This advert appeared in the Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser on 2nd October 1869 and seemed very strange when I first came across it. The pottery advertised in the Stoke papers whenever they wanted to recruit a pottery specialist but I couldn’t figure out why they would want a table manufacturer. After quite… Continue reading What’s in a name?
Category: Miscellaneous
Guilty or not guilty?
Three court cases from the 19th C – but are they guilty?
The pottery pay dispute in 1914
In 1914 the pottery industry followed the same procedure for pay discussions that had been developed in the 1890s and it had a very set annual pay round – every company in the industry followed exactly the same routine. Prices that were to be paid to the potters for the following 12 months were set… Continue reading The pottery pay dispute in 1914
The 1921 census is here
The 1921 census will be the last census publication for some years to come – the 1931 Census of England and Wales was destroyed in a fire at the Office of Works in 1942, the 1941 Census was never taken due to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the 1951 Census is not… Continue reading The 1921 census is here
So, what’s a Challerpoy then?
Deciphering 250-year-old parish documents can be a challenge even though they were no longer written in Latin. Some are torn, crumpled scraps of paper with very faded writing. All of them have letters written differently to the modern day plus abbreviations which take some figuring out. Handwriting style varies a lot as you might expect… Continue reading So, what’s a Challerpoy then?
Your dog ate my tripe!
Tripe is simply a type of edible lining from the stomachs of various farm animals and most of it is from cattle, pigs and sheep but it can be from any ruminant so you might find venison tripe. It is an offal product – offal is a general term for the edible entrails and internal… Continue reading Your dog ate my tripe!
Caring for the needy – Part Three
In 1834 the system for poor relief in England and Wales was completely changed by the Poor Law Amendment Act, also known as the New Poor Law. The Parish was no longer allowed to provide out-relief i.e. help out the poor with financial help. Relief would only be given in workhouses and, furthermore, it was… Continue reading Caring for the needy – Part Three
Caring for the needy – Part Two
A similar fate to James Conway befell two Waltho children, William and Jane, at even younger ages. Richard Waltho from Armitage had married Hannah Cox in Hamstall Ridware in 1785 and they had a son and a daughter in Hamstall Ridware. By 1791 the family was living in Armitage and reliant on poor relief as… Continue reading Caring for the needy – Part Two
Caring for the needy – Part One
In the 16th C there was no formalised practice for relief of the poor but the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1597 began a long process of setting up a legal requirement for helping the needy of each and every Parish in England and Wales. One of the first principles established was that… Continue reading Caring for the needy – Part One
The origin of the word ‘loo’
If you are going to write about the history of Armitage potbank how can you resist looking up the origins of the word ‘loo’? The word itself first appeared in print in the 1922 book, Ulysses, by James Joyce so it was obviously already in popular use by that time. There’s all sorts of claims… Continue reading The origin of the word ‘loo’