Life in a Georgian Cotton Mill – Oliver Twist style – At Quarry Bank Mill

Again I’m slipping a post in between the progression of Harriette’s story and taking you back to the middle of last week, when I spoke about Quarry Bank Georgian Mill and the history of spinning and weaving cotton. Today I am going to tell a bit about life at the mill in the 18th Century.

There’s an amazing Apprentice House just up the road from the mill, sadly I couldn’t take any pictures inside, so you are going to have rely on me verbally painting the scene for you.

In this period of the 18th Century industrialisation had put many people out of work and the poor houses were overflowing with men, women and children in need of food and shelter. So men like Samuel Greg, who built Quarry Bank Mill, saw an opportunity for cheap labour, they went to the poor houses to obtain children who would work for food and board under the definition of being apprenticed to learn a trade (exactly Oliver Twist style).

They were taken away from their parents at seven or eight and brought to the Apprentice House miles away from home, and they would then be asked to sign away their lives until they were sixteen, when they would be employed or leave. They were literally asked to sign a contract which said they agreed to be Samuel Greg’s possession for that period of their lives, it gave them no rights and no wages for their labour, beyond a bed, a roof, and food; they became slaves basically.

The boys and girls were kept in separate rooms in the house. The girls all slept in one large whitewashed dormitory with a hatch to let them in and out, which was locked when they went in at night and opened again at five in the morning when they had to get up to go to work. The girls were crammed into rows of beds, with straw pallets and a single blanket, wide enough to top and tail three, and you can imagine when the locks were secure, the bitter arguments and bullying the younger ones perhaps endured. As far as possessions, they had a single peg for spare clothes and nothing more.

The boys were split across three rooms, because they’d fight, but again were locked away at night, like animals.

They worked, then breakfast was taken down to the mill, and again just like Oliver Twist, they ate gruel, a dollop of porridge, not from a bowl, but placed into their hand. They had the same for lunch, another dollop, but this time seeds or vegetables had been mixed into it as the Gregs were emancipists and believed in keeping their apprentices healthy (we were told most apprentices would only be fed once a day). Their evening meal was more substantial and two or three times a week they had meat. The real difference from Oliver Twist though was that they were allowed more. The Gregs believed the children could do more work if they weren’t hungry.

But the negative aspect of the Gregs emancipation, was that Samuel Greg’s wife Hannah believed the children should be educated. So after a gruelling ten-hour day at the mill, the children came back to the Apprentice House and had to do their chores, planting and tending the vegetables, feeding animals, cleaning rooms, emptying out the toilet pits… And then after all this Hannah Greg insisted they had lessons to teach them how to read and write. They must have been too exhausted to learn a thing.

You might think Sunday, a day when the mill stopped running, would be a day they could recoup but no, on a Sunday, they had to wash and put on a clean outer layer of clothes and then walk six miles to church. Then for the only time in their week they had a few hours to play or do as they wished after a meat dinner, before they had to walk another six miles back to church for the evening service.

Were the children happy? Certainly some of them weren’t as they ran away, but in comparison to other mills, or the poor house, or having nowhere to live… Their lot was better than most.

While the children were working Hannah Greg enjoyed a social life which was equivalent to any ton society madam in London, she gathered together the bright and artistic of Manchester, and invited them to her home to debate and discuss common interests. She was highly respected in the area, but the fabulous thing was she wrote lots of letters and journals recording all she did and what she thought. One of those characters from history that I love, as I find these the best way to really discover how people lived and what they were like, by reading their thoughts. So of course, I bought the book, maybe more on Quarry Bank Mill, and Hannah Greg, at a later date then…

Come back on Sunday for Harriette’s story.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

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Harriette begins an intrigue with a new protector – perhaps with a happy ending on her mind

So let me continue my posts on Harriette Wilson’s story where I left off, just skipping a little ahead to when the Duke of Leinster leaves.

But as usual for those joining this series of posts today here’s the background, if you’ve read it before skip to the end of the italics.

In 1825 Harriette Wilson, a courtesan, published a series of stories as her memoirs in a British broad sheet paper. The Regency gentleman’s clubs were a buzz, waiting to see the next names mentioned each week. While barriers had to be set up outside the shop of her publisher, Stockdale, to hold back the disapproving mob.

Harriette was born Harriette Debochet, she chose the name Harriette Wilson as her professional name, in the same way Emma Hart, who I’ve blogged about previously, had changed her name. Unlike Emma, it isn’t known why or when Harriette changed her name.

She was one of nine surviving children. Her father was a watchmaker and her mother a stocking repairer, and both were believed to be from illegitimate origin.

Three of Harriette’s sisters also became courtesans. Amy, Fanny and Sophia (who I have written about before). So the tales I am about to begin in my blogs will include some elements from their lives too.

For a start you’ll need to understand the world of the 19^th Century Courtesan. It was all about show and not just about sex. The idle rich of the upper class aspired to spending time in the company of courtesans, it was fashionable, the thing to do.

You were envied if you were linked to one of the most popular courtesans or you discovered a new unknown beauty to be admired by others.

Courtesans were also part of the competitive nature of the regency period too, gambling was a large element of the life of the idle rich and courtesans were won and lost and bartered and fought for.

So courtesans obviously aspired to be one of the most popular, and to achieve it they learnt how to play music, read widely, so they could debate, and tried to shine in personality too. They wanted to be a favoured ’original’.

The eccentric and outspoken was admired by gentlemen who liked to consort with boxers and jockeys, and coachmen, so courtesans did not aim for placid but were quite happy to insult and mock men who courted them, and demand money for any small favour.

Harriette declares herself melancholy when Lord Leinster leaves London, and she has sworn her other young beau, Lord Worcester, not to call on her for three days, as she knows he will be gleeful, and she will be in no mood for his joy.

The Duke of Leinster has promised to write to her if his trip to Spain is delayed by the weather at Portsmouth, and when he does write advising his delay maybe as long as a week, Harriette decides to play more games, and leaves Lord Worcester behind in London, with hurried notes apologizing for deserting him, and hurtles off to Portsmouth for a last and final farewell to Lord Leinster. When she arrives, she says ‘His Grace was very glad to see me, in his dry way; but it was impossible to avoid making comparisons between my two young lovers as were most favourable to Worcester.’

But then we hear another insight into Harriette’s calculating mind. She takes this moment to highlight that ‘her sister’ (this was not Harriette’s thinking – not Harriette’s at all – ha, ha) highlighted the fact the Duke had not thought to enquire after Harriette’s finances before he intended leaving. Then Lord Leinster added insult to injury and instead of spending his mornings entertaining Harriette by walking out with her, he instead went sailing. That was the final straw when there was the perhaps less wealthy (as he had not yet come into his title), but certainly more ardent and willing to flatter, Lord Worcester back in London. Harriette was not going to sit in Portsmouth twiddling her thumbs to hang about a Duke who did not even pay her (perhaps she had only gone in the hope he would pay up after he’d left London without giving her a final settlement).

So ‘coolly’ wishing Lord Leinster ‘un bon voyage’ to his utter astonishment, she hastens back to town.

And on her return to London ‘I found a great many cards and letters on my table in town; and what was better still, another blank cover, directed to me, containing two banknotes for one hundred pounds each!’

Harriette says very little else about why she specifically agrees to accept Lord Worcester’s protection, and become his mistress, all she says about meeting him again in London is, ‘I will not attempt to describe his rapture, or how violently he was agitated at meeting with me. My readers, besides accusing me of vanity, would not believe such exaggerated feeling as he evinced to be in human nature… Therefore without love, I agreed to place myself under his protection.’

As I said last week and the week before, I have a suspicion that Harriette held some hope in Lord Worcester as her potential happy ending, as a pathway to respectability and constant fortune. And here, Harriette makes me believe it again, when in the paragraph after saying she has accepted Lord Worcester without love she goes on to say, ‘Many women… intrigue (have affairs in modern language) because they see no prospect nor hopes for getting husbands; but I, who might as everybody told me, and were incessantly reminding me, have, at this period, smuggled myself into the Beaufort family, by merely declaring to Lord Worcester, with my finger pointed towards the North––that way leads to Harriette Wilson’s bedchamber; yet so perverse was my conscience, so hardened by what Fred Bentinck calls, my perseverance in loose morality, that I scorned the idea of talking such advantage of the passion I had inspired…’

Me thinks she doth protest too much 😀

Harriette’s tale continues next week – but just for a little humorous aside, it makes me laugh how things circle about – The Beauforts, of course, are descended from Katherine Swynford who had an affair/intrigue with the Prince, John of Guant, in the 14^th Century which lasted years and produced four children who he later had legitimized. Oddly this was the love story which inspired me to write historical novels when I was very young, as John of Gaunt married Katherine when his second wife died… The happy ending perhaps Harriette was seeking.

Jane is currently running a competition offering a night in The Regency Hotel, London, amazon vouchers, and free copies of Illicit Love, which continues until 19th July 2013. To support the release of her new novella, Captured Love, telling the story of subsidiary characters from Illicit Love. Click on the cover on the side bar to purchase through Amazon, or go to the Old Victorian Quill to find out more.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.