Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

Near twenty years back, I hit upon a new system of manufacturing and finishing, which has redeemed Yorkshire from the disgrace it was in as a manufacturing county. For before then the name of Yorkshire cloth to buyers of a certain quality would cause them to turn away from listening to what the seller had to say. At the time I began the new system I was not worth £500, but the system enabled me in a short time to lay out in mills and machinery upwards of £80,000, and in 1824 I gave up business with a great income, but left all in the concern, but [the stock market crash of] 1825 was the ruin of the concern. I thought I could save it, and in 1826 I mortgaged my property for that purpose, but the new [protectionist] tariff in America, in 1828, blasted all hope. I then in 1829 released those who had the concern, and took the decayed concern into my hands again, and engaged to pay their debts in a way that has before been mentioned. For three or four months all went on well, but from an unforeseen event, and I say a most cruel one, my credit was stopped on account of it; the result was I had to appear in the Gazette.

Comment

Comment

Apparently he died in 1858 in poverty.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/makhist10_prog13a.shtml

A remarkable memoir.

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

MR. WILLIAM HIRST. TO MY YORKSHIRE FRIENDS.
This is the last Time I intend to Appeal to the Public through the Medium of the Papers. For the grounds of my Appeal I will state a few leading Facts as well as I can. Near Twenty Years back I hit upon a new System of Manufacturing and Finishing, which has redeemed Yorkshire from the disgrace it was in as a Manufacturing County: for before then the name of Yorkshire Cloth to buyers of a certain quality would cause them to turn away from listening to what the seller had to say. At the time I began the new system I was not worth £500, the System itself enabled me in a short time to lay out in Mills and Machinery upwards of £80,000, and in 1824 I gave up Business with a great Income, but left all in the Concern, but 1825 was the ruin of the Concern. I thought I could save it, and in 1826 I mortgaged my Property for that purpose, but the new Tariff in America, in 1828, blasted all hope. I then in 1829 released those who had the Concern, and took the decayed Concern into my Hands again, and engaged to pay their Debts in a way that has before been mentioned. For three or four months all went on well, but from an unforeseen event, and I say a most cruel one, my credit was stopped on account of it; the result was I had to appear in the Gazette, though I proved before my Assignees I had made a profit of £3,000 that very same year. My Assignees being well satisfied, set me to work again; the first five months, as I have before stated, I made a profit of £5,000, and since then up to now I have made £5,000 more, admitted by Letters from those who have got about £20,000 odd of my Goods, but the change in the American market being so great, if sold now, though admitted good value, and that they could get me a profit on invoice price, yet it is probable to sell them at present they would not realise more than the advances; but the persons who have them have no authority to sell less than invoice, nor shall they have any, for if they do sell them for less I shall look to them for the difference, as I will prove by letters they were good value.

I have about £6,000 locked up this way, and about £6,000 more in Machinery. This is the case. I make this last Appeal and I make it as hundreds of different persons have expressed so much in my favour. There was a number of Gentlemen last year met to raise a Subscription, but how it dropped I never knew; James Browne, Esq. wrote from the country to his partners that he would give me £100 and lend me £20; Thomas Beckett, Esq. has said many times he would give £100 towards a piece of Plate; he says so now; I advised him to put his £100 with some others to come to my present relief; £3,000 would relieve me better now than £10,000 afterwards. Lyndon Bolton has said many times that if Yorkshire was to give me £100,000, they would not pay me for what I have done. Mr. Field, Banker, in Leeds, has said many times I had done more for my Country than any man in it; hundreds have said so beside him, and will the People of Yorkshire see me sink for about £3,000, after so much has been said, and when I prove in every instance that I have done good in Business, and I can do good yet, if I had something more to work on, to enable me to work a little until next good Trade? If I can keep going on with a little and be ready to take advantage of the trade as it improves I have no doubt, if spared, with health and strength, as I now have, of realising as much as will keep me and my family comfortable through life; and were some of you in my place and I in yours, I should come forward myself to do all that was wanted. None, after this, can complain they have not had an opportunity to do one good, whom they admit to have done so much good to them. I can honestly and fairly say, that two months back I was worth £10,000, as much so as any other tradesman can say he is worth any other sum that is embarked in trade, but to stop now it might all be wasted, and I fully believe about £3,000 would be the means of saving me, for my life has been a life of struggle and disappointment since 1825, from causes not of my making. I appeal to you this last time to save me and my Family from ruin, that is, to get over this present bad time, and then I have no fear for the future; put into practice what you acknowledge is my due, and all will be well, and I shall ever remain a debtor in gratitude to such as do assist me now, and you will have a pleasure in doing good to one you acknowledge yourselves has done much good, and, though distressed now, I have never regretted having opened my heart and place to all inquirers, and there are thousands who have inquired and are now reaping the benefit which it is more than probable had I kept all to myself I might have been as wealthy by my new System is I could have wished; for I still say I do not regret if you do not let me sink while a trifle for what has been done would save me and my family for ever. I was reading in a book a short time back about a Man fishing and falling into the water, and he would have been drowned but for a Shepherd watching his flock, and saw him fall in and ran and saved him at the risk of his life; the Gentleman took the Shepherd home, made him his equal, and at his death left all he had to him. Now I do say and can prove that to establish my new System for Two Years I was in danger of my Life, and never appeared in public but in danger of my Life. Having saved Yorkshire from the ruin of its Trade, will you let him sink that has saved you for a mere trifle in proportion to the Object obtained for you? All I want at present is to be assisted to carry on my Business, to be ready to share in the good Business that is sure to come when the Corn Laws are repealed, for in my opinion Corn Laws are one cause of the present bad Trade. The Corn from America now lodged in Warehouses in Liverpool, if it could have been sold, the proceeds would have been wanted back to America in our Articles, and the Thousands that are now wanting Bread in England would have been relieved in two ways; they would have bread at Half-price, and as much more work to raise means to buy it with.

I could give a list of names that would fill a whole column. I only will mention two more,-Mr. Gott said he would give as much as any one; Mr. John Haley, of Bramley, said he would give £50. Now if the hundreds of expressions of this kind had never been used, I should never have made one appeal at all, and whether it is attended to or not, it is the last I shall make in this way. Amongst great people, debts of honour are always attended to with strlctness. I should mot have made this appeal now, but my Assignees set me to work, and from the meetings that took place then about, my Assignees expected I should have had assistance from the public, but Instead of that assistance coming in about two months after I had begun to work, Mr. Nevins, at the head of the meetings, called on me, and considered I then had no need, but at any future time, if I wanted, they would assist me. This is one ground I append. I feel more pleasure in giving myself, than in pleading for a debt of honour.
WM. HIRST.

P.S. The Thousands that have visited my Mill since I began, if I was to say Tens of Thousands í should not be wrong, and all expressing the great benefit I had rendered my Country, and those of all Trades, and in all capacities of life, therefore as all have felt the benefit, let all come forward, from 1d. to 1s, and £1 to £100, or more, as they are disposed. I will give one proof of the high esteem my Cloth was in – it sold by auction at New York for £7 10s. per yard. I will show you that this drawback and backening in trade is not my doing; for the very Goods I want about £6,000 of their invoice Value, and admitted good value by Letters.- Had they been at New York in Spring, 1831, they would have realized me £6,000 above the Invoice; and by the state of the Market now, or what is said of it, if sold, would not fetch more than what I have received; and I dare venture to say, if the Corn Laws had been repealed this Session, they would sell for as much as they did in the Spring, 1831. I want to keep in trade till the Corn Laws are repealed, and for which purpose I crave a small proportion of a Debt of Honor.
Leeds, June 12, 1832.

1634 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Bankruptcy (2) ·
• Corn Laws (1815-46) (7), mercantilist tariffs and other restrictions on imported wheat, oats and barley, which, by keeping prices artificially high, favoured (Tory) landowners but made the poor hungry, the middle classes poor, and (Whig) manufacturers less able to develop their businesses ·
• Gott, William (1797-1863) (4), Leeds wool merchant, mill owner, philanthropist, and art collector ·
• Hirst, William (1777-1858) (3), Huddersfield-born Leeds textile manufacturer and innovator, ruined inter alia by land speculation and the 1825 American crash ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Panic of 1825 (2) ·
• Protectionism (6) ·
• Stock market crash (2) ·
• Tariff of Abominations (1) ·
• Textile manufacturing (59) ·
• The London Gazette (1) ·
• United States (18) ·
• Wool (28) ·
• Woollen (21) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 4 October 1831: The end of a 33-week strike by weavers at Gott’s, Leeds
• 24 September 1862: Having bet his shirt on blockade-running to the Confederates, Hull mayor Zachariah Pearson tells of his ruin by Lombard Street and Abraham Lincoln
• 25 March 1667: Burials must henceforth be in wool, in order to support woollen manufacturers and reduce linen imports
• 20 September 1598: Tenterhooks are prohibited north of the Trent to arrest a decline in the quality and reputation of woollen cloth
• 29 June 1817: Pending legislation guaranteeing savings bank deposits held in government bonds, the York Saving Bank issues an ambiguous flyer
• 25 September 1705: Daniel Defoe is amazed by Leeds’s outdoor cloth market on Briggate, shortly before the opening of the white cloth hall
• 7 November 1920: In a guest sermon in the parish church where his father had officiated, Clifford Allbutt evokes the village of Dewsbury in the 1840s
• 5 October 1833: The Leeds Mercury calls on local textile manufacturers not to sack the 30,000 workers who refuse to renounce trade union membership
• 1 July 1788: Leeds textile workers celebrate the banning of exports of live sheep
• 13 January 1812: “My neighbours would think I was going to ruin if they could not smell my factory children half an hour after they had gone down the lane”