Act 17
John Farndale and the Industrial
Revolution
Family accounts of the essence of the
late eighteenth century and its transition into the Industrial Revolution.
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This
is a new experiment. Using Google’s Notebook LM, listen to an AI powered
podcast summarising this page. This should only be treated as an
introduction, and the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong.
There are a some instances in this podcast where there are mistakes about the
exact relationships and an overlap of generations. However it does provide an
introduction to the themes of this page, which are dealt with in more depth
below. Listen to the podcast for an overview, but it doesn’t replace the text
below, which provides the accurate historical record. |
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Dickens’
imagination of the industrial revolution |
John Farndale
first wrote about Saltburn-by-the-Sea
and the surrounding area at a time when it was evolving from a small fishing village, well known for its
smuggling history, into a Victorian seaside resort, with its own railway
station and grand hotel. John’s work, which has a Victorian flamboyancy about
it, is a contemporaneous record of the transition from a nostalgically
remembered rural landscape, to the excitement of industrial revolution. Though
clearly regretting the loss of a romantically remembered past, John was no
critic of technological innovation. Indeed his own life embraced a new world of
opportunity and risk.
Scene 1 - The end of a rural idyll
In A Guide to Saltburn by the
Sea and the Surrounding District, in 1864, John wrote When only four
or five years of age I remember my father’s father telling what was done in
those days and the old time before them. Many things then told were deemed most
important to those of us who then lived together in a state of primitive
simplicity, far removed from the occurrences which now surround us.
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1791 to 1878
The Author A man of sphinxian complexity who wrote extensively and has passed
down stories of the family and of change in early Victorian Yorkshire |
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The
transcripts of John Farndales books about a time of industrial change |
Janet Dowey later wrote The
Kilton John Farndale
knew and loved had changed beyond belief. Several of the very old and large
estates were less crowded than they had been, the small cottages had given way
gradually to shape a farm worthy of the person having such money to improve it.
The
industrial revolution was slowly changing life in Kilton.
Craftsmen left small villages to meet new centralised opportunities in the
towns. There was a revolution in farming methods and farming machinery.
Gradually towns replaced villages as magnets for moving populations. During the
Napoleonic Wars the price of food was kept at a fairly high level. After the
war ended, the price of grain fell to one of its lowest levels, along with
falling meat prices, and disastrous harvests. This provided an impetus to new
methods of agricultural efficiency. Landlords enlarged the farms and attracted
tenant farmers with the resource for modernisation. The mechanisation of
farming practice and the progressive growth of urban factories together
drastically altered rural life. Turnpike roads, the new railway and the canal
networks brought revolutionary economic and technological change. Enclosure and
amalgamation of the Kilton village farms
accelerated by the 1860s, changing the village forever.
Kilton’s fate was fundamentally changed by
the combined forces of the monstre farm and
Industrial Revolution.
John Farndale
lamented
And now
dear Farndale, the best of friends must part,
I bid you
and your little Kilton a long and final farewell.
Time was
on to all our precious boon,
Time is
passing away so soon,
Time know
more about his vast eternity,
World
without end oceans without shore.
Amidst his
nostalgia, John
Farndale was an admirer of Victorian innovation. Now much has changed,
we oft times have looked and looked again, but no corner of this large farm has
been neglected. Witness, this rich stack yard of 100 acres of wheat, the staff
of life, and 100 more, oats, beans, peas, hay, clover, potatoes and turnips
piled up against the winter storms. In the fold are housed 100 head of sheep, a
stable with 14 farming horses, besides the young horses, pigs and geese in
abundance, carts, wagons, ploughs and harrows and all implements.
John
recalled Kilton’s pre industrial past when
spinning wheels and woollen wheels were industriously used by every housewife
in the district, and long before there were such things in the world as Lucifer
match boxes and telegraphs, or locomotives built to run, without horse or
bridle, at the astonishing rate of sixty miles an hour.
Lucifer
matches were early chemical matches which replaced fire lighting by flint
John Farndale wrote in 1864 that from Saltburn south east there is a fine drive on a fertile ridge
of land to towering Huntcliff, where the scenery on
all sides is of the most delightful character, where “every prospect pleases”,
and the eye may gaze with rapture on a vast expanse of sea, land, woodland and
moorland. On this ridge stands the village of Kilton,
the author’s birthplace. The picturesque appearance of this place, its
antique character, and the great longevity of its inhabitants strike home to my
fondest and earliest recollections. I frequently imagine I still hear sounding
in my ears the things our father’s fathers told us, and which were done in
their day and in the old time before them. The days of ignorance, however, have
departed. Our privileges are much greater than our father’s fathers of old
enjoyed; and, therefore, as the march of intellect moves on at that rapid pace,
more is expected at our hands. Yea, during the last fifty years Reform has been
actively at work, and through the length and breadth of the land Improvement
has advanced with rapidity far beyond all preceding times. We can now by
telegraph communicate intelligence to all parts of the world – we can breakfast
in Edinburgh in the morning, dine in London the same day, and proceed to
France. What a contrast to what was done seventy years ago! Men at that time
had to grope their way, as it were, in the world – though many persons even
then as now rose to eminence and wealth.
John Farndale
recalled that the little farms were joined together, about 150 acres each.
Every farmer had to move to a new farm. The sons of Robert Jolly each moved
away at this time, one became a lifeguard to George III and the other
eventually became a minister. William Bulmer was another native of Kilton and
married with nine children, he made his living buying and selling, but all his
children moved away into 'respectable' situations. Significant numbers of
children of Kilton farmers moved
away from the district and from agriculture. John Farndale wrote and now
they disappear, but where are they gone, I know not.
Come
mothers and fathers
Throughout
the land
And don’t
criticize
What you
can’t understand
Your sons
and your daughters
Are
beyond your command
Your old
road is rapidly agin’
Please
get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the
times they are a-changin’
Scene 2 - The Innovators
In 1864, John Farndale
wrote, Long live Messrs Bolcklow & Vaughan,
the first high spirited gentlemen, and others also, who by their skill and
capital are bringing out resources of this greatly favoured district, and thus
giving employment to thousands.
Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan formed a new industrial
partnership in 1840. In 1846, Bolckow and Vaughan
built their first blast furnaces and ironworks at Witton Park, west of Bishop
Auckland, where coal from Witton Park Colliery was at hand to make coke, and
ironstone was easily imported from Whitby
on the coast. The pig iron from Witton was transported to Middlesbrough for further forging and
casting.
John Farndale
was also deferential of Mr Joseph Pearse who has long since earned for
himself a good name and independence. He is a friend and a friend indeed, and
as a useful member of Society, as an active and intelligent worker for the
benefit of the public at large, and lastly, as a worthy man, whose acts of
charity have done much to lessen the amount of human suffering, his name will
be handed down from generation to generation with every mark of honour and
respect.
Henry Bolckow
John Vaughan George
Stephenson Edward Pease Joseph Pease Henry Pease John Marley
Joseph Pease
was a Quaker, born on 22 June 1799 into a wealthy family. He initially worked
in the wool factories at Darlington
which were owned by his father, Edward Pease who also partnered George
Stephenson in his engine factory at Walker, Newcastle, and was a board member
of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (“S&DR”) where he became
known as the Father of the Railways.
Joseph
became treasurer of the S&DR at the age of 25. This was a time of expansion
of the railway with the objective to link the Durham coal fields to a port on
the North Sea. The company sought a site for a terminus on the lower Tees.
Further up, the river was treacherous and almost unnavigable, and only small
craft of shallow draught could reach Stockton
and Yarm. A new port was identified, to be called Port Darlington. However
there was heavy opposition from Stockton
and Yarm industrialists, who knew a new port lower down the river would steal
much of their business. It was Joseph Pease who led the lobbying of parliament
to grant the necessary Act for the Middlesbrough Railway Extension.
With his
five sons and his brother Henry, Joseph formed a company called Pease &
Partners. He offered Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan
land Middlesbrough on easy terms and
gave them letters of introduction to start their iron business.
Joseph was
elected to Parliament in 1832, representing South Durham, and became the first
Quaker to sit in the Commons. He campaigned against corruption and slavery and
was a proponent of human rights and religious freedom. He pursued a clause in
the Metropolitan Police Bill prohibiting bull and bear baiting, and also sat on
many committees dealing with industry. Re-elected in 1835 and 1837 he
eventually resigned from parliament in 1841 because of his heavy business
commitments.
In 1850,
Vaughan and his mining geologist, John Marley, discovered iron ore near Eston
in the Cleveland Hills. In time it would transpire that Eston was located over
a vein which formed the Cleveland Ironstone Formation, which was already being
mined in Grosmont by Losh, Wilson and Bell. To make
use of the ore being mined at Eston, in 1851 Bolckow
and Vaughan built a blast furnace at South Bank in Middlesbrough.
This was the first blast furnace to be built on Teesside, on what was later
nicknamed the Steel River.
As the
railways pushed east beyond Redcar, Pease & Partners expanded into ironstone mining. In 1853
they opened the Hutton Lowcross mine near Guisborough.
Soon, they owned Upleatham, Skinningrove and Hob Hill (Saltburn) mines, between
them annually producing almost a million tonnes of ore. By 1875, eight and a
half million tonnes of ironstone, limestone, coal and coke were being
transported, most of which was used in Teesside’s iron industry.
Shortly
after retiring from parliament, in 1844 Joseph Pearse bought several fishermen’s
cottages on the seafront at Marske, demolished them and then used the site to
build Cliff House where his family spent their summers.
It was from
there one afternoon in 1859 that his brother Henry took a stroll over the
sandbanks to discover the old village of
Saltburn. He followed the coastal path towards Old Saltburn and saw a
prophetic vision of a town arising on the cliff and the quiet, unfrequented and
sheltered glen turned into a lovely garden. Returning breathless, he stated
his intention to build a new town on top of the cliff. With some help from
brother Joseph and the S&DR, he succeeded, naming it Saltburn by the Sea. The
Pease family formed the Saltburn Improvement Company (“SIC”), which
purchased land from the Earl of Zetland. They employed George Dickinson as
their surveyor who designed a grid-iron street layout, with as many houses as
possible having sea views. The best locations were secured for the company and
plots were then sold to private developers. The S&DR was being extended and
reached Saltburn from Redcar in 1861.
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Saltburn by the Sea, Victorian new town John
Farndale focused much of his writing on the new seaside town of Saltburn by the
Sea, built beside the Old Saltburn of smuggling repute. It was a place of
Victorian optimism and inspiration, driven by the arrival of the railways and
the richness of Cleveland’s ironstone deposits |
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Huntcliff, Saltburn by the Sea Find a vantage point on the towering Hunt Cliffs to
look down over Saltburn and Cat Nab, and the alum mines. It was here, John
tells us, that when a French Napoleonic ship threatened out to sea, a band of
local women dressed in red along the cliffs to make the French believe that
an army of redcoats was ready to welcome any attack |
Middlesbrough grew at an astonishing
rate from 40 inhabitants in 1829 to 7,600 in 1851, 19,000 in 1861 and 40,000 in
1871. Bolckow and Vaughan’s business drove the
dramatic growth of Middlesbrough and
the production of coal and iron in the north-east of England in the nineteenth
century.
By 1864,
when John
Farndale was writing, the assets of Bolcklow and
Vaughan included iron mines, collieries, and limestone quarries across
Cleveland, County Durham and Weardale, with iron and steel works extending over
700 acres along the banks of the River Tees. The business was incorporated that
year as Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Limited with
capital of £2.5 million, making it the largest company to have been formed up
to that time.
Vaughan died
in 1868. Of the relationship between Vaughan and Bolckow,
the Institution of Civil Engineers wrote that there was indeed something
remarkable in the thorough division of labour in the management of the affairs
of the firm. While possessing the most unbounded confidence in each other, the
two partners never interfered in the slightest degree with each other's work.
Mr. Bolckow had the entire management of the
financial department, while Mr. Vaughan as worthily controlled the practical
work of the establishment.
Chris Scott Wilson has written
more about Joseph
Pease, the man who started it all and about Bolckow
and Vaughan.
Scene 3 - A Brave New World
Many very
remarkable discoveries and inventions were made. Most memorable among these was
the discovery (made by all the rich men in England at once) that women and
children could work for twenty four hours a day in factories without any of
them dying or becoming excessively deformed. This was known as the Industrial
Revolution and completely changed the faces of the North of England.
At the
same time there was an Agricultural Revolution which was caused by the
invention of turnips and the discovery that Trespassers could be Prosecuted.
This was a Good Thing too, because previously the Land had all been rather
common.
(1066 and
all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930)
Change is a
constant through Britain’s history. It was not exclusive to the industrial
change of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Change had influenced our
family story since and before the Middle Ages. There was significant change
between the Norman eleventh century and the Tudor fifteenth century, which we
have witnessed in earlier Acts. There was economic change in England after the
Black Death and the improvements in living standards that followed. Populations
rose across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and growing
demands were met by intensification of agriculture and new diverse economic
activities. The period immediately after Restoration in 1660 was also a period
of economic change.
By the
eighteenth century Britain and Holland were the wealthiest nations, even though
India and China were the main exporters of manufactured goods. From the late
eighteenth century new innovations including mechanisation and artificial
fertilisers enabled exponential growths in population. Britain was about to
experience a technological revolution which was unique in the world. Disraeli
would call Britain the workshop of the world, while William Blake would
emphasise the dark, satanic mills.
The subsistence
economy which dominated our story up to the late eighteenth century was subject
to regular famine, plague and other disasters. Technological advantages brought
new choices for individuals and the potential for some surplus cash with which
to seek new options and experience. Since Norman times, there had been but a
tiny proportion of literate people, but slow educational changes brought a
higher level of literacy, and the new ideas of the Enlightenment brought a
steady realisation of counter arguments to ideas which had been long accepted
without debate.
However the
centralisation of populations on factories and towns led to new levels of urban
poverty. Technical advance enabled the
control and organisation of society. In time it would also lead to military
mechanisation and industrial killing power. Warfare has always been brutal. Our
medieval military ancestors
lived in a world of hacking with swords, filling the air with arrows, and poor
medical care. Life as a soldier on the medieval battlefield was brutal. Yet
mechanisation and railway transportation would soon bring a new scale of
devastation, which we are yet to meet in future accounts of our
family history.
As this
period of rapid change came about, it was accompanied by a longing for
unspoiled nature and rural scenes, which emerged in art, literature and music.
The poet James Thomson wrote I hate the clamours of the smoky towns, but
must admire the bliss of rural clowns and A sylvan life till then the
natives led. John
Farndale was clearly a proponent of Victorian innovation, but he missed a primitive
simplicity, far removed from the occurrences which now surround us.
The
Industrial Revolution might have been perceived differently by those who lived
through this period of change. It was sometimes experienced as periods of
sudden innovative bursts and times of rapid change. Sometimes it was witnessed
as change which evolved more slowly over generations.
Robert
Tombs, The English and their History, 2023 is one of many sources that
has pondered over the reasons for the unique British experience of industrial
revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Success in
Britain’s ongoing struggle against France had provided its dominance of trade.
It accompanied an expansionist period of Britain’s history. Over 80% of
Britain’s tax revenue was spent on war in the eighteenth century. The Royal
Navy received 10% of national income. However, it is difficult to say that
victory in war, and foreign and imperial trade, caused the industrial
revolution. Holland, Spain and France also had significant imperial interests,
but did not witness a concurrent industrial revolution.
There was
also a domestic element. The political and legal system provided an arena for
rapid change. That said, the high level of taxes and trade regulations would
not today be thought to be conducive to growth.
The
revolution was no doubt given impetus by land owners and capitalist interests.
It may also have been the product of improvements in standards of living. From
the late seventeenth century, there was a new appetite among populations beyond
basic needs, but with appetites for comfort, novelty and pleasure. They sought
clocks, comfortable furniture, mirrors, earthenware and china.
Watches became a fashion item, and by the 1790s there were 800,000 silver and
400,000 gold watches in England.
There was a
particular revolution in clothing. New regional styles emerged. Clothing became
an important mark of social status, and whilst unwritten rules did not allow
dressing to match one’s betters, folk did wear clothes to demonstrate that they
were as good as their fellows. Cotton was adopted for its colour and
brightness. Goods were bought for enjoyment and self
invention. There was a move away from Protestant thrift and saving to a
more romantic work ethic driven by self expression
and ambition.
People
consumed more tobacco, sugar, coffee, fresh bread, alcohol and particularly
tea.
Spending
more required people to work longer hours. More married women took jobs.
Working hours reached 65 to 70 hours a week compared to 40 to 50 hours today.
It was often the new earnings of young folk and married women which enabled the
acquisition of new luxuries.
The
Industrial Revolution was driven significantly by domestic demand.
The
industrial revolution also coincided with cultural, political and scientific
liberties arising out of the Enlightenment. There was a new interest in
science, experiment, literacy and education. Britain started to acquire an
unusually high level of literacy and education. Working class children often
received at least some schooling. The majority of workers were able to sign
their names. Two thirds of boys took apprenticeships in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, which required the prospect of high wages to make the
cost worthwhile. An Ealing gardener paid 6d a week to educate his two children.
Enlightenment science generally had little connection with industrial
technology. However industrial invention arose out of the Enlightenment.
This was
also a period of discovery of new sources of energy, particularly coal.
Change
was significantly driven by technological changes. The ten macro inventors
of the eighteenth century were
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Iron smelting with coke |
1709 |
Bypassed the need for charcoal |
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Steam engine |
1712 |
Allowed the pumping out of deep coal mines |
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The flying shuttle |
1733 |
Sped up weaving |
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The spinning jenny |
1765 |
Multiplied the effectiveness of hand spinning |
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Water Frame |
1769 |
Used power for spinning with rollers |
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Condenser |
1769 |
Provided economical steam power |
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Mule |
1779 |
Allowed mass production of high quality yarn |
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Rolling Mill |
1783 |
Sped up the production of iron |
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Loom |
1787 |
Enabled water and steam power to make cloth |
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Engineering |
1724 to 1792 |
The father of modern engineering, founded the Society of Civil
Engineers in 1771 |
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Pottery |
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Since the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Francis Bacon had opened up a tradition
of scientific thinking and systematic observation in Britain that spurred a
period of surprising impetus in technical advance.
New
innovative and labour saving technologies thrived in Britain because wages were
already high. Spinning jennies and other innovations were not taken up in
France where wages and demand were low, skills were basic, and expensive
technology was wasted.
A new home
grown economy evolved primarily to harness the energy of coal. This allowed
Britain to overtake its nearest economic rival, Holland. There were significant
coal deposits across Britain. Early steam power, such as Newcomen’s atmospheric
engine created a vacuum by heating and cooling steam, but it used so much coal
that it was only really viable at the pit head. However there were continual
improvements, including Watt’s condenser, which extended the use of steam.
James Watt’s
condenser of 1769 increased the efficiency of Newcomen’s rudimentary steam
engine of 1716, which provided the basis for new energy efficiency in the
nineteenth century.
The
innovations in technology themselves spurred on the extraction of coal, as the
source of power.
New methods
for the extraction of useable iron from iron ore including the development of
coke-fired blast furnaces during the eighteenth century and of the puddling process in
1783, together with Bessemer
and Siemens open-hearth processes for making mild steel, developed in the
1850s and 1860s which together with the expansion of railways to transport
materials, led to advances in metallurgy.
The combined
efficiencies in a power source, engines to convert the source into energy, and
metallurgical advances to build more engines were symbiotic.
James
Hargreave’s spinning jenny relied on his newly noticed possibilities of
multiple spindles operated by a single wheel multiplying the output of cotton
yarn by eight. Quality and efficiency was then improved by Samuel Compton’s
spinning mule and Edmund Cartwright’s loom powered by water and later adapted
to steam provided efficiency in weaving yarn into textiles.
Two
centuries later, it would be realised that these new technologies posed a significant
environmental threat.
In the
Northeast of England, Cleveland would see rapid change. Its rural landscape
would soon be dominated by a new appetite for minerals and ironstone mines emerged in
the landscape across John Farndale’s
childhood home. Towns like Middlesbrough
and Stockton became engine houses of an
industrial machine connected by railways into the new national effort.
Ambitious Victorian aspirations drove the emergence of entirely new towns like
the seaside resort of Saltburn-buy-the-Sea.
To the southwest, a mechanised textile industry emerged in Leeds, Bradford
and Wakefield which would also start to
draw in our family story.
This was a
brave new world of opportunity, and the possibility of greater earning power to
meet new aspirations, especially if the resource of the whole family, men and
women, and children, were committed to these new opportunities. The rewards
could be impressive and there was generally more food available to those who
picked up work. Malthusian restrictions that populations followed an eternal
cycle of growth and then regression as finite resources were reached, seemed to
have been overcome. With the opportunities though came new risks. A tenant
farmer worked long days, but was generally in control of the hours he worked in
the fields. The same was true of rural artisans. The discipline of the new
factories insisted on high productivity from long working days often for
relatively low pay. Many factories employed women and young children, who
tended to be less trouble than men, as their traditional obedience in the home
environment transferred to the factory. Concentrations of populations in the
towns created new social tensions. Those who found new careers as small
businessmen, such as grocers, or agents, sometimes found a new cycle of
bankruptcy and debtor’s prison, from which to pick up and start again.
In a world
of new opportunities, those still relying on their traditional agricultural
livelihoods faced new challenges of falling prices and global competition,
whilst those who moved to the towns found new risks which they would need to
learn to cope with.
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Aspiration
and achievement in the Victorian Age |
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How
agricultural practices changed over time |
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Our
family history includes experiences of high infant mortality in Victorian
times, often extreme poverty, and struggle |
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The
education of our forebears |
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The
evolution of medical care |
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Opportunities
for work as servants in households |
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The
life of children in seventeenth century to Victorian Yorkshire |
or
Go Straight to Act 18 – The
Ironstone Miners