April 1831 a fourth, Mary, who survived for eleven months and was buried on 8 March 1831. It is likely that the birth of Mary led to Hannah’s (II) death on 4 June 1830, aged 31.

It is at some point after this that Haslehurst and the administrators of the Poor Law for Uttoxeter came into contact with each other. In April 1831 George Haslehurst was served with a removal order and was taken with his surviving child Elizabeth to Eckington by William Williams. Williams charged the parish £2 8s for his services. In May 1831 two vouchers relating to Haslehurst show that Elizabeth had died, a coffin had been supplied by Goodall and Heath and that Uttoxeter had paid for the child’s burial.

For the next fifteen years nothing further is heard of George Haslehurst until just before his third marriage. In January 1846 the Derbyshire Advertiser reported that George had been found guilty of being drunk and of assaulting Robert Yeomans of Ashbourne. He was fined for both, and in default of payment was to be committed to gaol for 24 days. His conduct did not prevent his marriage to Fanny Overton (née Baker), a widow with one son Enoch from Ashbourne. The marriage took place at St Oswald’s, Ashbourne on 28 March 1846.

It is also possible that this George Haselhurst was the same George Haslehurst, aged 53, who was up on a charge of larceny, but subsequently acquitted, at the Derby County sessions in January 1844.

By 1851 George, aged 59, and Fanny, aged 57, were living with Enoch Overton in Bunting’s Yard, High Street, Uttoxeter. However, it also seems likely that George once again found himself at odds with the law, and this time it was far more serious. In July 1854 the Derby Mercury reported the trial of George Hazlehurst, aged 62. He was charged with indecent assault upon Elizabeth Marsden a seven-year-old infant. The incident had occurred on the 1 May 1854 at Barlborough, a place close to Eckington. The newspaper thought evidence unfit for publication. The jury found him guilty of the intent and he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

George died sometime between 1854 and 1861. The 1861 Census shows that Fanny Haslehurst, now 67, a widow and infirm was still living in High Street, Uttoxeter.

Sources

Derbyshire Record Office, St Oswald’s Parish Register, Ashbourne.

Derby Mercury, January 1844, July 1854.

Derbyshire Advertiser, January 1846.

1851 and 1861 Census Returns

Staffordshire Record Office,

SRO, D3891/6/37/1/20; D3891/6/37/2/18; D3891/6/37/2/23; D3891/6/37/2/24; D3891/6/37/2/30; D3891/6/37/3/26, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers.

St Mary’s Parish Register, Uttoxeter.

Uttoxter Wesleyan Chapel Register

wirksworth.org.uk

This  is a work in progress, subject to change as new research emerges.

The State of Uttoxeter Workhouse, 1831

By Peter Collinge

Uttoxeter has had several parish workhouses. One of them  was built on the Heath in 1789 and remained until it was replaced in the late 1830s. To be strictly accurate, it was not a union workhouse in the sense that such places were to become after the 1834 Poor Law Act, but in addition to the paupers it received from Uttoxeter, it also accommodated paupers from Doveridge and Rocester. White’s 1834 trade directory informs us that the workhouse had a brickyard and a garden extending to one and a half acres in which the inmates were employed. The assistant parish overseer at the time was Thomas Norris. A summary of the workhouse’s finances at the end of March 1831 provides a glimpse into this world. There were 44 inmates: 18 men, 13 women, 8 boys (of whom, 4 were under nine years of age), and 5 girls all under the age of nine). We know that 2 of the inmates worked in the kitchens and 8 of the men worked as labourers or scavengers. The remaining adult inmates were listed under headings of ‘infirm’, ‘sick, lame and blind’ and what to modern minds is the rather offensive ‘idiots’.

The brickyard account shows a total of £270 1s 6d received, and £248 10s 8d paid out. The inmates working in the  yard earned £19 18s 6d, although it is unclear whether they actually received this amount or whether it went into the overall workhouse coffers. In addition, the workhouse received money from the sale of butter and vegetables and for the carding of wool. The existence of the brickyard and garden offer a different perspective on how workhouse paupers occupied their time. More common images are  of stone breaking (which is also mentioned in the accounts) and of picking apart old ropes to make oakum, used in caulking ships.

Amongst the workhouse expenses, more than £308 was spent on provisions, £25 on the governor’s and matron’s salary, £32 17s 10d on clothing and shoes, and £9 8s 8d on coffins and funeral fees. These figures do not include the amounts expended on the out poor (parish paupers who were not in the workhouse).

Description of Wednesbury from the Universal British Directory

By Peter Collinge

The following is an edited version of the entry in the fourth volume of the Universal British Directory.

Wednesbury is a market town, eight miles from Birmingham, six from Wolverhampton, three from Walsall and five from Dudley. The church is a very fine old Gothic structure. This place is rendered famous for its coal, the best in the kingdom for smiths work, on account of its extreme heat. It runs from three to fourteen yards in thickness, which makes it very valuable to its respective owners, who clear from one to three hundred pounds a week from the sale of that article only. This place also produces that sort of iron ore called blond-metal, used to make nails and horse shoes, and all sorts of heavy tools, as hammers, axes, &c. There are several vessels of diverse sorts made here, which are painted with a reddish sort of earth dug hereabouts, which they call slip. One of the collateral branches of the Birmingham Canal enters this parish about half a mile, to some coal mines not yet opened, and to the iron-works of Messrs. Samuel and John Hallen, iron masters. About two miles from hence are the very extensive iron-works of John Wilkinson, Esq. at Bradley Moor. Its principal manufactories are, guns, coach-springs, coach-harness, iron axel-trees, saws, trowels, edge-tools, bridle-bits, stirrups, nails, hinges, wood-screws, and cast iron goods. Enamel paintings are also done here in the highest perfection and beauty.

Here are three meeting houses, namely, Presbyterians, Quakers and Methodists.

The mail from Ireland, Shrewsbury, and a great part of Wales, passes and repasses through this place every day: the post office is open at all hours.

Source

Peter Barfoot and John Wilkes, Universal British Directory, vol. 4 (London: 1796)

Description of Uttoxeter from the Universal British Directory

By Peter Collinge

The following is an edited version of the entry in the fourth volume of the Universal British Directory.

Uttoxeter is a market town. It stands on a hill of easy ascent, near the river Dove. The town is rather rich, by means of its fine meadows and cattle; neat and handsome in respect of buildings: it has formerly suffered much by fire. The market is reckoned one of the greatest in these parts, for cattle, sheep, butter, cheese, corn, and all sorts of provisions: some of the London cheesemongers, by factors here, lay out five hundred pounds in a day. The town is pretty large, and the market place neat and commodious; three streets issue from the angles of the open area, and the market extends a considerable way into each of them. The market day is Wednesday; fairs May 6, July 31, September 1 and 19.

The town is surrounded with iron forges, and several considerable ironmongers carry on a great trade here in that manufactory; and it is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants. By the late inland navigation, it has communication with the rivers Mersey, Dee, Ribble, Ouse, Trent, Derwent, Severn, Humber, Thames, Avon &c.

The excise office is at the White Hart and New Star inn: Mr Fryer, Supervisor; Mr Trougher and Mr Freer, Officers; George Prosser, Riding-officer.

Uttoxeter contains five hundred and fifty houses.

Source

Peter Barfoot and John Wilkes, Universal British Directory, vol. 4 (London: c.1796)

George Foster (1788-1845), Gardener and Seedsman, Uttoxeter

By Peter Collinge

George Foster supplied the parish overseers with an extensive range of seeds and plants for the workhouse garden. One bill for February 1833 consisted of:

6 Quarts Beans,  6 Pints Peas £0.2.10d
4oz Onion, 3oz Carrots,  Turnip 2, Lettuce 2, Celery 2, Savoy 3 £0.0.9d
Leek 6, Radish 4, Parsley 2 £0.1.0d
Quart Green Beans, Carrots 4oz £0.0.11d
100 Plants £0.0.9d
300 Winter Plants £0.2.3d
4oz Early Turnip £0.0.8d
100 Savoy Cabbage £0.0.9d
Score Cauliflowers £0.0.6d
2 Score Broccoli, 6oz Cabbage seed £0.1.6d
½oz Winter Cabbage £0.0.4d
200 Strong Quick Cabbage £0.3.0d
100 Strong Quick Cabbage £0.1.6d

Another bill for beans, onions, leek seeds and cabbage, costing £2 3s 6d, was submitted in March 1830.

Listed as resident in Carter Street in the 1818 directory, Foster had removed to Smithy Lane by 1834.

George, the son of William and Mary Foster, was baptised on 10 August 1788. He married Hannah Martin at St Mary’s, Uttoxeter, on 13 July 1816. Hannah was older than George. The 1841 Census, when Foster’s address was given as ‘Yew Tree’ (the same as that given in Pigot’s directory of 1835), gives George’s age as 52 and that of Hannah as 65. The instructions to Census enumerators were that the ages of people above the age of 15 should be rounded down to the nearest five years. This may have happened in Hannah’s case, but William’s age was recorded accurately. Also living with the Fosters was Joseph Martin, probably Hannah’s brother. He was aged 70 and described as being of independent means.

In his will, dated 29 February 1840, Foster’s dwelling house near Smithy Lane, Uttoxeter and an additional dwelling house, garden and croft and land in the possessions of John Burton and James Lassetter together with all other property, monies, securities, goods, chattels, rights, credits and personal estate were bequeathed to his wife. Hannah was appointed his executrix. His probated estate did not exceed £100.

Sources

J. Pigot and Co., National Commercial Directory [Derbyshire to Wales] (1835)

W. Parson and T. Bradshaw, Staffordshire General and Commercial Directory, (1818)

SRO, B/C/11, George Foster of Uttoxeter, 23 April 1845

SRO, D3891/6/42/184, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 15 Feb 1833

SRO, D3891/6/36/6/69, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 24 Mar 1830

TNA, HO 107/1007/14, Census 1841

William White, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire (Sheffield: 1834)

This is a work in progress subject to change as new research is conducted.

Charles Green (1778–1856), Overseer, Darlaston

By Peter Collinge

Charles Green was the parish overseer for Darlaston in 1816. Green, born in London, married Elizabeth Bayley (1779–1844). They had four children. The first two George Washington (b.1810) and Charles Allen (1812–1892) were both born in New York. Their two sisters Mary Bayley (1815–1903) and Elizabeth Bills (b.1817) were born in Darlaston. George, Charles and Mary were all baptised on 3 September 1815 at St Lawrence’s parish church, Darlaston. Mary was married twice, first to John Whitehouse and then after his death to Joseph Whitehouse. Elizabeth married James Corbet[t] Lister.

George Washington Green and his wife Anne had at least three children: Martha, Henry and Frederick. In 1850, aged 38, Charles Allen Green married the 22-year-old Mary Yates at St Lawrence’s. They had five children: Charles (b.1851), George (b.1854), Thomas (b.1855), Joseph (b.1861) and Lizzie (b.1868).

The Report to the Commissioners on the Employment of Children 1843 took evidence from Charles Green and George Washington Green. Aged 62 at the time, Charles stated that he was a maltster and farmer. He had been a resident of Darlaston for 28 years meaning he and his family had arrived in Darlaston in 1814, two years before he became the overseer. He may have lived in Darlaston before he and Elizabeth went to New York: the 1798 land tax redemption for the parish lists a   Chas Green as the occupier of a property owned by ‘Thacker’. Charles may have been related to George Green, listed in the 1818 directory as a victualler and maltster, at the White Lion, King Street. Pigot’s 1828–1829 directory gives Charles Green’s address as Church Street; White’s 1834 directory lists Charles Green as an innkeeper at the White Lion.

In the Commission report both Charles and George Washington Green spoke about the treatment of apprentices. Charles believed that previously they were ‘badly treated by some masters, ill-clothed and ill-fed’ and in rare cases ‘beaten unmercifully’.  Those treated in such a manner, he declared, were parish apprentices from Lichfield, Stratford and Coventry who had premiums of four or five pounds. Premiums were amounts of money paid to a master or mistress to take the apprentice off a parish’s hands and it was Green’s conviction that masters cared little for their apprentices once the premiums had been received. Such treatment, he thought however, was less common than it used to be. Although there was more interest than previously, he was concerned about the lack of and desire for education in the area.

Coach-spring and file manufacturer George Washington Green, aged 30, thought the treatment of apprentices were ‘generally good; they have plenty to eat, are well-clothed, though roughly … and not cruelly beaten’. Judging from attendance at Sunday schools and subscriptions to them, he thought there was a desire for education. The standard of teaching he thought was generally low; better in the dissenting chapels than in the established church.

Until 1846 when the carriage spring and file making partnership at the Soho Works, Darlaston, was dissolved by mutual consent, George’s partners were Samuel Mills and Thomas Wells. He then seems to have changed direction. By the time of the 1851 Census when he was living in Church Street with his widowed father and their servant Sarah Horton, he described himself as a surveyor and architect.

Charles died in 1856. His will is extensive and shows his desire to ensure an equal, if gendered, distribution of his estate. It reveals that Charles was a significant property owner in addition to the 80 acres he farmed. The first two pages are largely concerned with the distribution of real estate and the income derived from it to be given to his two daughters. Through a series of trusts Mary Bayley Whitehouse inherited seven tenanted houses in Cock Street, Darlaston from which she was to receive the rents. These, Charles instructed, were to be kept in good order and repair. Elizabeth Bills Lister was to receive the same and in the same manner from property she inherited in Blakemore Lane, shops and houses in Pinfold Lane, and two houses and shops in Eldon Street. Elizabeth also received the land at Heath Fields ‘late in the occupation of Joseph Cockram’. In the event of the death of either sister without lawful issue, their share of Charles’ property was to be divided equally between the surviving sister and her two brothers. In leaving his daughters’ shares of his estate in trust, a common practice for the time, Charles Green’s legal authority extended beyond his death. Whilst in some ways this limited his daughters’ financial freedom, his stipulation that the money so derived was, in each case, for their ‘sole use and benefit’ protected it legally from their present or any future husbands. Such inheritance strategies attempted to give married women some financial security at a time when, upon marriage, women became the ‘property’ of their husbands and lost control of their finances unless marriage settlements had been drawn up beforehand.

Charles’ property in Church Street together with a brewhouse and malthouses in the occupation of his sons and the houses (about eight) in Washington Row were given to his son George. Five properties in King Street were given to son Charles. Both sons inherited their share of their father’s estate outright.

Lengthy instructions were given in the event of Charles’ trustees, Samuel Mills and William Carter, dying, neglecting, refusing or desiring to be discharged from their duties. In addition, the trustees were to sell Charles’ personal estate including his household goods and furniture and to call in the money owed to him to settle any outstanding debts and to pay his funeral and testamentary expenses. The residue was to be divided into four equal parts amongst his four children. In order that the trustees and executors of his estate could carry out their responsibilities, they were empowered from time to time to deduct from the estate the costs and expenses they incurred.

The 1849 Poll Books for Darlaston (recording those eligible to vote) gives Charles Green’s place of abode as a freehold house Church Street. Charles Allen Green of Church Street had a freehold house in Washington Row, and George Washington Green, also resident in Church Street, had a freehold warehouse and shops Bell Street.

What is unknown at present is when and why the Greens went to New York and what prompted their return.

Sources

London Gazette, 12 March 1846 (1846) part 1, p.1049

W. Parson and T. Bradshaw, Staffordshire General and Commercial Directory, (1818)

Pigot and Co., National Commercial Directory [Part 2: Nottinghamshire–Yorkshire and North Wales] for 1828–29 (London and Manchester: J. Pigot and Co., 1828)

Pigot and Co., National Commercial Directory, [Derby–South Wales] (London: J. Pigot and Co. 1835)

Poll Books Darlaston (1849)

Report to the Commissioners on the Employment of Children (1843)

SRO, D1149/1, St Lawrence’s Parish Register, 1539–1855, Darlaston

SRO, D5728/1, St Lawrence’s Parish Register, 1838–1987, Darlaston

TNA, HO 107/979/4, Census 1841

TNA, HO 107/2022, Census 1851

TNA, RG 9/2010, Census 1861

TNA, IR23/80, Land Tax Redemption, Darlaston, Staffordshire, (1798)

TNA, PROB 11/2240, will of Charles Green, 17 Oct 1856

William White, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire (Sheffield: 1834)

Thanks to Abigail Mackay for assisting with this research.

This is a work in progress subject, to change as new research is conducted.

Archangel Mats is not a Swedish Tennis Player

By Peter Collinge

Archangel mats appear a number of times in the overseers’ vouchers for Uttoxeter prompting us to ask what they were and what they were used for.

Archangel mats (sometimes referred to as Russian or bass mats in the vouchers) were produced in substantial numbers and exported through the port of Archangel averaging 905,000 pieces annually in the period 1837–1842. The mats, made from sedge and flags (aquatic plants with long narrow leaves), were durable and close textured. They had several uses including for packing around household furniture when moving and for covering trunks and cases. They were supplied to Uttoxeter’s brickyard where they may have been used to protect the clay bricks whilst they were being dried out before firing. They were also supplied to the workhouse garden where they would have been used to protect fruit trees and to cover cold frames and cloches to protect young and tender plants from frost and bright sunlight early in the growing season. Aquatias noted that, ‘Experienced growers only spread the mats when the bell-glasses turn white with frost, and take them away as soon as the glass is thawed. To save the trouble of shading with mats, certain growers prefer shading with limewash’.

Gardener and nurseryman William Rogers (see separate entry) supplied mats on three occasions between 1824 and 1834. On the last occasion ‘24 large Russia mats’ were supplied at a cost of £1 18s 0d. Rogers appears to have been making a decent profit on this transaction as in the early 1840s Archangel mats were being sold on the London market at £3 10s per 100 including duty at five per cent. Two years earlier Porter and Keates had supplied two dozen Archangel mats for £1 13s 0d.

Sources

P. Aquatias, Intensive Culture of Vegetables on the French System (1913. Carlisle, Massachusetts: Applewood Books, 2009)

Graham Brooks, ‘Industrial History of Cumbria, brick-making’,

www.cumbria-industries.org.uk/a-z-of-industries/brick-making/ accessed 10/01/18

J. R. McCulloch, A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical and Historical of Commerce and Navigation (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1844)

SRO, D3891/6/32/4/11, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 31 Mar 1826

SRO, D3891/6/32/18/4, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 4 Aug 1824

SRO, D3891/6/39/5/15, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 31 March 1832

SRO, D3891/6/40/10/9, Uttoxeter Overseers’ Vouchers, 31 Jan 1834

The Tradesman or Commercial Magazine, vol.11 (July–December 1813) (London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1813)

This is a work in progress, subject to change as new research is conducted.

Elizabeth Higginbotham (b.1804), Seamstress, Colwich

By Peter Collinge

Thus far Elizabeth Higginbotham is one of the few businesswomen to emerge from the vouchers who supplied any of Staffordshire’s parish overseers with goods or services. The explanation for this is not clear at present. It is certainly not because it was unusual to find women in business at this time, but may reflect the types of goods and services required by the overseers and the nature of the businesses in which many women could be found. Occasionally, we come across bills signed by women working in a family business but whose names do not appear in trade directories or on billheads.

Between 12 March 1829 and 22 January 1835 Elizabeth Higginbotham submitted 16 bills to Colwich’s overseers of the poor for a range of items she made including petticoats, frocks, caps, dresses and shirts. She also supplied drapery items. The aggregated value of goods totalled £6 11s 2d. The highest bill, for making clothes for Thomas Buckley’s three daughters and two sons totalled £0 19s 8d. It was submitted on 26 November 1829 and settled on 29, a quick turnaround for a parish bill. The lowest value bill for drapery items, costing £0 2s 2d, was settled on 7 November 1834. Like the bill for Buckley’s children, most of the bills provide the names of the families in receipt of the goods including Jane Tooth, Widow Tooth’s daughter; Margaret Bowvin and Francis Elsmore (four times); Thomas Buckley; Mary Rocks child, John Ansell’s boys (twice), Mary Shelly (three times); Sarah Yates’ children (six times); Edward Ansell, and Richard Ansell.

Elizabeth, born in Staffordshire in 1804, was married to Joseph Higginbotham, (b.1805 in Warwickshire). The Higginbothams lived in Great Haywood. In the 1851 Census Joseph, a stone cutter, and Elizabeth were living with two daughters, Ann, a ‘servant at home’ aged 19, and Henryetta aged 13. Ten years later, Joseph described himself as an agricultural labourer in the census and Ann was the only daughter listed. No daughters are listed in the 1871 Census, but living with Joseph and Elizabeth was a granddaughter Henrietta aged seven. For the first time in the 1881 Census another daughter Elizabeth (b.1837) is mentioned; like her mother she was a seamstress. Elizabeth the elder was a widow by this time. In all the census returns, Elizabeth’s occupation is not listed.  Neither Parson and Bradshaw’s 1818 directory nor White’s 1834 directory has any listing for either Joseph or Elizabeth Higginbotham.

Sources

SRO, D24/A/PO/1592–2016, Colwich Overseers’ Vouchers, 12 Mar 1829–22 Jan 1835

TNA, HO107/1999, Census 1851

TNA, RG9/1909, Census 1861

TNA, RG10/2820, Census 1871

TNA, RG11/2691, Census 1881

This is a work in progress subject to change as new research is conducted.

Richard Hayne’s (1723–1787) Memorandum on Uttoxeter Workhouse, 1782

By Peter Collinge

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Amongst the papers of the Fitzherbert family of Tissington, Derbyshire, there is a bundle of miscellaneous items including a description of Uttoxeter workhouse, its management and the activities of its inmates in the second half of the eighteenth century. From the document, it is not clear why the memorandum was written or to whom it was addressed, but it may have been prompted by planned changes to the way in which workhouses were established as a result of Gilbert’s Act of the same year.

Richard Hayne was the second of five children born to John Hayne (b. circa 1688) of Uttoxeter and his wife Lettice Leighton (bapt. 11 Jan 1690). Richard was baptised on 26 March 1723. He was apprenticed to a Derby attorney William Turner in 1742 and appointed as a Justice of the Peace for Derbyshire in 1755, the year after he married Mary Newton at St Oswald’s parish church, Ashbourne. He spent some years living in Uttoxeter, but his main residence was Ashbourne Green Hall. The Hayne family also owned a number of other properties in Ashbourne including the Green Man inn and the Old House in Church Street used as a dower house. Richard died at Bath in 1787 and was buried in the churchyard of All Saints’, Weston. After Richard’s death, his widow moved to the Old House, remaining there until her death in 1802.

The memorandum offers one person’s perspective of the state of the Uttoxeter workhouse and its management before the construction of the one designed by Thomas Gardner which opened in 1789. Hayne’s views emphasise its poor state before his appointment as an inspector, the improvements made whilst he was in post and its decline once again after he left.

He starts the memorandum by recalling events of more than thirty years previously when Uttoxeter’s numerous poor were ‘constantly erecting cottages and enclosing small [plots] of land which they considered as their own, making careful not to change their place of settlement’. The workhouse itself was ‘mostly filled with old persons and children perhaps from 40–60’. Many other poor people received outdoor relief ranging from one to three or four shillings a week. The overseers, chosen usually from ‘the lower sort of Trades People’, sent provisions to the workhouse where ‘some of the old men there distributed it’, not just to the inmates but to others who came for their dinners. The problem was exacerbated, according to Hayne, because those who went to the workhouse for their meal had a tendency to pocket the victuals and carry them away.

Hayne’s other main concern was that the ‘Poor of the workhouse had no employ and ran about the town at pleasure by which habit the children were ignorant, idle and impudent’. The problem of how to ‘amend this bad and expensive conduct’ was discussed frequently by the gentlemen of Uttoxeter who attended the parish vestry. Remonstrating with the overseers proved ineffectual. Consequently the vestry proposed that ‘two Gentlemen should be added to the official overseers who could spare time to inspect’ the workhouse. Hayne and a Major Gardener were thus appointed. ‘Our first step’, wrote Hayne, was to ‘advertise for a person as Manager of the Workhouse’. They got one from Wolverhampton at £24 a year ‘or thereabouts for himself, his wife and his daughter’.

Hayne’s and Gardener’s next step was to inspect the workhouse where they ‘found a room full of broken spinning wheels … We directed these implements to be thoroughly repaired’. The boys and girls were then taught to spin and knit linen and wool, and the ‘old people as were able had their allotment of such work as suited them best’. The House was ‘whitewashed and cleaned in a wholesome manner’. Rooms were inspected on a weekly basis. As the workhouse manager was ‘qualified to instruct the children … in reading, writing and accompting’, copy books and reading books were procured for their education. For the sake of their health the children were permitted to play in a large yard attached to the workhouse where a palisade and locked gate were fixed. A boy, seated in a box, was to unlock the gate and admit in or out ‘all proper persons’.

Gardener’s and Hayne’s role as inspectors lasted for a year, during which time they alternated their duties every two weeks. Hayne claimed that he scarcely missed a day, sometimes carrying out unannounced inspections twice a day. He visited the market to see the butcher’s meat (usually animal muscle tissue) being weighed and put his mark next to the entry in the general account book. He also did this for the flour, wool, hemp and other materials brought into the workhouse. Outdoor relief (except during sickness) was stopped as was the practice of feeding any other than workhouse inmates.

As a result of the inspectors’ endeavours the workhouse was transformed: ‘From a most filthy, dirty place the House became perfectly sweet, clean and wholesome’. The inmates became industrious and the children ‘attained an attention to Business & were (from Parental Homebread (sic)  Brutality) Civilised and fited (sic) to be put out as Parish Apprentices into any decent families’. The spinning of linen yarn for shirts and worsted produced a sufficient amount to make stockings and ‘to be sent out to be woven into liney wolsey for coats and waistcoats for the Men and Boys and Gowns and Petticoats for the Women and Girls’.

After his term of office Hayne removed to Ashbourne, the major returned to his regiment and a contested county election ‘divided the friendship of the Gentlemen [of Uttoxeter and the] workhouse gradually sunk into its former state’.

How much of Hayne’s account we accept at face value is difficult to say. Frederick Eden’s State of the Poor certainly confirms many of the practices Hayne found on his arrival at Uttoxeter workhouse, but the extent to which the workhouse and its inmates were transformed within the space of a year is open to question.

Sources

Derbyshire Record Office, D239/Z/6, Fitzherbert of Tissington Papers, Memorandum Uttoxeter Workhouse 10 May 1782

Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor, A History of the Labouring Classes in England, 3 vols (London: 1797)

Adrian Henstock (ed.), A Georgian Country Town: Ashbourne 1725–1825:  Fashionable Society (Ashbourne: Ashbourne Local History Group, 1989)

Alannah Tomkins, The Experience of Urban Poverty, 1723–82 (Manchester: MUP, 2006)

www.archerfamily.org.uk/family/hayne.htm accessed 6 Mar 2018

www.batharchives.co.uk/sites/bath_record_office/filesWES%20Inscriptions accessed 6 Mar 2018

This is a work in progress, subject to change as new research is conducted.

Matthew Woodward (1794–1857), Woollen and Linen Draper, Haberdasher and Deputy Postmaster, Rugeley, Staffordshire

By Peter Collinge

Between November 1826 and July 1832 Woodward submitted four bills to the Colwich overseers totalling £1 11s 0½d for flannel, linen cloth, worsted stockings and haberdashery items. Parson and Bradshaw’s directory does not list Woodward, however, Pigot’s 1828 directory reveals that he was a linen and woollen draper. Like many in his trade, his billheads show that he was also a silk mercer, hosier and haberdasher. He also had another occupation as Rugeley’s deputy post master.

The Rugeley post office was established in January 1830. The position of deputy (for which a bond of £300 was payable marking Woodward out as a person of means) was held initially by John Wood, but he resigned within 12 months. Woodward (listed as a draper in the post office appointment books) was engaged on 6 January 1831.

The roles of deputy postmaster and postmaster were ones that carried with them responsibility, and depended upon trustworthiness and creditworthiness so it comes as something of a surprise to note that in November 1831, less than a year into his new job, the London Gazette records that a commission of bankruptcy was issued against Woodward, ‘mercer and draper, dealer and chapman’ on 3 November 1831. The commissioners proposed to meet at 12 noon in the Talbot Arms, Rugeley, on 23 February 1832 to make a first and final dividend.

During this period, and indeed afterwards, Woodward kept the position of deputy postmaster. As limited liability in business did not come into being until the 1850s, those declared bankrupt were required by law to declare all their assets, not just those in the business affected by bankruptcy. Technically, therefore, the income derived from Woodward’s position in the post office would have been taken into consideration by the bankruptcy commissioners. They may have decided that the best and quickest way to ensure that Woodward’s creditors received a dividend was to allow him to continue to operate as the deputy postmaster. Indeed, it may be surmised that despite the bankruptcy proceedings, Woodward was not fundamentally poor at business. In a credit-dependent era, it is likely that his bankruptcy was occasioned by demand for payment by another person in the credit chain who was in difficulty. Whatever the cause, the outcome was that Woodward ceased to operate as a draper. White’s 1834 directory lists his only occupation as that of postmaster in Horse Fair, as does the 1841 Census (in a property owned by William Otty according to the tithe award). The 1844 Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons list Woodward as one of the people to whom ‘half-sheets of postage free paper will be sent for sale’. He resigned from his position in 1847; bookbinder Samuel Cheshire the younger was appointed in his stead.

Woodward married Jane Fortescue by licence at St Augustine’s, Rugeley, on 23 December 1823. The ceremony was witnessed by Rebecca Hart and Samuel Fortescue. All were literate. Samuel Fortescue was a surgeon in Horse Fair.

In the Census returns of 1841, 1851 and 1861 no children of Matthew and Jane Woodward are recorded. The 1851 Census records the pair as having a house servant, Elizabeth Marlow, aged 23. Intriguingly, the 1851 Census lists Woodward as a maltster, but he does not appear as such in any trade directory of the 1820s or ‘30s. In White’s 1851 directory, however, Woodward is listed as a maltster in Heron’s Nest Street. How Woodward moved from being a draper to post master to maltster is unknown, but he must have made or acquired money somewhere along the line to set up or take over a malthouse because malting was an expensive, highly regulated and heavily taxed trade. The law required commercial maltsters to be registered and to take out annual licences backed by guarantors. Few could afford the costs involved. Furthermore, the complexity of the malting process meant that it was not a business easily accessible to newcomers.

Woodward died in 1857. His funeral took place on 14 December at St Augustine’s, Rugeley. His widow, aged 70, was living alone by the time of the 1861 Census.

Sources

HMSO, Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons, 20 vols (1844), vol. XLV

Henry D. Barton, Analytical Digest of Cases Published in the Law Journal Reports, vol. XI, new series vol. II (London:  James Holmes, 1833)

British Postal Museum, POST 58/39, Appointments Register for Deputy Postmasters, 1777–1849

Peter Collinge, ‘A Genteel Hand in the Malt Business: Barbara Ford (1755–1841) of Ashbourne’, Midland History 39:1 (2014), 110–132

George Elwick, The Bankrupt Directory being a complete register of all the bankrupts with their residences, trades and dates when they appeared in the London Gazette December 1820–April 1843 (1843)

London Gazette, vol. 1 (London: 1833), 212

William Parson and Thomas Bradshaw, Staffordshire General and Commercial Directory, (1818)

Pigot, Directory of Staffordshire (1828)

Staffordshire Name Index, B/A/15/644, Tithe awards, 1836–1845

SRO, D24/A/PO/1496, Colwich Overseers’ Vouchers, 17 Nov 1826

SRO, D24/A/PO/1510, Colwich Overseers’ Vouchers, 27 Mar 1827

SRO, D24/A/PO/1705, Colwich Overseers’ Vouchers, 7 April 1831

SRO, D24/A/PO/1816b, Colwich Overseers’ Vouchers, 19 Jul 1832

SRO, D1454/1/12–17, St Augustine’s, Rugeley, Parish Register

TNA, HO 107/973/18, Census 1841

TNA, HO 107/2015, Census 1851

TNA, RG 9/1978, Census 1861

William White, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire (Sheffield: 1834)

William White, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire (Sheffield: 1851)

This is a work in progress, subject to change as new research becomes available.