Yorkshire Almanac Walter White finds ancient gloom in Shipley and new hope in Titus Salt’s Saltaire

26 July 1858: Walter White finds ancient gloom in Shipley and new hope in Titus Salt’s Saltaire

Walter White. 1861. A Month in Yorkshire, 4th Ed. London: Chapman and Hall. The best of White’s travel writing, in which, as usual, he encounters and investigates the Plain People. This is the golden age of walking, when there were good roads pretty much everywhere, and they hadn’t yet been made inaccessible to pedestrians by cars. His July is told in 31 chapters, which seem to refer to the days of the month. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

It was the day of Shipley feast, and the place was all in a hubbub, and numbers of factory people, leaving for a while their habitual manufacture of woollen goods out of a mixture of woollen and cotton, had come together to enjoy themselves. But no one seemed happy except the children; the men and women looked as if they did not know what to do with themselves. I took the opportunity to scan faces, and could not fail to be struck by the general ill-favoured expression. Whatever approach towards good looks that there was, clearly lay with the men; the women were positively ugly, and numbers of them remarkable for that protruding lower jaw which so characterizes many of the Irish peasantry.

Saltaire is about a mile from Shipley. It is a new settlement in an old country; a most noteworthy example of what enterprise can and will accomplish where trade confides in political and social security. Here, in an agreeable district of the valley of the Aire – wooded hills on both sides – a magnificent factory and dependent town have been built, and with so much judgment as to mitigate or overcome the evils to which towns and factories have so long been obnoxious. The factory is built of stone in pure Italian style, and has a truly palatial appearance. What would the Plantagenets say, could they come back to life, and see trade inhabiting palaces far more stately than those of kings? The main building, of six stories, is seventy-two feet in height, and five hundred and fifty feet in length. In front, at some distance, standing quite apart, rises the great chimney, to an elevation of two hundred and fifty feet; a fine ornamental object, built to resemble a campanile.

The site is well chosen on the right bank of the Aire, between the Leeds and Liverpool canal, and the Leeds and Lancaster railway. Hence the readiest means are available for the reception and despatch of merchandise. A little apart, extending up the gentle slope, the young town of Saltaire is built, and in such a way as to realize the aspirations of a sanitary reformer. The houses are ranged in parallelograms, of which I counted sixteen, the fronts looking into a spacious street; the backs into a lane about seven feet in width, which facilitates ventilation, admits the scavenger’s cart, and serves as drying-ground. Streets and lanes are completely paved, the footways are excellent; there is a pillar post-office, and no lack of gas-lamps. The number of shopkeepers is regulated by Messrs. Salt, the owners of the property; and while one baker and grocer suffices to supply the wants of the town others will not be allowed to come in. A congregational chapel affords place for religious worship, and a concert-hall for musical recreation, or lectures, The men who wish to tipple must go down to Shipley, for Saltaire, as yet, has no public-house. If I mistake not, the owners are unwilling that there shall be one.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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14 April 1843: John Nicholson, “the Airedale Poet,” “the Bingley Baron,” dies after falling into the Aire while drunk

8 January 1844: Members of the 70th (Surrey) Regiment of Foot stationed at Leeds riot against a graffito

25 September 1705: Daniel Defoe is amazed by Leeds’s outdoor cloth market on Briggate, shortly before the opening of the white cloth hall

25 August 1840: Debating the teetotal vegetarian Frederic Lees at Rotherham, the Wesleyan James Bromley calls the pledge unchristian, and “alcohol-free” wine undrinkable

11 July 1858: In Whitby, Walter White buys a religious ballad printed at Otley and called ‘The railway to heaven’

26 July 1858: Walter White samples the nascent Brontë tourist industry at Haworth, but declines to buy photographs or visit the father

17 March 1914: Months before murdering his lover, the painter John Currie lectures at Leeds University and has a late-night heart-to-heart with its vice-chancellor, Michael Sadler

19 May 1812: An Anglican Whit walk encounters a Nonconformist one at “Briarfield” (Birstall), amid Luddites and wars with France and the US, in the imagination of Charlotte Brontë

29 February 1824: Prophet John Wroe is baptised on the Leap Day in the Aire near Apperley Bridge before an audience of 30,000

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I haven’t read much about the Yorkshire Baptists, but Israel Roberts writes:

In my mother’s early days [born 1802], the Baptists used to baptise their new converts in [Bagley] Beck, which then, of course, ran with pure clean water.[ref]Strong: Farsley’s first Baptist Chapel was built adjacent to Bagley Beck in 1777.[/ref] I can remember very well when it was the custom to baptise in the River Aire at Newlay Bridge (Roberts 2000).

I think that Wroe’s choices of Idle and 40 days and 40 nights were designed to echo the Temptation of Christ and his baptism by John the Baptist. Here’s Matthew 4 (KJV):

[1] Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
[2] And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
[3] And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
[4] But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
[5] Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
[6] And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
[7] Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
[8] Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
[9] And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
[10] Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
[11] Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

Let’s speculate wildly:

Stones into bread. 19th century quarrying at Idle/Wrose/Eccleshill, though valuable for quarry owners and workers, and for the builders of Bradford, had a devastating effect on (public access to) the hillsides. “Suffice to say that, near Bradford, good stone was cheap, and good eyes were rare; and that, except in the time of the rich corn harvests, what was Eccleshill Moor is now a hideous sight.” (Anon 1852) Wroe’s anti-industrial line was that man shall not live by bread alone: what about bilberries?!
Pinnacle of the temple. More thought required.
Mountain. The trig point on Eccleshill is at 212.244m. The views would have been 360º stupendous before mass housebuilding, and, while dodging the dog poo, you still get marvellous glimpses of Ilkley Moor, Airedale etc. But, like Jesus, Wroe affected a rejection of worldly dominion.
Ministered to by angels. Wroe believed, and managed for a while to convince his followers, that young girls were his just reward for withstanding the Devil’s temptations:

“Seven books – seven writers will I have – seven virgins temporal and spiritual; and until seven be found I will not cease my work.” Written from John Wroe’s mouth by William Tillotson. See how this has been fulfilled in part by the shepherds of the house of Israel agreeing to accuse John Wroe of unlawful actions, in the 10th month, 1830; which caused many of the flock who were then gathered to be scattered again; and on the 11th of the 4th month, 1831, at Bradford, when he was trodden under foot, and had three of his ribs dislocated (Wroe 1851).

One Jane Rogers has novelised these later events:

John Wroe, prophet of the apocalyptic Christian Israelite Church, made his headquarters in Lancashire in the 1820s. When God told him to comfort himself with seven virgins, his congregation gave him their daughters. Each woman in Wroe’s household, from brutalised Martha to saintly Joanna, has her own secret hopes of a new life – either in heaven or on earth – at a point in history when anything seems possible. And each has her own view of the prophet. Mr Wroe’s Virgins tells the story of the nine months of their life together, until accusations of indecency, and the trial that follows, bring Wroe’s household to a dramatic end (Rogers 2011).

Wroe surely improves dramatically, if not theologically, on Jesus by being baptised after his temptations rather than before. How does Joanna Southcott score in the Prophet Rankings?

The Quakers also number, rather than name, their months.

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