WORKING PAPER The Centre for Research in Applied Economics (CRAE) 04062015, June 2015 A Journey through the Industrial Revolution Tim Barmby University of Aberdeen ISSN 1834-9536 Telephone +61 8 9266 3502 or visit curtin.edu.au Curtin University is a trademark of Curtin University of Technology CRICOS Provider Code 00301J (WA) A Journey through the Industrial Revolution Tim Barmby PrefacePrefacePreface The following booklet stems from a discussion that Professor Peter Kenyon and I had in the rear courtyard of his and his wife Jan’s house in Perth, Australia, in November 2011. Peter had been ill but at that time was in remission from cancer. We were talking about Economic History and in particular the events and linkages of events pertaining to the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Peter was intending to take early retirement, and he and Jan had already planned a trip to the UK for the summer of 2012. Peter expressed a desire to see some of the places where key events in the Industrial Revolution had taken place. This desire struck a real chord with me as being very similar to the thoughts which might have occurred to the enquiring mind of a 17th/18th century scholar who would want to go and take a look and see what could be learnt. Peter was having difficulty drawing the information together so I said I would draft a proposed schedule for him. I am glad that I didn’t leave this too long; as the cancer returned over that Christmas and Peter died in February 2012. He read some of the following text in hospital as he underwent chemotherapy. 1 I suggested the idea of writing my notes up as a short pamphlet to Jan and this is the result. Jan made some part of tour in the summer of 2012. IIIntroductionIntroductionntroductionntroduction:: Looking at the past It is a difficult but fundamentally important question to ask how effectively we see the past, Carr (1961), and how we can use that perception to put our modern experience into context. Humphrey Jennings’ book “Pandemonium” used the written impressions of the great industrial changes which were seen from the end of the 17th century onwards which people at the time felt the need to record to do this. Emma Griffin’s more recent book “Liberty’s Dawn” in a similar way draws on autobiographical writings from the late 18th into the 19th century to try and form a picture of the changes which were occurring. As we look back from our 21st century position, we can also use remains of now defunct industrial locations to interpret the past. This tradition is possibly strongest in local history and, of course, industrial archaeology, W G Hoskins’ “The Making of the English Landscape” being a seminal work in this regard. Hoskins used the term “palimpsest” to try and give a framework to the process of interpreting what we see now, and what it tells us about the past. The Marxist historian E J Hobsbawm comments that Hoskins teaches historians to walk and see as well as read. Palimpsest is a parchment which has been used repeatedly, 2 so previous writings are hidden under the surface, so in this way we think of the landscape as being reused for different purposes; movement and travel, trade, industry and agriculture. The great historian of the English Village Maurice Beresford demonstrates this way of looking at the landscape in startling clarity as he interprets, in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Economic History at Leeds in 1961, the way in which back-to-back houses in Leeds were built, and sometimes the way the row would abruptly stop, in terms of how enclosed fields were bought up and developed. The edges of things are always there; many of the roads that you would drive along in Britain today are, of course, following the lines of old drove roads which before the canals and the railways were one of the main ways of travelling and moving things around. In 1806 George Stephenson, to whom we will refer to again later, took a job in Scotland, and although not exactly a poor man, he walked from Killingworth to Montrose to take up this job presumably along well-trodden ways known to working men. Hobsbawm’s 1964 essay entitled “The Tramping Artisan” suggests that mobility of labour was more prevalent than modern perception might have it. The early 18th century was a period poised for change. It was a period of enquiry, not just among those instigating the change but also amongst others, for whom human development, either their own, or as a general objective, was important. In the early part of the century Daniel Defoe, perhaps driven by his journalistic instinct, made a number of tours 3 around Britain. His instinct was, of course, quite right. There was a big story breaking. The incentives for enterprise were fundamentally altering, and the activity which flowed from this was everywhere to be seen. Esther Moir (1964) documents the 18th century traveller seeking out instructive visits to lead, copper and tin mines. People were keen to see, and also had the resources to fund this curiosity because of the wealth the very same activity was imparting. The question as to why there were so many seeking to instigate change in Britain at this time is still an open question, Mokyr (1985) remarks that, “There was a certain hard-nosed practical knack among British inventors, engineers, and businessmen that is harder to spot on the Continent at this time .. (with) .. not only the ability to generate new ideas but, equally important, the ability to recognize and value somebody else’s.” Many important innovations originated outside Britain but were exploited within Britain during this period, silk making and the Jaquard loom perhaps being two such examples. Mokyr (2009) developed the idea that what we saw, in particular in Britain in the 18th century, was an emphasis on practical knowledge so that “pure” scientific enquiry was more likely to have a practical focus. This can be seen as a continuation of the approach expounded by Francis Bacon in the 16th century. Recent research by Kelly, Ó Gráda and Mokyr (2013) suggests that labour productivity and the potential for further growth was particularly high in Britain during this period, and this can possibly be traced back to the superior diet of the British worker at the 4 time. Peter would have been interested in this as an accomplished chef himself and founder of a business1 giving cooking lessons. The interplay of political and economic views and pressures were causing people to think about work and the relation of the human spirit to it. Humphrey Jennings’ parents were influenced by the 19th century ideas of William Morris and Jennings’ documentary instinct produced the book “Pandemonium” which records the coming of the machine age by contemporary observers. E P Thompson in his biography of Morris make clear how many early socialist thinkers saw something in the idea of earlier pre-industrial societal values that the new industrial capitalism was destroying. Thompson suggests in his “Making of the English Working Class” that in this pre-industrial world a different moral economy existed Artists such as Thomas Hair were also looking to depict the changes that were taking place, in his case in a very detailed way allowing for a very clear view to be formed of actual operations. Collier boats being loaded at Wallsend drops. So, for instance, in this picture we can see Drawing by Thomas Hair very clearly how coal would be loaded from waggonways to colliers on the River Tyne. Hair was recording what he saw but often casting our gaze backwards, we need to try and reconstruct in our minds what would have been happening. Mark Sorrell, the son of the famous reconstructional 1 This business still survives http://www.thecookingprofessor.com.au/ 5 artist Alan Sorrell (1981), describes how his father would build up the details he would need to inform his paintings and drawings. The minute attention paid to all aspects of the historical situation parallels, and I am sure in many cases surpasses, the research needed for an academic paper. Sorrell devoted much of his attention to Roman and Ancient Britain. Had he focused his attention more on the 18th and 19th centuries, our industrial archaeology would certainly be the richer for it. One of the most enigmatic studies (by another Marxist!) of the way in which art and artistic depiction is bound up with the social and cultural changes which were seen in the Industrial Revolution must be Francis Klingender’s “Art and the Industrial Revolution”. Klingender, through his discussion of the artistic representation of the new industrial landscape, opens up new layers of how the changes were perceived, and maybe how J C Bourne – inside Brunel’s first Bristol those in positions of power might want Station 1846 the changes to be perceived. The pride and verve of the achievement of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway just leap out from John Cooke Bourne’s drawings of the GWR, and indeed they were meant to, the architectural splendour and the breathtaking span of the roofs. Of course the ascetic appeal was heightened by Brunel’s 7’ gauge. In the first series of Michael Portillo’s recent “Great British Railway Journeys”, Michael seemed distinctly saddened to see Brunel’s first station in Bristol depicted here (not the present bigger Temple Meads) empty though in 6 surprisingly good condition. I believe it is now used as an enterprise centre, which seems fitting.