Leaving Groton for
Lancashire, 1836: The Rudland Family
(For an updated account click
here)
Samuel Rudland and Mary
Garrard had married in
Groton on the 13
th January 1822.
He was 24 years of age and she was 23
years.
Baptism records suggest that they
were non-conformists and frequented the Edwardstone Independent Chapel adjacent
to Boxford.
OSMap1902
In 1836 Samuel and Mary Rudland and their eight children
were sent from the Suffolk village of Groton to work for Henry Ashworth in
Lancashire.
The family were part of a
national migration scheme that arranged for families who were receiving poor
relief, to move to the north where there was a labour shortage in the cotton
mills and woollen industry.
On the 14
th April 1836, as they left Groton on
their long journey to Lancashire, the
Rudland family consisted of:
- Samuel Rudland, aged 38
- Mary Rudland, aged 37
- Cain Rudland, aged 14
- Joseph Rudland, aged 12
- Lucy Rudland, aged 9
- Samuel Rudland, aged 6
- Charles Rudland, aged 4
- James Rudland, aged 3
- David Rudland, aged 2
- John Rudland, aged 9 months
The migration scheme was devised by the Poor Law
Commissioners who realised that there were a large number of unemployed
agricultural workers who had no chance of finding a job. They devised a way of moving these people to
Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire to work in the cotton mills and woollen
industry where there was a shortage of labour.
It is not clear how the Rudland family travelled to
Lancashire but other Suffolk families were sent from their home parish to
London where they were transported via the
Grand Union Canal to Manchester – a
journey which was supposed to take four to five days and for which they had to
supply their own provisions.
The canal boats left City Basin, Paddington every evening
except Sundays and the cost of the passage was:
Adults ~
14shillings
Persons under
14 ~ 7shillings
Under one
year ~ Free
Families were not allowed to bring any furniture with them,
except their bedding, but it was suggested that the Board of Guardians who had
arranged the journey should send between £3 and £5 to the future employer for
the purchase of furniture.
New Eagley Mills
Henry Ashworth treated his textile workers with a great deal
of respect and he provided good quality homes for them in the Bank Top
area. He also built a schoolroom, a
social club and a library to ensure that his workforce and the children were
educated.
OSMap1906
Samuel Rudland and his family would have been drawn to
Lancashire by the prospect of regular employment, better wages and improved
living conditions. The extent to which
these prospects materialised were recorded by an anonymous correspondent of the
London based, Morning Advertiser newspaper.
In March 1846 (ten years after the Rudlands arrived in Lancashire) the
newspaper published an account with the aim “to ascertain how far these
promises of better wages and better food in Lancashire had been fulfilled.”
The correspondent had first interviewed Samuel Rudland in
1844 and noted that the family had increased to eleven (Isaac Rudland had been
born in 1843). He recorded that the
whole household brought in an income of £2. 15s. per week but pointed out that
though this was “not a very liberal income” it was much more than that which
they earned in agriculture in Suffolk in 1836.
Samuel Rudland (the father) per week
|
8s 0d
|
Eldest boy, 14 years of age
|
2 0
|
Next younger boy, at cow-keeping, aged twelve
|
1 0
|
Parish allowance, one peck of flour, worth at that time
|
1 4
|
|
12 4
|
It was also emphasised that Samuel Rudland in 1844 was still
only a labourer and that a skilled operative in the cotton mill would have
earned considerably more.
Rents for the workers’ cottages ranged from 1s. 6d. a week
to 3s. 6d. Sixty one cottages out of 155 were rented at 2s. 10d. per week. If this large family was paying 3s 6d per
week to rent one of the larger properties available, then this would have
represented just above 6% of their total income.
The Morning Advertiser’s correspondent not only provides us
with invaluable information on the Ashworth’s workers’ wages and rentals but he
also gives us a detailed first-hand description of the workers’ cottages which
is worth reproducing in full:
“Now these cottages were not only good, but the greater part of them
were superior to any dwellings of working men which I had ever seen, or have
since seen, if I make an exception of a few other rurally situated factories
and the dwelling of the workers, which I visited subsequent to that in
Lancashire. They generally consisted of
four rooms, with back kitchens, wash-houses, etc. They were scrupulously clean, with flower
garden in front and rear. They were all
fitted up with ovens and fixtures of the most substantial and useful kind. The people had all good furniture. Most of them had stuff-bottomed chairs in
their parlours, carpets on the parlour floors, chests of mahogany drawers,
time-pieces or eight-day clocks, little piles of well-bound books on the top of
the chest of drawers, companions of the looking-glasses, which all stood there
in their ornamental frames. A barometer
against the wall; a pair of globes; some very respectable pictures, chiefly
engravings, were also seen ornamenting some of the parlours. While in the other rooms there were such
articles of furniture as the parlours would lead us to expect. On the Sunday the people were all well
clothed and orderly; no drunkenness, no lounging about in dirt and idleness;
the women were smartly dressed, some of them perhaps a little too fine. I did not go into many of the houses at tea
time on Sunday, but in those which I did enter at that time, I saw sets of
china on the tables. There is butchers’
meat in these houses every day in one shape or another. In only one instance at Eagly did I find the
mother of a family working in the mill. She was a widow, with two young
children. She hired a woman to keep the
children and the house. Her earnings in
the mill were 13s a week.”
Sometime between this interview in 1844 and 1851 Samuel
Rudland died. There is no record in the
archives of his death but the 1851 Census Returns for Bank Top, Sharples,
Bolton, lists Mary as a widow. At least
four children were still alive and living at home at this time:
|
|
|
Condition
|
Age
|
dob
|
Occupation
|
Place of birth
|
Mary
|
Rudland
|
Head
|
Widow
|
54
|
1797
|
|
Boxford, Suffolk
|
Cain
|
Rudland
|
Son
|
Unmarried
|
27
|
1824
|
Carder (Cotton)
|
Boxford, Suffolk
|
Joseph
|
Rudland
|
Son
|
Unmarried
|
23
|
1828
|
Wheelwright
|
Boxford, Suffolk
|
Charles
|
Rudland
|
Son
|
Unmarried
|
18
|
1833
|
Blacksmith
|
Boxford, Suffolk
|
Isaac
|
Rudland
|
Son
|
|
8
|
1843
|
Scholar
|
Sharples, Lancashire
|
(Note: Some dates do not tally with
the emigration list of 1836. See above)
What happened to the family members after 1851 is
unclear. Further research is
required.
However, one tantalising lead for Charles Rudland does present itself. In 1856, a Charles Rudland, blacksmith and a
Jane Rudland, servant [sic] set sail from Liverpool for America. They arrived in New York on the 27th
September.
In 1870, the US Census records a Charles Rudland, blacksmith
and his wife Jane Rudland living in Portage, Wisconsin. They had five children:
Note about the Poor Law Commission’s
Migration Scheme, 1835-37
The scheme
did not last long because soon after the arrival of migrant families the cotton
mills and woollen industry went into a decline and many people became
unemployed again. Some made the long
journey south to their home parishes but others remained in the north. In 1843
there was an investigation into why the scheme had failed and among the papers
relating to this enquiry was a list of around 4,000 people who had migrated –
over half of them had come from Suffolk.
Between 1836
and 1837 over 2,000 paupers – men, women and especially children were taken
from Suffolk to work in factories in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
Christopher
