The Reverend C.W. Woodhouse, M.A. 

Charles Wright Woodhouse was born in or near Nottingham in the autumn of 1816. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge before being appointed curate, or assistant minister, at St James’s Church, Sheffield. He was well-liked and when he left, in 1846, a local poet called George Allen wrote him a farewell poem, which can be found in A Christian’s Songs in the House of his Pilgrimage. 

 Mr Woodhouse spent eleven years as a tutor in Theology at Saint Bee’s College, Cumberland. In December 1857, he was invited to preach at Blackburn Parish Church (now the Cathedral), which seems to make it clear that he was being considered for a future vacancy in the growing town.  

 Four months later, he was offered the position of Vicar of Saint Peter’s, a parish to the west of the town centre, whose church had been built almost forty years earlier. At once, he made a good impression. “He has a fine, clear voice and displays great earnestness in style and manner, while the matter of his discourses is such as might be expected from a gentleman of his talent and industry.” [Blackburn Standard, 12th May, 1862] 

 The choice of the words ‘talent and industry’ is interesting. The motto of Blackburn, which had become an incorporated borough only seven years earlier, is ‘Arte et Labore’ - skill and industry (hard work). And Mr Woodhouse was a gentleman of some wealth, for both his mother and sister lived with him, the 1861 census noting that they were living on money from investments. 

 Only a few weeks after arriving, he examined the boys of the grammar school in Classics and Maths; soon afterwards, he became a governor of the school and joined the committee tasked with finding a new site for the expanding school. He was one of two clergymen who were governors of the new Infirmary, the other being Father Meaney, the priest of St Anne’s, which served the Catholic population who lived close to St Peter’s. 

 The Woodhouse family chose to live in a fairly new house near the bottom of Duke’s Brow, almost opposite the historic Bank House. They had two live-in servants, a cook and a housemaid. The vicarage, on the corner of Saint Peter Street and Byrom Street, was occupied by the curate, Thomas Cooper. 

 He took a great interest in education, particularly that of the working men who formed much of his parish. He was elected Chaplain and was a keen supporter of the 5th Lancashire Artillery Volunteers, whose October gunnery demonstration Jason watches. He was also on the committee for the establishment of a Free Library, being appointed to the sub-committee that conferred with the town council. He gave several lectures, on various subjects from mathematics to geography, to the Literary, Scientific and Mechanical Institution. 

 In 1862 Charles Woodhouse was unmarried. However, in August 1864, when he was nearly forty-eight, he married Anne Livesey, the eldest daughter of cotton importer James Livesey, at the church of St John the Divine, Fairfield, Liverpool. The marriage was conducted by the Right Reverend David Anderson, formerly Bishop of Rupert’s Land, Canada, who was assisted by the Rev. A.J. Woodhouse, Charles’s younger brother, and the Rev. Sadler, vicar of Fairfield. The honeymoon was spent in London and in Europe. 

 Anne, who was seventeen years younger than Charles, bore eight children in the space of about eleven years; four boys and four girls. Three of the sons became clergymen. The family (then of six children) moved from Blackburn to Ardwick, Manchester, in 1874. Mr Woodhouse was made a Canon of Manchester Cathedral, a post he reluctantly resigned from in 1903, citing ‘the pressure of age.’ 

“It was only his conscientious sense of inability to perform his duties, owing to physical weakness, that constrained him to send in his resignation.” [Manchester Courier, 28th Dec. 1903] 

The Kelly Family

John and Margaret Kelly were both born in King’s County, to the west of Dublin, around 1828-1830. It is difficult to be precise because they seem to estimate their ages for the census returns! They are typical of the many thousands of Irish people who sailed to Liverpool in the late 1840s to escape the awful conditions that we call the Potato Famine, when the crop failed for several years in a row. By 1851, they were lodging with a mother and daughter in a small house on Bank Top. For the next fifty years, as they brought up their family, John and Maggie moved several times, but never more than a few streets away.

The 1861 census finds them at 79 Chapel Street, close to the Blakewater, in an area with several cotton mills. They now have four children: Mary Ann, the twin boys John (Jack) and Patrick, and baby Bridget, who was born in May 1862. John’s younger brother Tom, who is already widowed, and Tom’s three sons live with them. This typical millworker’s cottage, with two rooms upstairs and two down, must have been crowded because one room was occupied by three other adults: an Irishwoman, aged 60, her partner (55) and his colleague (48). As Jason works out, there were thirteen people living in this small house!

Both John and Tom were listed as ‘labourers’ in 1861, John working for a bricksetter - making bricks. There would have been plenty of such work in the late 1850s, as the town grew rapidly; but we know that by the early spring of 1862, John had lost his job. He was labouring, with hundreds of others, at a quarry on Whinny Heights, near to where the hospital is. He was one of the leaders of a revolt, demanding more than one shilling for back-breaking work that had been arranged by the relief committee. Basically, if men wanted cash handouts, they had to prove that they were willing to work - the so-called Labour Test, which was finally dropped in the autumn of 1862.

Eventually, after the cotton famine, John Kelly became a plasterer, a trade at which he worked for many years. Both he and Maggie survived into their seventies, and the 1901 census shows them living at 1, Alice Street, where they moved in the mid-1870s. John, claiming to be 70 but more likely about 72, is listed as ‘unemployed plasterer’; and the house has been divided into two, one part belonging to their youngest child Elizabeth (32) and her husband, a carter for a flour mill.

The comical story that John tells Jason, about the brothers being arrested and fined for punching a policeman, is a true one. It happened in 1860 and is recorded in the Police Court reports in the Blackburn Standard.

The Beckett Family

The two brothers who take Jason to their home, on his first afternoon in Victorian Blackburn, lived in Howard Street, which lies underneath the Townsmoor Retail Park. Howard Street was parallel with Russell Street, where the Darwen bus turns right off Park Road.

I chose the Becketts as a typical working family, who depended on the cotton industry. Henry, the boys’ father, was born in Blackburn around 1827; he was a weaver. His wife’s name is spelt three different ways in the census returns: Janet, Jennett and Jenet. This was not unusual before around 1900; the person completing the census would ask people’s names and write them as he thought fit. Mrs Beckett, between having children, worked as a winder - she wound the cotton thread onto the weaving looms. She was born in the village of Hoghton, five miles to the west of Blackburn, which had a few small cotton factories; along with thousands of others, she moved into the town during the 1840s.

Their first son was James, born in 1848; in the book, he has moved to Bradford in search of work in the woollen mills. Many people did this once the supply of cotton was stopped and the Lancashire factories closed. Apparently, he never lived with his parents again. The youngest Beckett child, in October 1862, was Sarah. Like her elder sister Ellen, she became a weaver. Times were changing, though; and in 1871, a younger sister, Jane, did not start work at the age of eight, but attended school full-time. They had two more daughters. By then, the family had moved to 6, Fox Street, just around the corner from Howard Street.

William Henry and Edward, the boys who take Jason on the dangerous potato raid, both became cotton spinners. By April 1891, William and his wife Martha, who was born in Norfolk, had ten children - seven of whom were boys, the eldest being James Henry (18) and the youngest Herbert, a few months old. Charles (8) and Thomas (6) went to school all day; Edward (12) and John (10) worked part-time as spinners and attended school in the afternoons; Janet (14) was a winder, like her grandmother; Mary Ellen (16) was a weaver. They lived in Bonaccord Street, which ran off Higher Audley Street towards Bonaccord Mill, midway between Audley and Cicely Bridges.

The boys’ father, aged 64, was working as a night watchman, though whether he was guarding potatoes is unlikely! He and Jennet had moved to Culvert Street (near Audley Bridge over the canal); sharing their home was Henry’s younger brother Moses, a sawyer (aged 60), whose daughter Alice (21) and her husband Robert Clark, a mechanic (22) had a baby son. Alice’s younger sister Ellen, a weaver (19) also lived there.