ARTHUR EDWARD REYNER (c1846-1902) AND THE BROOKLANDS AGREEMENT

When we were growing up, the only family “heritage” of which my father spoke was the line of his great grandmother, the staunch non-conformist Gurney family. There was never any mention of the more recent (and, you might think, more influential) lines of his Castle mother or Reyner grandmother – or indeed of his own male line, the Salters of Hertfordshire. From a purely genealogical point of view this seems like a terrible waste of ancestors!

This post marks the second anniversary of this weekly blog, in which I try to recover and celebrate some of those lost ancestral souls. Since my father took whatever he knew about his non-Gurney forebears to the grave with him, it has not always been a simple matter to snatch even a glimpse of the lives of some of mine. The Reyners are a case in point. They too were liberal non-conformists, a family of Lancashire cotton mill owners for several generations. But I am not in touch with any Reyner cousins (if you’re reading this, Reyner cousins, please write!); and for a long time I knew only the name of my great grandmother, Jane Reyner.

Arthur's sister, Jane Reyner (1850-1938)

my link to the world of Lancashire cotton

This morning however I stumbled across three of her brothers and sisters of whom I had previously never heard. Better still, one of them is described in the sort of detail which no amount of FreeBMD or Ancestry statistical records can convey. I now know I had a great great uncle Arthur, who was

a bachelor of uncertain health, and lived at Thornfield Hall near to Ashton-under-Lyne, with a mother whose strength and stateliness of spirit, coupled with extreme personal fragility, advanced years, and only occasional visibility through the bevelled glass of an ancient brougham, constituted her one of those occasional reproductions of Queen Victoria which appeared during the reign of that monarch, his life being one in which music, travel in Switzerland, Gladstonianism, a perilous habit, for one of his weight and build, of riding to hounds, and the current number of the Nineteenth Century, played a great part.

It sounds as if Arthur was a bit of a playboy. He certainly doesn’t seem to have played any active part in the running of the family mills, and only appears on one British census return throughout his adult life (suggesting that he travelled aborad a lot). He never married, and clearly enjoyed the good life, judging from the weight and build which made riding to hounds such an ill-advised hobby. The Nineteenth Century was a monthly literary magazine which from 1877 to 1972 published debate by leading intellectuals of the day.

Brougham carriage 

as occupied by Queen Victoria (left) and Helen Reyner nee Bayley (right)

The description of his mother Helen Reyner, née Bayley (1816-1892) is tremendous! How  I wish I had more pictures of this pair of ancestors. Helen was 15 years younger than her late husband Frederick Reyner and outlived him by just that length of time, shutting herself away in Thornfield Hall, the family home, and mourning Frederick (who died in 1877) in perpetuum just as Queen Victoria had been mourning Prince Albert since 1861. Arthur died only ten years after his mother.

These descriptions come from a 1917 article about industrial relations in the northern cotton mills, and it was in this sphere that Arthur did make a mark in public life. He was the president of the Federation of Master Cotton Spinners’ Associations which represented the mill owners, although he seems to have fulfilled the role with mixed results:

In his speeches on the public platform great fluency of thought and expression struggled with anguish against a marked defect of utterance. He had Robert Lowe's inability to perceive the effect he was making on his audience, and his position as leader at once of a Liberal organisation which wanted all sorts of democratic changes, and an Employers' Federation which wanted a reduction of wages, was a vexatious inconsistency, and probably accounted very largely, though it was not suspected at the time, for the recurrent Conservatism of the borough in which he lived.

The tension between his liberal non-conformist inclination to help the working man and his capitalist responsibilities to the family business must have been hard to balance. Around the time of his mother’s death Arthur was one of three employers appointed by the Federation to negotiate a new deal with employees about working practices in the mills. The deal, following a bitter dispute over wage cuts, was thrashed out in a room at the Brooklands Hotel outside Manchester in one all-night session in March 1893 and became known as the Brooklands Agreement. Arthur was the first signatory, but in fact his ill health (perhaps made worse by his mother’s dying days) meant that he was absent from the negotiating table for much of the process.

Sir Charles Macara (1845-1929)

closer of the 1893 Brooklands deal

(and in 1891 creator of Lifeboat Flagdays)

In fact the absence of Arthur and his “defect of utterance” from the final stages made the agreement possible. He had adopted a much harder line over the 5% wage cut and subsequent 20 week strike than his conservative colleague Charles Macara; with Arthur indisposed, Macara was able to take a more flexible approach with the trade union leaders and reach a satisfactory compromise. The Brooklands Agreement introduced a structure of negotiation, conciliation and appeal procedures which remained in place for more than 20 years.

One rather happy side effect of the rancourous 20-week dispute was also described by the same 1917 writer. As the dark satanic mills, and their chimneys, stopped working, pollution levels began to fall:

[The lock-out] lasted long enough to clear the sky, and nearly long enough to clean the earth. Distant objects acquired that startling visibility which in South-east Lancashire usually signifies nothing more serious than " the wakes," and the operatives wandered up and down amid unfamiliar tracts of morning and afternoon, and were, for all their faith and fortitude, in the suspended and deeply disordered state of those who are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

HENRY BAYLEY (1804-1875) AND THE GENTLEMEN'S GLEE CLUB

Henry Bayley was a first cousin of my great great grandmother Ellen Bayley. With his brothers William and Charles he inherited the family cotton mill, Bridge Street Mill in Stalybridge, Cheshire, from his mother. In the 1830s they set about a programme of improvement and expansion, building a new operation on the other side of the river Tame on a plot of land called “The Stakes," which became known as Bayley Street Mills. William and Charles eventually withdrew from the business leaving Henry in charge.

Plaque on Stalybridge Town Hall

commemorating the General Strike

which was sparked by William Bayley

I know nothing of Charles at all, I’m afraid. But William (who features in Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Coningsby) was the Bayley responsible for triggering a national General Strike by his intransigent response to the Plug Riots of 1842 (see my earlier post). It is little wonder that he chose to play a less active part in mill ownership, having made himself so deeply unpopular with the workforce.

Henry, I feel, could not have been more different in temperament to his brother. As a young man he showed considerable promise as a musician, which must mark him out as a civilized man! He encouraged other local musicians, and was himself “a player of quality,” promoting several concerts at Stalybridge Town Hall. (By this I reckon he redeemed his brother William’s future role at the building – William became the town’s first mayor when it was incorporated in 1857!)

Henry by contrast was a prime mover in the setting up of the town’s “Gentlemen’s Glee Club.” These glee clubs were a popular feature of middle class life in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly in the towns and cities of northern England. They were originally dedicated to amateur choral performances, although in time they broadened to encompass other art forms. (In Manchester the world-renowned Halle Orchestra can trace its roots to the Manchester Gentlemen’s Glee Club.) Henry Bayley is credited with attracting “several celebrated London actors” to give performances in Stalybridge.

Stalybridge Harmonic Society

(Could one of the musicians be Henry Bayley?)

As if that were not enough, in 1844 he was a chief supporter of the new Stalybridge Harmonic Society, another choral body. This one was formed when the choir of King Street Chapel fell out with their minister! Thereby, surely, there hangs a tale worth digging out.

Maybe he was just driven to save the good name of Bayley in the wake of his brother William’s exploits. As William was serving his third and final term as mayor, Henry was subscribing to the inaugural New Year’s Day Aged Persons’ Tea Party for the over-70s. The event ran from 1860 until at least 1907, when Samuel Hill’s wonderful book Bygone Stalybridge (from which I get most of what I know of Henry) was published.

Sadly I cannot relate whether Henry ever attended the tea party as an eligible guest. He died, suddenly, at the age of 71; so his opportunities were few. But he left a cultural mark on Stalybridge which long outlived him.

(I should mention one other aspect of his life which may also have placed him firmly opposite his older brother William. In 1841, the year before the Plug Riots, Henry was chairman of the local branch of the Anti-Monopoly League, a society connected to the Anti-Corn Law League and to the Chartists whose agitation was behind the riots. When Henry assumed control of the family mill years later, he must have had a very different approach to management and a very different attitude to his workforce.)

Both pictures are from the splendid archive of Tameside.gov.uk

JOSEPH BAYLEY (active mid 18th century to 1793) AND THE PRESS GANG

My oldest Bayley ancestor is Joseph, my 4x great grandfather, a yeoman farmer from Hooley Hill near Audenshaw in Lancashire. “In physique he had few equals and no superiors,” according to a 1907 local history, “Bygone Stalybridge” by Samuel Hill. He passed his physical strength on to his sons, grandsons and great grandsons, all of whom are described in a similar fashion. (See my earlier blog about young Adam Bayley.)

Joseph married Sarah Stopford Harrison, the widow of his neighbour William Harrison from High Ash, and they had four strapping sons, Joseph, James, John and William, who moved the family history on from rural agriculture to industrial milling in nearby Stalybridge. Leaving the land, they founded a mill-owning family dynasty which neatly parallels English social history in the Industrial Revolution. But why did they quit farming?

Quarry Bank Mill at Styal near Manchester

opened in 1784

One day in 1793, old man Joseph took a trip into Manchester, the centre of the new Lancashire cotton industry. Its population had trebled since 1770 and stood now at around 75,000; I don’t know what sort of produce Joseph had to sell, but Manchester would certainly have been a big market for it.

But he was not the only one for whom a large mass of people held an attraction. Far away in France, the popular euphoria of the French revolution of 1789 had given way to Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, and in February 1793 a bullish France declared war on Britain. Britain suddenly needed a stronger army and navy, and couldn’t simply wait for eager volunteers to form an orderly queue. The quickest way to “recruit” was to send the press gangs into centres of population to “persuade” useful men to join up with a combination of strong drink and hard cudgels.

"Manning the Navy" (1780)

No one knows for certain, but it is generally believed in the family that this is what happened to Joseph Bayley. It is easy to imagine him in the tavern after a successful day at the market, then setting off for Hooley Hill and home while a little the worse for wear. If a press gang set upon him even in this condition, it would have taken many men to subdue this great bear of a man. But subdue him they did – Joseph Bayley was never seen in Hooley Hill again.

Britain remained at war with France for the next 22 years. With their father gone, perhaps the next generation of Bayleys could contemplate the brave new industrial world with younger, more open eyes. By the turn of the century Joseph’s sons were already in partnership with other millers in Stalybridge, and in 1804 they built their own premises, Bridge Street Mill, in the town. The past was in farming; the future was in cotton.

GEORGE ADAM BAYLEY (1845-1876) AND THE HURDLING GOLD

The Bayley family, who followed the yellow brick road of the industrial revolution to become prosperous Lancashire mill owners, were of eighteenth century farming stock. They were noted not only for their business acumen (wrote an early twentieth century Stalybridge historian) but also for “their exceptionally fine physique and love of all field sports.”

Racing over hurdles, Brompton

(from The Graphic magazine, 1871)

George Adam Bayley, a cousin and contemporary of my great grandmother’s, inherited the genes of his father William, of whom it was written “in physique he had few equals and no superiors”; of his grandfather Joseph, “a finely built and handsome man, a daring horseman”; and of his great grandfather Joseph, “a fine and powerful man.”

Adam was a keen amateur athlete, a noted swimmer, wrestler, runner and jumper. At a great Athletic Festival held in Manchester, 29th July, 1865, open to all comers, his record was as follows: cleared the bar at 9 feet 9 inches in the pole-jump; covered a distance of 18 feet 5I inches in the long jump; cleared at a stand jump 9 feet 9 inches; won the 220 yards hurdle race easily; and threw the cricket ball a distance of 105 yards. Nobody throws the cricket ball any more (except cricketers of course), but when I was a lad it was one of the central events of the school sports day.

For his wonderful feats that day Adam was awarded a silver medal for pole-jumping, silver medal for long jumping, and gold medal for running and jumping. I’m afraid none of the Bayleys’ athletic prowess has come down to me or any of my siblings. My brother and I are tall and had legs long enough for the high jump to be easy at junior school, but that was as far as we went with sport. 

My father had an arrhythmic heart condition that forced his withdrawal from sports activities at his school, something he always regretted. He turned to academia. His father’s generation were keen alpine climbers, but  by day white collar professonals of one sort or another - lawyers and historians. In general we have been all thinkers rather than doers, whose genes apparently (and ironically) overpowered those of the strapping Bayley lads.

WILLIAM BAYLEY (1802-1891) AND THE PLUG RIOTS

My Bayley family tree is a perfect illustration of Britain’s nineteenth century social journey. The Lancashire family moved from their eighteenth century farming roots in Hooley Hill to the rapidly expanding cotton industry of the Lancashire towns.

(Hooley Hill was a sizeable village which took to the industrial revolution with gusto, becoming a centre for felt hat production – although I haven’t read this anywhere else, it seems a possibility that Hooley gave its name to special occasions at which a hat might be worn, parties for example, or as they became known in Ireland, hooleys! Does anyone know different?)

William Bayley, unplugged

The Bayleys moved to nearby Stalybridge. William Bayley, first cousin of my great great grandmother Ellen Bayley, was two years old when his father built their first mill there in 1804 – Bridge Street Mill. After the death of his father in a horrific mill accident, he and his brothers developed the family business as Wm Bayley and Brothers in what became known as the Bayley Street Mills.

In 1841 an economic depression brought reduced hours to the Lancashire Mills as it did to the rest of Britain. Hard times and discontent drove up popular support for the Chartists, who were agitating for radical electoral reform. Things came to a head in the hot summer of 1842 when wage cuts were threatened. The fury of the workforce made most mill owners reconsider, but William Bayley imposed a sixpence reduction (2.5p) on a weekly wage of ten and ninepence (53.5p), nearly 5%. Anger erupted in protest meetings and a general strike of mill workers.

A plug riot: this one in Preston, August 1842

When William offered to withdraw the cuts a few days later it was too late; the Chartists were fanning the flames and the strike spread. Nationally half a million people withdrew their labour. In Lancashire mobs went from mill to mill stopping the machinery, by force if they had to. In some cases the rioters broke in and sabotaged the works by removing plugs from the boilers, and the actions became known as the Plug Riots.

By the end of September it was all over and most strikers had returned to work at the old rates of pay. Although the Chartists never again attracted such levels of support, the strike is a landmark event in the history of labour rights, and Friedrich Engels specifically referred to Stalybridge in writing “The Condition of The Working Class in England” two years later.

William Bayley’s role in starting it all doesn’t seem to have done him any lasting political damage. The Municipal Borough of Stalybridge received its charter of incorporation on 5 March 1857, and Bayley was elected its first mayor, serving for three years.

Clarence Mill on the Macclesfield Canal,

now Bollington Discovery Centre

The Bayley brothers subsequently fell foul of another economic crisis. War with the US in 1862 resulted in a critical shortage of cotton and mass redundancies across the Lancashire mills. In Stalybridge only five of over 60 factories and workshops were working at full strength; 7000 workers were unemployed, and an exodus in search of other work left 750 houses in the town empty. The Bayleys had committed to a new state of the art factory, Clarence Mill, and lost heavily on its construction. Some reports say the Bayleys never used the building, and they certainly sold it off only a few years later. William, by now over 60, withdrew from the business in 1863 and led a long and comfortable retirement in his mansion Stamford Lodge.

William's life, almost exactly spanning the nineteenth century, mirrors Britain's industrial development. He experienced all the twists of its story: its rise to strength and the threats to its viability. As a prominent mill owner he played in equal measure the part of wicked employer and that of local benefactor, donating money to local churches and to the building in 1854 of Bayley Street bridge, which connected his mills and the town to new roads and a wider world.