BURY AND ITS GROWTH AS AN INDUSTRIAL TOWN
WHEN a visitor to Bury is taken to one of the hills which overlook the town, one of his first impressions will be concerned with the sight of the many tall factory chimneys which can be counted by the hundred on a clear day. Each chimney, he will quickly realise must be associated with some place where the manufacture of goods is carried on. He may feel that behind this busy industrial scene there must have been something of romance, of grim struggle, of anxious care, and of deep study leading useful discovery. Should he travel along the byways and reach the edges of the moorlands he will find many quiet valleys that retain much of their early beauty, and frequently, beside a tumbling stream in the deep cut clefts leading up to the hills, will be seen the ruins of closed mills and desolate rows of cottages. In his mind pictures may arise of busy scenes in bygone days, when the cleansing stream and the power the water could supply were used to carry on the manufactures of the countryside. The products of these early mills were carried far and wide. As time went on their fame spread throughout the world, and the town of Bury and its citizens played an honourable part in the great development.
It. was due to the plentiful water supply that Bury first attained prominence as a manufacturing district Early in the XIVth century, Flemish weavers settled in England, and their skill, exercised on the high quality wool produced in this country, led to the growth of a reputation for the production of woollen goods which England has maintained ever since. Many of these weavers settled in Manchester, to which town Queen Phillippa of Hainault and wife of Edward III. paid a visit, and some of the Flemings penetrated, through the great forest region, to the foothills of the Pennines, where abundant water could be obtained. So was brought to Bury the woollen trade which was to be the staple manufacture of the town for four hundred years.
The conditions of life were then very different from those of to-day. There was no town of more than 800 inhabitants in Lancashire in 1377, and, with very little change, the character of village life continued to the XVIIIth century. The wool used in manufacture was obtained in the fleece from the higher lands of the Pennine Range, and all the processes were carried out by home workers. The wool had first to be sorted, a process often carried out by a special worker - the stapler; then it was cleaned and, if necessary, dyed. The next process prepared the wool for spinning. In carding or combing the fibres are sorted and arranged so as to give strength to the threads formed when the wool is spun. The spinning was done by hand on Spinning Wheels, and provided much work for the women and children. One weaver could keep ten spinners busy and the work of spinning was often spread out among several cottages. The weaving was, of course, done on the hand loom and then the cloth had to be treated in a fulling mill. Here it was placed in troughs and pounded by pestles driven by a water mill and lastly cleansed from oil and grease by fuller's earth and soap.
The woollen manufacture was usually combined with farming, and many farm buildings still show the large rooms over the living quarters in which the looms were worked. Farming was also very different from that of to-day. The district would be under the control of the Lord of the Manor (Bury was at one time part of the Royal Manor of Tottington). Such land as had been cleared was worked an the " open field " system. The arable fields were divided into strips sown with crops in a definite order, and the meadow land was divided into sections, pegged out and allocated among the cattle owners by lot. After the harvest both arable and meadow land was thrown open for pasturage. The remainder of the land in use was common or waste land, on which pasturage could be found at all times of the year for the domesticated animals owned by the cottagers. The various grades of the population had certain rights of ownership and duties of service and they moved about very little from place to place. Bury was a market to which the produce of the farms and would be brought for exchange and sale from a district reaching out several miles around the town. Most of the wants of the people were supplied locally, and each district had its own smiths, carpenters, masons, clothmakers, and other craftsmen, but the distinctions between the various trades developed slowly, and through the XVth and XVIth centuries no great industrial change took place. In the reign of Henry VIII., trade and commerce began to show signs of increase and our system of weights and measures was made more definite. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a cloth inspector or "aulnager" was appointed in Bury, the title of the official being derived from the measure called the ell. The existence of these inspectors was due to several causes. The woollen goods had a high reputation on the Continent, and it was essential to maintain their quality, and also the country was in need of revenue which could be collected for the Government by these inspectors on every piece of cloth produced. Dishonest practices were also adopted by some workers, such as mixing poor quality or short staple wool, and after the fulling process, when the cloth was pegged out in the fields to dry, excessive stretching was used in this tentering process. It is interesting to know that at first Lancashire was exempted from the appointment of these inspectors, as they always gave good measure in their cloth.
During the XVIIth century, the importance of Bury as a manufacturing centre appeared to diminish. This may have been due to the fact that at this time Southern England was increasing its trade with the Continent. At this time Norwich was one of the chief centres of the woollen industry, and much iron was obtained from the Weald district of Sussex. Western England was also responding to the new trade movements set on foot by our explorers in their voyages of discovery. Northern England had not yet felt these beginnings of growth and change, and the towns and markets would not appeal to the few travellers whose records remain for us to read.
The growth of trade was destined, however, to bring prosperity to the North. The Industrial Revolution was not a sudden change, but a series of applications of new methods to manufacturing processes, which in a period of some sixty years so changed the life of a large part of the country that a comparison between the life of the earlier and of the later period can only be described as revolutionary. Lancashire was well situated to take a great part in this change.
The government of the County was in the hands of the Lords of the Manors, and there were few restrictions to hamper the growth of new industries such as existed in the older established boroughs of the South.
Property was secure, and, with its coastal outlets to Ireland, the Atlantic, and America, with its abundant water, coal, and minerals, trade in the county could easily expand.
Cotton goods had been brought from India and the East, and the manufacture of cotton had commenced in Lancashire about 1640, but the rapid growth did not begin till the rise of Liverpool, about 1750, as a port trading with North America, where colonists from England were prospering. In its early days the cotton industry followed similar methods of working to the established woollen manufacture. Merchants centred on the growing towns and markets of Liverpool and Manchester, and supplied the domestic workers with prepared warp or lengthwise threads, and raw cotton to be spun for the weft or cross threads. The raw cotton was cleansed, carded, and spun in the homes of the workers. At first the warps were of linen, brought largely from Ireland, partly because of its greater strength which was necessary to meet the tough handling the material received in the loom, and also to meet trade restrictions on the production of fabrics made wholly of cotton. Even with this assistance one hand-loom weaver could keep three or four spinners at work, and the former had often to travel round the district to collect weft from the " spinsters." The minds of inventors were turned to the problem of keeping the balance between spinners and weavers more even, and between 1730 and 1800 the workers of Lancashire were concerned with the invention of many new machines and methods which enabled much more cloth to be produced more quickly and cheaply so as to meet the growing demand for English goods.
The first of these inventions was that of the " fly-shuttle," by John Kay, of Bury, in 1733. He was born at Park, near Walmersley, in 1704, on an estate on the slopes of the hill now crowned by Grant's Tower. He was apprenticed as a reed-maker for looms, and invented the use of flattened metal wires in place of wood strips to separate the threads of the warp as they pass through the reed before the actual weaving process. To sell his goods he travelled the country by pack-horse, starting from his home on what is now a by-road passing along the higher ground above the Ramsbottom valley. The present main road through Walmersley was a later turnpike, and runs through the family estate of Kay. His next, and greatest invention, was that of the "Kay's Hands," or " picking stick," or " fly-shuttle." In his journeys Kay would see the weaver seated or standing at his loom, working the warp crossing movements by foot treadles, while the shuttle, carrying the weft thread, was thrown to and fro across the loom through the shedded warp, by each hand in turn. On a wide loom, two weavers would be necessary, one at each end of the slay, to throw the shuttle across the loom. Kay's invention consisted in placing two " hammers," one at each end of the shuttle path. These were pulled smartly against the end of the shuttle by a picking stick, which was in turn operated by a string jerked by the hand of the weaver. A left-ward jerk sent the shuttle from the right of the loom to the left and a right-ward jerk caused the shuttle to return or " fly " across the loom. Thus with one hand a weaver could operate the shuttle on the widest looms and his speed of work was at once doubled. Before the invention .was brought into general use, Kay suffered much persecution and loss. It was at first adopted by the woollen weavers, now largely settled in the West Riding of Yorkshire, who combined to resist Kay's patent rights. The cotton weavers, who already had much difficulty in securing weft, would no doubt not encourage an invention which would make their work more difficult.
Following Kay, other inventors were at work, most of whom lived in the cotton districts of Lancashire. The carding of the cotton, in which the fibres were drawn into line was then a hand process. The cards were like two brushes, one of which was moved over the other. A carding machine, invented in 1748, was introduced into Lancashire in 1760, one of the first users being the ancestors of the Peel family, then resident near Blackburn. In this machine the cards were mounted on cylinders to give continuous working. Successful attempts were now made to increase the speed of the process. Highs and Kay (of Leigh) set up a six-spindle machine in 1762, while in 1767, at Blackburn, Hargreaves built a thirty-spindle machine, but he was badly treated by those who thought that their livelihood as spinners would be lost. At this time Highs also invented a spinning machine, which could be driven by water power.
The new machines required a lot of metal in their construction, and it was about this time that coal was first widely used in the smelting of iron. The iron industry moved north and from Birmingham, the coal fields and iron mines were developed together. Charcoal was still used, and to feed the furnaces the forests of the North quickly melted away, as they had done on the chalk downs of Sussex. In the metal trades the thick bars were drawn out by passing them between successive pairs of rollers, each pair revolving at a higher speed than the preceding pair, and so reducing the cross-section of the metal. This principle was applied to cotton spinning, and a machine was perfected by Arkwright, of Preston, in 1769. From the rollers the cotton thread was made still finer since the spindles were made to revolve so as to draw the cotton at a faster speed than the last pair of rollers. Cotton could now be spun by machine with a regularity, fineness, and strength that enabled it to be used to equal the finest productions of the Eastern lands from which the industry came. The spinners were also able to produce yarns at a rate which kept weavers regularly at work, and the next series of improvements related to details. Thus Robert Kay, of Bury, son of John Kay, invented in 1760 a " Drop Box," by which various coloured threads could be used in the weft. The shuttles were contained in boxes, set over one another, which could be brought at will into line with the hammers of his father's picking motion. Figured or check fabrics could be woven more simply, and by improvements in the warp motions threads could be manipulated to give other varieties of raised or figured work. Another invention of Robert Kay was a machine to make the cards used in preparing cotton. In this machine steel wire was threaded into a band of leather, secured, bent, and cut off automatically, so that numerous rows of steel points were left projecting to act as combs for the cotton fibres. The spinning mule was the invention of Samuel Crompton, a Bolton man, in 1773, and his home at Hall-i'th'-wood, near Bradshaw, has been preserved as a most interesting museum.
The way was now ready for a vast expansion of the cotton industry. As the new machines required capital to set them up, the workers were becoming more and more dependent on the merchants who often owned the machines used by the spinner or weaver. At first the work continued to be done in the home, but gradually the machinery and workers were assembled in factories near water power.
One of the earliest and greatest of the firms which now began to flourish in Lancashire was that of the Peel family, in Bury. Coming originally from Blackburn, Robert Peel joined the firm of Haworth and Yates, with works on " Bury Ground," in 1772. Peel, from being junior partner, rapidly became the guiding mind of the business, and ultimately its leader and senior partner. The trade of the Peels, in Blackburn, had mainly been in connection with the printing of patterns on cloths, which was done by hand pressing from blocks. When more intricate patterns or designs using more than one colour were required, outlines only were printed and the colours were filled in by "pencillers," who were chiefly women. Some times the surface of the cloth had to be passed over nine times. Also much of the cloth was still a mixture of cotton and linen, and was therefore very coarse to work on. It is sometimes said that the Peel family first introduced calico printing to this country, but it appears from history that the trade had been practised in England from about 1620 and that Clayton, who lived near Preston, brought the industry to Lancashire, in 1764. A successful cylinder printing machine was patented by Bell, in 1783, some years after the Peel firm became a flourishing concern in Bury.
Peel showed great acumen in seizing on the use of the various developments then coming into use. His family had taken up the carding machine and Peel himself made a determined endeavour to secure the early use of Crompton's mule. In 1779, the works on the banks of the Irwell, at Bury, and in the surrounding districts, employed some 6,800 people, and the firm, now Peel, Yates and Co., carried on all the four branches of the cotton industry. They were spinners, using Arkwright's and Crompton's machines; weavers, with the improvements of the Kays and others on their looms ; bleachers ; and printers. These operations are to-day usually carried on in separate establishments, but in the times and circumstances of the Peel firm the convenience and financial arrangements of combined working were probably more easily attained than they would be to-day. At that time bleaching was still carried out by a natural process like the domestic laundering of clothes. The cloth was boiled in lye, which was prepared from the ashes resulting from the burning of plants called "pot-ashes" Buttermilk was also used in the process. The cloth was then spread on " crofts " (grass fields) to use the sun's rays to whiten the cloth. The growth of chemical knowledge at this time quickly affected the bleaching industry. The first change was to use sulphuric acid or " oil of vitriol " as a substitute for buttermilk, lime was then suggested for use as a bleaching agent, but the greatest change followed the discovery of a greenish gas by a Swedish chemist, Scheele, in 1774. This gas we now know as Chlorine, and it was soon found that its effect in destroying vegetable colours could be applied to cotton. The production of bleaching powder, from lime and chlorine, brought the chemical industry into Lancashire, and the manufacture of chemical products is well represented among the industries of Bury to-day. The immediate effect of the introduction of chlorine was to reduce the time occupied in bleaching from four or five weeks to as many hours, and it also enabled the work to be done in factories at any time of the year.
The bleach crofts did not disappear at once. They formed a characteristic sight of the district, appearing under the light of the sun like sheets of water. There was much temptation for theft and we read that in 1786, under the harsh penal code of the time, a croft-breaker was executed at Bolton for the theft of thirty yards of cloth valued at two shillings a yard.
Robert Peel took up each of the new processes as it arose, and his various works soon employed 10,000 people. At first he relied on designs and patterns sent down from London by coach, but later the firm employed its own pattern drawers in Bury, these men being among the best paid workers of that time.
Such large responsibilities took Peel out into the wider world of business and politics. He had married, in 1783, Ellen Yates, the daughter of his partner. In 1788, their third child and first son was born at Chamber Hall, a large house which had been improved to serve as a residence for the family. In 1790, Peel purchased land and erected mills at Tamworth, in Staffordshire. Eventually he bought Drayton Manor, and divided his time between Bury and Drayton. He became Member of Parliament for Tamworth and it is recorded that he dedicated the life of his son to the service of England, and this hope was fully realised in the career of Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister and Repealer of the Corn Laws. The period of the rise and greatest prosperity of the Peel works in Bury was momentous in the history of the country. The French Revolution had taken place in 1789, and in 1798, when the young General Bonaparte was threatening to invade England, Peel gave £10,000 to the Government in response to an appeal for money. As a Member of Parliament, Peel took an active part in all discussions relating to commerce. In order to secure trade and to obtain money to finance our war against Napoleon, many schemes were devised, and the words of Peel as a wealthy and influential manufacturer were listened to with respect. He was made a baronet in 1800 and it was this title which later descended to his more widely known son.
The rapid growth of industry had brought many changes into the life of the country, some of great benefit and others which were obviously harmful, and the minds of many people were troubled at some of the conditions which had arisen. Slavery abroad had excited the compassion of Wilberforce and others, but there was a pressing problem at home which needed early attention. The machines which had been devised could be attended, either entirely or in part, by children. Some employers treated the young workers with consideration, but in the fierce competition to supply increasing orders, and to secure big profits, many employers paid little attention to the physical and other needs of the children in their mills. They worked long hours, even when only five or six years of age, particularly the children who were sent by the Poor Law authorities from distant parts of England. In some mills double shifts were worked, the children who worked at night using the beds that the other group had left to tend the machines through the day. In order to secure better conditions, it was felt by many people that the Government would have to pass an Act of Parliament in order that all employers and overseers should act alike, and so prevent the bad employers obtaining an advantage over the good. It is almost impossible for us to realise to-day the conditions in the mills, and the fierce opposition which had to be met by Sir Robert Peel and Robert Owen in their efforts to secure the consent of Parliament to the measures they suggested. Peel himself had found that one of his own mills in Radcliffe was badly run, and that fears were rife in the district that a fever in the apprentice quarters would spread to the town. He had an investigation made by Dr. Percival, of Manchester, and it was from the report made that he introduced a bill in 1802, " finding that my own mills were mismanaged, and that, with my other pursuits, I had it not in my power to put them under proper regulation." Success was not attained for many years, and it can only be said that Sir Robert Peel started the system of factory legislation and the improvement of the conditions of child labour which were later carried out by Shaftesbury.
By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Bury was a thriving industrial centre. Not only was the cotton industry, in all its branches, firmly established, but there were many woollen manufacturers ; hats, leather, and paper were made in quantity, and the making of the new machines required the services of engineers, who set up separate works for the building of looms and the making of other things necessary for the mills.
The town of Bury still centered round the Parish Church, and indeed maps dated 1850, show that Freetown, Elton., Pits-o' th'-Moor, Heap, Walmersley, and other parts of the present town were separated by open roads which are now built up. The houses were small and closely built together, often in groups associated with mills. Some of the property still exists much as it must have been in 1800. In travelling about the town many signs can be seen of the old houses. Horrocks' Fold, in Water Street, is an example. Many of the builders put dates and initials on stones built into the dark brick walls which tell us of the development of the districts. Many houses near Huntley School bear dates such as 1777, and 1783. There is in the same district a block of stone houses with what appears to have been a small hand-loom factory on the top floor. Similar features which can easily be found in other districts tell of the growth of a mill and the settlement of workers. A house in St. Mary's Place bears the date 1845 and as this street leads up to the railway wall, it suggests that this district was developed when the railway came to Bury.
One interesting account of the coming of Peel to Bury describes him as riding along the old packhorse route from Bolton, through Ainsworth, a foot-bridge where Bury Bridge now stands, up Bury Lane (now Bolton Street) and thinking in imagination of the works he was to build there later. Such packhorse roads were narrow and often dangerous, and carts could not be sure of a safe passage. Among the many things which made the great development of industry possible, was the attention then being paid to the transport of goods and passengers. To improve the roads the system of turnpiking was used in which toll-bars were placed at intervals and all traffic had to pay dues for the use of the road. In an energetic district money was borrowed on the security of the tolls, in other cases improvement had to wait till the fees paid had accumulated. The road from Bury to Manchester was turnpiked in 1754, but the improvement of other roads was very slow. Examples of the old roads paved in the centre only, can be found on the moors leading up to some disused mill. The next progress was in the use of waterways, both natural and artificial. Such works were carried out by groups of individuals, under powers granted Acts and the men employed were given the name of navvies. The most famous of the early canals was that built by the Duke of Bridgewater between Manchester and Worsley. Bury was first connected by canal with Bolton and Manchester in 1791, and the canal would doubtless be much used by the Peel firm, as the terminus was near their main works.
Another agency was now in the course of development, which still further advanced the Industrial Revolution. In the cotton industry of 1800 the spinning process was in advance of weaving, and men were speculating seriously on the possibility of harnessing the power of water or steam to drive the looms.
John Kay, of Bury, had, in 1745 taken out a patent for a power driven small-ware loom, such as would be used for tapes, but it was not adopted. In 1787, Puls, of Warrington, first applied Boulton and Watt's rotating steam engine to cotton manufacture, and in the same year Cartwright took out a successful patent for a power loom. His mill failed, and other attempts did not prosper. It was not until the XIXth century that the steam driven power loom was adopted in the Manchester district, but in 1824 it was said that a child of twelve years of age could attend two such looms and produce three times the amount of cloth woven by the best hand-loom weaver.
It was about this time that John Lomax of Springfield, ordered from the firm of Tuer, Hodgson and Hall some 400 of the new under-pick power-looms, and quickly followed this by a further 1,000 machines. His example was quickly followed by other manufacturers. At this time there were in Bury firms of mill-engineers, such as Newbolds, of Rock Street, who could supply steam engines which were sent away for the early patent process of Macnaughting or compounding. These engines required steam boilers, working at a high pressure which could be supplied by Lord's, of Barnbrook The Peel family had given up practically all its direct connection with Bury manufactures, and other names had taken their place. Foremost among these was the Grant family, Coming from Scotland, there is a famous description of their determination to make the valley prosper that they viewed from above Ramsbottom, where the Tower now stands. Reaching Bury in their tramp, they sheltered, and were given employment by Mr. Dinwiddie, of Hampson Mill, established in 1781, to the south of Bury. By hard work in merchanting cloth, the Grants established a shop in Bury, and later bought the Ramsbottom works of Peel and Yates, in 1807. William Grant the son of the founder of the family, was made a justice of the Peace in 1824.
This appointment was necessary in view of the difficulties which had grown up in the Government of the populous district of Bury. Although so important, commercially, the district had no resident magistrate, and the duty of keeping order rested in Constables appointed by the Lord of the manor
In 1824, a petition to bring the Assizes to Liverpool and Manchester was refused, and all law business of any importance was still conducted at Lancaster, the capital of the County Palatine. Until the appointment of William Grant, as a J.P., magistrates came from Bolton to Bury to try minor offenders.
Conditions throughout the country at this time were difficult. The end of the Napoleonic wars was followed by a period of trade depression and unemployment which seriously affected the new industries. Riots took place in Bury and district, the most serious being at Chatterton, near Stubbins, where the soldiers fired on the weavers who had caused work to cease by removing the shuttles from the new power looms. Heavy taxation, dear food, and irregular employment rested heavily on the people, who also thought that the new methods of work were doing them harm.
At the same time the towns continued to grow in size, for many workers who had formerly earned their living by a mixture of domestic manufacture and farm work now had to choose between the new system of farming and work in a factory. While the Industrial Revolution had proceeded, there had also come about a great change in agriculture. New methods of tillage, alterations in the diet of the workers and in the kind of crops, and changes in the system of ownership had taken place with the passing of the Enclosure Acts. Farms, instead of being worked as open fields with common pasturage, were now fenced and enclosed. The new methods certainly brought an improvement in the produce of the land, but the workers now had very few of their old privileges and were also employed on weekly wages like the factory workers in the towns. These changes did not directly affect the town of Bury, but it would be at this time that the long stone dry-walls, which are a feature of the surrounding districts, were erected. The distress was enhanced by the administration of the Corn Laws which, though designed to help the farmers by keeping up the price of corn, neither allowed good wages to be paid to the farm labourers nor cheap bread to be obtained by the town operatives. In 1819 a great meeting was held at St. Peter's Fields, Manchester, which led to the Peterloo massacre, and this event was followed by a period of reform in which many of the injustices of the time were eased or removed.
Bury at this time was much occupied with the establishment of new institutions. Peel's attempts to pass factory legislation were now assisted by many able and sincere people, including his famous son. Churches, chapels and other bodies of people took an interest in the education of the young people. Sunday Schools, in which both religious and other education were given were rapidly increasing, some 1,800 scholars being in attendance at such schools in Bury, in 1824.
A Dispensary, a forerunner of the modern Hospital and Infirmary, was founded in 1829, and gas works were started in the previous year. Such changes as these were not Sufficient, and throughout the country great reforms were demanded Before the Reform Act of I832, Lancashire was represented in Parliament by fourteen members only, two for the county area, which included Manchester, Liverpool and other towns with Bury, and two each for six towns generally of smaller size and importance. The new Act made Bury a Parliamentary Borough, and the change was followed by the passing of an Improvement Act, in 1846. This Act set up a body of Commissioners, whose duty it was to govern the town.
There was much work to be done. The rapid growth of the town had been largely haphazard. The clean streets of to-day giving safe passage for traffic above, and carrying water, gas, electricity, and sewage below, were almost unknown. The town was not rich, and periods of depression were frequent. The manufacture of cotton goods was still the main trade, but other industries were growing. Paper-making became of great importance and the firm of James Wrigley & Sons, at Heap Bridge, was large and influential. There were fears that with the removal of the paper tax, in 1861, the trade would be seriously affected, but these were groundless. The industries required much machinery, and firms making the larger plants and smaller accessories grew in size. They not only made goods for local use, but sent them far and wide. The making of hats and woollens was also still of importance. The Act of 1846 came at a time when other developments were in progress. The railway method of transport grew rapidly in favour after 1825. The East Lancashire Railway was commenced from Manchester, through Bury, to Rawtenstall, in 1844, and was opened in September, 1846. The line from Liverpool to Hull, through Bury, was opened at Knowsley Street Station, in November, 1848. Tickets issued from the Bolton Street Station still have, in some cases, the initials E.L. on them, although the two lines were amalgamated in 1859, as the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L. & Y.). Later this railway was taken over by the L.N.W.R., and is now part of the London, Midland, and Scottish Group (L.M.S.). A new route to Manchester, through Whitefield, was opened in 1879, and this route was electrified in 1915. The railway brought new industries to Bury, as the company built engine-building and repair works at Buckley Wells, the workers finding houses in the new district of Fishpool. The works are still used as engine sheds, and to deal with the electric rolling stock, though the actual making of locomotives has ceased there. There was also a railway wagon works at Woolfold, on the Holcombe Brook line.
Coal is not mined from Bury at the present time, but in the XIXth century workings were opened in the Heywood Street district, also near the Clarence Recreation Ground, and in Birtle. The last of the workings closed down about 1880, but some of the collieries in surrounding districts have roads which extend under the town.
The coming of the railways to Bury was preceded by the introduction of cheap postage, and was also followed by the introduction of the electric telegraph. These changes meant that communication with the outside world became much easier. Before that time the stage coaches were used for passengers and mails, though many people walked to Manchester for business purposes on market days. The journey to London occupied two or three days, and two days were required for the journey from Chamber Hall to Tamworth in the time of the first Sir Robert Peel.
Many names well known and represented in the town appear in the accounts of this period. Ashworth, Crompton, Grundy, Hacking, Hall, Hutchinson, Kenyon, Openshaw, Ormerod, Walker, Webb, Wike, Whitehead, and Wrigley were well known as manufacturers or in connection with local government. Their names are still known in connection with large works and by various gifts to the town, such as recreation grounds, picture collections, and other memorials.
The Chartist agitation of 1840 to 1850 did not affect Bury greatly, although there were riots in which boiler plugs were drawn in the mills. The pressing of the Repeal of the Corn Laws brought some relief, and the attention of many men was turned to self development and improvement. To make up for the lack of education in childhood, Mechanics' Institutes were started in many towns, especially in the North of England. The Bury Institute was opened in 1836.
Other institutions which grew up in the middle years of the XIXth century were examples of co-operative effort in the buying, making, or selling of goods.
The Bury and District Co-operative Society was commenced in a very humble way by a group of workmen, in 1855. They followed earlier pioneers, who, by previous saving, purchased small quantities of goods in advance, and then resold to themselves, using any profit to add to the stock. A single shop was taken in Market Street, in 1856, and 120 members transacted £1,805 worth of business during the year. Just before their jubilee year, in 1905 the membership was 12,000 and the annual business £334,365, and the Society had some twenty-three large branches. The activities of the Society have not been confined to trading, but have included the provision of concerts, lectures, and grants in aid of local charities, as well as the running of a library and investments in cottage and mill property. The Co-operative movement grew as a result of some of Robert Owen's ideas, and was at first set up in opposition to the Truck Shop system, one of the earliest societies being that of the Rochdale Pioneers. Some part of the profits of the Societies has always been set aside for educational work, and in Bury it is interesting to know that the science classes of the Athenaeum were later absorbed in similar classes conducted by the Co-operative Society, who, in their turn, passed on the work to the Town Council, as the foundation of the work of the Technical School opened in 1894.
The Lancashire Cotton Famine, at the time of the American Civil War, was severely felt in Bury. A depression, in 1841, had seen the formation of a local distress fund, which was only used where the family income was less than half-a-crown per head per week. A similar fund had to be set up in 1862, soup kitchens were opened in various parts of the town, and many families suffered privation. The sales of the Co-operative Society diminished considerably, but after the war had ended conditions rapidly improved again.
The trade of the town was now taking on a different form in its control. The early firms, such as those of Peel and Grant, were owned by the partners, who took full charge of the mills. The capital was supplied by themselves, though occasionally money would be borrowed to be used in the business. One account has survived in which the family of John Kay advanced money to the firm of Peel and Yates. In the case of some companies, the shareholders might be called on to bear the full weight of any losses which were caused by the mismanagement of the chief owners.
In 1834 the Government laid down conditions under which companies could be formed, and in 1862 Joint Stock Companies, in which the liability of the shareholders was limited to the amount of stock or capital they held, were allowed to be formed. The Bury and Heap Commercial Company Limited and the Bury and Elton Manufacturing Company were early examples of the use of these methods in the cotton industry. Many people were able to invest their small savings in these concerns, knowing that they would not be called on to make large unexpected payments. Many of the private firms were converted into similar companies, and more recently there have been formed larger bodies of associated companies, as in the bleaching and dyeing trades. The change sometimes meant that working conditions did not receive the direct interest of the shareholders, and on the side of the workers Trades Unions were formed to look after the interests of the employees. The Unions developed from groups in the mills and workshops. In some instances they took a leading part in agitations for reform, whilst in others acted mainly as benefit societies for members who were ill or out of work. To-day they are large bodies, with members representing constituences in Parliament, and take a great share in the work of the factory and social legislation. In Bury, the Textile Hall is a centre for much of the work of the Trades Unions.
By 1876, when Bury was granted a Charter as a Borough, the main lines of the present town had been laid. The changes since then have been chiefly in such matters as the improvement of streets and the erection of many notable buildings. The postal system has grown and includes a large telephone equipment. A steam tramway to Broughton was opened in 1883, and later extended to Tottington and other districts, the system being electrified and further extended in 1903. In the present year motor bus services have been introduced, and the communications from Bury to other towns would astonish its earlier inhabitants.
In this brief sketch of the growth of industry in Bury, stress has been laid on the textile industries and the chief personalities whose names are known throughout the world. Their qualities - solid, alert, persevering, ingenious - were not confined to the few, but were present in only slightly less degree in many thousands of craftsmen and women, not only in the cotton trade but in all the many trades which make up the life of our busy town. The woven, bleached, and dyed fabrics from its looms go abroad to Turkey, Africa or China; and looms built in Bury are at work in Brazil and the continents of Europe and Asia, with Bury men as the managers. The products of the paper mills are used all through the country, and machines for paper-making are set up and run by Bury men in Norway and Newfoundland. Building firms in Bury carry out important contracts in many parts of the country. Steam engines, hats, slippers, springs, and textile parts, amongst many other articles, are made in quantity for use outside the town. If you search the trade papers of the various industries you will find that Bury goods are known far and wide. To maintain this position in the coming years will require from those who are to be the citizens of Bury those same qualities of character which in the past enabled men to transform the quiet valleys into a hive of busy industry.
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