From rural Suffolk to industrial Lancashire

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

On arrival in Lancashire, Samuel Rudland and his four eldest children were taken into the employ of Henry Ashworth who owned the cotton mill at New Eagley near Bolton.  They were very lucky because Henry Ashworth, a Quaker, was an employer who, by 19th century standards, was both altruistic and forward-looking.

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.

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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 27^th September.

In 1870, the US Census records a Charles Rudland, blacksmith and his wife Jane Rudland living in Portage, Wisconsin.  They had five children:

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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