William Pilkington was born in 1840, the son of Peter and Betsy Pilkington, then living in Great George Street, Preston. He rose from very humble origins to become a Methodist preacher and prosperous newsagent. He wrote a number of local history articles for the Preston Herald, which were published as Then & Now: The Illustrated Story of Preston’s Progress for Seventy Years (1841-1911). His other publications included The makers of Preston methodism and the relation of methodism to the temperance movement and Flashes of Preston Methodism. The second chapter of Then & Now contained his autobiography (see below). He died in 1920, aged eighty.
See also: Ellen – a working-class biography – preston history
CHAPTER II
Early Days of the Writer
I was born in Great Georges Street, on May 26th, 1840. That was the year in which the railroad was opened from Preston to Lancaster, and also to Fleetwood. There was then no railway to Lytham, Blackpool, Southport, or Longridge. It was also the year in which the steamship Britannia, the first Cunard liner, crossed the Atlantic with rather more than 100 passengers, and it took over a fortnight to make the voyage. So that my birth was practically contemporaneous with the introduction of railways, penny postage, and the first liner which sailed to America. My father, Peter Pilkington, was a hand-mule spinner at Mr. Frank Sleddon’s factory in Hanover-street, which was burnt down a few months ago. In after years he became a well-known newsagent.
When I was but a baby of three weeks old my mother contracted typhus fever, and my father was also quickly stricken with the same disease. At that time the very mention of that contagious disease struck terror in the hearts of the people, and neighbours dare not enter a house to render help where people lay sick. So it was that both my parents were removed to the House of Recovery. My mother improved very slowly indeed, being confined to the hospital for about six months, during which time the infant William was in the poor house. When at last my mother was convalescent she inquired about her child. When it was brought she looked at it with a long, questioning gaze, which began with suspicion. The child’s appearance was so changed that she could not recognise it, and she pushed the babe from her, saying “This is not my child; tell me the truth; is it dead, or have you swapped it for another? Take it away, it is not mine”
Recognition
In a few days the infant was brought again, and this time it was dressed in its own clothes, and the nurse explained that the child’s altered complexion had been caused by thoughtlessly putting the babe into a cradle and wrapping it in the clothes of one who had died of scarlet fever. Mother’s strength had now gained command over her suspicions, and with this explanation she again looked at the infant, and was carried away by the sudden natural outburst of emotion, and her arms of love tightened around the child, and she gave it the kiss of recognition.
When William grew up, after hearing the story, sometimes, in a little kindly banter, said “Mother, I am wondering whether I am really yours or somebody else’s bid.” Mother never liked to be reminded of this incident, and on one occasion the mention of it roused her anger and she threatened to give me a good hiding if I said it again. Fifty years ago, on Sunday afternoons, I used to preach the Gospel to the inmates of the poor-house in which I lived during the first six months of my life. Then it was a barn-like white-washed building, situated alongside of the Longridge Railway, about midway of Burrow-road. Though I started my career there, I have as much regard for my life as if it had commenced in a palatial residence, and think of it as a present from my parents, and will continue to preserve it as long as possible in remembrance of father and mother.
Although my origin was so humble, and all my life long have had to toil for my living, and received but a meagre education, there stands to my credit “The Makers of Preston Methodism,” “History of the Temperance Movement and Origin of the Teetotal Pledge,” also “The Life of the Rev. Walter Briscombe.” These three books are in the Free Library, as well as in the Reference Library. In addition to the above, I have written “Glimpses of the Life of the Late Rev. Charles Garrett;” also a lantern lecture, with fifty original slides, sketched by a special artist, illustrating the struggles and triumphs of teetotalism. This lecture was first delivered in the Wesley School in 1894. His Worship the Mayor of Preston, Mr. W. H. Woods, presided, and Alderman W. M. Margerison, thrice Mayor of Preston, exhibited the slides with his powerful limelight lantern. The slides and the lecture are copyrighted. After I had delivered the lecture in Preston and district, it was bought by Riley Brothers, magic lantern makers, Bradford, and through them has had a successful run in the United Kingdom, also in the United States and Canada.
My recollection goes back to the time when I was three years of age. As young as I was, I can remember quite well rambling away from home, and was taken in a crying condition to the police station, then in Avenham-street. What struck me most was a very big fire, nearly as big as the house I lived in, and a great big room, and in the room was a large square table, and on the table two policemen were playing cards, smoking their pipes, and chatting. When night came on I was still there, and they gave me something to eat and drink. All the while I was wondering whether I should ever see father and mother again. The bellman went round the town, ringing his bell, and describing the lost child. You can imagine my feelings of joy when I saw father coming to fetch me home.
The desperate poverty of Preston
I mean by poverty more than lack of money, worse even than death by starvation—the poverty of intellect, of imagination, of beauty, of soul; indeed, it means a living death. Seventy years ago schools and railways were lacking, and the majority of people were ignorant and superstitious. We to-day stand forth a little from those times in which our fathers lived, in the forties of last century. We have fresh light from different quarters, which was not available in their days.
A right hon. gentleman in the year 1868 said that if children of poor folk were made to attend school until they were twelve or more years of age, their bones and muscles would become too stiff to allow them to bend themselves to the work of manual labour.
When I was about eight years of age I was sent to John Goodier’s factory, Brookfield-street, as a half-time creeler. Half-time was nominally thirty-six hours a week. My wage was one shilling and threepence per week, less than a halfpenny per hour. At that period the cotton mills ran from six o’clock in the morning until any time at night, usually half-past seven. Then there were no factory inspectors. Low wages and excessive hours of labour involved over-weighting anxiety. The all-absorbing question of that day was not how to educate the children, but how they should be employed to obtain money to keep the wolf from the door.
When I brought my first week’s wage home mother was very proud of the paltry one shilling and threepence, and said “My word, Will, though thy one shilling and threepence is little, it is better than nothing.” As soon as a shilling or two a week could be earned it had to be done, in order to help the family income. For this purpose I had to resort to a bit of trickery to pass full-time before I was twelve (full time age was thirteen). Inside my clog heels were filled with cotton to make me stand an inch higher than I really was, and the purpose was accomplished.
The only education I ever had was in St. Thomas’s School, Lancaster-road, as half-timer. Elijah Simmons was the master. At that early day I appreciated the value of learning, but did not get much. In those days lads got more cane than tuition. My small stock of learning has been acquired by my own industry, without tutor or assistant, and, to add to my difficulties, my exertions have frequently been made under circumstances the most unpropitious to my pursuits. I was never out of work until John Hawkins’ mill was totally destroyed by fire on February 7, 1861. At that time I was a piecer, my wage was eight shillings a week, and I was twenty years of age. Being burnt out, I commenced life afresh as a newsagent, without money or friends. Since then I have been in many troubled waters, and turned sharp corners, travelled along rough and disagreeable roads, and have fought my way through poverty of childhood and youth to a position of comparative ease in declining years.
The young men of fifty years ago
Like most persons who are no longer young, I find myself recalling the past with much feeling. It must needs be so as the years go on. The memory of “old friends, old scenes,” is part of the food by which the mind is nourished in our later days, and the habit of indulging in it is instinctive and natural. Some of my recollections may be interesting to contemporaries who share them. For those who are younger they may possess something of novelty.
What hurt the writer most when a lad was going to Sunday school with patched clothes and irons on his clogs. It was a painful experience every Sunday to walk as silently as possible on the sides of my clogs, afraid of anyone knowing about the irons. When nineteen years of age, and working in the factory as a piecer, my pocket money allowance was twopence a week; then I was a church member, and paid a penny per week class contribution and a shilling for the quarterly ticket, and out of the twopence per week saved a few coppers annually. Therefore, having no money to spare, I never acquired spending habits, and this has been one of the greatest blessings of my life, and in after years enabled me to “put a little bit away for a rainy day, for the sun would not always shine.”
I found myself happy in the company of like-minded youths, and saved myself in trying to save others, and furnished my own mind in preparing to furnish others. Since the writer budded into manhood he has never hesitated to bear testimony to the inestimable benefits of Sunday school work and cottage meetings. Much of what I know of life and religion was learned through these humble agencies. It was in cottage meetings, and not in college classes nor university lecture-rooms, that I learned to talk to ten, twenty, and thirty poor folk crowded in a back kitchen, illumined by a tallow candle standing on a small round table, casting a dim light on the faces of a slum audience. Then I had no idea that the cottage meeting would lead to the pulpit.
Cottage Meetings
In the fifties and sixties of last century there were sixteen cottages in different parts of the town in which meetings were held at least once a week, and the young men paid for the lighting up of the meeting places and found books for the services. Six young men were appointed to conduct the service in each house. It is impossible to measure the magnitude of the influence exerted upon the work and workers by the singing, praying, and talking in these homely meetings.
It is unnecessary to give the census roll of these 96 young men with the dew of youth upon them, who were the strength of the church, and learned, like myself, to address large audiences in cottage meetings, but enough of the names may be mentioned to show that they were capable and gifted men, though the standard of general scholarship was not as high among us fifty years ago as it is now. The well-remembered names of the late C. W. Whitehead, who for many years was a most successful superintendent of Moor Park Sunday school; the late T. P. Berry, who became a superintendent of the same school, also a lay preacher; Charles Pickles and John Crompton Sowerbutts both entered the ministry in 1871; the late Clement Stuckberry, who entered the ministry in 1873; Richard Rossall, who entered the ministry in 1877; and the late Joseph Berry, who became a president of the New Zealand Wesleyan Conference. There are those still left who will recall the good work they had done in this town in their young days.
My first temperance speech
This was attempted when I was about fifteen years of age, in a Band of Hope meeting held in the schoolroom under the Methodist Free Church, opposite the Covered Market. The Rev. Joseph Thompson was the chairman, in the year 1855. I remember quite well rehearsing the speech aloud amid the din of the machinery in the factory. When I had to deliver it I had it off by heart, but when called upon I was a speechless lad. They sang a verse or two, during which I pulled the writing out of my pocket, got the start, and went through somehow.
Pulpit blunders
It is a little more than fifty years ago since this never-to-be-forgotten event happened. In the year 1860 I was urged by a well-known local preacher to read the lesson for the evening service, held in the Wesleyan Chapel, Penwortham, and accepted the invitation. On entering the vestry I found that the preacher had not arrived, and it was just on six o’clock. The steward eyed the beardless lad from head to foot, and said, in a disappointed fashion, “Has he sent you?” I replied, “No, he only asked me to read the lesson.” So saying, I picked up my hat, and was making for the door, but as I was passing through the waiting congregation in the chapel my progress was arrested by the steward pulling me back by the lap of my coat, saying, “You must go in the pulpit, and begin the service; the preacher will be here soon.” To use a forceful slang phrase, I “faced the music,” and ventured into the pulpit for the first time in my life, full of nerves, and hoping that the preacher would come before the hymn was sung. But I was doomed to disappointment. During the prayer a cold sweat came over me, and my teeth began to chatter. Instead of repeating the Lord’s Prayer I pronounced the Benediction. In the silence and awful experience which ensued, a member of the congregation stamped his foot and exclaimed aloud, “Nay! Nay! William; ‘Our Father,’ ‘Our Father.'” William was greatly confused and discomfited, but when he recovered his breath he repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and during the singing of the next hymn the excitement had somewhat subsided.
This was my first pulpit blunder, but unfortunately not my last. Preachers and printers make all sorts of errors without knowing it. The late Rev. Dr. Grosart, of Blackburn, the well-known writer and editor of several editions of old English classics, tells a very amusing instance of a printer’s error that he noticed while revising some proof sheets for his friend Alexander Smith, the poet. One line should have stood—
“See the pale martyr in his shroud of fire.”
But the doctor was not a little puzzled to read—
“See the pale master with his shirt on fire.”
This reminds one of the complaint of the young poetess—
“When I wrote of the dewdrop on freshly blown roses,
“The nasty things printed it ‘freshly blown noses.'”
One Sunday morning, when I was preaching in Moor Park Wesleyan Chapel, unknown to myself I made a strange error in using an angel-like face and head of a little girl to illustrate my subject, and, having occasion to make a second reference after the girl had grown up into womanhood, spoke of her as a man. After the service I was told that I had performed a miracle, and was the first preacher that had turned a woman into a man before their eyes. In a few days I received some verses on the transformation, from which the following lines are culled:—
Sometimes he’ll teach,
At others preach,
With telling exhortation;
But a queer mistake
He once did make
In giving an illustration.
Who ever knew
A girl that grew,
And changed into a man?
But this he gave,
With aspect grave,
In his graphic sermon plan!
An exciting Sunday Incident
Three or four years ago I was holding forth at the Wesleyan Chapel, Goosnargh. The services were held morning and afternoon. I was staying with Mr. Hugh Blundell, farmer. After tea Mr. Blundell said to me, “We shall now have to start milking, and you may take a walk in the fields behind the barn, and you will see a large number of rabbits skipping in all directions.” Passing along the bottom of the first field, I noticed at the top corner a red cow, and it was bellowing “Mow, mow.” I thought the cow out of condition, and for that reason had been left behind, so I passed into the other field. On returning, I found that the red cow was paying more attention to me than I liked and as it approached nearer, to my horror I discovered that it was a bull bent on mischief. There was no way of escape, not a tree to climb, nor a gap in the hedge through which I might scramble. As I looked into his fierce, piercing eyes, wry mouth, and distorted face, I thought the last day had come. My body was turned into a water fountain. I was no match for the monster. My courage, bravery, and strength seemed to be giving way. Fortunately Mr. Blundell had heard the roaring of the bull, and said to the milkers, “Hurry up with the dog, I believe the bull is chasing Mr. Pilkington, I had forgotten it was in the field.” The dog was the first to the rescue. I only escaped, by the skin of my teeth, being gored to death. In relating my experience to my friends at the farm, one of the guests who had sat at the tea table, said with a twinkle in his eye, “We are surprised that a preacher should be so perturbed when he has such a fine chance of going up yonder.” “My good fellow,” said I, “when I go ‘up yonder’ I should like to go the old-fashioned way, and not on the horns of a mad bull.”
I remember going, in my younger days, with some of the old temperance reformers, to hold a teetotal meeting in the Wesleyan Chapel, Goosnargh, when the movement was not as respectable as at present. On arriving, the doors were locked, and we were told by the trustees that we could not hold the meeting in the chapel, it was against the rules. Mr. Waterhouse, of Whittingham Hall, who was then the society steward, said he had a large room over the shippons in which we might hold the meeting. This offer was accepted, and it was soon filled to overflowing. During the meeting the floor went in, and a strange sight was witnessed in the dim light of the candles, some of which had lost their bearings. There was great confusion when the two legged teetotalers in the upper room found themselves precipitated to the bottom room, and in close and comical positions with four legged teetotalers. Like all old-fashioned shippons it was a very low building, and happily we had not far to drop. The higher grade animals and lower grade animals, all being sober minded, no one was hurt. The meeting was now adjourned to Whittingham Hall, and the speakers were stirred by enthusiasm, and at the close many signed the pledge. So ended the first teetotal meeting in Goosnargh, which is talked about to this day.
Then the movement had not even a back door entrance, but now it has a front door status, and a charming outlook.
“A character”
For some years, when preaching in the surrounding villages, I generally spent the Sunday afternoons in visiting the homes of the people, and some times came across specially interesting characters. I am now thinking of a good Irish Wesleyan. “Well, Bridget, did you like my sermon this morning?” “Oh, yis, your rivirence, it was very improving.” “And what part of it did you like best, Bridget?” “Be dad, your rivirence, I don’t remember any part, but altogether it was mighty improving.” “Now Bridget, if you don’t remember it, how could it be improving?” “Now does your rivirence see that linen I washed and dhried last week there on that line?” “Certainly, Bridget.” “And isn’t the linen all the better for the washing?” “No doubt, Bridget.” “But not a drop of the soap and water stays in it.” “Well, sir, its the same with me. Not a word of the sermint stays in me. But I am all the better and claner for it, for all that.”
When I come in touch with one who, through sickness or old age, has been deprived of attending public worship, and expresses a desire to hear a sermon, I offer to gratify that wish. Several weeks ago I visited an old friend living in Fulwood, in his 83rd year, who had not been able to leave the house for about two months. During the conversation he said to me, “I see you are appointed to preach at the Wesley Chapel on Sunday night; if the weather be favourable I hope to be there.” I said to my friend, “Don’t, it will be risky. I should not like you to take a chill. I will come and give you the sermon to-morrow night by your own fire-side,” and this was agreed. I went, and my friend showed great interest in the subject.
The next day I called in to inquire if his sleep had been sweet? He lifted up his hand and exclaimed, “Oh, that sensational sermon! I never got a wink of sleep. Do what I would I could not get it out of my head, it stuck to me like a leech, it nearly drove me mad.” I said “Praise the Lord. I wish I could make 50,000 that they could not sleep by preaching to them.”
The writer has lived a strenuous life and put plenty of hard work in it. Fifty-two Sundays a year does not supply all the demands made upon him. He has preached in every Nonconformist Church in the town with one exception, and three times in London, as the representative of the Local Preachers’ Mutual Aid Association, and held all the offices which a layman can hold in Methodism, except the circuit stewardship.
Bazaars
I have always had a passion for big chapels, big meetings, and big schemes. My ready response when financial efforts were required kept me in useful work for many years, to which I look back with feelings of pleasure. In 1886, as secretary, I piloted the most successful bazaar which had been held in the Wesley Circuit. The object was to pay off the debt of £2,000 which had been incurred by modernising Wesley Chapel. The bazaar realised £1,100 in addition to £800 received in cash and promises, making a total of £1,900. This bazaar was held in the Public Hall, December, 1886.
Five years later, in the year 1891, I was again appointed secretary of another bazaar which was held in the same place, and which realised £1,500. The amount enabled the trustees of Wesley Chapel to pay off the remaining debt of £750, and the trustees of Moor Park Chapel to pay off a debt of £150, and the remainder formed a nucleus for a new church at Ashton.
I was one of the three who planted the acorn of Methodism in Ashton in the spring of 1866, first by holding open-air preaching services on the marsh, after which Mr. James Francis opened his house in Hull-street, for Sunday services. Soon two houses were thrown together in Swansea-street, and here the first Nonconformist Sunday School was opened in Ashton. The infant church grew and grew, and called for greater accommodation. At the beginning of 1869 a large room, which had been used as the pattern-room of the ship-building company, which had come to grief, was obtained. Seats were provided for about 100 people, and the members of the society numbered twenty.
I shall never forget that cold, draughty preaching room, which in winter required three mammoth stoves to raise the chilling temperature just a few degrees above freezing point. In this room champagne luncheons used to be given after ship launches, and dancing indulged in until the small hours in the morning. The worshipers had to climb eighteen awkward steps at the risk of breaking their necks.
From this humble beginning has evolved the present magnificent church and Sunday school in Wellington-road, Ashton-on-Ribble.
For fifty years and more I have sought to strengthen and extend Christian effort in Preston, and in the attempt have spent both money and a considerable amount of time.
I must add to all I have named my extensive correspondence in connection with temperance legislation and other subjects. Prestonians will remember many warm debates in which I have taken part in the Preston newspapers. I was appointed the first chairman of the Newsagents Association, and the late Mr. John Ward was appointed treasurer, and Mr. H. Worthington secretary.
For twenty-five years the writer sat on the board of directors of four Star Bowkett Building Societies, and has lived to see them all finish in a satisfactory manner. About a quarter million of money was received in subscriptions and paid out. There are hundreds of people in Preston living in their own house to-day by the aid of these societies.