The British industrial revolution: mills and education

The British industrial revolution: mills and education is a thematic series contained as a sub-set within the digitized archival content known as British Online Archives (BOA), distributed by Microform Academic Publishers (MAP).  This series includes the following collections:

Bolton's mills, how the spinning mule changed the textile industry, 1672-1929

This collection provides access to 7,006 pages.  MAP states, "This resource combines papers relating of two families prominent in the history of Bolton. Both families, the Cromptons and the Heywoods, were involved in Lancashire's rapidly expanding textile industry. Samuel Crompton's 'Mule', invented near the turn of the nineteenth century, was instrumental in the revolutionising the manufacture of textiles, leading in turn to the subsequent prosperity of Bolton. Documents contained in the Crompton Archive, are highly instructive on the rise to prominence of the mule and on the efforts of its inventor, who did not patent his machine, to secure financial recompense for the economic benefits that it brought. They also facilitate research into contemporary business practices, as well as into more domestic concerns, including the nature of family relationships and their household expenditure. The papers also show some of the varied ways in which provincial Victorians sought to commemorate pillars of the community, in addition to providing insights into the religious life of members of the non-conformist New Jerusalem Church, or Swedenborgians. The Heywoods were successful textile manufacturers. The business correspondence drawn from in this archive offers insights into the nature of trade within England and abroad. Robert Heywood became influential in local politics and public affairs, becoming the second Mayor of the Borough of Bolton in 1839-1840. Thus these Heywood papers also provide insight into contemporary political issues in Bolton, in particular the Chartist movement and riot of 1838, while his journals and letters relating to expeditions to America, Europe and the Levant shed light on nineteenth-century travel, in which business opportunities were never entirely forgotten during the sightseeing. The Heywood papers also contain personal correspondence between family members and friends, which complements items in the Crompton archive regarding the nature of kinship at that time. Of related interest for studying the social and commercial history of Lancashire during the Industrial Revolution are the Liverpool directories and the Ecclesiastical, court and land records in the Manchester Cathedral archives.

Bristol shipping records: imports and exports, 1770-1917

This collection provides access to 28,562 pages.  MAP states, "The Bristol Presentments are bills of entry derived from official sources (the reports and manifests of ships) which contain information about the trade of Bristol. This collection of Bristol Presentments, now in the Central Reference Library, Bristol, is the earliest series of bills of entry known to exist. Returns are available for the following years: imports 1770, 1775, 1777-80. 1791-1828, 1830-44, 1846-1917;" exports 1773-80, 1790-1828. 1830-44, 1846-1917. Some of the volumes are incomplete and those for 1829 and 1845 are missing. Precisely when the Bristol Presentments started is not known but a note at the end of no. 3838 (31 December 1917) informs subscribers that 'His Majesty's Treasury has decided not to continue the publication of the Bristol Bill of Entry after the 31st inst.'. Prior to this, from December 1916 the detailed ship's reports had been discontinued. The notice stated that 'A List of Ships arriving will be published under the heading Ships Entered Inwards, and cargoes will appear under the classified heading of Imports'. From 5 April 1917 the Board of Customs and Excise ordered that 'until further notice, particulars of Imports of Food, Drink and Tobacco and of clearances of Dutiable and Drawback Goods shall not be disclosed, and that the countries whence Imports are shipped or consigned, or to which Exports are destined shall not be published'. These Copies were printed daily and sent to any Merchant, or other person, in the city that would pay forty shillings a year to recieve them. Contents include the quantity of goods, the names of the merchants involved and the places where the goods had arrived from or were to go to. These Bills are divided into two parts, the first contains details of goods arriving in to port on various vessels which tended to be the produce or products of foreign countries. The second variety of goods listed are exports which tended to be the produce or manufacture of Britain carried out. These records also include an account of all the ships that enter and leave port daily, with the name of the Master, the places they had come from and the locations they were to depart to. Some entries included advertisements of the names of ships that lay waiting to take-in goods. This description was drawn from the introduction and online guide to the microfilm edition by Professor Walter E. Minchinton of the University of Exeter."

British Poor Schools in the Nineteenth Century, 1812-1901

This collection provides access to 30,671 pages.  MAP states, "These reports cover the history of poor schools and the societies that ran them in Britain. These papers cover schools from the Anglican and Wesleyan denominations as well as secular and Catholic schools. The reports chart the rise of education for the poor from the industrial revolution to the Victorian era. As the number of schools increased, the factory acts released children from work so that they could learn. The effects of these acts can be seen in these papers. "

Liverpool shipping records: imports and exports, 1820-1900

This collection is available in 4 parts.  MAP states, "The Livepool Customs Bills of Entry were printed broadsheets designed to provide factual information - primarily statistics - for merchants and other interested parties to keep abreast of the flow of commerce into and out of the port. Liverpool is an appropriate port for examining the details of ships and their cargoes in depth, for it rose significantly to become an important maritime centre during the eighteenth century. It was a rise that followed the pouring of millions of pounds by the wealthy city corporation into constructing wet docks that became the envy of other British ports. Liverpool shippers became significant traders in the Caribbean sugar and Chesapeake tobacco trades but, above all, in the African slave trade to the Americas, so that by 1800 Liverpool was the largest slave trading port in the world. In the nineteenth century the port of Liverpool grew even larger with industrialisation, the financing of additional docks, internal links with the canal and railway network, the growth of the cotton trade with the United States, the rise of the emigrant trade, and the development of successful steamship companies such as Blue Funnel and the Guinea, Bibby and Castle lines. By the 1840's, Liverpool handled more export tonnage than London. Many of these commercial trends can be analysed via the Bills of Entry. Collectively drawn from the Liverpool Record Office and Liverpool Maritime Museum, these Bills of Entry are complete for the period 1820-1900 with the exception of the years 1821-24, 1833, 1836 and 1838-40 where lacunae exist. This description was drawn from the introduction and online guide to the microfilm edition by Professor Kenneth Morgan of Brunel University."

The Church of England and social change in Manchester, 1635-1928

This collection provides access to 26,047 pages. MAP states, "Manchester Cathedral is one of only a handful of Anglican cathedrals that hold their own archives on site. Dating from 1361 to the present day, its archives cover the parish functions of both the Cathedral and its predecessor, the Collegiate Church, founded in 1421, as well as of the capitular workings of the church. The collection contains the largest series of parish registers in the country, because of the peculiar coincidence of a very large parish with a huge population increase during the 18th and 19th centuries. At times of peak demand, more than a hundred couples would be wed in a single day, married in batches of 20-30. Yet not all would-be couples were married, as the Cathedral's apparently unique series of banns books starting from the Georgian period shows. These volumes provide unique insights for historians into the proportion of engagements that failed, what objections were raised, and by whom, as well as allowing detailed statistical analysis of residence and mobility in Victorian England. The Capitular Archives record the management of the Chapter Estates comprising considerable land holdings from the 17th-20th centuries in what became the world's first industrial city. Again it is possible to chart the effects of the Industrial Revolution on land use and property values in one of Britain's most important urban centres, as farms and fields were converted to roads, railways, homes and factories. Accessible through a full and detailed online catalogue of the entire fonds (Access to Archives), the materials chosen for publication include highlights from across the major collections. Each document selected serves to illustrate the parochial duties of the Chaplains and Churchwardens, including charity distribution and the daily management of the church and its fabric, as well as the land and financial management of the Warden and Fellows of the Collegiate Church. Taken altogether they reveal how the established church tried to cope not just with spiritual, but also with social and economic change on an unprecedented and massive scale. Accompanied by an online guide to the collection by Christopher Hunwick, formerly Manchester Cathedral Archivist."

Trade and Commerce in Liverpool to 1900

This collection provides access to 81,992 pages.  MAP states, "The city's importance began to grow following Parliament's decision in 1698 to end London-based Royal African Company's official monopoly in England on the triangular slave trade. By 1750, 43% of all British slave ships were setting sail from Liverpool, rising to 79% by the time the trade was abolished in 1807. This resource comprises all the street and trade directories in the collections of the Liverpool Record Office up to 1900, beginning with the first one to be published by John Gore in 1766. With few exceptions chiefly in the early years, Gore's directory thereafter appeared annually, enabling the researcher to chart the expansion of Liverpool as a commercial centre in the later 18th century, the effects of the cessation of the slave trade on the economic life of the city, and the revival of its fortunes in the Victorian era, as a major port bringing raw materials from the Empire to the industrial heartlands of North West England. Also reproduced here are surviving examples of the half dozen unsuccessful attempts by other publishers to rival Gore's directory. These include: Lewis's Liverpool directory for 1790;" Baines' History and directory of Liverpool for 1824;" Robson's Alphabetical directory of Liverpool (1840); McCorquodale's Annual Liverpool directory (1848); Slater's Directory (1869); and A. Green & Co.'s Directory for Liverpool & Birkenhead (1870); as well as the section entitled Description and directory of Lancaster and Liverpool", from the Universal British directory, dated c.1794. "

Medical essays read to the Royal Society in Scotland, 1751-1970

This collection provides access to 20,660 pages.  MAP states, "ounded in 1737, this is the oldest student society of its kind in the United Kingdom, whose members were duty-bound to deliver a dissertation for examination by their peers. This collection comprises over 200 volumes of hand-written dissertations, providing a unique insight into the development in medical teaching and thought during the last 250 years. In subject, the dissertations range from framboesia to fear, from meningitis to mongolism and many represent the earliest original work of famous men of medicine. The linked author index is in two parts: vols. 1-95 (1751-1833), and vols. 96-215 (1834-1968). Scanned from the microfilm of the Royal Medical Society collections in the Edinburgh University Library. "