Description:As a prominent public figure and extensive local landowner in North Staffordshire, George Granville Leveson-Gower (1758-1833), the Marquis of Stafford, received many appeals from local people seeking financial assistance or patronage. Amongst these is a letter sent to the Marquis on behalf of the poor and unemployed inhabitants of Hanley and Shelton.
Unlike the applications made by individuals, this letter appeals to the Marquis on behalf of the communities living in Hanley and Shelton, telling us a great deal about life in these manufacturing districts in the early nineteenth century.
Reverend R. C. Atkins, the Beneficed Curate of Hanley wrote to the Marquis of Stafford on Christmas Day 1826. He had been ‘deputed by the Committee for the relief of the poor’ in Hanley to send a copy of ‘the Resolutions recently passed at a Meeting of the principal Inhabitants’ in Hanley to the Marquis and to solicitm‘benevolent aid’ for the poor in the town.
Reverend Atkins reports that ‘five thousand individuals’ were ‘receiving parochial relief in the Parish of Stoke’ in December 1826, costing over three hundred pounds a week.
Attached to the letter is a printed copy of the Resolutions made at a ‘Public Meeting of the Manufacturers and other Respectable Inhabitants’ of Hanley and Shelton. The meeting had been held on 19th December to consider ‘the best means of relieving the Unemployed and Distressed Poor’ in Hanley and Shelton.
The ‘Resolutions’ refer to the destitute condition of many unemployed workmen and their families within Hanley and Shelton and also to ‘the distress experienced by the necessitous poor’, particularly near to Christmas. The document states that the inhabitants of Hanley and Shelton saw it as ‘a duty to sympathize’ with the poor and ‘to exert’ themselves ‘so far as possible’ for the relief of their sufferings.
Subscriptions were solicited from inhabitants at the meeting, and it was decided that an appeal would be made to ‘the Manufacturer’s Relief Society’ in London, and to the ‘County Subscription for the Relief of the Unemployed Poor’. Applications had also been made to Trusts involved in work on the highways in the area to try and find work for the unemployed.
A list of donations appears at the bottom of the paper. Fifty pounds was given by Josiah Wedgwood and Son and Reverend Atkins had donated twenty pounds to the fund. The Resolutions state that ‘the relief most likely to be useful, will be that bestowed in labour, and food, and clothing’.
This document occurs at an interesting time in Hanley's social development. The previous year an Act of Parliament had set up Improvement Commissioners for Hanley with powers to provide lights and police for the growing town. The act specified that the minister of the town should always be amongst the Commissioners. The document reflects the rather limited powers of the Improvement Act.