Elizabeth Raffald: The Martha Stewart of the Georgian Era

by Lauren Gilbert

Elizabeth Raffald,  From the 1782 edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper published by Baldwin

Elizabeth was born about 1733 in Doncaster, near York, and may have been baptized July 8, 1733. Her father was Joshua Whitaker, school teacher, taught her and siblings (4 sisters) including French. In the introduction to his work, Roy Shipperbottom indicates that her mother’s name was Elizabeth. However, in other data, there was a suggestion that her mother may be someone else. Little is known about Joshua. Shipperbottom’s introduction states that Joshua and Elizabeth moved from Wadwoth to Doncaster by the time the infant Elizabeth was baptized on July 8th, 1733. The Dictionary of National Biography does not mention her mother’s name, which could certainly lead one to speculate. Shipperbottom lists Elizabeth's sisters: Jane, Sarah, Ann and Mary. One learned confectionery (Mary) and another married a flax grower.

She went into service at age 15, about 1748. She was familiar with and developed contacts in the city of York. There are indications that she worked for several families in Yorkshire. John Raffald, born around 1724, was from a family with market garden stalls in Manchester and that owned land where they grew plants in Stockport with links to Salford. (John was the oldest but signed his share over to his brother George.) John was working in Pontefract for a firm of nurserymen called Perfects of Pontefract, which sold plants. There are hints that Elizabeth may have worked for a family in Pontefract (in Yorkshire, less than 100 mi from York) at the same time. There is speculation that Elizabeth met John there. John was shown in employee records as head gardener at Arley Hall in Cheshire in January 1760 with earnings of 20 pounds per year (worth roughly $3822.85 US today*).

In December 1760, Elizabeth went to Arley Hall as housekeeper (Arley Hall records indicate that she came from Doncaster-it is unclear if it means that she travelled to Arley Hall from Doncaster or that her family was from that area), earning 16 pounds per year (worth roughly $3058.28 US today*). Arley Hall was owned by Sir Peter Warburton, 4th baronet, and his wife Lady Elizabeth. Her duties included managing the female servants, buying certain comestibles from travelling vendors and keeping accounts of the money spent (she received cash monthly, turned her accounts in to the steward monthly). She would have had duties in the kitchen as well, including making wine, pickling and preserving, baking special cakes, and making table decorations. She apparently developed an excellent relationship with Lady Elizabeth.

After serving three years as housekeeper, Elizabeth married John Raffald on March 3, 1763 at Great Budworth in Cheshire (a village near to and dependent on the Warburtons of Arley Hall). Because house rules did not allow married couples, Elizabeth and John had to leave. Arley Hall records show their marriage and that they both departed some weeks afterwards, in April 1763. Some sources indicate they were given a year’s salary at that time. The couple moved to Manchester were John’s family had two market stalls were they sold plants, vegetables and flowers. The Raffald family were an established family and ran market gardens near the market place, and also owned land near Stockport, a town roughly seven miles away. Sources indicate John went to work in his family’s business. This left Elizabeth to her own devices.

Manchester was a thriving market town, with a growing textile trade. There was a commodities market and warehouses for fabrics produced in the surrounding area. Money was being made, and there were those with ambitions to rise to the gentry class. From their home in Fennel Street, Elizabeth sold food products, including Yorkshire hams and other prepared foods, sweets, and “portable soup”, and rented out space in the cellar. She also made table decorations and catered dinners. In 1764, she established a Register Office where people could find servants seeking work.

Elizabeth and John moved to a location at Market Place (later number 12 Market Place) in August 1766, which was near the Bull’s Head Inn and the town center (convenient to the newspaper, the Exchange and the market where John and his brothers sold produce). She opened a confectioner’s shop, where she sold cakes and other sweets, tea, coffee, chocolate, and condiments. She also took orders for christening and bride cakes. In addition to these ventures, she taught cooking. She maintained her ties with Arley Hall, as receipts show purchases from her. Her wares expanded, including perfumes and other items. She and John took on the running of the Bull’s Head. Apparently, Elizabeth’s culinary skills paid off: the officers of military stationed in the area transferred their mess to the Bull’s Head.

During this time period, they also started their family. Daughter Sarah may have been born in January of 1765. Mr. Shipperbottom’s and Ms. Appleton’s research showed daughters as follows: Emma was born March of 1766, Grace November 1767, Betty January 1769, Anna (or Hannah) January of 1770 and Harriot (or Harriet) September of 1774. Another child Mary was born in February of 1771, with a male child who apparently did not survive. Although some sources indicate she had nine or even sixteen children, these seven daughters and one male child are the ones who are known.

In addition to caring for her family and her business enterprises, Elizabeth was also working on her cookbook. She dedicated it to Lady Elizabeth Warburton (whom she visited in 1766 and from whom she presumably got a blessing on the cookbook and its dedication) and included clear instructions for her recipes (numbering about eight hundred, and shown as her own), based on her experience and designed to be of benefit for novice cooks. She provided information on when what foods were in season, and how to set an elegant table (including diagrams). Interestingly, she did not include recipes for medicinals, a deliberate exclusion as she preferred to defer to “...the physician’s superior judgement, whose proper province they are.” (1)

Foldout engraving of table layout for an elegant second course, from Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper, 4th Edition, 1775

The cookbook was published in 1769 on a local basis, by subscription. Eight hundred copies were sold in advance, and she signed the first page of each first edition. It was extremely popular and went into multiple editions. It is worth noting that in the second and later editions, new recipes were included that were not Elizabeth’s own. In another venture, Elizabeth gave Mr. Harrop of Harrop’s Manchester Mercury newspaper financial backing that allowed the paper to continue to be published. She entered into a similar venture in 1771 when she assisted in establishing Prescott’s Journal in Salford, a town near Stockport. She may have written articles for Prescott’s Journal. (Elizabeth had an appreciation for newspapers, as she advertised her wares in local periodicals on a regular basis.) Sometime between 1771-1773, she sold the copyright to Richard Baldwin of Paternoster Row in London for 1400 pounds (roughly $267,599.65 US today*).

Also in 1772, she produced THE MANCHESTER DIRECTORY FOR THE YEAR 1772, a trade directory of 60 pages listing local businesses and inhabitants in alphabetical order and the first of its kind for the city of Manchester. She included the Raffalds but not herself in this directory. It was designed to benefit business people and customers alike by making it possible for them to discover the locations of businesses and residents alike. (It certainly was beneficial to her employees charged with deliveries.) She published new and updated editions in 1772, 1773 and 1781. Each edition was published in a limited run of one hundred copies.

In 1772, John and Elizabeth advertised that they were closing their respective businesses, and advertised on August 25, 1772 that they were taking over the King’s Head in Salford. The King’s Head was a coaching inn with accommodations (including meals), an assembly room and stables. They held entertainments, including cards and public dinners. The officers’ mess followed them from the Bull’s Head to the King’s Head. John was the host, and appears to have been the mastermind of the Florists’ Feasts. In 1774, Elizabeth went into partnership with a Mr. Swaine in hiring out carriages from the inn. Unfortunately, the carriage rentals were not successful.

At this point, there appears to be difficulties arising. John and Elizabeth were carrying a load of debt and John acquired a reputation for heavy drinking and inconsistent behaviour. There were problems with thefts. In spite of the income from her books, including the large lump sum from Mr. Baldwin, and encouragement of her sister Mary Whitaker who moved nearby in 1776 and opened her own confectioners shop, their debt load became excessive. They ended up having to assign all of their business effects to their creditors by December 1778 and leave the King’s Head.

Their next venture was the Exchange Coffee House, for which John received the license as master in October of 1779. The coffee house was a come-down from their previous establishment, and offered much less scope for Elizabeth’s talents as the food offerings were quite limited. Subsequently, she sold hot beverages and small treats from a stand to ladies and gentlemen at the Kersal Moor racecourse nearby in the summer of 1780. There are indications that she was co-author of a book on midwifery with physician Charles White during this period as well. The stand at Kersal Moor was apparently her last independent venture.

Elizabeth Raffald died suddenly, possibly of a stroke, April 19, 1781 aged approximately 48 years. She was buried in St. Mary’s churchyard, in Stockport, in a family vault belonging to the Raffald family. She was survived by John and three daughters, her youngest Anna and two of her four older girls (Grace is known to have died in March of 1770, but it is not clear whether Sarah, Emma or Betty died young). . Some accounts indicate she was buried in haste, as her name was not engraved on the stone. There is speculation that John simply could not afford to pay for the engraving. After her death, creditors closed in and John fled to London, where it is believed that he sold the manuscript of the midwifery book. He died in 1809 at the age of 85. He was buried in Salford.

Because of the fame of her cookbook, Elizabeth Raffald has been compared variously to Mrs. Beaton of Victorian Fame and today’s Mary Berry. However, because of her entrepreneurial spirit, head for business, and wide-ranging talents, I prefer a comparison to today’s Martha Stewart. Elizabeth not only cooked the food, she created table decorations and established guidelines for setting an elegant table. She branched out beyond cooking and her cookbook into other areas, including starting an employment register, publishing her Manchester Directories, running inns and leasing carriages. She was a fascinating woman. It is worth noting that, in 2013, some of her recipes were re-introduced at Arley Hall, when the general manager announced that her pea soup, lamb pie and rice pudding would be served in the hall’s restaurant. I think she would have been pleased.

* Currency converter: I used the converter using a base year of 1770 at this site: HERE

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Raffald, Elizabeth. THE EXPERIENCED ENGLISH HOUSEKEEPER. P. 3

Sources include:

Appleton, Suze. THE COMPLETE ELIZABETH RAFFALD Author, Innovator and More from Manchester’s 18th Century. 2017: Suze Appleton.

Raffald, Elizabeth. THE EXPERIENCED ENGLISH HOUSEKEEPER, with an Introduction by Roy Shipperton. Ann Bagnall, editor. 1997: Southover Press, Lewes.

Stephen, Sir Leslie, ed. DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY, Vol. 1-22, 1921-1922: Oxford University Press, London.

Arley Hall Archives. HERE

BBC.com “Georgian chef Elizabeth Raffald’s return to Arley Hall menu” posted April 6, 2013 (no author shown). HERE

Chesterfield Life. “Elizabeth Raffald-Arley Hall’s Domestic Goddess” by Paul Mackenzie, posted May 20, 2013 and updated Feb. 6, 2018. HERE

Museum of Fine Arts Houston. “Keeping House: The Story of Elizabeth Raffald” by Caroline Cole, posted Sept. 30, 2011. HERE

Sheroes of History. “Elizabeth Raffald: The Original Domestic Goddess and Celebrity Chef” by Naomi Wilcox-Lee, posted Dec. 10, 2015.HERE

The Elizabeth Raffald Society. HERE

Images:

Elizabeth, from the 1782 edition of THE EXPERIENCED HOUSEKEEPER, Wikimedia Commons (public domain).    HERE

2nd Course Table Layout, from the 4th edition of THE EXPERIENCED HOUSEKEEPER, Wikimedia Commons (public domain). HERE

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Lauren Gilbert is a dedicated reader and student of English literature and history, holding a BA in liberal arts English with a minor in Art History.  A long-time member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, she has done several presentations for the local region, and delivered a break out session at the 2011 Annual General Meeting.  Her first book, HEYERWOOD: A Novel was published in 2011, and her second, A RATIONAL ATTACHMENT, will be released (finally!) later this year.  She lives in Florida with her husband, and is researching material for a biography.  For more information, visit her website here

Playing the Provinces: 18th Century Actors on the Move, Part 1 (Liverpool & Manchester)

by Margaret Porter
During the Georgian era, the performance season at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, London's two Theatres Royal, concluded in June. Actors and actresses therefore sought employment elsewhere, resulting in mass migration of theatrical personnel towards provincial theatres. During the summer months, England's most celebrated players augmented their income in the distant cities in which they had first honed their talents. From afar they also negotiated their terms for the next London season, commencing in September.

Liverpool

 

Ned Shuter

From the 1750s, Liverpool's Drury Lane Theatre offered summer entertainment to prosperous visitors flocking there for the bathing season. As no playbills are extant, little is known about its company or the performances. In 1756 the newspaper alerted the public to the arrival of 'Comedians from the Theatres Royal in London at the Theatre in Liverpool. During the months of June, July, and August next, will be perform'd variety of the best plays. N.B. The days of acting will be Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.' On 4th June the season opened with The Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee, followed by the farce The Virgin Unmask'd. Seats in the pit cost two shillings and the gallery one shilling. At that time there were no boxes, although they were added during a subsequent renovation, with seats offered at three shillings. For many years the theatre attracted London players, including famous comic actor Ned Shuter as well as John Palmer, Thomas King, and Miss Pope.

The fortunes of the Liverpool theatre improved in 1771 when, by Act of Parliament, a licence was granted. In the Letters Patent, the location of the Theatre Royal would be Williamson Square.

Williamson Square, Liverpool

Facade of the Theatre Royal

  

After the opening 5th June, 1772,  the summer season proceeded  with a company populated primarily by London performers. In 1775 Charles Macklin appeared as Shylock, his most famous character. Prior to his retirement from the stage the great David Garrick also trod the boards in Every Man in His Humour by Ben Jonson. The Georgian theatre repertory relied heavily on plays from prior centuries.

 

Macklin as Shylock, The Merchant of Venice

 
During late 1770s, Sarah Kemble Siddons was a mainstay of the theatre. The daughter of provincial players, she had disappointed them by becoming an actress and compounded her error by wedding an actor. She began her career in provincial theatres and eventually David Garrick of Drury Lane hired her. After her inauspicious debut and departure after a single London season, she accepted employment in Liverpool, where her brother John Philip Kemble joined her.

 

Sarah Siddons & John Philip Kemble in Macbeth

In 1782 her second attempt to establish herself in London was hugely successful. After her metropolitan triumph, on her way to a summer engagement in Dublin, she stopped to perform in Liverpool. She returned in 1785, 1789, 1797, and 1809.

The popular comedienne Mrs Jordan performed there in 1786. She delighted local audiences as Hippolyta in She Wou'd and She Wou'd Not, and in The Romp, one of her most popular roles. 

Mrs Jordan as Hippolyta

Kemble, who had risen to succeed Garrick as actor-manager at London's Drury Lane, spent the summer of 1786 in Liverpool. Three years later he became a co-lessee (with Francis Aickin) of the Theatre Royal. In his diary he records: 'This day [1st January] I agreed to take the Liverpool Theatre with Mr F. Aickin for several years. Our rent is to be 360 Pounds per ann. We are to use the Theatre for six months of the twelve and are to pay down twelve hundred pounds for the purchase of wardrobe, etc.' He was present on 15th June to open its summer season with an address, but due to his London responsibilities was an absent manager, leaving most responsibilities to Aickin. Their partnership failed, and after losing money Kemble gave it up.

Harriot Mellon

Another player of that period who achieved popularity in Liverpool was Harriot Mellon, who wrote, 'When I was a poor girl, working very hard for my thirty shillings a week, I went down to Liverpool during the holidays [from London's Drury Lane], where I was always kindly received.' Harriot later wed her devoted and elderly admirer, wealthy banker Thomas Coutts. After his death she chose the much younger, impoverished Duke of St Albans as her second husband.

By 1803 the Theatre Royal had been rebuilt and given a graceful curved facade, reopening in June of that year. Actor Charles Mathews left a rich description of the theatre and his experiences in the city:

The theatre is beautiful...the prices are now lowered, and we play to houses of £90 or £100, which is thought to be bad; the pit is usually well attended. They had little opinion of any actor who has not appeared in London...The town I like; the situation is beautiful. I have ridden seven miles on the sands; the sea on one side, the town and harbour on the other. The opposite Cheshire coast and distant Welsh mountains for altogether a most enchanting prospect. Prince William [of Gloucester] is here....He has bespoken plays three times.

The improved theatre continued to draw the most eminent players of the late Georgian and Regency periods: Edmund Kean, Charles Mayne Young, Robert Elliston, George Frederick Cooke, Master Betty ('The Young Roscius'), and Miss O'Neill.

In the waning days of his long career John Philip Kemble returned for a farewell performance as Corialanus. On 12 July, 1816, in his remarks at the conclusion of the performance, he expressed his appreciation of the Liverpool audiences, emotion overcoming him as he declared:

Ladies and gentlemen, I have tonight appeared before you for the last time, and cannot take my leave without expressing my high sense of the liberal support that I have always received from you....It was on this stage that I first adapted this play of Shakespeare's for representation, and the success which it met with in the fostering smile of your approbation encouraged me to persevere in my profession and determined me to pursue an industrious and methodical study of my art....Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all a very good night, and every prosperity and happiness to this town.

There remains a theatre in Williamson Square in a slightly different location. The site of the 18th century one now looks like this:

 

Manchester

An early theatre located at King and Marsden Streets housed a repertory company and occasionally hosted concerts, oratorios, balls, and auctions. In the summer of 1762 it welcomed the first London actors, 'His Majesty's Servants from the Theatres Royal,' who performed three times a week from June to September, and every night during the August race meeting.

In 1764 the theatre was described by Thomas Wilks (sometimes Snagg) as 'plain and unadorned, having been newly built....the manager had a room to himself, the first male performer likewise a separate room; the useful plebians, of which I made one, a general apartment for habiting. The heroines and principal ladies had likewise an attiring room, and the underlings their cockloft....'  The following summer an actress relatively new to London's Drury Lane established herself in Manchester, Mrs Baddeley, whom Wilks admired as 'an extremely beautiful woman. She played the ladies in most comedies and operas, and I...was often allotted to be her lover before the curtain, which brought an intimacy, with many a cup of tea and private walk with her, where I have been charmed with her melodious voice...I'll venture to say she was the best and most beautiful Ophelia I ever saw.' Nearly a decade passed before London players returned to Manchester.

In 1775, Lord Lyttelton sponsored a bill for a licenced Theatre Royal in Manchester: 'to establish a Theatre in Manchester, to keep a company of comedians for His Majesty's service, and to act such Tragegies, Plays, Operas, and Entertainments only as had been or should be licenced by the Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household.' The licence was granted to Joseph Younger and George Mattocks (managers of the Liverpool theatre), and subscriptions were raised to construct a brick building at the corner of York Street and Spring Gardens, with boxes, pit, and gallery. The season in Manchester was not intended to overlap the summer season in Liverpool. 

Manchester's Theatre Royal, York Street & Spring Gardens

 
The theatre opened June 5, 1775, with Othello--Younger playing the lead. Performance nights were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The regular season commenced the following October. Sarah Siddons and her brother John Kemble spent time at Manchester in the winter of 1776, as did Elizabeth Farren and Elizabeth Inchbald. All were destined to gain greater fame--and notoriety--in London. Farren left the Drury Lane stage to marry her lover, the Earl of Derby, and was transformed from actress to countess.

Elizabeth Farren

A German resident in the 1780s left a description of the theatre and its audiences:

The gallery is here, as everywhere in England, unbearably unashamed; they throw apples, pomegranates, nut-shells on the stage, in the pit and the boxes they cry out and make a lot of noise; I know people who refuse to sit in the front seat of the boxes. With ladies they are more polite. Many years ago a flask flew from the gallery into the pit, striking a man's skull. This shrieking and din and all this bad behaviour is difficult in the intervals...during the play itself the gallery is quieter than I have heard in any other place, and the applause and laughter in the middle of speeches does not last so long that one loses the thread or misses the climax...Of battles and murders they are especially fond.

The Liverpool company sometimes performed in Manchester during the summer, bringing with them luminaries from Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Those who turned up in Manchester included George Frederick Cooke and comedian Dicky Suett. John Philip Kemble returned in 1784 after achieving success in Dublin and prior to emulating his sister's fame in London. He reappeared periodically, whenever playing at Liverpool. In May 1785 his sister Sarah Siddons, by then London's leading actress, returned, prompting a sudden rise in prices for her two performances--to five, three, and two shillings for box, pit, and gallery respectively. 

Anna Maria Crouch

The Manchester theatre was rebuilt in 1790. The next year, playwright/librettist Charles Dibdin's son joined the company for its winter season. George Frederick Cooke was present, as he was in most years, for Race Week, and stayed on. In some years there was a brief September season. Kemble returned for Race Week in the summer of 1798. By this time, the theatre was often used in summer for special events--a one-off performance by a well-known player, or singers such as Charles Incledon, Michael Kelly, and Mrs Crouch, Mr and Mrs Charles Dibdin, and Madame Mara. 

Near the turn of the century John Ducrow 'The Flemish Hercules'--a clown who performed thrilling acrobatic feats--came to town. He posted a notice in the newspaper, informing the public of his intent in to display 'those wonderful leaps from the Trampoline in particular one over Eighteen Grenadiers, with shouldered firelocks and fixed bayonets; also through a hogshead of Real Fire, and will fly over a grand Pyramid of Light.'

A banking establishment was built on the site of Manchester's Theatre Royal, a building that has since become a restaurant.

Coming next: Part 2 of this article, featuring the theatres of York, Bristol and Bath, follows on 14 June 2016 and you can read it here.

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Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of twelve period novels, whose other publication credits include nonfiction and poetry. A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of 17th century courtiers Lady Diana de Vere and Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, is her latest release, available in trade paperback and ebook. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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When Liverpool Went Dixie and Manchester Backed Lincoln

by David Chadwick

Britain’s influence on the American Civil War is hard to overstate, yet is often overlooked – while much the same can be said of the Civil War’s impact on Britain.

The Union, or North, went to war with the slaveholding Confederacy, or South, over the abolition of slavery on 12 April 1861. When the conflict ended four years later, it had cost more American lives than any other war in the country’s history – including both world wars and Vietnam. The extent to which Britain had blood on her hands is not widely known.

From the outset, Concerted Confederate attempts to acquire a British-built navy were met with equally determined resistance by the North. By October 1863 relations between the United States and Britain had reached breaking point.

In Britain, supporters of the Northern states believed a Union victory would help British workers to win the vote. Those who backed the Confederacy saw it as a bulwark against the mass democratic ‘mob rule’ they feared would upset the status quo in Britain.

The significance of the conflict in Britain was lucidly illustrated by an editorial in the London Times on August 21 1861: “The Civil War in the United States affects our people more generally even than the Indian Mutiny.”

Broadly speaking, the British working classes favoured the North, while the aristocracy backed the South. There were notable exceptions – for example, the Duke of Argyle’s ardent support for the Union. Nor was there anything like universal support for the North among the working classes.

Abraham Lincoln
President of the United States during the Civil War

At the heart of the Civil War was the abolition of slavery – a cause close to the hearts of the British people. They were proud of their country’s suppression of the transatlantic slave trade and the eradication of bondage in the West Indies in 1833. As a result, slavery no longer had meaningful support in any section of British society.

Nonetheless, in Britain – as in America – the question of choosing sides was more complicated and nuanced than 150 years of hindsight might suggest.

British Liberals and Radicals found themselves in a particularly invidious position. Many had applauded the Greek struggle against the Ottoman Turks, as well as attempts by Hungarian patriots and Italian states to shake off the shackles of Hapsburg oppression. The Confederate rebellion was also seen as a just fight for self-government. The fly in the ointment was slavery – although until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 1863, it had been possible to argue that the North was not officially fighting for abolition.

Conservative supporters of the South were less conflicted – and drew strength from the argument that they were not supporting slavery, but rather opposing the Yankee democratic experiment. The Civil War itself, they argued, was a direct result of the failure of the republican form of government.

Some supporters of the Confederacy even promoted the notion that the American Civil War was a corollary of the English Civil Wars, with descendants of New England’s ‘Puritans and regicides’ pitted against ‘banished Cavaliers’ in the South. Nor was this view unreciprocated. In Virginia, Britain was often vaunted as the ‘mother country’ and transatlantic kinship – especially with the British aristocracy – was venerated.

Statue of Oliver Cromwell,
Victor of the English Civil Wars
at the British Houses of Parliament

Nowhere in Britain was the war across the Atlantic more vividly replicated, or opinions more sharply divided than in Lancashire’s two great cities of Liverpool and Manchester.

Liverpool owed much of its wealth to the slave trade. The city’s ships had transported an estimated 1.5 million Africans across the Atlantic into bondage before the transatlantic trade was abolished by Britain in 1807. When the Civil War broke out, Liverpool’s ties with the South were still strong and it was no surprise that ‘Liverpool went Dixie’.

Historians agree that events in Liverpool and Birkenhead in 1863 could have radically redirected the course of the Civil War. From a Liverpool office building nicknamed the ‘Confederate Embassy’, the Rebels came within a whisker of acquiring two ironclad battleships – known as the Laird rams – powerful enough to penetrate the Union navy’s blockade of southern ports.

If this had happened the South could have exported cotton to mills – including Lancashire’s – and used the funds raised to bring back vital war materials. Whether this in itself would have led to a Confederate victory is conjecture, but war with Britain (and possibly France, also hard hit by the cotton embargo) could certainly have altered the outcome of the conflict. In the event, British prime minister Lord Palmerston took a pragmatic view. He conceded to the demands of Charles Francis Adams, the US minister in London, and the ironclads were seized by the British authorities before they could leave the Mersey.

HMS Warrior, a new breed of ironclad battleship
at the time of the American Civil War

As well as the Laird rams, Mersey shipyards produced legitimate blockade runners and legally dubious commerce raiders: warships that were built, but not armed in Britain. They included the infamous CSS Alabama, which ranged the oceans of the world destroying Federal merchant ships and inflicting serious economic damage on the Union. The final Confederate act of the Civil War involved another well-known commerce raider, CSS Shenandoah, surrendering to British authorities at Liverpool Town Hall on November 6 1865.

Liverpool Town Hall, scene of the final Confederate surrender

Unlike Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire’s big textile towns were heavily reliant on cotton imported from southern plantations. When the Union navy’s blockade stopped the flow of raw material, these factory workers faced severe hardship.

Before the Civil War, Lancashire imported 75 per cent of all cotton produced by southern plantations (1.3 billion lbs). After 12 months of fighting, 60 per cent of the county’s spindles and looms stood idle and many operatives had lost their jobs.

Workers in parts of Lancashire hardest hit by this ‘cotton famine’ called for Britain to recognise the Confederacy, though their actions were driven by the need to put food on the table rather than any fondness for slavery. Moreover, many cotton industry operatives continued to back Lincoln’s Union, despite their own privations.

At a meeting in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in December 1862, workers agreed to continue backing the cotton embargo and sent a message of support to Lincoln. In January 1863, the president replied by acknowledging the self-sacrifice of ‘the working men of Manchester’ and praising them for their ‘sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country’.

Soon afterward, the arrival in Britain of Union relief ships, loaded with provisions, represented an act of unity between the northern states and Lancashire’s cotton workers.

There is no doubt that Britain’s Confederate sympathisers antagonised Northern politicians, resulting in strained Anglo-American relations in the years following the Civil War. Nonetheless, it became increasingly apparent that the common interests of Britain and the USA outweighed their differences – especially with the emergence of a unified Germany following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

The ‘Confederate Embassy’
in Liverpool

The resolution of the Alabama claims dispute in 1871-72 resulted in Britain compensating the USA for damage inflicted on its merchant fleet by British-built Confederate commerce raiders, including the CSS Alabama. The peaceful settlement of these claims set an important precedent for solving international disputes through arbitration and resulted in a substantial, long-term strengthening of relations between Britain and the United States.

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David Chadwick’s novel, Liberty Bazaar, is set in Liverpool during the American Civil War and is told through the eyes of an escaped slave girl and a battle-fatigued Confederate general. It has received a rarely awarded Kirkus Reviews star and praised by Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War historian James M. McPherson, as well as leading African American historian Richard Blackett.

A professional journalist and PR adviser, David took a BA in history and politics at Queen Mary, University of London, followed by an MA in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has worked in Liverpool and Manchester and has undertaken detailed research into the histories of the rival cities.

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You can find out more about David as well as the people and issues behind Liberty Bazaar at his website or his Facebook page.

The Peterloo Massacre

by Maggi Andersen

St Peter’s Field, Manchester, England.

In August 1819 on a cloudless, hot summer’s day, a peaceable crowd of some 60,000 to 80,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Field (an open piece of cleared land alongside Mount Street) to hear orator, Henry Hunt speak and to demand reform of parliamentary representation. What happened next was as unnecessary as it was shocking. Cavalry charged into the crowd with sabres drawn, and in the ensuring confusion, 15 people were killed and between 400 and 700 injured.

In March 1819, Joseph Johnson, John Knight and James Wroe formed the Manchester Patriotic Union Society. All the leading radicals in Manchester joined the organisation. Johnson was appointed secretary and Wroe became treasurer. The local magistrates were concerned that such a substantial gathering of reformers might end in a riot. The magistrates therefore decided to arrange for a large number of soldiers to be in Manchester on the day of the meeting. This included four squadrons of cavalry of the 15th Hussars (600 men), several hundred infantrymen, the Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry (400 men), a detachment of the Royal Horse Artillery and two six-pounder guns and the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry (120 men) and all Manchester's special constables (400 men).

At about 11.00 a.m. William Hulton, the chairman, and nine other magistrates met at Mr. Buxton's house in Mount Street that overlooked St. Peter's Field. Although there was no trouble, the magistrates became concerned by the growing size of the crowd. Estimations concerning the size of the crowd vary but Hulton came to the conclusion that there were at least 50,000 people in St. Peter's Field at midday. Hulton, therefore, took the decision to send Edward Clayton, the Boroughreeve and the special constables to clear a path through the crowd. The 400 special constables were therefore ordered to form two continuous lines between the hustings where the speeches were to take place, and Mr. Buxton's house where the magistrates were staying.

Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the military to arrest well-known radical orator, Henry Hunt who was asked to chair the meeting, and several others on the hustings with him, and to disperse the crowd. Arrested along with Hunt for inciting a riot and imprisoned was Samuel Bamford, who led a group from his native Middleton to St. Peter’s Field. Bamford emerged as a prominent voice for radical reform. Hunt became MP for Preston 1830-33.

To understand what happened in Manchester one must look at the period of economic upheaval between 1783 to 1846, when Britain shifted from being a predominantly agricultural and commercial society to being the world’s first industrial nation. Many of the most contentious political issues of the day, corn and currency laws for example, were really questions of whether government policy should be directed towards encouraging this shift, or trying to reverse it.

Accompanying the economic changes was the most sustained and dangerous cycle of revolutionary discontent and working-class protest in British history. This prompted a few political concessions on the part of the governing aristocracy, but more significant was the emergence of governmental machinery designed to maintain law and order, which in turn led unintentionally to the foundation of the modern centralized and bureaucratic state.

The power of the Crown declined significantly. Although George III (until he became incurably mad in 1810) George IV, William IV, Victoria, and her consort Albert, could all influence the course of political intrigue, the monarch’s power to control the policies of the state was severely reduced.

As the scope and scale of government business increased during the long French wars, less and less passed through the monarch’s hands. Except possibly where foreign policy was concerned, the Crown was being reduced to little more than a figurehead of state. Effective power remained in the hands of a territorial aristocracy, whose representatives still dominated both Houses of Parliament. They faced an active and vociferous radical movement, particularly strong in 1792 and in the economically depressed years after the end of the war in 1815, when a period of famine and chronic unemployment came into being, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws.

Postwar adjustment brought depression, with agrarian disturbances, machine-breaking and revival of popular reform agitation. Two meets at Spa Fields 1816 and an attack on the Prince Regent led to suspension of Habeas Corpus and restrictions on public meetings.

After the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century, Manchester began expanding at an astonishing rate in the 19th Century as part of a process of unplanned urbanization.

Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester one of the defining moments of its age. It left an enormous psychological scar on a polity which prided itself on its ability to contain discontents. Yet the aristocracy survived, largely because the middling ranks, terrified by the violence of the French Revolution, rejected any sort of revolutionary radicalism.

The Peterloo Massacre called on the Government in 1819 to pass what is known as the Six Acts which forbade training in arms and drilling, authorized seizure of arms, simplified prosecutions, forbade seditious assemblies, punished blasphemous libels and restricted the press.

Resource: The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland.
Author Website: http://www.maggiandersenauthor.com