In the mid-19th century, the backstreets of Preston were a labyrinth of red brick , soot, and struggle. To a passing stranger, Albion Street West was merely a row of twenty-seven cramped terraces. But to the Norris sisters – Jane, Ellen, Catherine, and Mary – these few hundred yards of cobbles were the boundaries of a shared life.
Albion-Street West can be found on old maps sandwiched between Arthur Street and Bolton Street in the Fishergate Hill area of Preston. This snug street was home to some colourful characters during the mid-19th century, including my 3x great grandmother Ellen Norris and her three sisters – Jane, Catherine and Mary.
The Norris sisters spent their whole lives living in the Fishergate Hill area of Preston. They grew up on Dock Street and raised their own families in the adjoining streets, including Albion-Street West where the sisters lived as neighbours between 1859 – 1865.
Researching my ancestor and her sisters revealed a close-knit family that lived and worked in Preston at a time of great hardship, social change and architectural growth.
Albion-Street West no longer exists and sadly there is little detail to be found concerning this street specifically, but by looking at the surrounding streets and Fishergate as a whole, it is still possible to piece together what life would have been like at the time that the Norris sisters lived there.
The area where the street once was can be identified today by the County Hall buildings fronting Fishergate Hill. The street itself is now taken up by the County buildings car park.
Whilst eldest sister Jane didn’t survive to see the County Hall buildings, the three remaining Norris sisters watched the skyline transform as the grand, red-brick County Hall began to rise at the end of their street – a symbol of the changing Preston they called home.
Prior to the halls construction this section of Fishergate Hill was occupied by a row of residential properties, in the vicinity of which lived a Magistrate, an army Captain and Ms. Maria Holland – a charitable catholic lady, who built and endowed St Joseph’s orphanage.
Albion-Street West was then part of the chapelry of Christ Church. The street was made up of twenty-seven tightly packed ‘two up – two down’ terraced houses with back yards. Numbers 1- 8 of Albion Street West were the old-style industrial cottages.
Nearby were three cotton and spinning mills; Ribble Street Mill, Pitt Street Mill and Arthur Street Mill.
The Working-Class
The 1861 census of Christ Church offers an interesting tour of Victorian working-class society. The majority head of households listed skilled work as their occupations, with job titles such as joiner, stone mason, stoker, as well as carters, coach drivers and railway workers.
In the year 1861, my 3x great grandmother Ellen lived at number 26 with her husband Thomas Wareing, son James Norris and their three children.
Thomas worked as a carter and son James was employed as a ‘stripper’ at one of the local mills. Their neighbours were, James Berry – a railway guard – and his family, and on the other side lived Evan Jones – a tailor – with his wife and seven children.
Ellen’s sister Catherine lived at number 6 with her husband Joseph Lloyd and their three young children. Catherine’s husband worked as a mill labourer. Catherine’s house was an older mill-cottage, which was typically smaller than the later built workers terraces. Close to the house was a communal water pump.
Mary Norris lived at number 12 with husband John Singleton and their 2-month-old daughter Mary. Also lodging with the family was the sisters parents, Robert and Mary Norris.
Tragically, Jane Norris did not survive the birth of her final child. The records attribute her death aged 38 to anaemia following a complicated delivery. When the door closed on Jane’s life at number 23, the door at number 12 opened wider. Mary ensured that Janes two daughters never left the warmth of a Norris hearth.
The overcrowding at number 12 was a testament to a different kind of wealth. With three generations and two families under one roof, the walls may have been thin and the space small, but no one in the Norris family had to face the hardships of Victorian life alone.
The houses on the south of the street were numbers 1-13. The main road of Fishergate can be seen at the bottom right of the map, with Jordan Street and Pitt Street branching off northwards.
Heading out of Albion Street West and into Pitt Street there was a variety of local businesses, including Marmaduke Aspens ‘bread and butter biscuit’ business. There was also a grocers and William Richardson’s shoe making shop. Later Mary Norris and her family ran a grocers shop at number 14 Pitt Street.
The ‘Fox & Goose’ public house was located on Bolton Street, perhaps frequented on one occasion or another by the Norris sisters’ respective husbands and father Robert, or maybe by the sisters themselves. Bolton Street led onto Jordan Street, which was made up of larger houses with gardens. Living on Jordan Street was the Astronomer Moses Holden. Following his death in June of 1864, a funeral procession left from his home and headed for Preston Cemetery. Perhaps the sisters were witness to the mourner’s coaches that morning.
A black and white aerial photograph brings the above 1845 map to life. The tightly packed terrace houses of Albion-Street West can be seen three rows back from the County Hall Buildings. In this photograph we can see houses on Bolton Street have been demolished, along with the beginnings of the same on Albion-Street West immediately behind. The mill buildings seen in the north of the photograph were very likely places of work for the Norris sisters.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rpsmithbarney/5607951503/in/album-72157625080453401/
The Lancashire Cotton Famine
Mill Closures, Mass Unemployment and Poverty
1861-1865
The period when the Norris sisters lived on Albion Street West also coincides with the years of the cotton famine.
The Lancashire cotton famine was a depression in the textile industry of Northwest England, brought about by overproduction in a time of contracting world markets. It coincided with the interruption of baled cotton imports caused by the American Civil War. – Wikipedia
The image below shows the unemployed Manchester mill workers queuing to collect food and fuel for their fires. Similar scenes took place in Preston; hand outs and soup kitchens offered help to the suffering. Poor Preston mill workers waited in line daily for bowls of soup, or crusts of bread.
The following excerpts written by Edwin Waugh, provide an in-depth look into the harsh realities of life for our relatives during the cotton famine.
I hear on all hands that there is hardly any town in Lancashire suffering so much as Preston. The reason why the stroke has fallen so heavily here, lies in the nature of the trade. In the first place, Preston is almost purely a cotton town. There are two or three flax mills, and two or three ironworks, of no great extent; but, upon the whole, there is hardly any variety of employment there to lighten the disaster which has befallen its one absorbing occupation. There is comparatively little weaving in Preston; it is a town mostly engaged in spinning. The cotton used there is nearly all what is called “Middling American,” the very kind which is now most scarce and dear.
“The wail of sorrow is not heard in Preston market-place; but destitution may be found almost anywhere there just now, cowering in squalid corners, within a few yards of plenty, as I have seen it many a time this week. The courts and alleys behind even some of the main streets swarm with people who have hardly a nail left to scratch themselves with.”
David Hunts ‘a history of Preston’ describes –
“This crisis was unlike all earlier depressions and strikes – it dominated Preston society for almost four years. For the unemployed themselves conditions became extremely harsh, and even those who had managed to save money, such as overlookers and managers, were soon reduced to poverty and with almost everyone else, including the towns shopkeepers.”
There is no doubt that the sisters and their families were affected by the cotton crisis, but for my ancestor Ellen there was the consolation that her husband Thomas worked as a carter and was therefore likely to be earning some income. On the other hand, Mary and her husband John Singleton both worked in the mills, John specifically as an ‘overlooker’ (superintendent or overseer). For a household who relied completely on wages from the mills to pay their rent and feed their family, this would have been a dire situation.
In the years following the famine, Mary and her family moved out of Preston to Ashton-on-Ribble on the outskirts of the town. From there they moved on to the town of Wesham where Mary continued in the cotton mill working on the carding machines and husband John remained in his role as an overlooker.
A letter printed in the Preston Herald in 1864 gives a possible clue to why Mary’s family left Preston. We also get an eye witness account of the poor mill workers predicament before and during the cotton famine.
The local papers at the time were filled with desperate pleas for better relief, noting that while thousands were starving in Preston, the help being offered was often a mere fraction of what was needed. This was the precarious world Mary and John Singleton were navigating when they decided to leave the town for work elsewhere.
The table below shows relief given during the cotton famine in the various areas of Preston including Christ Church.
Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
The Public Health Act of 1858
The families of the Norris sisters didn’t just battle lack of employment and poor wages, they also contended with the constant threat of sickness and disease from the unsanitary conditions of Victorian urban living. Many working class terraced houses didn’t have running water or anything like adequate sewerage, causing sickness and high mortality rates.
The 1848 Public Health Act was the first step on the road to improved public health in Victorian Lancashire. The streets of Preston suffered the same overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions as other booming industrial towns of the 19th century. Whilst the act was passed in 1848, it was another fifteen years before improvements to the sanitation was seen on Albion-Street West. Sewerage piping took place in 1863, followed by paving and channelling works in 1864. Whilst these new ‘modern developments’ may have caused some disruptions to the families of our Norris sisters; they would have certainly been welcomed. Houses for the first time had clean running water and the looming threat of disease was to some small degree abated.
Less than a mile from Fishergate Hill was the public baths on Saul Street. Opened in 1851, it had private bathrooms, swimming baths, shower rooms and facilities for washing clothes.
Prior to the improvements following the Public Health Act, the squalid sanitary conditions of the town were so awful that it was described that Preston was one of the unhealthiest towns in all of Lancashire. Numerous scathing reports from the time paint visions of squalor in areas only a few minutes’ walk from the back streets of Christ Church.
The cause of death for Jane Norris’s husband William confirms the dangers and consequences of living with limited access to clean water and poor sanitary conditions. William died from Typhus fever aged forty-four in 1862.
Fishergate Hill
The Fishergate Hill area underwent great changes during the time the Norris sisters lived there. Preston railway station located on Fishergate Hill first opened in 1838 and was extended to include additional platforms in the year 1850. The station on Fishergate Hill that is present today was built in 1880 and saw further extensions in 1903. The railway bridge was also extended around this time, resulting in the demolition of various neighbouring buildings that filled the space between the bridge up to Pitt Street. Two of these premises were William Harding’s Livery Stables and the North Western Hotel.
These very expansions to the railway created employment for numerous members of the family, including my 3x great grandfather Thomas Wareing whose job it was to transport the large bodies of iron needed for construction on his horse and cart.
Further transport works took place in 1882 with the extension of the Preston tramway, which created a route from Fishergate Hill to the Pleasure Gardens in New Hall Lane.
Town Hall
1867 was an exciting time for the residents of Preston with the opening of the new Town Hall. Our ancestors would have been witness to the embellishment of Fishergate as it was decorated with beautiful adornments of colourful bunting, garlands and evening illuminations. A trade procession took place during the day starting at the Railway Station and the Rifle Volunteers displayed a battalion drill in full dress uniform at their depot at Fishergate. Preston welcomed titled persons such as the Duke of Cambridge and the Archbishop of York amongst others. Enormous tightly packed crowds gathered and cheered as the illustrious visitor’s carriages made their way from the train station to the Town Hall.
In the decades that followed, Preston welcomed new social movements and geographical landmarks which drove progress across all areas of society. The Norris sisters watched their hometown grow around them. Whilst the skyline ascended, so too did the family’s ambitions. Census records show that the sisters moved on from Albion-Street West and ventured into new and perhaps more prosperous employments. The families of Ellen and Mary went into the shop-keeping profession, as grocers and provision dealers. The experiences during the famine years clearly had an impact on the sister’s families, with both households deciding around the same time that the grocer profession offered them more earning potential and perhaps increased stability.
One can almost hear the conversations over a shared hearth as they planned for a more stable future, perhaps sharing advice or discussing suppliers.
When we look at the census entries for numbers 6, 12 and 26, we see more than just names and occupations; we see a map of a family. The Norris sisters faced the harshest chapters of Victorian Preston – the hunger of the famine, the threat of disease, and the early loss of their own. But they faced it door-to-door, hand-in-hand.
Are we related?
Sources & Further Reading
- Ancestry
- Find my past
- British Newspaper Archive
- Lancashire Record Office
- Lancs BMD
- 1855 Directory of Mid-Lancashire – By P. Mannex
- Geographia – Preston & Leyland
- A History of Preston – By David Hunt
- victorianweb.org
- Lancashire Historic Town Survey 2006
- Preston Digital Archive
- Photograph of Robert (Bob Norris) – Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons