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Factory work in Victorian Lancashire |
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Factory communities?
Cotton factories in Preston
© Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston |
Many factories were surrounded by streets of terraced houses, and in some cases these belonged to the factory masters. Some were paternalistic, wanting to build good relations with their workpeople, and also to watch over their morals and politics. Others, especially the impersonal limited companies that spread from the 1860s, were only concerned with profit.
In some areas, especially parts of Blackburn, people living close to mills tended to vote the same way as their employers, especially when they themselves were candidates; but this was never universal, and the 'cotton towns' were deeply divided politically, even before the first socialist parties appeared around 1890. Trade unions were becoming a force to be reckoned with in late Victorian times, and there were also divisions based on religion, drink and the temperance movement.
Nostalgia for hard-working factory communities where jobs were secure and neighbours helped each other is often misleading: people moved around more than is often assumed, and there were many sources of conflict between neighbours as well as between workers and employers. But factory society did extend beyond the factory gate, and increasingly this was more a force for stability than for conflict in the distinctive urban civilisation that was the Victorian cotton town.
Further reading
Alan Fowler, 'Lancashire cotton operatives and work, 1900-1950' (Ashgate, 2003)
Mary E. Rose (ed.), 'The Lancashire cotton industry: a history since 1700' (Lancashire County Books, 1996)
Geoffrey Timmins, 'Made in Lancashire' (Manchester U.P., 1998)
John K. Walton, 'Lancashire: a social history, 1558-1939' (Manchester U.P., 1987)
Words: John K Walton - University of Central Lancashire
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