Articles, records and resources relating to the history of the city of Preston
‘No Irish’ policy in Preston’s mills
A report by James Phillips Kay, an assistant poor law commissioner, on migration to the cotton districts of Lancashire, published in the first annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales in 1835, contains observations on the employment of Irish migrants in the county’s cotton mills, including two in Preston. The information supplied to Kay about Preston makes clear that the town’s major cotton trade employer, Horrocks, Miller and Co, was operating a ‘No Irish’ policy in its mills as early as 1825: [1]
James Kay, who later became Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, public health reformer, of Gawthorpe Hall, Burnley, provides a sobering illustration of the anti-Irish prejudice that was so prevalent in nineteenth-century Britain, even among the more enlightened social reformers. In searching for the reasons for the appalling conditions in which the urban poor lived, Kay reached the following conclusion:
‘Believing that these evils could not be “the necessary results of the commercial system”, Kay found other explanations by blaming the poor (especially the Irish) for bringing about their own demoralization.’ [2] This conclusion was reached in a pamphlet Kay wrote a few years before his report to the poor law commissioners. That earlier view on the Irish is reinforced in his observations and comments in the later report, as, for example, in the following, in which his protestation of sincerity rings hollow:
‘With the deepest and most sincere commiseration of the sufferings of that gallant but degraded race, I cannot but consider the extent to which the immigration of Irish has proceeded in the cotton district an evil, as far as the manners, habits, and domestic comfort of the people are concerned … The English are more steady, cleanly, skilful labourers, and are more faithful in the fulfilment of contracts made between master and servant.’
Kay relies heavily for the shaping of his views on a Mr Taylor of Preston:
‘Mr. Taylor, of Preston, when connected with the firm of Messrs. Horrocks, Miller, and Co., (having to make an inquiry, in preparation for giving evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons,) about ten years ago, discovered that the preference of English labour had been so decided in their firm, that though they had received numerous applications, they had not a single Irishman in their employ, among 1,300 workmen. They have now 1,600 workmen, but since the date of the inquiry alluded to, they have seen no reason to change their system, and they have still no Irish in their factory.
‘I was informed by the same gentleman, that Messrs. Swainson, Birley, and Co., having about ten years ago erected an immense establishment, requiring not less than 1,500 “hands,” encouraged a large immigration of Irish. Since that period they have found it much to their interest to reduce the number of Irish, and to supply their place with English.’
Kay concludes:
‘For skilled labour, the English are universally preferred, and after them the Scotch … This preference is justified in a great degree by that apathy of character, which is a characteristic of those who feel few of the wants of civilized life, and who, therefore, being contented with meagre fare, and narrow dwellings, acknowledge but slightly the stimulus of emulation or of hope; in whose apprehension the brutal sloth of the savage resembles the placid contentment of the instructed artisan.’
7. One source of a vast supply of workmen to this district yet remains to be mentioned; viz. Ireland. I am not aware that any accurate estimate of the Irish population of Lancashire has yet been made, though I know that inquiries are proceeding under the direction of the Statistical Society of Manchester, which will soon determine that question, as far as the principal towns of the county are concerned. In Manchester alone, the Irish and their immediate descendants amount to about 60,000, and in Liverpool to about 50,000; and it may be correct to add at least 30,000, or 40,000 for the rest of the county. Irish labour has certainly (under the circumstances of the extraordinary extension of the trade, and the deficiency of a supply from the English counties) been absolutely necessary to maintain the commercial position of the cotton manufacture of England amongst its foreign rivals, but it has not been an unmingled benefit.
8. With the deepest and most sincere commiseration of the sufferings of that gallant but degraded race, I cannot but consider the extent to which the immigration of Irish has proceeded in the cotton district an evil, as far as the manners, habits, and domestic comfort of the people are concerned, all which would, I think, have been less liable to deterioration, had an early migration from the southern counties of England supplied the place of the ten thousands of Irish who now people the great towns of the cotton trade.
9. I have had frequent opportunities of ascertaining the opinions of the most intelligent manufacturers of Lancashire on this subject. They all unite in lamenting the evils necessarily attendant on this immigration; and with reference to the skill required in the various processes of the trade, together with that steady perseverance which factory employment peculiarly requires, they agree, (without exception, as far as I can discover,) that they prefer English labourers from a purely agricultural district, to Irish from a similar source.
10. The English are more steady, cleanly, skilful labourers, and are more faithful in the fulfilment of contracts made between master and servant.
11. In Ashton, Stayley Bridge, and Hyde, I was informed that few, if any, Irish (though there are several thousands in the district) are ever employed in the superior processes in the cotton factories; they are almost all to be found in the blowing-rooms, an employment requiring little or no skill, and receiving, therefore, the least reward. A certain number are also employed in the card-rooms, which is the next gradation of employment; but several most intelligent manufacturers informed me, that though they had retained Irish at least 25 years in their employment, none had ever been preferred by them to offices of trust, and few, if any, ever attained the rank of spinners. Mr. Taylor, of Preston, and Mr. Edmund Ashworth, of Turton, likewise told me, that they did not believe there were 100 Irish spinners in the county.
12. Mr. Taylor, of Preston, when connected with the firm of Messrs. Horrocks, Miller, and Co., (having to make an inquiry, in preparation for giving evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons,) about ten years ago, discovered that the preference of English labour had been so decided in their firm, that though they had received numerous applications, they had not a single Irishman in their employ, among 1,300 workmen. They have now 1,600 workmen, but since the date of the inquiry alluded to, they have seen no reason to change their system, and they have still no Irish in their factory.
13. I was informed by the same gentleman, that Messrs. Swainson, Birley, and Co., having about ten years ago erected an immense establishment, requiring not less than 1,500 “hands,” encouraged a large immigration of Irish. Since that period they have found it much to their interest to reduce the number of Irish, and to supply their place with English.
14. Messrs. M*** having observed a great portion of the population in the neighbourhood of W ***, in the south of Ireland, to be unemployed, were tempted, by the cheapness of labour in the district, to erect a mill near that city. The population were begging bread at the gates of their factory, in idleness and destitution; yet very few accepted employment within its walls, and they were obliged to advertise for workmen in the adjoining counties. Even then, the supply was inadequate, and they had to repeat their advertisements from time to time, because they found they could not retain the native population in the mill. Though the labour was nominally much cheaper than in England, yet the products of the labour were so much smaller, that they doubted whether they gained any advantage by the nominal rate. They found a great difference between the Irish who had never removed from the vicinity, and those who had spent one or two years in the cotton districts of England. Such men were exceedingly more valuable labourers than the surrounding population.
15. Among the workmen employed in the building trades of Lancashire are an immense number of Irish, but I am informed that very few indeed are contractors or overlookers, and that they are chiefly employed as “hodmen” and labourers, i. e. in the inferior and worst paid occupations. For skilled labour, the English are universally preferred, and after them the Scotch.
16. This preference is justified in a great degree by that apathy of character, which is a characteristic of those who feel few of the wants of civilized life, and who, therefore, being contented with meagre fare, and narrow dwellings, acknowledge but slightly the stimulus of emulation or of hope; in whose apprehension the brutal sloth of the savage resembles the placid contentment of the instructed artisan.
[1] Great Britain Poor Law Commissioners, Annual Report, 1835, 305–6, Google-Books-ID: inkXAAAAYAAJ.
[2] ‘Shuttleworth, Sir James Phillips Kay-, First Baronet (1804–1877), Civil Servant and Educationist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, n.d., https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/15199.
