NB page 8 box

Artisan families in Lancashire circa 1775

“The workshop of the weaver was a rural cottage, from which when he was tired of sedentary labour he could easily sally forth into his little garden, and with the spade or the hoe tend its culinary productions. The cotton wool which was to form his weft was picked clean by the fingers of his younger children, and was carded and spun by the older girls assisted by his wife, and the yarn was woven by himself assisted by his sons. When he could not procure within his family a supply of yarn adequate to the demands of his loom, he had recourse to the spinsters of his neighbourhood.”

A. Ure, Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain (1836)

“Their dwellings and small gardens clean and neat - all the family well clad - the men each with a watch in his pocket and the women dressed in their own fancy - the church crowded to excess every Sunday - every house well furnished with a clock in elegant mahogany or a fancy case - handsome services in Staffordshire ware." Many cottage families had their cow, paying so much for the summer's grass, and about a statute acre of land laid out for them in some croft or corner, which they dressed up as a meadow for hay in the winter.”

William Radcliffe Origin of the New System of Manufactures (1828)

Manchester in the early 19th century

"The dwellings of the labouring manufacturers are in narrow streets and lanes, blocked up from light and air, crowded together because every inch of land is of such value that room for light and air cannot be afforded them. Here in Manchester, a great proportion of the poor lodge in cellars, damp and dark, where every kind of filth is suffered to accumulate because no exertions of domestic care can ever make such homes decent."

Robert Southey 1808

"And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air - and such air! - he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither."
 

Friedrich Engels
The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844