3 August 26
A Textile Center
Blackburn had been a wool weaving centre since the mid 13th century, with handlooms in houses providing much of the wool needed for trade especially following the settlement of Flemish weavers in the area. During the Industrial Revolution Blackburn’s population went from 5,000 to over 130,000. (The spinning jenny was invented a few miles away, driving the need for machine looms to turn Blackburn into the “weaving capital of the world.”) My grandmother’s family moved from just east of the Pennines to Blackburn; my grandmother worked in the cotton mills as early as age 15.
Housing for this population explosion was often provided by the mills. But what was it like? Small, cramped, damp. The Victorians could expect to lose a third of their children before they reached adulthood; how much higher would that figure have been when adjusted for these kinds of conditions? My grandmother had two surviving sisters and one brother, all of them living in a two-bedroom townhouse. The idea of laundry in a time before washing machines, in a part of the country where it ALWAYS rained and where the only indoor source of heat was a coal fire, makes me shudder. (I hung a full load of laundry outside yesterday; much of it was almost dry before I finished hanging it. California summers… And yet, most Davisites dry their clothes in a dryer. Not sure why.)
But this is where my grandfather’s family comes in: my great-grandfather was a plumber. Outhouses were common through the 1950s in this part of the world but indoor water supply needed installing, and plumbing provided the answer. Terry Pratchett’s Dodger is a fun glimpse into the rise of sanitation practices in London, but the extensive sewers put in by the Romans had no equivalent in smaller towns in the north.
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