Gipsy Dan Boswell

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Meanwhile the exposed coal field to the west of the Leen, in the Erewash Valley, was the scene of the application of a new kind of power. The shortage of coal throughout Britain was necessitating deeper mining. Deeper mining demanded improved methods of shifting water. Watt's first steam engine had only a vertical motion and was used chiefly for drawing up water, but in the Leen Valley at the Papplewick Mill, the union of steam power and the spinning mule was first applied. James Watt, acting on an idea put forward by Robinson, the owner of the Leen Mills, had produced the vertical engine.

With the use of water and steam power, the factory system did not spring into being fully fledged. In the stocking industry, steam power was not utilised for another 60 years, but the cottage, from having a single stocking frame, often became a small scale factory in which the craftsman worked several frames, hired or his own, and in which his wife and children prepared the thread that he used. The knitting industry had grown up in Bulwell during the 18th century as a domestic activity of this kind. By the end of that century the prosperity of a considerable part of its 1,500 inhabitants was bound up with the manufacture of gloves and stockings. Wages were fairly high. The frame operatives were not particularly thrifty. A succeeding decade brought tragedy. Napoleon, triumphant on land, but defeated at sea, set out to crush Britain by economic sanctions. The Berlin decrees of 1806 he framed with the object that British trade might be "repelled by all Europe from the Sound to the Hellespont".

The effect was to accentuate wartime slumps and to disrupt British industry to such an extent that Napoleon came perilously near to succeeding in his aim. With export markets greatly curtailed, over-production and decreased wages were inevitable. Wartime change in fashions played its part in aggravating the difficulty, and there was no longer a market for such goods as the fashionable pantaloon made on the wide frames for export to France. The manufacturers thereupon adapted their machines to producing inferior goods for the home and American market. Material that could be produced on wide frames with a minimum of manual labour could be sold to master hosiers—the hated bagmen, who would cut up the material and make it up into stockings. This undercut the price of fully fashioned work and damaged the reputation that the stockinger had for fine craftsmanship. Such considerations as these were at the actual root of the Luddite operations locally. It is true that machine wrecking did take place in the lace trade, at Loughborough for example, because the workers believed the machines themselves to be displacing labour and causing unemployment. But to generalise this idea to cover the whole movement is to ignore the particular factors which were at work in the hosiery industry. Another very specific grievance of the stockingers was payment in "truck", i.e. in goods—which might even be a stocking-frame which the stockinger did not want. The hosiers of reputation were in agreement with the knitters. This is well evidenced in the press notices of the period. The Nottingham Review constantly published agreements to give the 1803 price, but putters-out of work always managed to circumvent the resolutions of the master middlemen. That is why we find that notices were put on machines. A typical one was, "This frame is making full fashioned hose at the full price—the old Derbyshire Price". A notice like this was a mark as effective, where the Luddites were at work, as was the Blood of the Lamb in averting from the Hebrews the wrath of the final plague.

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For the rest, items such as this from the Nottingham Review were a common enough occurrence: "Four frames broken at Basford last night and their woodwork burnt. Five frames also destroyed the same evening at Bobbers Mill". Resistance was organised by some owners of frames. Hollingworth of Bulwell put on an armed guard and, in an attack, an Arnold frame-breaker named Westley was shot and killed. At his funeral, at Arnold, the Military, the Special Constabulary and the Riot Act between them barely served to keep the peace. There was no civil police force. The Berkshire Regiment and later the West Kent militia were quartered in Nottingham. Luddite feeling pervaded the food riots. Napoleon was getting his thrust well in.

Before turning our attention to the critical decades following the Napolonic Wars, let us see what repercussions these local disturbances were having in the national legislature. A Bill which attempted to prohibit "truck payment" and the production of cut-ups was thrown out of the Lords in 1812. What Parliament did do was to prosecute associations of workmen under the Combination Acts, to use Government spies to counteract secrecy, and to impose the death penalty for machine wrecking. It was during a debate on this last measure in 1812 that Byron made his famous maiden speech: "Such marchings and counter marchings! From Nottingham to Bulwell, from Bulwell to Basford, from Basford to Mansfield! And when at length the detachments arrived at their destination in all 'the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war', they came just in time to witness the mischief which had been done and ascertain the escape of the perpetrators, to collect the spolia opima in the fragments of broken frames, and return to their quarters amidst the derision of old women and the hooting of children". Byron inveighed tellingly against tyrannical government. The frame-breakers, he said, were guilty of the capital crime of poverty. With the end of the war and the disbandment of Militia regiments, thousands more came into the cheap labour market. Those men who had often halfheartedly quelled the hunger riots went to swell the ranks of the rioters. This influx counteracted the effect of the increase in the output of hand-made goods which took place after 1815. The Corn Laws were another depressing factor. While keeping food dear to starvation point, they stifled the revival of continental markets. In 1819, the year of the tragedy of St. Peter's Fields, men were parading the streets of Nottingham carrying boards, "Pity our distresses. We ask for bread. Pity our children". The machinery for dealing with poverty of such huge and hopeless dimensions was entirely inadequate. The parish was the unit for the administering of relief. There had been no radical change in administration since 1601. The only major adjustment had been the application of the Speenhamland System which led, in rural England, to a complete confusion between wages and relief. In an industrial district such as Bulwell, what happened was that the overseers of the poor set themselves up as hosiers, which only added to the difficulty of the master hosiers in finding a market and paying prices that constituted a living wage. The Act of 1834 organised the country into Poor Law Unions and established the Board of Guardians. The grim lack of imagination and psychological intuition with which the Commissioners went to work counteracted the efficiency of many of their measures, in that the workers were solidly resistant. This Benthamite efficiency was aimed at preventing the exploitation of pauperism by local vested interests; but the abolition of outdoor relief, which was a reform in rural districts, meant to the unavoidably unemployed of the industrial districts either starvation or incarceration in a degrading prison designed on more or less intentionally penal lines. The mood which gripped the distressed workers was that voiced by the mob of the Reform Bill riots at Nottingham in 1831, who, when advised to disperse, said "What's the use of dispersing, we may as well die where we are as go home and be starved".

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I have outlined at some length the English tragedy in the years following Waterloo because it is only in relation to that background that the local situation can be understood. In 1851, the population of Bulwell had risen by some 75% since the beginning of the century. Arnold was slightly larger. Through­out this phase of tile history of these two towns the interest of the frameworkers is practically identical. This is shown by their combination in many of the popular demonstrations of the period. The contemporary record of the plight of the Arnold frameworkers quoted by Dr. J. D. Chambers is well applicable to Bulwell. "The poor stocking maker", writes a correspondent of the Nottingham Mercury, "may possibly, by practising much forbearance during the prime of his life, be enabled to provide funds against the calamity of his own sickness, as numbers of them have done in this village; but since it is not possible that he can by the most unwearied industry accomplish the same benefit for his wife and family, he is continually exposed to the painful mortifications of being branded as a pauper and subjected to the workhouse test of destitution, notwithstanding he may be doing all that in him lies to keep himself, in his individual character, free from a dependency on the stinted bounty of a parish officer. The net average earnings of a sober, industrious, and good workman after toiling for 70 hours will not exceed 8s."

Nottinghamshire history resoures for local histories and genealogists

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Robert Mellors, Men of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire (1924)
Nottinghamshire history resoures for local histories and genealogists
 
ABSALOM BARNETT, (1773-1850), of Nottingham, was a man who in his time played many parts, for to his ability was added character and energy, securing the confidence of all about him, while in conversation he always had the saving grace of humour. In early life he was connected with the hosiery trade, at New Basford and Carlton Street. He was actively engaged in religious work connected with Castle Gate Chapel, (1802), and afterwards with George Street Baptist Chapel, and in the latter, when the minister was ill or away, he frequently conducted the services with acceptance and satisfaction.

In 1825 he appears as Assistant Overseer of the parish of St. Mary, and he gave important evidence upon the working of the Poor Laws prior to the passing of the new Act which came into force in 1836, when the three parishes of the town were joined into one Union, with one workhouse instead of three, and Mr. William Vickers, Alderman, was elected first Chairman of the Board of Guardians, and Absalom Barnett first Clerk of the Guardians, Governor of the Workhouse, and later made Superintendent' Registrar. The old Workhouse was crowded before amalgamation, but the Workhouses of St. Peter's in Broad Marsh, and of St. Nicholas' on Gillyflower Hill, Castle Road, being closed, St. Mary's Workhouse became full to overflowing. The reports of the time state that there was hardly standing room; the result being the development of vice and disease; and the virtuous poor were huddled with the idle and dissolute. (Orange, p. 909). There was no room for enlargement of the premises, which were like a prison within doors and high walls. The Chairman and other Guardians, urged by the Workhouse Master, determined to have a new building in open land; the Town Council refused consent. No land could be bought, and there came, therefore, a battle royal between the two bodies, in which Barnett was the persistent spokesman. In desperation, the Guardians went and bought two fields on Sherwood Rise, at that time in the parish of Lenton, and in the county. Then came indignation at the cruelty of taking the poor across the wild forest to such a lonely spot as Sherwood Rise. So the Council gave way, and consented to lease to the Guardians all the land between York Street and Windsor Street, called St. Michael's Church-yard, being the site of the ancient church, destroyed possibly about 1327, and also including the site of the old Leper Hospital, of two hundred years earlier date. Schools and rooms for children were built first, and afterwards the Workhouse. The Chairman and Barnett bought the materials, and the latter acted as Architect and Clerk of the works, having a foreman, Thomas East. The cost for the accommodation of 1,150 people, Wylie gives as £17,500, other figures, (probably including later additions), state the cost as £25,312.

Barnett retained his offices to the end of his life. He was one of the promoters of the building of Derby Road Baptist Chapel, and, pending the appointment of a minister, he was chosen as Presiding Elder. He died seven days after the chapel was opened. (See Ward, Wylie and Orange).

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Men of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire (1924)

 


JOHN SAMON, JOHN SAMON the younger, and RICHARD SAMON.

JOHN SAMON, (died 1416), must have been a good Mayor of Nottingham, for he served the office, first as Bailiff, then Mayor, four times, with twenty-six years between the first year of office (1381) and the last (1407). The family record was remarkable, for his father, JOHN SAMON, was Mayor five times between 1361 and 1378, and RICHARD SAMON, son of the junior John, was Mayor six times between 1418 and 1451. The elder John was a benefactor to the building of St Mary's new church. The son gave as a mortuary, or gift after death, to the church, his best horse with saddle and bridle, and also £10 to the fabric. (F. A. Wadsworth, in T.S.T's. 1917, pp. 47 and 50). The canopy of his tomb still stands in St. Mary's South transept, having been transferred from the old church which was razed four hundred years ago, but by a strange vandalism the altar tomb and effigy with the hands raised upon the breast in the attitude of prayer "was utterly destroyed this spring," so says Orange in 1840 (p. 516). John Samon further founded a chantry in St. Mary's church, and his son Richard increased the benefaction.

All the three Samons gave benefactions for the poor. The first gave three cottages in Cowe Lane (Clumber Street) for ''three poor men for ever."



A. S. Buxton, Selston church, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, vol XVI, 1912


The work of the 15th century is seen in the three-light east window and the whole of the tower. On the battlement, on the south side of the tower, are the letters J. and M.,— Jesus and Mary. Also, the letters T. S. with a shield, bearing a bend between a pierced mullet and an annulet. Mr. George Fellows is of opinion that these are the arms of the Samons. The Samons were at Annesley Woodhouse, and of the same family as John Samon, of Nottingham, who contributed to the building of St. Mary’s Church there.

These arms seem to indicate that a Samon helped in the building of Selston tower. The tower was supposed to have been built by an Annesley, as it was thought that the stone came from some Annesley quarry. This theory perhaps gives us the clue to the exact part played by the Samons, viz., that the stone was provided by a member of that family.

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A parliamentary report of 1777 recorded parish workhouses in operation at Basford (for up to 44 inmates), Beeston (12), Bulwell and Hemshall (16), Bunney (, and Greasley (30).

Basford was one of several poor law incorporations formed in Nottinghamshire prior to 1834 — others included Gedling (1787), Claypole (1817), East Retford (1818) Thurgarton (1824), Blyth, and Clarborough.

The Basford Incorporation was formed under the terms of Gilbert's Act of 1782 and initially comprised 24 parishes with a further 16 joining by 1834. Most of the member parishes were located in the Broxtowe Hundred and the main source of employment in the area were the lace and hosiery trades whose periodic depressions created widespread unemployment and hardship (Caplan, 1984). In 1815-16, an incorporation workhouse for 240 inmates was erected at on a 24-acre site in Basford at a cost of £8,500. Initially, the inmates made stockings but this seems to have been given up in favour of cultivating vegetables in the workhouse grounds with the surplus produce being sold in Nottingham. In bad weather, the men were employed in stone-breaking. Women were employed in domestic work, and girls were taught needlework. A day-school was also set up for the children.
 
 

In terms of its effects on reducing expenditure on the poor, the Basford workhouse seems to have been highly successful. The number of inmates declined between in the years up to 1834, even though the population had increased and trade had been bad. One member parish, Hucknall, which had paid £600 to join the incorporation, had recouped the cost of its subscription with two years. The operation of Basford workhouse may well have provided a model for the regimes later adopted at Southwell and Thurgarton.

 

 

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After 1834

The Basford Incorporation was, in principle, immune from the strictures of the 1834 Act. However, its Guardians were persuaded that the Incorporation should be dissolved and replaced by a new Poor Law Union. The Basford Poor Law Union formally came into being on 2nd May 1836. Its operation was overseen by an elected Board of Guardians, 46 in number, representing its 43 constituent parishes as listed below (figures in brackets indicate numbers of Guardians if more than one):

County of Nottingham: Annesley and Felley, Arnold (2), Barton, Basford (2), Beeston, Bilborough, Bradmore, Bulwell, Bunny, Burton Joyce, Calverton, Carlton, Clifton with Glapton, Colwick, Cossall, Eastwood, Gedling, Gotham, Greasley (2), Hucknal Torkard, Kirkby in Ashfield, Lambley, Linby, Newstead, Nuthall, Papplewick, Ruddington, Selston, Stoke Bardolph, Strelley, Thrumpton, Trowell, West Bridgeford, Wilford, Wollaton, Woodborough.
County of Derby: Codnor-cum-Loscoe, Codnor Park, Heanor, Ilkestone (2), Shipley.
 Later Additions: Awsworth (from 1894), Bestwood Park (from 1877), Brinsley (from 1896), Kimberley (from 1896), Standard Hill (1862-97).

The population falling within the Union at the 1831 census had been 51,794 — with parishes ranging in size from Bradmore (population 35) to Basford itself (6,325). The average annual poor-rate expenditure for the period 1833-35 had been £13,745 or 5s.4d. per head.

Early in its existence, the Basford Union Board of Guardians was in dispute with the Poor Law Commissioners. In 1837, a serious slump in the framework knitting industry had led to large increase in poor relief applications. The Basford workhouse, which the Union had taken over from the old incorporation, had a capacity of 250 inmates soon became full. The Guardians therefore decided to continue providing out-relief to unemployed able-bodied, contrary to the provisions of the 1834 Act. However, the Commissioners stood firm and threatened that the Guardians would be personally liable for paying the costs of such relief. The Commissioners were also unhappy about a public subscription relief fund that had been started in Nottingham to which the Chairman of the Basford Guardians donated £100. The solution proposed by the Commissioners was to enlarge the workhouse to a point that would cope with all those whose distress was sufficient for them to seek admission.

The dispute dragged on unresolved for several years, with one Assistant Commissioner reporting that he had never been connected with a Union so difficult to manage as Basford. The Commissioners gradually made concessions in the distribution of out-relief, particularly in the winter. A labour test — the providing of relief only in return for the performing of work — was also sanctioned. However, the pressure for the Union to enlarge its workhouse was also continued. In 1840, an outbreak of smallpox in the workhouse resulted in an eminent Nottingham physician recommending the provision of separate accommodation for the sick. Eventually, despite the prevarications of the Guardians, the extension work took place and was completed in March 1843 at a cost of £2,000.

That was still not the end of the union's difficulties. In 1844, the Nottingham Review printed allegations of incompetence and corruption at the workhouse. Although proved to be unfounded, and probably the work of Chartist opponents of the New Poor Law, these accusations generated much bad publicity for the union. A much exaggerated version was even included by Engels in his 1845 work Conditions of the Working Class in England:

The Workhouse story of an institution web site
   


   

 
 
The story of an institution

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Public Healthcare in Nottingham 1750 to 1911
by
Ennis C. Bosworth, B. A.
Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, May 1998

I think this is maybe the old Nottingham union hospital that went on to become or already was the general one, google that name above and theres some writing of the very hard times of the 1800s
I wrote about these things becourse I wanted to understand the worled in the time of great hardship as wrote by Rich below

The confusion of Dan with Louis can be dated back at least to 1838 when Dan's widow Sarah died. She is recorded as Sarah Boswell, buried at St Mary's, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, on 1st May 1838. Age given as 93. The reports confuse her husbands death and burial at Selston in 1827, with that of her probable son Louis at Eastwood in 1835:


‘Norfolk Chronicle 19th May 1838 - Mrs. Sarah Boswell, aged 93. Queen of the Gipsies. This is another of the illustrious of the Gipsy tribe, who is gone to that bourne whence no traveller returns. Though living as a Gipsy all her life, she has far outgone the common age for mortals; but this, perhaps, may be accounted for by the fact she was a Queen. Her marriage lines, which were seen at the workhouse, indisputably proved that she was married to the great Boswell, The King of the Gipsies, 72 years since. The King died at the gipsy-camp, at Eastwood Park, in 1835, and was interred in Eastwood Church-yard. His Queen was soon after chargeable to Selstone parish, and was sent to Basford Union workhouse, from which she came out in March last, and was received into Nottingham Union Hospital, where she was placed under suspended orders, on account of severe illness.’

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 Southwell and Nottingham church history project

 Eastwood
St Mary

History

No church is mentioned at Eastwood in Domesday Book, and the first evidence of a church in the village is from 1271. The only surviving physical depiction of this building is in a tapestry map of 1632, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The accuracy of this depiction is uncertain. Pieces of stone from the building can still be seen as a part of a wall near to the modern church. It was not until 19 October 1286 that there is a record of a rector being ordained to the living. According to the Register of Archbishop John Le Romeyne of York, Adam de Markham, deacon, was inducted to the church at Estwayt [Eastwood] on that date.

A Glebe Terrier of 15 July 1714, prepared by Peter Lalouel vividly describes the parsonage as well as the Glebe Lands and tithes. ‘The dwelling house is thirteen yards long, five yards and above two feet broad, having a porch on ye west side and on ye east a little building which is four yards and a half long. A barn with a stable in it.’ The terrier continues to describe the Glebe lands in detail, and the map of the manor of that year distinctly illustrates the church with a nave and low embattled tower.

By 1759 the building was dilapidated, partly due to neglect and partly as a result of subsidence. The body of the church and the tower (with steeple) were condemned, and a brief issued at Nottingham Quarter Sessions to seek financial support from around the country to erect a new church.

As a result of fund raising, a new, brick-built church was erected in 1764, with a low tower, on the site of the previous building. It contained a single bell, dated 1713, which probably came from the first church, and was re-hung in St James’, Codnor, Derbyshire, in 1856, where it still survives. The new church served a community of about sixty families at that time. Depictions of the building suggest it was a simple nave and chancel, probably much the same size as the medieval building. An extract from the Glebe Terrier of 1764 notes that ‘Our Church is at this time rebuilding by the charity of a Brief and the Chancel by our Rector, both with brick’. Throsby wrote in 1797 that ‘It is mostly of brick and stands on an eminence. It has a tower, and is neat within.’

According to the Glebe Terrier of 1764, Maurice Pugh built the chancel of the new brick church at his own expense - as required of the rector - and built and thatched the outbuildings at the Parsonage. This Terrier also mentions that included in the inventory was a “Flaggon, Bason, and Chllice” [chalice] all in pewter. Eight years later, the pewter sacramental vessels were replaced by a silver Chalice, described as a beaker shaped bowl with a curved lip and base, on a tall spool shaped stem with a narrow knot and domed foot. It was inscribed 1772, John Wood, Rob’t Granger, Churchwardens.

The church was enlarged in 1826 to accommodate 380 people. As a result, according to the Post Office Directory of 1848 ‘The church, dedicated to St Mary, is a brick building with a low tower and one bell, and is in good repair’.

Rich wrote about this,
Lewis' son Frampton Boswell, age 20 was also buried at St Mary's, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, ten months after his father on 28th December 1835.