(1788-1873)
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries middle class women spent most of their time confined to a domestic sphere. They did not have paid jobs or public appointments, so records of their achievements are hard to find. I was fortunate, therefore, to find a typewritten notebook detailing a collection of family stories about the life of my third great grandmother, Sarah Stancliffe, before she married Jonathan Nield.
Industrial development
Sarah was born in Barkisland, a hilltop village in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, about six miles south west of Halifax. The Stancliffes were yeoman farmers and craftsmen whose Woodhead farm had been in the family’s possession for about 300 years.
In Sarah’s day the countryside was dotted with woollen mills, sited along the banks of the river Calder, and several small coal mines. Calderdale was one of the main centres of wool production in England. The industry around Halifax was undergoing a dramatic transformation. Steam-powered machines housed in large mills were rapidly replacing the cottage-based handlooms. The effect was to transform employment opportunities for the previously independent handloom weavers. They saw their craft skills and independence replaced by machine operatives and factory employees. Many were unhappy about this development.
Loss of the farm
Women had no right to own property in those days. When Sarah’s father died, ownership of Woodhead farm passed to her brother, Benjamin. Her mother hoped he would stay and run the farm, but he had other ideas. Instead, he joined the stream of emigrants bound for the New World. He settled in Philadelphia, selling the farm before he left. A condition of the sale was that his mother and sisters could remain there until her death. But the Stancliffe women could not forgive him for deserting them and their beloved home.
Luddite attack
The Stancliffes did not remain at Woodhead very long after Benjamin’s departure. The event that prompted them to leave was an infamous Luddite attack that left them feeling insecure in the remote farmhouse. The Luddites were skilled craftsmen who hated the machines that had had such a baleful effect on their working lives. William Horsfall, a wealthy neighbour of the Stancliffes who had invested heavily in machinery for his mill, was ambushed by a group of Luddites as he rode to market. They shot him with pistols, mortally wounding him, and he died three days after the attack. This was the last straw for the women, who reluctantly gave up their rural life and moved to relative safety in the town of Rochdale.
For more information on this story see: Angela Coulter, A Stream of Lives, Matador Press 2021, available from Troubador Bookshop