Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century

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Preface

WHEN, in deference to a wish often expressed, I contemplated preparing a new edition of " Reminiscences of Old Sheffield," I quickly realised that reprodu<5lion in the dialogue form was impossible. It would, manifestly, be an anachronism to credit the original colloquists with a knowledge of fad\s that had become known, or of changes that had occurred after their decease. And, at the same time, there existed no longer the former necessity to identify individuals with statements largely dependent upon their personal authority. But on beginning to re-write in, narrative form, another difficulty presented itself. Owing to the accumulation of information since 1876, throwing floods of fresh light on our local annals, it became apparent that the book threatened to exceed all reasonable dimensions. I had, therefore, to limit its scope to the Eighteenth Century. Whether I continue the history of the town through the Nineteenth Century, or leave that task to more competent hands, I hope that this volume may at least do something to stimulate in a younger generation that affe<5lionate pride in " Old Sheffield " which was one of the charadleristics of their forefathers.

I have been asked to reveal the identity of the original colloquists. They were : Twiss, Mr. William Swift ; Everard, Mr. Samuel Ellis ; Wragg, Mr. T. O. Hinchliffe ; Leighton, Mr. George Latham ; Johnson, Mr. Isaac Jackson. Each of these had a distincfl individuality. Leonard, a sort of generalutility man, represented the editor — the sole survivor.

I have to acknowledge kind assistance from many quarters. By the courtesy of the Clerk (Mr. C. E. Vickers) and the Surveyor (Mr. Gibbs) to the Town Trustees ; and of Mr. Thomas Winder, of the Duke of Norfolk's Estate Office (by permission of Mr. Coverdale), I have had access to collections of invaluable plans. Mr. Walter Hall (Sorby and Hall) bore with me for many days, while I searched through the dusty parchments that have been accumulated by the old conveyancing practice of which he is the inheritor. The " finds " in his strong-room were delightful enough to compensate for the necessity of having to cancel many printed pages, and to re- write the chapter on "Old Inns." Mr. Henry George Beardshaw has given me the benefit of his accurate knowledge of the Sheffield of the past ; and I am indebted to many others for helpful information.

R. E. LEADER.

London, April, 1901.

,, XVI.

Appendix

OF THE

Sports,

The Town and its Social State ...

Smithies, Apprentices, Dames,

Dress, and Customs

Condition and Habits

Workmen ; Brutal

Drunkenness, Crime

The Trades of Hallamshire;

their Rise and Growth Distribution ; Pack Horses,

Coaches, Chapmen, and Mer-

Amusements, Learning, and Literature

The Theatres and Music

Streets, Shops, and Markets ...

Doctors, Lawyers, and Parsons...

The Town Head; Church Street

Cutlers' Halls, the Cutlers' Company, Vicar Wilkinson ...

The Old Church and Town Hall

High Street; Old Inns

Campo Lane ; Hartshead ; Quakers, Gales, Montgomery

Mercers, Booksellers, Workhouses, and Bridges

Methodists; Sunday Schools ...

Early Cutlery

Tramways

Old Taverns and the Church ...

36 — 61

62—88

89-112

134-149

150-173 174-198

199-219

285-307

IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

The Town and its Inhabitants.

nPHE town of which this volume treats was a place very '*• different from the city of to-day. The period may be said, in general terms, to comprise the hundred years which make up the eighteenth century. When it begins, the streets still ran on lines fixed by primaeval footpaths ; the houses were dotted down with all the contempt for symmetrical arrangement charadleristic of communities where individual will is strong and corporate regulation small ; the inhabitants clung tenaciously to the habits of their forefathers ; the trades retained the narrow customs of mediaeval workers; and the system of local government was but the legacy — slightly developed and modified, but still the legacy — of the feudal period. When it ends, old habits, old views, old institutions, old fatalisms were being superseded ; old landmarks were disappearing, old manners being lost, and even an old diale(5t dying out. The more heroic measures which have improved part of the town, in its exterior aspe(ft, out of recolle(ftion, belong to a later period whose history has yet to be written. But already something had been done, though not much, towards widening, straightening, and levelling the streets. The more aggressive proje<5lions had been cut off, frontages to some extent harmonised, and pi(fturesqueness sacrificed to convenience. The older shops and houses of the main thoroughfares had become interspersed with others which, if more commodious, were uglier ; and these, in their turn, ' seemed almost ripe for renovation.

A

Into the conditions of manufad^ure and trade, into the relations between employers and employed, a new spirit had, at the end of the century, been infused by the introdudlion of steam and machinery. But even then this influence was latent rather than developed ; and its development, with the revolution brought by railways and other inventions, does not come within the scope of this volume. Nor had there yet been introduced those institutions of popular self-government which were to be substituted for the quaint old doings of the Burgery. The affairs of the town continued to be administered in an informal, happy-go-lucky fashion. There was a slight improvement on the time when all the magistrates lived miles away, for one was now resident here. But justice was still dispensed on patriarchal lines ; the peace was kept, order more or less preserved, and crime professedly detedled by a handful of constables of the old school, and by decrepit watchmen who were far more afraid of evil-doers than evil-doers were of them. Sleeping in their watch-boxes, they were the victims of many pra(5lical jokes, and they took the earliest opportunity of sneaking off to bed.

The gradual working towards changes whose development is not yet altogether complete, may be traced in the following pages. There may still be dete<5led, by the observant eye, survivals of the departed past in our streets, and there are lingering remnants of old manners and customs among our people. In not a few nooks and corners there can be found traces of habits, both in homes and workshops, which differentiate the inhabitants of true Hallamshire descent from the ** uitlanders '* who have come from outside. And in byeways, in courts, in smithies, and in wheels there may still be heard — by those who have ears to hear and are free from the Board - School-miss delusion that local pronunciation and local words, because broad, are necessarily vulgar — the virile speech that has come dire(ft from the Saxons and the Danes who settled here when history was dawning.

Materials for forming any accurate estimate of the condition of the people in the earlier period embraced in this volume — that is to say before Huntsman had revolutionised the steel trade, before Bolsover's discovery of silver plating had created

SCALE OF LIVING. 3

a new industry, before the invasion of machinery, and when the water of our five streams formed the sole motive power — ^are scanty and fragmentary. That there was much poverty may be gathered from many incidental entries in the accounts of the Town Trustees and of the Cutlers* Company. That the houses were insanitary is certain. That the scale of living was of the humblest is evident. That the workshops were deplorable hovels may be judged by survivals, if not a<5lually within human memory, yet as known from the descriptions of those who have but recently passed away. The habits of an essentially conservative people like the natives of Hallamshire are as abiding as their speech ; and there can be little doubt that the smithies, with their mud floors, and the grinding hulls, bespattered with wheelswarf, which not a few of us remember, were the exa<5l counterparts, in their damp and squalour and dirt, of those in which the artizans of Sheffield had worked time out of mind. Unfavourable conditions of labour stamped an impress on the bodies of workers so indelibly as to find expression in such epithets of common speech as that which made the knock -knees of the cutlers a bye-word.

The severe regulations of the Cutlers* Company as to the admission of freemen and apprentices, designed to limit the staple industry in a few hands, were a fatal hindrance to growth and progress. But they had this advantage — that while discouraging the introdud^ion of outsiders in times of prosperity, they kept the numbers of the distressed, in periods of adversity, within compassable bounds. Thus the burdens imposed on householders for the relief of the poor were not onerous. In 1721, the amount levied was £']o 9s. id., and as there were 1,320 persons assessed, the yearly poor rate averaged little more than one shilling per head. In cases of emergency, the resources of the Town Trustees, the Cutlers* Company, and the subscriptions of the better-to-do inhabitants were fully equal to the provision of extra parochial assistance. In 1735, £^ was sufficient to discharge the entire cost of the maintenance of the Poorhouse. The number of inmates, about that time, seems to have ranged from 24 to 34. Afterwards it increased, steadily but slowly, to 70 in 1743, to 94 in 1745, and to 156 in 1786. The overseers managed affairs with a stern economy that offered no inducement to "go into the house." Thus the charges for two weeks in 1744, with 60 inmates, amounted to only £S 6s. gd.; and in 1761, with 11 1 inmates, to ;^i2 5s. lod. for a fortnight. It is hardly necessary to add that, as the century drew towards its close, with its wars and terrible commercial depression, the poor rates advanced by leaps and bounds. From ;^40o in 1750, the overseers* expenditure jumped in 1788 to ;^4,ooo; and by the end of the century to ;^ 10,000, supplemented by large voluntary contributions. But throughout the greater part of the century, in normal times, the rates were low, and the amount of assistance given such as to indicate an absence of poverty, either wide-spread or excessive.

Having due regard to the purchasing power of money, food must be deemed to have been cheap, and rents low. Prior to 1750 we meet with such prices as these: — Crop of beef, 2d., ribs and rump, 3d. per lb. ; a shoulder of mutton, 2/4 ; a quarter of lamb, 1/7; 11 chickens for 3/2 J, or 6 for 2/8; a goose, i/io; 4 tongues and 31b. suet, 5/3; bacon, 4d. per lb.; sugar, 3^. per lb. ; cheese, 2^(1, per lb. ; a ham, 3s. ; a loin of veal, i/io; candles, 4d. per lb.; coals, from 2/6 to 3/2 a load, or if Attercliffe coals, then 5/6. Wheat in 1735 was 13/- a load, rye 94; oatmeal 7}d. per peck. In 1764, when there were great complaints of the high prices of the necessaries of life, wheat was 16/- per load of three bushels ; malt, which had been 17/- to 19/-, 40/- a quarter ; flesh meat, 3^. to 4d. per lb. ; butter, 7d. to 9d. A cart load (meaning then about locwt.) of hard coal was delivered for 5/2, or of small for 4/-. In 1796 a very different state of things existed. Then meat had jumped to 8^d. per lb., sugar to i/i, cheese to 8d., butter to 1/2. Wheat was experiencing immense flu(5luations, even reaching £y I OS. od. a quarter, flour 5/6 a stone, and a quartern loaf cost S^d. Tea, as a highly taxed monopoly, was almost a prohibitive luxury — 6d. per ounce, or 8/- per lb. Ale was i/- a gallon, and wine was cheap. Sack and claret, thought good enough as presents to the Duke of Norfolk, cost i/- or 1/6 a bottle, or 3/- a gallon.

RATE OF WAGES. 5

As to wages, our information is scanty, and we can only pick out odd indications here and there. It is evident that the operatives had to be content with what seems now very little. The figures must, however, be appraised by their relation to what has been said of the prices of food ; and if we multiply both by three or four, we shall arrive at some basis for comparison. At Eyam, in 1737 (where, probably, the price of labour was somewhat lower than in Sheffield) a mason's wages were 1/2 a day, his apprentice's 4d. A labourer received only 8d., augmented to the not munificent sum of lod. when he had two daughters helping him to carry dirt, in baskets, from the quarries. Mr. Samuel Shore (1709) bound a steel converter to work for him only, for ten years, at 6/- a week, with 6d. extra as a charitable grant to his widowed mother. Mr. Samuel Walker, of Grenoside, engaged (1746) a carpenter, to be employed in his foundry, or as occasion might require, to make new or to repair, for ten years ; and he was prohibited from working for anyone but his master — even for himself. His wages, subjecft to stri(5t dedu(flions for any absence, were 7/- a week for two years ; 7/6 for the next two ; and 8/-, or as much as would make his wages equal to those of any other servant, for the remaining six. The Rev. E. Goodwin gave these as the wages current in Sheffield in 1 764 : — A common labourer, i/- per diem; a carpenter, 1/6. A journeyman cutler, he said, could earn 12/- a week ; and in certain businesses good workmen sometimes made 20/-.

The following story may be taken as typical of the earnings of cutlers, when they "had a mind to work," at this period : —

Samuel Dixon, a cutler in Westbar Green, while paying his addresses to the young woman whom he afterwards married, had some lover's " tiff." In the course of this he said : " Betty, oi'd 'av thee kno 'at oi nother care for thee, nor nooa woman i* Shevveld. See thee, oi can addle me noine or ten shilling a week, onny week when oi 've a mind to work. Poind me another chap i' t' taan 'at can do it besoide messen." When he had completed his apprenticeship, he still lived with his master, paying 2s. 6d. a week for board and lodging ; but, provisions getting dearer, this was raised to 3s, A second advance to 3s. 6d. was attempted, but this he resisted, and it ended in his still lodging in the house, but finding his own vid^uals.

There were not, we must conclude, the extremes of riches and poverty seen in later times. The lines of division were less marked, all classes being much nearer to a common level. If there were many poor, there were few really wealthy. A very modest competence enabled a man to pass for rich in those days. In the neighbourhood of the town there were a certain number of families of superior station, but the modern manufa(5luring nabob would look with contempt on the wealthiest of these. Most of them were the descendants of yeomen, whose modest freeholds had, in the course of generations, and by advantageous marriages, been enlarged until the owners became squires and lords of manors. In some cases the revenues from landed property had been largely increased by profitable iron smelting and forging, at Wortley, or Chapeltown, or Attercliffe, or Renishaw, by such families as the Sitwells, of Mount Pleasant, the Parkins, and others. The wealth of the Clays, of Bridgehouses, came from Derbyshire lead mines; that of the Saundersons, of Grimesthorpe, from tanning. There were, besides, the Bamforths of High House, the Burtons of Royds Mill, the Jessops of Broomhall, the Brights of Banner Cross (represented by Lord John Murray), the Staniforths of Darnall, the Rawsons, tanners, of Wardsend, the Bagshawes (as successors to the Gills) of the Oaks, the Parkers of Woodthorpe, the Wilsons of Broomhead, and the Shirecliffes of Whitley. All these " sat on their own land." The Walkers were already beginning to build up large fortunes at Greno8ide,.and the Fells of New Hall were rich ; but in both cases their wealth was made as ironmasters, and no instances can be found, until after 1750, of large individual prosperity derived from the town of Sheffield by those engaged in the staple trades of the place.

Dr. Gatty, on the authority of the first Mr. Samuel Roberts, endorsed by Mr. Hunter, has said that in the middle of the eighteenth century ;^ioo a year was considered a handsome income, qualifying its possessor for the first rank among his fellows ; and ;f 500 was a fortune that justified retiring from business.

MIDDLE-CLASS INCOMES. 7

The account book of the Rev. John Pye, minister of Nether Chapel from 1748 to 1773, throws instrucftive light on the cost of living among the better class of inhabitants who had some degree of appearance to keep up. From this we learn that although for many years he had an income which did not exceed ;^ioo per annum,* yet, out of that, he kept a horse, and saved considerable sums. Up to the year 1757, in which he was married, he paid a modest £1^ per annum for board and lodgings, and after his marriage his household expenses ranged from £2 2s. to £\ 4s. per month, though occasionally they were both higher and lower. He appears to have paid his servant £2 a year wages. The material for a coat and breeches cost him £1 4s., and the tailor's charge for making them up was 8/6. A pair of shoes cost 5/6. The worsted for a pair of breeches was bought for 8/-, and trimming for the same for 3/6. The tailor made a waistcoat and mended other things for 3/-. For tea, 12/4 was paid for ijlb. ; and 14/6 (this was in 1764) for a load of wheat. The expenses of a journey to London were £^ 6s. At first, an annual contracfl for shaving was made at 10/- a year, but this was afterwards increased to 15/..

Mr. Pye's income and expenditure were affluence compared with the condition of a neighbouring village minister, the Rev. Samuel Smith, of Stannington Nonconformist (now Unitarian) Chapel (1713-1761). The stipend seems to have been about ;^I2 a year, with a house ; but even from that sum, any money spent on the strucflure of the chapel was dedu<5led before the balance was paid to the minister — so that the ;^40 a year on which Goldsmith's village parson was reputed "passing rich" was, by comparison, boundless wealth. Mr. Smith has left a MS. memorandum book, in which, interspersed with sermons and abstra(5ls of religious books, there are jottings of his accounts during some incumbency he held before going to Stannington. The contributions of his flock were counted in shillings, even these being often left unpaid. But if the guineas on which he had to subsist were few, his outgoings

* The salary of the Rev. Joseph Evans, Upper Chapel 1758-98, was £^0 a year, or occasionally ;^8o.

were proportionately small. Thus he records, " My landlord has received upon my account, for my board, for one whole year in 1707, with contentment, £^ 17s. 3d."

Reference has just been made to the forges and foundries as the chief source of wealth in this distridl in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Walkers, first, in a small way, at Grenoside, and afterwards on a large scale at Masborough, are a conspicuous illustration of this. But no more striking proof of the scale of living, even among men rightly held to be prosperous above their fellows, can be adduced than that, for the years 1755 to 1760, the three, or perhaps four, partners were content to take out for their own share £i\o per annum. At first this was done with some fear and trembling. There were questionings whether the forge would bear it ; but year by year the profits increased, and the firm wisely spent all the revenue, beyond their own modest wants, in extensions and improvements. Samuel Walker records that in 1757, "tho' we took out ;f 140, I make no doubt we cleared ;f 1,140 this year," and from that time they went on by leaps and bounds.*

John Fell, from being a clerk to Dennis Hayford, or Heyford, of Wortley and Attercliffe Forges, became the lessee of the latter. There has been preserved an old assignment of the Attercliffe Forge dated 1692, which gives a clue to its history. In 1688 Sir John Reresby was indignant at the quality of some newly appointed county justices : " amongst others John Eyre, of Sheffield Park, Mr. Ratcliffe, &c. The first can neither write nor read, the second is a bailiff to the Duchess Dowager of Norfolk's rents ; and neither of them have one foot of freehold land in England." This John Eyre, of Sheffield Manor, is mentioned in 1692, as protecfling the Park, in the Duke of Norfolk's interest, against persons claiming a right of road through it.f The Duke had leased to him a messuage and iron forge near Sheffield, called Sheffield Forge, but, becoming bankrupt. Eyre assigned it, in trust for his creditors, to George Bamforth, of High House, and the Rev. Cuthbert Browne, the latter of whom combined with the spiritual duties of Assistant Minister of Sheffield and Curate

* Gatty's Hunter's Hallamshire, pp. 211, 212. f Gatty's Hunter, p. 333.

DISAPPEARANXE OF LEADING FAMILIES. 9

of Attercliffe the secular fundlion of commissioner for the management of the Duke*s estates. These trustees under Eyre's bankruptcy sold the forge for £^0 to Dennis Hayford of Miiiington, Thomas Barlow of Sheffield (Town Trustee), and John Simpson of Babworth, who had also ironworks at Chapeltown, Wadsley, and Rotherham. From these it came in course of time into the hands of John Fell, and afterwards to Richard Swallow, who had managed it for Madame Fell during her widowhood.

Though there is some divergence of view as to the conditions under which the seventeenth century closed,* there can be little question that the trend of influence during at least the first half of its successor, was retrograde. It is, for instance, exceedingly striking to notice how many of the leading families who had given distindlion to the neighbourhood and tone to its society, had, when the time dawns with which this book is more especially concerned, gone away or gone under, or had been so dispersed that their beneficial influence was. lost. The glories of Attercliffe Hall under the Spencers had departed ; and Carbrook was deserted by the Brights who had made it famous. The light of the elder branch of the Brights, of Whirlow, had flickered out miserably in an ale-house, where Fox of Fulwood and Hall of Stumperlowe had joined with Henry Bright in ruining their once fine estates by low dissipation. The Banner Cross property of the Brights was in the hands of aliens, with no local associations ; and though there were still Brights at Greystones and Nether Edge, the former

* The late Mr. Arthur Jackson, in a ledure delivered in 1893, took exception to the description given by Hunter of the low social state of the town in the seventeenth century ; and he maintained that there was, at the end of that period, more comfort and more culture than Mr. Hunter quite realised. The opinions of Mr. Arthur fackson on any subjed conneded with the Sheffield of the past, which he had studied so well and sympathetically, are entitled to the highest respect ; but a very careful examination of the instances he cited leads to the conclusion that his contention was unproved. Mr. Jackson's illustrations, which roamed all over the century and were not confined to its later years, were taken from Hunter himself. They were, therefore, well known to the historian of Hallamshire, and the verdid he arrived at was formed in the full light of the evidence from which Mr. Jackson drew opposite deductions.

lO REMINISCENCES OF SHEFFIELD.

were drifting away to Staveley, and the latter were of minor importance. The Ashtons having ended in an heiress, Whiteley Wood Hall, like Banner Cross, had come into new hands. Already when Mr. Banks, the attorney, who is one of Mr. Arthur Jackson's instances of the successful accumulation of seventeenth century wealth, lived at Shirecliffe Hall, that house had been shorn of its ancient honours and had been divided into three ; and Mr. Banks himself left Sheffield " when he had scarcely passed the middle period of his life.'** As to the Hollisses, the Hanbys, and the Birleys, they had long ago migrated to London, where they made their money, though they honourably marked their former connecflion with Sheffield by founding the charities which perpetuate their names. Darnall Hall had become of secondary interest to the Staniforths, for the elder son had gone off to give two generations

* Gatty's Hunter, p. 394, and Leader's Burgery, 286. Banks's wife, daughter of Rowland Hancock, an ejedted minister, and his predecessor in the occupation of Shirecliffe. brought him a fortune of /400. Mr. Banks became a Member of Parliament, but during his residence in Sheffield, his finger, like that of Mr. Thomas Chappell, with whom he had served his articles, and whom he succeeded on the Town Trust, is found in every local pie. It was " one Chappell an attorney, one Bright a lawyer (both concerned in the Duke of Norfolk's affairs) and one Buck a chimrgeon of Sheffield (whom I had caused to be prosecuted not long before for having two wives)," who in 1676 excited Sir John Reresby's indignation by getting up a bogus charge against him of having caused the death of his black servant. Reresby brought an ad ion against "the knave " Bright at York Assizes, "and recovered of him a hundred marks, and more than that my credit, all the world being convinced of the malice and falsehood of the inventor." Reresby's Memoirs, pp. 105, 120, 143. The Parish Church Register has this entry : — " 1681, Od. 20. Bap. Sarah, d. of John Buck, chimrgeon." To Chappell, too, seems to have been due the injunction obtained in the time of James I. (1685) compelling the Sheffield Burgesses to carry out the decree of charitable uses made in the reign of Charles H. (1681), whereby he and another attorney, William Simpson, were placed first on the list of Trustees. Chappell, Banks, Simpson, and a fourth attorney, John Styring, were the commissioners under Eyre's bankruptcy (see p. 8), and there are few legal documents of the period in which the names of one or other of them do not occur. The witnesses to Eyre's deed of assignment are "iZh. Pegge^and Jane Pegge," landlord and ■landlady of the Angel Inn — a sign of the prevailing custom, of which we shall meet with many examples, of transacting almost all matters of business in taverns.

NOTHING LIKE LEATHER. II

of Mayors to Liverpool, and the younger let the house to the father of the twelfth Duke of Norfolk. The Saundersons of Grimesthorpe, who in 1660 had produced a bishop of Lincoln, were so scattered as to be undistinguishable from ordinary folk. And the same story, of departure or decadence, might be told of others.

The instances to the contrary are in direcflions other than the cutlery trades. After the iron forges, tanning ranks, at this time, as the foundation of fortunes. The Rawson clan, for example, ancient freeholders of Hallamshire, had their tannery at Upperthorpe from the middle of the sixteenth century, and as the generations went by they showed that " there was nothing like leather " by establishing tan pits at Walkley and Philadelphia, perhaps also at Norwood ; and by joining forces, matrimonially, with the other Rawson at Wardsend.* They pervade the centuries as leading Sheffield citizens, even close to our own times, although in the end, brewing was found more profitable than tanning. There was a very curious story toldt in connedlion with some proceedings taken in Chancery, about 1722, in a vain attempt to recover an endowment which had eluded Braithwell School. John Bos vile, tanner, of Wardsend, brother of the Vicar of Braithwell, had built the school house in 1693, and was known to have made a will endowing it with certain lands ; but on his death in 1697 nothing could be heaid of any such will or endowment. A suit was instituted, and evidence was taken in which it was freely imputed that Thomas Bosvile and Thomas Rawson had, somehow, contrived, to their own emolument, to deprive the school of the benefits John Bosvile either conferred, or intended to confer, on it. Some hesitation in accepting this version — which was only one, and that the unsuccessful, side of the case — is justified by the difficulty of reconciling what was said about Thomas Rawson with what we know of his family. According to the Braithwell deponents, Rawson was apprenticed by John Bosvile, as a tanner, " out of charity,"

• See the Rawson pedigree in Gatty's Hunter, 386, 450, and Eastwood's Ecclesfield, 391-394.

t Local Notes and Queries, Sheffield Independent, August 2, 1877.

and it was made to appear that he so worked himself into the good graces of the old man as to get possession of the business on easy terms. But Rawson*s father had himself been a tanner at Wardsend, probably through his marriage with the widow of one of the Bosviles, a daughter of an Upperthorpe Rawson ; so that there is no need to seek a sinister explanation of the T facfl that the son Thomas, who was only an infant when his father died, should be brought up to, and ultimately inherit, a business with which he was both paternally and maternally connecfled. However this may be, the exception afforded by the Rawsons to what has been said as to the disappearance of old families in the eighteenth century, in no way afie(5ls the contention that such fortunes as were acquired were made outside the staple trades of the town.