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Progress in Pudsey
order this bookJoseph Lawson Price £30.00  Joseph Lawson's Progress In Pudsey, first published in 1887, vividly conveys what life was like in a Yorkshire township in the 1820's, and provides an unrivalled sociological account of an early nineteenth century textile community and how it changed over time. The book should be of interest not only to economic and social historians, but to all those who wish to know what life was really like before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. "Most of the houses are without ovens but have a 'bakstone' for baking. The stone floors are sanded, furniture is plain and sparse: 'in some houses there is an oaken chest or kist - a family heirloom, or a small cupboard fastened up in a corner, and a delfcase for pots and plates. Water is scarce, and on washdays queues of twenty or thirty may form at the wells. Coal and candles are dear, and in the winter neighbours gather to share each other's fires. Baking and brewing are done at home; white bread and meat are regarded as luxuries: 'oatcake, brown bread, porridge pudding, skimmed milk, potatoes, and home-brewed beer, which they always call 'drink', are the principle articles of food' "The sparse routine is broken by occasional 'tides' or feasts, when 'a bit of beef' is bought, and all go to the fair, where gingerbread, fruit, and toys are sold, there are peepshows of the Battle of Waterloo, Punch and Judy shows, gambling stalls, swings; and a customary 'love market', where the young men court the girls with 'tidings' of brandy-snaps and nuts. Very few of the working people can read well enough to read a newspaper; although papers are taken (and read aloud) at the blacksmith's, the barber's and several public houses. Much of the news still comes by way of broadsheet vendors and street singers. Old superstitions are a living source of terror to old and young. There are ghosts at Jumble's Well, Bailey Gallows, Boggard Lane; parents commonly discipline their children by shutting them 'in cellars and other dark places for the black boggards to take them.' 'Another most serious and mischievous superstition, everywhere prevalent, was the belief that when any child died, it was the will of the Lord that it should be so.' Sanitary reformers were regarded as 'Infidels'. Dog-fighting and cockfighting were common; and it was also common at feast-times 'to see several rings formed, in which men stripped to their bare skin would fight sometimes by the hour together, till the combatants were not recognizable. . .' Drunkenness was rife, especially at holidays and on 'Cobbler's Monday', which was kept by weavers and burlers as well as cobblers. But there were plenty of less violent pastimes: knur and spell, 'duck knop', and football through the streets. The village was clannish within, and a closed community to outsiders from only two or three miles distant. Some very old traditions survived, such as 'Riding the Steng', whereby if a man was known to ill-use his wife, or a woman was thought to be lewd, a straw effigy would be carried through the streets by a hooting crowd, and then "burnt by the offender's door." (E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.) |