George Dewhurst (8 August 1789 – 14 August 1857) was an English Radical, reformer and reedmaker, best known for his contribution towards working class Radicalism in the first half of the 19th century and reform in his home town of Blackburn.

Early life

George Dewhurst was born in the English town of Blackburn on 8 August 1789, one of seven children of George Dewhurst the elder and his wife Ann Hanson. His father was a whitesmith and grocer of the town.

George Dewhurst married Ann Green in February 1810 and the couple had four children together (Hanson, Alice, George and Mary) before Ann’s untimely death in 1816. He married his second wife, Alice Hitchen, in November 1823.

A reedmaker by trade, an occupation that produced reeds for the weaving and calico industry, Dewhurst remained in this line of work for a large part of his life, despite the increasing development of machinery taking over this traditionally handcrafted process (reeds originally made from strips of reed became replaced by flattened brass and steel wire and began to be made by machinery).^[1]

Radical beginnings

George Dewhurst could scarcely have been born at a time more resonant with the hope and possibility of betterment for the poor, together with the fear, despair and anger that such change would never be realised. It was a time ripe for a man such as George Dewhurst, whose life was to be defined by fighting against injustice and reforming the conditions of the working men, women and children of his hometown of Blackburn.

The French Revolution began the year of Dewhurst’s birth, and the possibility of a similar upheaval befalling the established order in England must have been occupying the thoughts and haunting the dreams of the privileged. The prevailing sense of corruption in politics (such as the rotten and pocket boroughs denying proper representation of people’s grievances) was compounded by the financial constraints caused by the end of the Napoleonic War, the tariffs and trade restrictions of the Corn Laws and the burden of taxation. Throughout the country there was an increase in British political radicalism and restlessness to improve the lot of the working poor.

In addition to the general maladies affecting the country as a whole, workers in areas such as Blackburn, dependent so much on cotton, were threatened continually with the onward march of industrialisation in the factories and the fluctuations in the price of raw materials. As Abram^[2] points out:

About the time that Dewhurst reached man’s estate, the labouring populations of these Northern Counties were in a state of furious resentment against the master-manufacturers who were developing the factory system. It was an extension of the "Luddites"’ rising in the Midlands in 1811. Some rapacious attacks upon property, accompanied by threats against obnoxious persons, and more than one murder, occurred on the Lancashire and Yorkshire border. At the close of the war, in 1815, the stagnation of all manufacturing trades ensued, and the distress amongst the people was dreadful and long-continued. At length the starving populace were roused to a pitch of dangerous rage against the Government and Legislature. The Corn Tax which had been levied aggravated the want and wretchedness which prevailed amongst the cottagers, and a bitter cry went up for its repeal. This was the origin of the political upheaval in Lancashire which, commencing in 1816, lasted several years, all the time menacing revolution, filling the propertied classes with alarm, and as it grew more portentous in its manifestations, causing the Government and the magistracy, under the influence of panic, to resort to measures of excessive severity in repressing the organized and tumultuous demonstrations of the disaffected section of the industrial class.^[2]

It was this upheaval that prompted those like George Dewhurst to act, and he did so with increasing fervour. He became involved in a number of meetings that Radicals like him hoped would persuade the authorities to improve conditions. He promoted an open air meeting at Factory Hill in 1816 (to urge an extension of the franchise and a repeal of the Corn Laws)^[3] and a number of others in the three years that followed and became "by dint of earnestness, downrightness, and the use of plain, forceful Saxon words" someone "understood and felt by the most illiterate of his hearers".^[2]

This agitation and confrontation with the authorities was to come to a head on 16 August 1819 in what is now known as the Peterloo Massacre where a cavalry charge into a crowd of several thousand people in Manchester led to the deaths of eighteen people and the injury of many hundreds of others.

Though no doubt aware of the tragedy in Manchester (and possibly present at the event although that is currently unknown) Dewhurst still attended and addressed a further meeting of Radicals only three months later (15 November 1819) at Habergham Eaves near Burnley and was soon after arrested on a charge of high treason. Abram contends that simultaneous to the events in Manchester the Government was determined to deal a blow to other Radical leaders and that the Magistrates of the Blackburn Hundred had been keeping a close eye on Dewhurst as one of the most egregious facilitators of the revolt.^[2]

Arrest and imprisonment

A number of newspapers, both local and national, recorded the arrest of Dewhurst and his co-accused. The Blackburn Mail (8 December 1819):

On Thursday evening last, December 2nd, George Dewhurst, reedmaker, John Adamson, tailor, Joseph Fletcher, tailor, and two other men in custody, were examined before the Rev. T. D. Whitaker, LL.D., and Joseph Feilden, Esq., when they were severally committed to Preston House of Correction for further examination. The prisoners Dewhurst, Fletcher, and Adamson are charged with having, on the 15th November last, at Habergham Eaves, near Burnley, traitorously conspired and combined together, with other wicked and traitorous persons, to the number of 10,000 and upwards, and, in pursuance of the said traitorous conspiracy, at the time and place aforesaid, with having armed themselves with divers pikes, pistols, clubs, staves, and other offensive weapons, and with having thereby, then and there, levied war against the King, in order, by force and constraint, to compel his said Majesty to change his measures and councils, and to intimidate and overawe the Houses of Parliament.

The following day, following further questioning at Preston by Colonel Hargreaves. Dewhurst, Fletcher, Adamson and Hargreaves were committed to Lancaster Gaol on a charge of High Treason.

The consequent trial took place on 1 April 1820 at Lancaster Assizes under Mr Justice Bayley with George Dewhurst being sentenced to two years imprisonment at Lancaster Gaol. As recorded in the delivery of Gaol documents at the end of the two years Dewhurst was further instructed to find sureties of £40 and enter into recognizance to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for three years longer.

Dewhurst petitioned Parliament in May 1820 regarding his ill-treatment complaining that he had been made to do hard labour and "compelled to wear the felon's dress".^[4] This is just one indication of the hardship that he endured during his imprisonment, further insights can be gained from a letter he wrote in August 1821 from his cell at Lancaster. Although the full text of the document is no longer available, Abram (in his book on Blackburn Characters)[2] provides a number of extracts that give an idea of what Dewhurst is enduring.

A friend of Dewhurst, C. Cottam (a fellow Reedmaker) had visited him in gaol and was horrified at the thought of human beings having to spend years in such conditions and having to be "confined within a yard about twenty yards long and ten broad."

Perhaps most moving is the copy of a petition he had sent to the Annual Meeting of County Justices held in Preston in June 1821 in which hopes for his sentence to be commuted:

I was arrested the 2nd day of December, 1819, upon a charge of high treason, for attending a legal and peaceable meeting at Burnley. Afterwards I was committed to this jail, and kept under that dreadful charge for 12 weeks. At the following Assizes I was tried for a misdemeanour, found guilty, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in this jail. That I have been confined to the Crown side of the prison ever since, and subjected to the same privations and restrictions as felons and the Bridewell prisoners are. The yard which is allotted for walking in is small, and is surrounded with such high buildings that the air breathed therein" is very unwholesome. "The restrictions thought necessary for the government of the Crown prisoners have prevented me from yielding to the repeated solicitations of my parents, who are very anxious that they and my children may come to see me; but it would be a useless journey of 30 to 40 miles to see each other through a small aperture of a door." "Death has for ever deprived me of one boy, about seven years old, since I came here. I appeal to you as fathers, whether my anxiety to see my children will not be greater in consequence of that event. I shall not speak of my own conduct during my incarceration, but I will refer you to the keepers.^[2]

Dewhurst was finally released in the Spring of 1822 and must have welcomed the opportunity to return home and be reunited with his children. He must have also been aware of the stipulation made when sentenced to keep the peace and be of good behaviour. A widower before he was imprisoned, he married Alice Hitchen on 9 November 1823 and returned to reedmaking.

The deprivations of prison however did not keep Dewhurst quiet for long. Three years later he was again speaking on behalf of the poor, specifically on the evil of taxation:

I am certain, that if the money wrung from the people, to support idleness and extravagance, was distributed amongst us, every man, woman, and child, in the kingdom, would have plenty to eat.

He then made a reference to his imprisonment, and its injustice:

Did I ever recommend violence? No. But because I called upon the people to come forward, and demand their rights, I was dragged from my family to a dungeon.

However, the feeling of indignation in this speech and the prevailing sense of injustice it spoke of foreshadowed not further attempts at reform in Blackburn but the determination to start anew in the United States.

Travel to America

Between 1826-27 there was renewed distress in Blackburn and great difficulty in trade.^[2] This depression left only about one third of the population around Blackburn in work and the consequent hardship led inexorably to robberies and even mob violence including an attack on the house of the clerk to justices and passengers on market coaches.^[5] Gooderson ^[5] further records that a large crowd destroyed power looms in Accrington and Blackburn and fatalities occurred in a conflict between soldiers and rioters outside a mill in Grimshaw Park.

The privations endured by the poor around Blackburn (and doubtless similar towns) were truly severe:

When a doctor called to attend the birth of a weaver's child in Eanam, he found the child delivered, but already dead, alongside its mother lying half dead from starvation in a heap of straw. The Blackburn workhouse was full to bursting. Local landowners distributed food and money and employed men in clearing woods, while the local relief committee distributed oatmeal, bacon, East India rice and treacle. Blankets were in desperately short supply, and vinegar had to be given to sufferers from typhus.^[5]

It is likely as a result of this difficulty (and possibly to start a new life for himself now that his imprisonment was behind him) that George Dewhurst made the decision to set sail to America. One certainly gets the feeling that he would not be sorry to escape contact with what he described (only the year before he left for America) as "the pestilential breath of the English Parliament."^[6]

He was certainly not the only inhabitant of Blackburn to make such a decision. An article in the Blackburn Mail of 30 August 1826, comments on increasing numbers travelling to America to seek better conditions, but warns that things might not always be as positive as they seem:

We learn that a great number of weavers, and others in the town, have been prevailed upon in consequence of the distress of the times, to embark to America, and that others are preparing to follow their example. If these people go in the expectation of bettering their condition, we fear they will find themselves woefully mistaken. Numerous instances have occurred where parties have gone over under this idea, but when they reached their destination, would gladly have paid a double price to have returned to their native land; and we have this week been favoured with the perusal of a letter written by a person, formerly an inhabitant of this town, and now resident at Poughkeepsie, near New York, and who had a little property when he left, but is now obliged to sell it to support himself! He communicates a fact, which it will be well for all emigrantly disposed persons to consider, viz. 'that all weaving is done by power looms' and that he, himself, has been without work for the last two years.^[7]

It is known that George Dewhurst travelled from Liverpool to New York on the Dalhousie Castle, arriving in America on 6 September 1827,^[8] but so far no more is known of his time there, or the exact date of his return to Blackburn (although this cannot have been later than 1830). It seems that Dewhurst met with little success in the United States, and Abram reports that some of his old neighbours made fun of him for having discovered that the "American Republic was no better than, if so good as, king-lord-squire-and-parson- ridden England."^[2]

Upon his return Dewhurst, perhaps after a short respite, once again involved himself in the political fray as was reported by another Blackburn citizen Thomas Rogerson who reported his activities to the then Home Secretary Robert Peel in November 1830:^[9]

Sir

A few weeks ago I sent you a copy of the Rules and Resolutions of the Blackburn Political Union and I now send a copy of an Advertisement from the same party signed by order of the Political Council, callings public meeting to be holden on Monday next - one of the principal leaders is George Dewhurst who was imprisoned in 1819 for his seditious conduct and since then he has been to America but not succeeding there he returned here saying he had done with politics - perhaps it would have been will for himself and the peace of this district if he had remained quiet - I think Dewhurst and his colleagues wish by their unions and meetings to keep the public mind (at least the labouring classes) in a state of ferment and I thought it right to send you a copy of each of the bills to appraise you of their proceedings.

Dewhurst offered me each of the enclosed to print knowing full well that I should refuse them - his object in offering them to me was no doubt to hold me up to the scorn of his radical party and the boast that even the liberty of the press (as they call it) was denied them in this town.

I am Sir, your obedient servant, Thomas Rogerson.

The approbation of Rogerson did little to diminish Dewhurst’s enthusiasm for reforming politics and he was to go on to play a significant role in the future political and social development of Blackburn.

The work of reform 1830–1857

The Blackburn elections

The Improvement Commission

Following the election Dewhurst spent years serving on the town's Improvement Commission, often in the role of chairman. His work provides a fascinating glimpse into the unglamorous but wholly necessary business of civic improvement. In some ways the smaller, quieter battles of the committee were just as important to improving the lot of his fellow citizens as his struggles of yesteryear. The Blackburn Standard of 12 August 1846 reported^[10] on the regular Friday meeting of the Commissioners in the Sessions Room in Blackburn. George Dewhurst was in the chair and that single meeting covered:

• The construction of the new Market House including the costs involved.
• Repairing streets and cleaning bye-ways (where Dewhurst brought attention to the "filthy nuisance" of the George and Dragon yard where horses were boiled up and placed in tubs causing an intolerable stench)
• In his role as Chairman, Dewhurst brought the Commission's attention to the fact that the Improvement Act intended that a street was defined not only as a thoroughfare but also a court, alley, lane or passage and that these areas were to be cleaned as well. When this was challenged Dewhurst pointed out that "...the state of the back places were disgraceful. The persons residing there paid their rates like other people, and yet they were, in this respect, together neglected. The scavengers ought to go into all these back streets and places."
• The removal of pigsties.
• What Dewhurst considered the greatest nuisance of all, the River Blakewater, and in particular the "noxious exhalations continually rising from its bed." A lengthy and detailed discussion followed.
• Approving the purchase of land.
• The appointment of police constables.
• The post of weighing machine keeper.

In such a way George Dewhurst dutifully kept on the work of local improvement and common justice. The passion of the early days that let to his imprisonment may have become more measured, but his commitment to those he felt compelled to serve remained as strong as ever.

Election to the first town council

Dewhurst was a member of Blackburn's Improvement Commissioners for many years before the town was incorporated and in 1851 was elected to the first Town Council. He was to represent the ward of St Pauls until he died in 1857.^[3]

His appeal to voters to be their representative was both humble and effective:^[11]

Gentlemen,

At the meeting held in your Ward, on Monday last, in the Assembly Room, Heaton-street, you were pleased to nominate me as one of your intended Councillors. For such an honour I sincerely thank you. I have laboured in the Public cause for many years, and have not been an inactive inhabitant of my native Town: of the results you are able to judge.

I submit to you my past conduct, not as a boast, but as a testimonial of my claim for your suffrages.

The incorporation of your Borough has given to all Householders the right of self-government, and with you rests the responsibility of appointing governors of the Town. I have no collegiate education to recommend myself to your notice; I a self-taught and plain; and, if my past labours give you any assurance of my future conduct, you will, I anticipate, place me in a situation where I can be more useful than I have hitherto been.

Gentlemen, I do not intend to canvass the Ward for Votes, but it is out of no disrespect to you that I have come to this conclusion. I believe the duties between the Representative and the Represented are reciprocal; consequently, no unnecessary burdens should be laid on your Representatives.

I have the honour to be, Gentlemen,

Your Servant,

— George Dewhurst, Queen Street, October 23rd, 1851.

Political, social and economic views

Religion

Although baptised and married in the Church of England, George Dewhurst was a self-confessed dissenter of the Unitarian tradition (at least in 1832, it is possible that his views changed in later life).^[2]

Women's suffrage

Railway mania

Catholic Emancipation

Death and burial

George Dewhurst died at his home on Queen Street on 14 August 1857 of kidney disease and was buried five days later at Blackburn Cemetery. He was still a Councillor of the town on the day of his death.

The people of Blackburn commissioned a monument to Dewhurst at the cemetery and in April 1858 the Blackburn Standard reported that it had been erected. It was the first public monument in the cemetery at that time, completed by the builder John Hacking and about 17 feet in height.^[12] It was reported that when first erected the monument was "conspicuous from a considerable distance".^[13]

It was inscribed with the following:

Legacy and recognition

George Dewhurst's contribution to the cause of reform was clearly recognised before and shortly after the time of his death. His memorial in Blackburn Cemetery has already been mentioned, but he also received a fine silver cup from fellow Radical reformers with the inscription:

"Presented to Mr. George Dewhurst by the Radical Reformers of Blackburn, as a testimony of the high estimation in which his exertions in the cause of the People are held by his compatriots. The People united are omnipotent."

Shortly after Dewhurst's death a small drinking fountain made of Peterhead granite was inserted in the west wall of the market house with the inscription "1858. Erected by the friends of the late George Dewhurst". It was later moved beneath Darwen Street railway bridge and then to where it can be seen today in Fleming Square (following the prompting of Margery Woods, one of Dewhurst's descendants).^[14]

Despite the acclaim that George Dewhurst enjoyed during his lifetime as "one of Blackburn's most remarkable sons,"^[15] recognition of the importance of his role faded from memory over the decades that followed his death. More recently this recognition has been revitalised by the enthusiasm of those with a passion for local and family history. An online supporters group^[16] has been set up and has been influential in bringing Dewhurst's role to much greater prominence. The aforementioned silver cup was successfully acquired through crowdfunding, and members share memories of George Dewhurst and his ancestors and act to preserve his memory.

Recently Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery held a George Dewhurst day^[17] and Dewhurst descendants have also announced that they have put in an application to have a road named after George Dewhurst which has now been put into effect.^[18]

An animation was created in celebration of George Dewhurst by the BA (Hons) student Bee Joy (The Radical - Animation by Bee Joy on YouTube)

This resurgence of interest in Dewhurst is wholly deserved and it seems surprising that a man who played such an important role in the helping the plight of the poor should have been neglected for so long.