Extracts from Edwin Waugh's book "Home Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk" written in 1862 and published in 1867
(The whole eBook is on this website)

POVERTY IN PRESTON

"I hear on all hands that there is hardly any town in Lancashire suffering so much as Preston. The reason why the stroke has fallen so heavily here lies in the nature of the trade. In the first place, Preston is almost purely a cotton town. There are two or three flax mills and two or three ironworks of no great extent; but, upon the whole, there is hardly any variety of employment there to lighten the disaster which has befallen its one absorbing occupation. There is comparatively little weaving in Preston; it is a town mostly engaged in spinning. The cotton used there is nearly all what is called "Middling American", the very kind which is now most scarce and dear. The yarns of Preston are known by the name of "Blackburn Counts". They range from 28s to 60s and they enter largely into the manufacture of goods for the India market. These things partly explain why Preston is more deeply overshadowed by the peculiar gloom of the times than many other places in Lancashire.

"The wail of sorrow is not heard in Preston market-place; but destitution may be found almost anywhere there just now, cowering in squalid corners, within a few yards of plenty - as I have seen it many a time this week. The courts and alleys behind even some of the main streets swarm with people who have hardly a nail left to scratch themselves with".

..."Another case was that of a poor widow woman, with five young children. This family had been driven from house to house by increasing necessity till they had sunk at last into a dingy little hovel, up a dark court, in one of the poorest parts of the town, where they huddled together about a fireless grate to keep one another warm. They had nothing left of the wreck of their home but two rickety chairs and a little deal table reared against a wall because one of its legs was gone. In this miserable hole - which I saw afterwards - her husband died of sheer starvation, as was declared by the Jury on the inquest. The dark damp hovel where they had crept to was scarcely four yards square; and the poor woman pointed to one corner of the floor, saying, "He dee'd i' that nook". He died there with nothing to lie on but the ground, and nothing to cover him in that fireless hovel. His wife and children crept about him, there, to watch him die; and to keep his as warm as they could. When the Relief Committee first found this family out, the entire clothing of the family of seven persons weighed eight pounds, as sold for fivepence as rags.

THE SOUP KITCHEN

"As we drew near the baths and washhouses, where the soup kitchen is, the stream of people increased. About the gate there was a cluster of melancholy loungers, looking cold and hungry. They were neither going in or going away. I was told afterwards that many of them were people who had neither money or tickets for food - some of them wanderers from town to town; anybody may meet them limping, footsore and forlorn, upon the roads of Lancashire just now - houseless wanderers, who had made their way to the soup kitchen to beg a mouthful from those who were themselves at death's door. In the best of times there are such wanderers; and in spite of the generous provision made for the relief of the poor, there must be, in a time like the present, a great number who let go their hold of home (if they have any), and drift away in search of better fortune, and sometimes, into irregular courses of life, never to settle more. Entering the yard, we found the wooden sheds crowded with people at breakfast - all ages, from white-haired men, bent with years, to eager childhood, yammering over its morning meal, and careless till the next trip of hunger came. Here and there a bonny lass had crept into the shade with her basin; and there was many a brown-faced man, who had been hardened by working upon the moor or at the "stone-yard".

"Five hundred people breakfast in the sheds alone, every day. The soup kitchen opens at five in the morning, and there is always a crowd waiting to get in. This looks like the eagerness of hunger. I was told that they often deliver 3000 quarts of soup at this kitchen in two hours. The superintendent of the bread department informed me that, on that morning, he had served out two thousand loaves of 3lb 11oz each. There was a window at one end, where soup was delivered to such as brought money for it instead of tickets. Those who came with tickets - by far the greatest number - had to pass single file through a strong wooden maze, which restrained their eagerness, and compelled them to order. I noticed that only a small proportion of men went through the maze - many a bonny lad and lass who will be heard of honourably hereafter. The variety of utensils presented showed that some of the poor souls had been hard put to it for things to fetch their soup in. One brought a pitcher; another a bowl; and another a tin can, a world too big for what it had to hold. " Yo mun mind th' jug," said one old woman; "it's cracked, an' it's noan o' mine".

PRESTON MOOR

"Preston Moor is a tract of waste land on the western edge of the town. It belongs to the Corporation. A little vale runs through a great part of this moor, from south-east to north-west; and the ground was until lately altogether uneven. On the town side of the little dividing vale the land is a light, sandy soil; on the other side, there is abundance of clay for brickmaking. Upon this moor there are now fifteen hundred men, chiefly factory operatives, at work, levelling the land for building purposes, and making a great main sewer for the drainage of future streets. The men, being almost all unused to this kind of labour, are paid only one shilling per day; and the whole scheme has been devised for the employment of those who are suffering from the present depression of trade. The work had been going on several months before I saw it, and a great part of the land was levelled. When I came in sight of the men, working in scattered gangs that fine morning, there was, as might be expected, a visible difference between their motions and those of trained "navvies" engaged upon the same kind of labour. There were also very great differences of age and physical condition amongst them - old men and consumptive looking lads, hardly out of their teens. They looked hard at me as I walked down the central line, but they were not in any way uncivil. One thing amongst these men: with very rare exceptions, their apparel, however poor, evinced that wholesome English love of order and cleanliness which generally indicates something of self-respect in the wearer, especially among poor folk. There is something touching in the whiteness of a well-worn shirt, and the careful patches of a poor man's old fustian coat.

WORK IN THE STONE-YARD

"The "Stone Yard" is close by the Preston and Lancaster Canal. Here there are from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and eighty principally young men, employed on breaking, weighing and wheeling stone for road mending. The stones are of a hard kind of blue boulder, gathered from land between Kendal and Lancaster. The "Labour Master" told me that there were thousands of tons of these blue boulders, a great deal of them are brought from a place called "Tewhitt Field" about seven miles on "t'other side o' Lancaster". At the "Stone Yard" it is all piecework, and the men can come and go as they like. As one of the Guardians told me, "They can either sit and break 'em, or kneel and break 'em, or lie deawn to it, iv they'n a mind". The men can choose whether they'll fill three tons of the broken stone, and wheel it to central heap, for a shilling, or break one ton for a shilling. The persons employed here are mostly "lads and leet-timbered chaps". The stronger men are sent to work upon Preston Moor. There are great varieties of health and strength amongst them. "Beside," as the Labour Master said, "I have known and odd un or two, here, that could break four ton a day, an' many that couldn't break one, but then, yo' know, th' men can only do accordin' to their ability. There is these differences, and there always will be".

"The men are naturally jealous of misrepresentation; and the other day, as Radical Jack (the superintendent of the Stone Yard) was describing the working of the Yard to a gentleman who had come to look at the scene, some the men overheard his words and, misconceiving his meaning, gathered around the superintendent, clamorously protesting against what he had been saying. "He's lying!" said one. "Look at these honds!" cried another; "Wi'n they ever be fit go to the factory again?" Others turned up the soles of their battered shoes to show their cut and stockingless feet. They were pacified at last; but, after the superintendent had gone away, some of the men said much and more, and "if ever he towd ony moor lies abeawt 'em, they'd fling him into th' cut".