THE HANDLOOlif-WEAVERS OF LANCASHIRE. [To THE EDITOR OP THE "
SPECTATOR."] `SIR,—Allow me to say that I have read your article on " Samuel Bamford" in the Spectator of August 18th, and that I am eighty-one years of age, and can remember handloom- • weavers and weaving as far back as 1820 in East Lancashire. have a painful recollection of the poverty and distress amongst handloom-weavers. Our family consisted of father and mother and eight children, all dependent upon handlooms. Breakfast in our home was oaten-meal porridge sweetened with treacle, eaten with small beer ; dinner, meat only on Sunday, and that chiefly bones boiled into soup. The rest of the week's dinners, potatoes and oaten cakes, seldom butter, and never cheese. Supper similar to breakfast. The quantity of these was stinted, so that we often had not enough to eat. As to wages, an ordinary man could not earn more than 10s. per week, and often he could not procure enough warp and weft even to earn that. The idea of "putting one- pound notes between slices of bread and butter," is simply monstrous. In respect to the statement of kindness and sympathy between employers and employed, I can only recollect grinding poverty and cringing dependence which had the effect of taking away a man's self-respect. When I think of ray early days—poor food, poor clothing, poor homes, no day-school—I do not wish to see the "golden age" back again. The few who still live will confirm my
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