Hebden Bridge

When I was growing up, I associated the name 'Hebden Bridge' with romance. My parents had fond memories of taking long walks from Hebden Bridge to scenic Hardcastle Crags when they were courting.

By the time I visited the town for the first time in the 1980s, it was an attractive and trendy tourist centre, full of craft shops, boutique food outlets and cafes. But back in the 1860s, when my great great grandparents Samuel St Leger and Alice Dodd moved there from Manchester with their family, it was a working mill town.

Hebden Bridge, in west Yorkshire, stands in a deep valley where the Hebden Water meets the Calder River. The Rochdale Canal (opened in 1798) and the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway (opened in 1840) run through it, and it’s not far from the major wool-marketing town of Halifax. Until the industrial revolution, sheep farming and hand-loom weaving of woollen cloth were the main economic activities, and Hebden Bridge was less significant than the nearby hilltop village of Heptonstall.

Ducks by the Old Bridge over Hebden Water (my photo)

The availability of running water to power the looms led to the construction of many textile mills in the valley in the 19th century. While cloth of all sorts was produced, it gained the nickname ‘Fustianopolis’ because of its specialisation in the production of fustian i.e. corduroy and moleskin. And since these were used in the manufacture of hard-wearing work clothes, it was also known as ‘Trouser Town’.

Samuel St Leger and Alice were both fustian cutters, which provides one clue as to why they moved to Hebden Bridge with their seven children. The cotton famine in Lancashire in the 1860s led to many families moving to Yorkshire.

But they may have had other reasons for choosing to move, besides employment opportunities. There’s no record of Samuel and Alice ever marrying, perhaps because Samuel was already married, in 1840, to an Irish girl, Bridget Dobbs. Bridget moved back to Ireland from Manchester after the birth of their second child, but there’s no record of a divorce. Few working people could afford the legal fees for a divorce, so there were many common-law marriages like that of Samuel and Alice.

Such relationships were not necessarily accepted by everyone though, and they may have felt that they could live more openly as man and wife in a place where neither of them were known.

Their eldest son Ralph (who was probably Samuel’s stepson) married Alice Broadbent, a girl from Hebden Bridge, in 1865. It’s not clear whether Ralph moved with his parents, then married, or whether he moved first and the rest of the family followed. Samuel and Alice’s youngest child, David, was born in Hebden Bridge in 1868, so they must have moved sometime before this date.

When the St Leger family arrived in Hebden Bridge, it would have been a smokey, noisy, bustling place. By the early 1870s it had “a post office [..], a railway station with telegraph, a mechanics' institution, a news room, a public library, many large cotton factories, a silk mill, dye works, iron foundries, and a saw mill” according to John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales.

Because of the steep-sided nature of the valley, many houses in Hebden Bridge were built as double-decker terraces, with one family living above another. They were constructed from the local stone. Multistorey mills, with tall chimneys also constructed of stone, were dotted through the valley and up the hillsides.

At the time of the 1871 census, Samuel and Alice and their family were living at 24 Foster Mill Lane, which seems to have been a more traditional terrace, in which many of the occupants were employed in fustian manufacturing. Over seventy people in Hebden Bridge were listed as fustian cutters in the census, and many others were in related occupations.

By 1881, the St Legers were living in a house in Back Commercial Street, closer to the town centre. Only the three youngest children were still at home. Their sons Ralph and William, both fustian cutters, were still in Hebden Bridge, but two of the other children had married and moved back to Manchester.

Samuel St Leger died in Hebden Bridge in 1882. Alice went to live with her son Samuel and his family sometime before the 1891 census and died in Prestwich, Manchester in 1897.

Canal boats, Hebden Bridge

Unfortunately, when we visited Hebden Bridge earlier this year, on a day trip by train from Manchester, I didn't have much information with me. So I wasn't able to find and photograph any of the places where Samuel and Alice lived, though we probably walked past them on our way to see Hardcastle Crags. Even in the middle of winter, Hebden Bridge is a lovely spot, though in Samuel and Alice's day its attractions were perhaps less evident.

Photos all taken by me and copyright

Fustian cutters

Samuel St Ledger (1821-1882) was a fustian cutter all his life, and so were his sons Ralph, Samuel, William and David. In her younger days his wife, Alice Dodd, was also a fustian cutter. But what did a fustian cutter do?

Corduroy: This modern diagram shows the warp (3) 
and the long (red-4) and short (green-5) weft threads; 
traditionally the knife (1) and the guide (2) 
are attached and the cutting motion is upwards.
"Cordsamt 6" by Ryj - Digitalkamera FinePix A 201. 
Licensed under Public Domain 
via Wikimedia Commons

Fustian refers to several types of heavy cotton cloth such as corduroy, velveteen and moleskin, which were once used mainly to make work clothes. It had ridges running along its length formed by loops of thread woven into the weft. For corduroy and velveteen these loops had to be cut to give the cloth a soft, thick surface.

The fustian cutter (sometimes called a cord cutter) used a tool rather like a modern-day stitch cutter (or button-hole cutter) on a long handle. This was run carefully along each ridge, cutting the loops.

At 7 ridges per inch, a bolt of corduroy cloth 31 inches (~ 80cm) wide would have been over 200 ridges across. Each bolt was many metres long, so cutting every one of these ridges was a laborious and skilled job.

The material was stretched across a long table and the fustian cutter would walk along the length of it, cutting one ridge, then back to cut the next one. Some fustian cutters were able to use two knives simultaneously. Once one length had been cut, the fabric was advanced. After the whole bolt had been cut, the material would be processed further to clean and brush it and then it was dyed.

Since each fustian cutter held their knife at a particular angle, it was important that only one person work on a bolt of cloth, otherwise it would be obvious where one stopped cutting and the other started. In a 60 hour week, a good fustian cutter could cut 500 yards (457 metres) of cloth. For this they might be paid 15 shillings.

Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire was particularly well known for its fustian manufacturing, and it was sometimes referred to as Fustianopolis. Foster Lane, where the St Ledgers lived, was the centre of fustian production. Some of the moleskin cloth produced here was exported to Australia, where it was used to make the iconic moleskin trousers worn by stockmen and other bush workers.

The first part of this video demonstrates what was involved.



Fustian cutting from Alternative Technology Centre on Vimeo.

From Hell hole to Hebden Bridge - Samuel St Ledger and Alice Dodd

Today Angel Meadow, near Manchester's Victoria Station, is a pleasant park. But in the middle of the 19th century it was a pauper's burial ground next to St Michael's church, and was surrounded by the most notorious and overcrowded slums in Manchester.

This is how journalist Angus Reach described it in 1849:

"The lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy, and most wicked locality in Manchester is called Angel Meadow. It lies off the Oldham Road, is full of cellars and is inhabited by prostitutes, their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants, tramps, and, in the very worst sties of filth and darkness, live those unhappy wretches the low Irish.” 

Clearly Angus didn't have a high opinion of the Irish. But his description of the slum conditions around Angel Meadow is confirmed by other sources. Tanneries, dye works, breweries, tripe works, timber yards and other industries added to the noise and stench of the area.

In the 1850's this was home to Samuel St Ledger and Alice Dodd, the future parents of Sarah Jane St Ledger and grandparents of Albert Edward Orton, my grandfather.

At the time of the 1851 census Samuel was living at 6 Style Street, just off Angel Meadow. Although he gave Manchester as his place of birth, it's quite likely that he was the son of one of the many thousands of Irish people who swelled Manchester's population in the early part of the 19th century.

Samuel shared the house with Ann St Ledger, an Irish widow listed in the census as his sister-in-law, along with 15 other people, most of them from Ireland. He was employed then (and in every future census) as a fustian cutter in one of the many mills.

Possibly Samuel was a son, grandson or nephew of Samuel Ledger (sic), born in Ireland in 1774, who in the previous 1841 census lived with his wife Ann in St Michael's Place, just around the corner from Style Street. So far I haven't been able to make any firm connection between the two Samuels.

In 1851 Alice Dodd lived a few blocks away from Samuel, in Brooks Court, just off Long Millgate St, with her three surviving children, Ralph (born 1841), Samuel (born 1848) and Alice (1850). Another child, the first Sarah Jane (1845), had died in infancy. Like Samuel, Alice was a fustian cutter. Whether or how she worked with three children to care for is unknown. Perhaps better not to think about it.

Given her surname and her address, it is quite possible that Alice too was of Irish descent. According to the 1851 census she was born around 1816 and listed Manchester as her place of birth. However in later censuses her date of birth is closer to 1824.

I have some doubts about whether Samuel St Ledger was the father of Ralph Dodd (more of that later) and I can't be certain that he was father to Alice or the first Sarah Jane. They were both registered and baptised under the name Dodd. However he was surely father to Samuel Dodd, and William Dodd (born 1853) who both had 'St Ledger' registered as their middle name. (In later censuses all of the children took on the name St Ledger as a surname, and all except Ralph listed Samuel as their father when they married.)

Both Alice and Samuel claimed to be married in the 1851 census. However the minister who baptised the younger Alice in November 1850 recorded her mother as "Alice Dodd, spinster". So if they were married to each other, it must have been in the few months between then and the census in March 1851.

It's quite possible that Samuel and Alice (the parents) simply couldn't afford to marry or live together, and found whatever accommodation they could, while maintaining a relationship with each other. Another possibility is that Alice was already married and so couldn't marry Samuel, but I haven't found any record that suggests this. My impression is that the normal niceties of social life fell apart in the chaos that was Manchester at this time, and Alice and Samuel were fairly typical of this. So far no record of a marriage has come to light.

All that can be said is that, by the time of the 1861 census, Samuel and Alice were living as man and wife under the same roof. Mary Ann, who was born in 1857, was registered under the surname St Ledger, so the move to the same address probably occurred sometime between 1853 and 1857.

By 1861 the family was living at 7 David Street in Salford, and had now expanded with the birth of Frances in 1860. Sadly she died the following year. Sarah Jane (named, as was common then, after an earlier sibling who hadn't survived) arrived in 1862 while the family were still in Salford.

If there were other children between 1862 and the birth of David Saul St Ledger in 1868 they aren't recorded. David was born in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, so the family must have moved in this period. As I suggested previously, this may have been as a result of the so-called 'cotton famine' in Lancashire in the 1860's, with many families moving to Yorkshire to look for work.

In 1871 the family were living in what seems to have been part of a row of workers cottages on Foster Mill Lane, in Wadsworth, a village close to Hebden Bridge. While their accommodation may not have been luxurious, it's difficult to imagine that it could be any worse than the slums of Angel Meadow.

UPDATE: check out this informative video about Angel Meadow

Images: 
Angel Meadow and St Michael's Flags by David Dixon
View of Chiserly, Wadsworth by Humphry Bolton

Sarah Jane St Leger

In my mother's family, Sarah Jane Orton (nee St Leger*) has an unhappy reputation. She was apparently a hard-hearted business woman, who turned her son's family into the street when he developed tuberculosis and was unable to work in the barber's shop attached to their accommodation in Hankinson Street, Pendleton (which Sarah Jane owned). While Albert was in a sanatorium being treated, his wife and four children (including my mother) were taken in by a kind neighbour or friend. Meanwhile Sarah Jane brought in another hairdresser to work in the shop.

We'll probably never know the full story, since no-one is alive who can still remember the details. Certainly I can't remember my Mum ever talking about her grandmother as someone she knew and loved. But what is known about Sarah Jane?

Sarah Jane St Leger was the youngest daughter of Samuel St Leger and Alice Dodd. Samuel and Alice had a rather unusual relationship. Five of Alice's children - Ralph (1841), an earlier Sarah Jane (1845, died 1848) Samuel (1848) Alice (1850) and William (1853) were born while Alice was still single, though Samuel seems to have been their father.

Sometime between the birth of William in 1853 and Mary Ann in 1857 they seem to have moved in together and Alice took on the name St Leger, though I can't find any record of a marriage.

Hebden Bridge

Sarah Jane was born in Salford, the dockland area south west of Manchester city, in November 1862. Sometime before she turned 6 years old the family moved to Hebden Bridge, near Todmorden in Yorkshire. (Her younger brother David was born there in 1868.) As I mentioned in my previous post, it's possible that the family were one of many who moved from Lancashire to Yorkshire seeking work during the Lancashire "cotton famine" of the 1860's.

The family were still in Hebden Bridge at the time of the 1881 census. Samuel senior died there in 1882. It seems that Alice and most of the children except Ralph moved back to Manchester, though not as a family. In the 1891 census Sarah Jane was boarding with a family named Stokes in Napier Street, Gorton (an area of Manchester) and she was working in a cotton mill.

Later that year she married Albert Edwin Orton (senior), a barber who lived at the time with his parents Thomas and Sarah Orton in Gorton. Albert's sister Augusta and brother Ernest were the witnesses.

Their first child Edith May was born in July 1893, when Sarah was 30 years old. Lillian (1894), Harold (1898), Frederick (1901) and Albert Edwin (1903) followed. Lillian and Frederick both died in infancy. The family lived at 28 Hankinson St, previously owned by Albert's brother Percy, for many years. Albert senior died in 1919 and Sarah seems to have inherited the property.

The notorious eviction of Albert junior's family seems to have happened in the mid to late 1930's, not long before Sarah Jane died in 1938. She would have been in her seventies at the time, and may well have been suffering from dementia. Her cause of death (provided by my cousin David) was myocarditis and senility.

*The name St Leger is not an easy one to research. It appears as St Leger, St Ledger, Ledger, StLedger and several other variants. Samuel and Alice seem to have changed the spelling to St Ledger as time went on, and sometimes they were recorded as plain Ledger.

Photo of Hebden Bridge By Leg1ndyoll at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

War and its effect on families

On this Remembrance Day, which marks the end of the First World War, I've been reflecting on the effect that wars have on families and the impact of war on my own family's history. 

In some cases a war has had a very direct effect on individual's lives. If there had been no war in 1914, my grandfather Thomas Henry Ward would probably have stayed in Milnrow, Lancashire. He almost certainly would never have travelled to Colchester if he hadn't been sent there to train for military service, and he wouldn't have met my grandmother, Rosina Beales. He wouldn't have experienced the horrors of the Mesopotamia campaign. And Grandma would probably never have moved from Essex to Lancashire.

Rosina's mother, Eliza Whybrew, also came from a family that knew well the impact of war. Eliza's father David Whybrew, an Essex teenager, joined the British Army and travelled via the Maori Wars in New Zealand to Australia. There he met Eliza's mother, Susan Mason. Susan and David's children were born in three different countries as the family moved around with the army.

Susan and David lost one son (David Henry) to the Boer war, and, it seems, another son (William) and a son-in-law (George Howard) in WW1. Rosina's brother William James Beales also fought in WW1, but fortunately survived.

On the other side of my family, two of my grandmother's cousins, John Henry Bentley and Thomas Bentley died in WW1. But it was the second World War which had most direct impact on my maternal grandparent's and families, with the blitzing of Salford and the evacuation of my grandmother and the younger children to Rossendale.

Wars have emotional and psychological impacts which affect not just those who experience the war directly, but their children and grandchildren. Fears and anxieties get passed on, sometimes without any explanation. Attitudes learned in war-time become the next generation's norm. As a simple example, I was brought up with a strong sense of 'waste not, want not', a carry-over from the rationing and scarcity of my parent's childhood.

Wars also have economic and social impacts. For instance, the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815 resulted in taxes being raised steeply to fund the war. This resulted in great hardship for many people. How many of the children who died in infancy in this period might have lived if their parents had been even slightly better off? It's difficult to say.

A major factor in the "Lancashire cotton famine" of 1861-1865 was the American Civil war, with imports of raw cotton blockaded and exports reduced. Unemployment in some places rose dramatically, and many families found themselves in poverty. 

Some left Lancashire to find work in the woollen mills of Yorkshire. Perhaps that was the reason why Samuel and Alice St Leger moved with their family to Hebden Bridge about that time. (More of that in my next post.)

Image  © Copyright Oast House Archive and licensed for reuse under thisCreative Commons Licence

Sarah Jane St Leger (or St Ledger) 1862-1938

Individual Summary

5 October 2014

Name:	Sarah Jane St Leger1–3
Sex:	Female
Father:	Samuel St Leger (1821-1882)
Mother:	Alice Dodd (1824-    )
Individual Facts
Birth	Oct 1862	Salford, Lancashire, England1–7
Residence	1871 (about age 9)	Relation to Head of House: Daughter; Wadsworth, Yorkshire, England7
Residence	1881 (about age 19)	Relation to Head of House: Daughter; Wadsworth, Yorkshire, England6
Residence	1891 (about age 29)	Relation to Head of House: Boarder; Gorton, Lancashire, England3
Residence	1901 (about age 39)	Relation to Head of House: Wife; Pendleton, Lancashire, England2
Residence	2 Apr 1911 (about age 48)	Marital Status: MarriedRelation to Head of House: Wife; Pendleton, Lancashire, England1
Death	Jun 1938 (about age 75)	Salford, Lancashire, England4
Marriages/Children
1. Albert Edwin Orton (1867-1919)
Children	Edith May Orton (1893-1965)
	Lilian Orton (1894-1899)
	Harold Orton (1898-1946)
	Frederick Orton (1901-1901)
	Albert Edwin Orton (1903-1947)
Notes

       1. 1911 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), Class: RG14; Piece: 24037.

       2. 1901 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG13; Piece: 3713; Folio: 38; Page: 30.

        3. 1891 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG12; Piece: 3175; Folio: 34; Page: 5; GSU Roll: 6098285.

        4. England & Wales, Death Index, 1916-2007 (Ancestry.com Operations Inc).

        5. FreeBMD, England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 (Ancestry.com Operations Inc).

        6. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1881 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG11; Piece: 4354; Folio: 26; Page: 11; GSU roll: 1342040.

        7. 1871 England Census (Ancestry.com Operations Inc), Class: RG10; Piece: 4324; Folio: 6; Page: 5; GSU roll: 846983.

More about Sarah Jane St Leger:

From hellhole to Hebden Bridge Samuel St Leger and Alice Dodd
Sarah Jane St Leger