The use of workhouses to house the poor began with the introduction of the Poor Law Act of 1601 and witnessed a rapid growth during the eighteenth century. Each parish maintained its own workhouse, which in general was able to accommodate between 30 and 100 inmates. Penkhull workhouse was built in 1735, for the parish of Stoke, opposite St Thomas’s Church and could accommodate 80 paupers. Burslem’s 1780s workhouse was at Greenhead and was extended in 1835 to hold 300 people. Wolstanton workhouse was at the north-east end of the Marsh, near the church and village, and could accommodate around 100. Often inmates from these establishments were provided with work at local manufactories, with the bulk of their earnings going to the parish.
Under the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 responsibility for administering poor relief passed to new Poor Law unions (PLUs). The Act had been passed in response to the rising costs involved in providing poor relief, and allowed parishes to group together in order to tackle the problem jointly. These inter-parish collaborations were known as PLUs and their formation led to a building boom as small parish workhouses were either expanded or replaced by larger institutions. Often the new workhouses were built outside the existing centres of population, creating isolated communities for people who might already have been displaced from their home parish. In certain cases outdoor relief was offered to paupers within their own homes, so avoiding the expense of being taken in as a workhouse resident.
Due to its large population, Stoke-upon-Trent formed its own PLU and did not need to join with other parishes. At that time Stoke-upon-Trent PLU covered Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton. The 1834 Act came at a crucial time for Stoke as the existing workhouse was mired in crisis. Two of the officers had been convicted of embezzlement, while at the same time the Potter’s Union had declared its intention to take over the administration of relief and use the rates to support industrial action. An investigation by the Poor Law Commission led to the setting up of a new Stoke-upon-Trent PLU governed by an elected Board of twenty-four Guardians.
Chell workhouse with the superintendents Mr and Mrs Burden. (Public domain)
The original Penkhull workhouse was replaced in 1832 by a new and remote one on London Road, known as the Spittals. This soon grew from its original two blocks. In 1842 a school house, hospital and vagrants’ wards were added; followed by a new school block and chapel in 1866, with further additions through into the early twentieth century. Capacity was increased to 500 people after 1836 and to 800 people by 1855. Similar investments in new workhouses were made at Wolsanton & Burslem PLU in 1838 (for a site on Turnhurst Road, Chell able to accommodate 400 inmates); and at Newcastle-under-Lyme PLU in 1838–9 (for a site in Keele Road with 350 beds). The latter replaced nine smaller parish workhouses within the Newcastle-under-Lyme area.
Under the post-1834 regime more work was provided within the premises, which was part of the aim to make workhouses repellent to the poor. They became self-sufficient, even to the extent of having a wharf on the canal over the road to bring in stone for the vagrants to break. As numbers increased so did the facilities necessary to supply all aspects of life. Strict principles of segregation were enforced, in particular to differentiate between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Not only was there separation between men and women, but also between the elderly/infirm and those who were deemed fit enough to work.
Outdoor relief continued, however, in the Potteries more than elsewhere. When in the 1870s the Local Government Board campaigned against outdoor relief at a series of meetings in Staffordshire, the chairman of Stoke’s guardians led opposition to the plan. Between 1871 and 1876 the number of recipients of outdoor relief in Stoke fell by 9 per cent, compared with 33 per cent for England and Wales as a whole. The Wolstanton & Burslem Union also resisted the campaign, having one of the highest proportions of paupers on outdoor relief in the country: 92 per cent in 1870 and 89 per cent in 1885, at a time when some unions had less than 30 per cent.
Boards of Guardians were elected by ratepayers and made up of respectable traders, businessmen and the local gentry. The Guardians employed a master and matron, as well as medical officers, nurses, teachers and other staff. They oversaw a regime that was grim and unforgiving. On admission, inmates were stripped of all their clothes and given a bath, for many the first of their lives. They would then be put into workhouse clothes (it was an offence to abscond while wearing them) and segregated by age and gender. The daily routine was hard work, with education or training for the children, interspersed by innutritious, unappetizing meals.
The workhouse struck fear into all who came into contact with it. Charles Shaw, who entered the Chell workhouse in 1842 as a 10-year-old boy, wrote of his experiences in his autobiography When I Was a Child:
I had heard of workhouse skilly but had never before seen it. I had had poor food before this, but never any so offensively poor as this. By that rare culinary-making nausea and bottomless fatuousness it could be made so sickening I never could make out. Simple meal and water, however small the amount of meal, honestly boiled, would be palatable. But this decoction of meal and water and mustiness and fustiness was most revolting to any healthy taste. It might have been boiled in old clothes, which had been worn upon sweating bodies for three-score years and ten. That workhouse skilly was the vilest compound I ever tasted.
Shaw’s account inspired Arnold Bennett in his Clayhanger trilogy, where Darius Clayhanger, father of the book’s protagonist Edwin Clayhanger, experiences a very similar episode as a child in the local workhouse: ‘the Bastille’. The workhouse remained a feature of life until the early twentieth century. In the case of Chell, the city council acquired the building in 1930: it later became the Westcliffe Institution and then the Westcliffe Home for the Aged, prior to demolition in 2010.
Higginbotham (2007), as well that author’s excellent website (www.workhouses.org.uk), and Baker (1984) have further information on workhouses in North Staffordshire.
Workhouses were a feature of daily life before the welfare state and most people’s ancestors would have come into contact with them at some point in their lives.
The Board of Guardians generated an enormous amount of records. Admission and discharge registers generally show full name, date of admission, date of birth, abode, occupation and marital status, and date of discharge. Creed registers were a way of ensuring inmates’ religious needs were met. Apprenticeship records document those indentured to local tradesmen and servants registers show who was put as hired hands to factories or farms, or into domestic service. Punishment books include name, date, offence, punishment and often a comment on character. Other records cover the administration of the workhouse and those who worked there. Minutes of meetings were produced and often reported verbatim in the local newspaper. There are also reports from sub-committees formed to investigate and report back on various subjects, and details of tenders received from local traders and who was awarded the job.
Creed register for Wolstanton & Burslem Poor Law Union, 1887. (Courtesy of Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent Archives, SA/CW/8)
Most of the Potteries was covered by the Stoke-on-Trent, Wolstanton & Burslem and Newcastle-under-Lyme unions. Adjacent authorities, which might also be worth consulting, were: Stone PLU, covering Trentham, Hanford and Blurton (workhouse at Stafford Road in Stone); Cheadle PLU, covering Caverswall (workhouse at Bank Street, Cheadle); and Leek PLU, covering Norton-in-the-Moors (workhouse on the Ashbourne Road, south of Leek).
Unfortunately the survival of workhouse registers across Staffordshire as a whole is very poor. Of eighteen PLUs, workhouse admissions and discharge registers have survived for just six. Stoke-upon-Trent is the sole representative from North Staffordshire and those records relate to the period 1836–8 only. These are covered within an online index of admissions and discharges for Staffordshire workhouses between 1836 and 1900 at Staffordshire Name Indexes (www.staffsnameindexes.org.uk). The survival rate for birth, death, creed and other registers is better: Stoke-on-Trent Union, Wolstanton & Burslem Union and their successor the Stoke & Wolstanton Union are all represented, although some records are still subject to the 100-year closure rule. The Gateway to the Past online catalogue lists what is available (select PLUs as Collection Type) and there is also a handlist in the STCA Search Room.
Before 1834 poor relief was overseen by the parish, either through poorhouses or through out relief for those at home. Records for both, where they survive, are most likely to be found among the papers of the parish overseer: as for example with Norton-in-the-Moors [STCA: SA/C-C/5].
By the late nineteenth century there was increasing recognition that the workhouse was not an appropriate environment for orphaned or destitute children. New institutions were set up away from the workhouse in airy rural locations, organized along the lines of a village community. These so-called ‘cottage homes’ provided accommodation for pauper children from age 3 upwards.
Cottage homes came rather late to North Staffordshire compared with elsewhere. It was not until 1901 that the Stoke Guardians built Penkhull Cottage Homes on land adjacent to Grindley Hill Farm in Newcastle Lane. The original development comprised twelve homes, a receiving block and a house for the superintendent, Mr Till, whose wife was the homes’ matron. Each home accommodated around a dozen children under the care of a house ‘mother’. By the time of their official opening the homes were already full with 140 children in residence aged from 1 upwards. The children’s natural mothers were allowed to visit once a week. The addition of a further ten homes in 1924 increased the total capacity to 300 children. The homes continued in operation until the 1980s; actor Neil Morrissey is a former resident. There were similar cottage homes at Cheadle and Alsagers Bank, operated by the Cheadle and Newcastle-under-Lyme unions respectively.
In addition to the Penkhull Cottage Homes, the Stoke & Wolstanton Union operated a number of scattered homes. In 1924, these were located at: Basford Hall, Basford; Oxford Road, Basford; and 2 Stanley Street. The latter had been inherited from the Wolstanton & Burslem PLU at its merger with the Stoke-upon-Trent PLU in 1922. These homes appear to have ceased operating by about 1930.
A new type of establishment emerged in the 1850s, in response to the creation of the Reformatory School system by an Act of 1854. Reformatory Schools were places of detention for convicted juvenile offenders who were first required to spend two weeks in an adult prison. When a campaign to remove this requirement proved unsuccessful, an alternative institution was proposed, the Certified Industrial School, which was aimed at younger and less serious cases, and omitted the prison element. Further Acts in 1857 and 1861 defined the categories of offences in greater detail.
The Stafford County Industrial School for Boys was established at Werrington, about 4 miles to the east of Stoke-on-Trent in 1868. Pupils were first admitted in January 1870, there being accommodation for 107 boys aged 10 years or over. Mr Benjamin Horth and his wife Emily were appointed as superintendent and matron, with James Horth as schoolmaster and assistant. The School originally had 7 acres of land attached and a further 26 acres were rented in 1873, with field and garden work providing the boys’ main industrial employment in its early years. Training in tailoring, shoemaking and basket-making was provided.
In 1933, Werrington became an Approved School, one of the new institutions introduced by the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act to replace the existing system of Reformatories and Industrial Schools. It accommodated up to 120 boys aged under 13. In 1955 the site was taken over by the Prison Service and now forms the basis for Werrington Young Offenders Institution. Staffordshire Record Office has various records, including admission and discharge books, dating mainly from the 1890s.
North Staffordshire Training Home for Girls, Cliffe House, Hill Street, Stoke was a Certified School for young women, similar to the Industrial Schools. At Hanley, there were several Magdalen Homes, operated by various Christian and charitable organizations. Other institutions in the area included: North Staffordshire Blind School at The Mount, Greatbach Avenue, Stoke-on-Trent; and North Staffordshire Hostel for Mothers and Babies, 2 Enderley Street, Newcastle-under-Lyme. During the twentieth century many of these institutions were taken over by Stoke-on-Trent Borough Council or equivalent local authorities.
Peter Higginbotham’s Children’s Homes website has lists of homes, with some histories, together with bibliographic references where available (www.childrenshomes.org.uk).
The STCA has records for certain homes including an admission register for Penkhull, 1908–16 [SA/PCH]: check the Gateway to the Past online catalogue for details. Such records are classed as highly sensitive and are subject to the 100-year closure rule.
The Potteries’ transformation into an industrial centre during the late eighteenth century brought a need for organized medical provision. The first hospital, known as the ‘House of Recovery’, opened to the public in 1804 at Etruria, on land donated by Josiah Wedgwood II. Construction was undertaken by Francis Coxon of Hanley, who delivered a handsome, good-quality brick building, three storeys high. During the first 9 years over 5,000 patients were treated and by 1814 demand was such that an extension began to be discussed.
The House of Recovery’s cramped position made expansion difficult and it was decided to build a second hospital instead. The Wedgwoods again provided the land (this time through sale), a site being chosen at Wood Hills, on the turnpike road from Etruria Wharf to Cobridge. The new facility opened on 22 April 1819, with another representative of the great pottery families, Josiah Spode, as chairman of the governors. This, too, was gradually expanded as demand rose. Among the additions were new wards for the treatment of burns and scalds, many of the casualties coming from the nearby Earl Granville’s ironworks.
In 1861 experts reported that the whole hospital was threatened by subsidence. Moreover, Etruria itself was becoming more and more polluted. An infamous mound of refuse from the Slippery Pit colliery and ironworks, known as Tinkersclough tip, grew by the day and came within 150yd of the building. The tip burned and smouldered continuously and was the cause of many children being burnt or overcome by fumes. William Yates of Eastwood, Hanley offered £5,000 for the building of a new Infirmary on another site, provided he was paid £250 per annum for life. The Governors decided to accept. The offer proved extremely timely: Yates died a few days after signing the cheque and the Infirmary received the full benefit.
North Staffordshire Infirmary, c. 1915. (Public domain)
The Potteries’ third hospital, the North Staffordshire Infirmary, opened at Hartshill in 1869. It was one of the first English hospitals to be built on the pavilion system favoured by Florence Nightingale, meaning that all the buildings were positioned around a large central courtyard. Known later as the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary and Eye Hospital, it remained the district’s principal general hospital for over a hundred years, before merging with the nearby Orthopaedic Hospital and City General Hospital to form the University Hospital of North Staffordshire. As a result, new facilities were built and all services were transferred to the new single site in 2012.
Other hospitals within the Potteries included: Longton Hospital (founded in 1867); Haywood Hospital, Burslem (founded in 1881); and the Orthopaedic Hospital of the North Staffordshire Cripples’ Aid Society (founded in 1916 and mentioned above).
Alun Davies’s The North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary, 1802–1948 (Churnet Valley Books, 2006) charts the history of the NSRI from its inception through to the formation of the National Health Service. Lawley (2011) offers a pictorial history of Stoke-on-Trent’s hospitals. The Voluntary Hospitals Database has detailed time series and statistics on the growth of individual hospitals from the mid-nineteenth century, such as number of beds, number of nurses and expenditure on in-patients and out-patients (www.hospitalsdatabase.lshtm.ac.uk).
Although local repositories have substantial holdings relating to hospitals, individual patient records seldom survive and those that do are subject to strict confidentiality conditions. Patient records are closed for up to 100 years but close relatives may be able to gain access by filing a Freedom of Information Act request to the relevant authority. The Wellcome/National Archives Hospital Records Database is the best finding aid: it documents the existence and location of the records of UK hospitals, based on information provided by the repositories concerned (https://data.gov.uk/dataset/hospital-records). For some establishments staff records may also be available.
Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archives holds records for North Staffordshire (Royal) Infirmary and predecessor institutions, 1742–1975 under numerous headings and split between the STCA and SRO. Name-rich series include an admissions and discharge book from the early 1880s [SD 1321/36]; a subscriptions book for ‘Hospital Saturday’, 1935–48 (a pre-NHS care scheme) [D6140]; nursing staff records, 1913– 82 [D6020]; and general staff records, 1900–79 [SD 1611].
Other health series are: the records of Westcliffe Hospital, Chell, c. 1930–74 [SD 1552]; registers of tuberculosis and infantile mortality for North Staffordshire, 1934–92 [D5786]; pre-NHS medical records for Norton-in-the-Moors [SD 1633]; and materials from the Hanley Nursing Society, 1895–1982 [SD 1260]. There are also miscellaneous health-related photographs from the 1960s [SD 1624]; and notes, photographs and cuttings from a television documentary about City General Hospital made in 1985 [SA/CGH]. The Potteries Museum Collection has some registers of pottery workers found to be suffering from silicosis and asbestosis in the 1930s and 1940s [SD4842/1/61]. Local authority series include the records of the Commissioners and Boards of Health for each of the Six Towns but these are mainly administrative.
For professional registrations of doctors see the UK Medical Registers, 1859–1959 dataset and of nurses the UK & Ireland, Nursing Registers, 1898–1968, both on Ancestry.
While the welfare of the general populace was of widespread concern, the same could not be said for that of the mentally ill. Only during the second half of the nineteenth century did adequate provision start to be made for those suffering various forms of mental illness.
The Victorians had a rather sweeping definition of the term ‘insanity’: many of the patients (‘inmates’ would probably be a better term) were suffering from post-natal depression, epilepsy, alcoholism or other minor afflictions. From 1871, the census returns made special provision for those with mental health problems, describing patients as either ‘idiots’, ‘imbeciles’ or ‘lunatics’. The distinctions are somewhat vague and overlapping but those suffering from dementia were mostly described as ‘imbeciles’.
A number of asylums are likely to have taken patients from the Potteries. The main facility was the North Staffordshire Asylum, Cheadle Road, Cheddleton, near Leek. It was designed and built between 1893 and 1897 by Giles, Gough & Trollope, who designed many such establishments. The water tower is credited as being ‘the highest structure in Staffordshire Moorlands’. It became Staffordshire Mental Hospital in 1948, then St Edward’s Mental Hospital, and later St Edward’s Hospital, Near Leek. In 1979 it had around 900 patients but closed in 2001 and was subsequently converted into a series of apartments and houses. Chadwick & Pearson (1993) provides a more detailed history. Kivland (2001) is a collection of four books of memoirs of this hospital, including maps and drawings by patients and references to the rules and regulations that applied to staff.
Prior to the opening of Cheddleton, patients would have been sent to the Staffordshire County Asylum at Stafford. This opened in around 1818 and initially had accommodation for up to 120. By 1844 there were 245 patients, of whom 183 were paupers and 62 were private.
The sprawling Cheddleton Asylum, Leek, later known as St Edward’s Hospital. (Public domain)
Conditions had recently been improved due to an outbreak of dysentery. In succeeding years demand for its services was eased by the opening of new asylums at Coton Hill, Stafford, in 1854 and Burntwood, in the south of the county, in 1864. Coton Hill catered for private patients from the middle and upper classes. It closed in 1976 when, apart from the chapel and the lodges, it was demolished and the new Stafford District General Hospital was built on the site. The A Turn of the Key website documents its history and memoirs (https://aturnof thekey.com).
The history of asylums and the treatment of mental illness are chronicled on Andrew Robert’s website (http://studymore.org.uk), which includes a comprehensive list of such institutions across England and Wales.
Probably the most useful and widely available asylum records are the admission registers which show that patients were often admitted and discharged within a short space of time. As with hospital records, these are closed to the public for 100 years but may be accessed by close family members. The authorities had little respect for patients’ identities and it is not uncommon to find just initials or first names listed in institution registers and census returns. Documents within the SSA catalogue for Cheddleton County Lunatic Asylum are limited to the building itself and no patient records are listed [see under ‘Lunacy’, series Q/AI]. There is a limited run for other asylums, including Stafford, 1858–9 [Q/AIc/1/3/2] and Spring Vale (a private asylum), 1833 [Q/AIp].
Many asylums, or former asylums, are included in the Wellcome/ National Archives Hospital Records Database (see above). Some patient lists from county asylums can be found at TNA (Class MH).
It is difficult to believe that not many generations ago few children received a full-time education, and of those who did most were unable to continue their studies beyond elementary level unless they were exceptionally bright or of wealthy backgrounds. In the first half of the nineteenth century it was not uncommon for local children over the age of 5 to work 60 hours a week in the potbanks and mines. The harsh conditions they experienced there have already been noted (see Chapter 2). Urged on by poverty and improvidence, parents had little choice but to put their children to work at the earliest opportunity.
The first attempts to rectify the situation came from the Church. Both Anglicans and Dissenters ran Sunday schools where children received a moral education as well as some instruction in the ‘three Rs’. One such was the Bethesda Schoolrooms in Hanley, opened by the New Connexion Methodists in 1818. This hugely impressive two-storey building with Flemish bond brickwork and a stuccoed gable provided for more than 1,000 children, who were taught to read and write, and also instructed in religious and general knowledge. Teachers and scholars had access to its extensive library (known as the ‘Bethesda General and Juvenile Libraries’), which also served a large number of external subscribers.
Besides the Bethesda School, the New Methodists had four other chapels and schools at Eastwood Vale, Etruria, Hanley Upper Green and Shelton. Meanwhile, the Wesleyans had schools alongside their chapels at Etruria and Old Hall Street; and the Independents had three schools at the Tabernacle, Hanley; Hope Chapel; and Brunswick Chapel, Shelton. Not to be left out, the Baptists catered for 200 at their Sunday school and the Primitive Methodists taught 180 alongside their chapel at Shelton. The Burslem Ragged School in Greenhead Street was for destitute children who could not afford even the small charge at the Hill Top Sunday School, which was only a few hundred yards away.
As the nineteenth century progressed different types of schools emerged, divided broadly between private and charity. Many were funded by the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, founded in 1811, and were known as ‘National Schools’. Having close links to the Church of England, the Society aimed to provide a basic education while stemming the influence of Nonconformists. National Schools opened in Lichfield Street, Hanley, in 1815, for 300 day scholars, and St Mark’s, Shelton, for 150 day scholars. The British & Foreign Schools Society, largely supported by Nonconformists, had schools at Hanley, Cobridge, Tunstall and Burslem. By 1842, there were only 2,831 day school places in the Potteries and not all of those were filled. By contrast, attendance at Sunday schools approached 18,000.
The Education Act of 1870 introduced compulsory state education for children aged 5–13 inclusive. Many new schools were built to house the sudden upsurge of pupils. The school leaving age steadily increased, from age 10 in 1893, to 12 in 1918, to 14 in 1944 as a result of the Butler Education Act. Following the Six Towns’ Federation, responsibility for schools passed to the new Stoke-on-Trent Education Committee.
Records from many nineteenth-century schools have survived and are available online or via local archives. Staffordshire school admission registers to 1914, held by the SSA, have been published on Findmypast as part of the National School Admission Registers Project. The SSA website has a list of the registers that are included (https://tinyurl.com/ y773xvkj). Log books for schools that were the responsibility of Stoke-on-Trent City Council are held at the STCA with a handlist in the search room [SA/ED/LOG]. These relate mainly to the management of the school and few children’s names are mentioned. There are also a few punishment books, for example, for Eastwood Vale Infants School, 1888–1911 [SD 1532]. Burslem Ragged School records are filed separately [SD 1395], as are those for Middleport Schools, 1877–2001 [SD 1241]; and there is a long series for Dr Hulme’s Educational Foundation, 1708–1952.
The log book for Middleport Girls School, 1907. The entry for 25 November notes: ‘A day’s holiday is granted today in consequence of a vote of the ratepayers being taken on the Federation of all the Pottery towns’. (Courtesy of Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent Archives, SD1241/2/1)
Many school records fall within the 100-year closure rule and may not be accessible. More general files relating to education within the city (both pre- and post-Federation) are also under reference SA/ED, including a Staff Register for 1900–8 from the Staffordshire Potteries Pupil Teachers’ Centre [STCA: SA/ED/73].
Children were not the only ones recognized as being able to benefit from education. Adult education for working men, particularly in technical subjects, was seen as a means of ‘self-improvement’. Mechanics’ Institutes catered for this adult working class, providing them with an alternative pastime to gambling and drinking in pubs. Often they were funded by local industrialists, who recognized the benefits from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees.
The Mechanics’ Institution, Hanley, was founded in 1826 for ‘the promotion of useful knowledge among the working classes’ at the instigation of Benjamin Vale, then curate of Stoke and later Rector of Longton, and with the support of Josiah Wedgwood and other leading local men. Its origins can be traced back to The Pottery Philosophical Society, which was established at the Red Lion Inn, Shelton in 1820, with a largely middle-class membership. The Institution prospered, especially the library, and in 1861 it moved from Frederick Street to new premises in Pall Mall. In 1887, most of the building was acquired by the Free Library, with the Mechanics’ Institution museum becoming the nucleus of the Borough Museum.
Later the Workers’ Educational Association grew up to provide continuing education to the working class and was particularly strong in North Staffordshire. The STCA has a long series of records, 1929–94 [SD 1665].
Free public libraries were another innovation of the Victorian age. Until then, access to libraries, like education, had been restricted to those who could pay. James Straphan, a bookseller, founded the Pottery Subscription Library at Hanley in 1790. By 1840 the library, consisting of some 3,000 volumes, was housed in the shop of Thomas Allbut, who had succeeded Straphan as librarian and treasurer. Members were elected and paid an entrance fee of 2 guineas and an annual subscription of 1 guinea. The library was still in existence in 1860. A similar facility, the Shelton Subscription Library, was founded in 1814 and housed in the Bethesda Schoolroom. Prior to the establishment of the free Borough Library in 1887, there was a subscription newspaper room at Hanley Town Hall.
From the mid-nineteenth century new technical, vocational and arts colleges were set up to meet the growing needs of the local pottery, mining and construction industries. Foremost among these were the Stoke School of Science & Art, London Road (1860); the Sutherland Institute, Longton (1898); and Burslem School of Art, Queen Street (1907), all of which were housed in suitably grand buildings. Alumni from Burslem included the ceramicist Clarice Cliff (1899–1972); the artist William Bowyer (1926–2015); and Arnold Machin (1911–99), who designed the classic ‘plain’ British postage stamp and served as headmaster at the Burslem School of Art during the 1940s. Later these institutions were united as Stoke College of Art, which in turn became the Faculty of Art and Design within the new North Staffordshire Polytechnic in 1970 (now Staffordshire University).
Keele University was founded as the University College of North Staffordshire in 1949 and admitted its first 159 students the following year. It was the first new university to be established in Britain following the Second World War. The University is situated on an estate with extensive woods, lakes and parkland, formerly owned by the Sneyd family, and includes Keele Hall. Until the 1990s most students followed a unique four-year course, beginning their studies with a Foundation Year.
Both universities have alumni offices which maintain registers of their graduates. They may be willing to pass on enquiries and requests to former students, subject to data protection regulations.
Historically, the judicial system in England and Wales relied on Assize Courts and Quarter Sessions, a system that dated back to the twelfth century. Judges rode on horseback from one county town to the next, trying all those charged with more serious criminal offences that could not be dealt with by magistrates or the Quarter Sessions. By the middle of the sixteenth century six assize circuits had developed, each under the control of a Clerk of the Assize. The assizes were normally held twice a year in Lent and Summer. In some counties the assize was an annual event and therefore people could spend many months in prison awaiting trial. Staffordshire was part of the Oxford Circuit, with assizes held at Stafford.
Quarter Sessions were the lower of the two courts and dealt with the lesser, non-capital crimes. As well as dispensing justice, these courts originally collected taxes and other monies due to the Crown. The courts were presided over by knights, called Keepers of the Peace, later known as Justices of the Peace. A statute of 1388 required that these sessions should be held in every quarter of the year – Easter, Trinity, Michaelmas and Epiphany – to be presided over by three Justices of the Peace, and hence they became known as the Quarter Sessions. Justices of the Peace were appointed at the start of each reign by the new monarch, and had to swear an oath of allegiance. They were required to possess ‘justice, wisdom and fortitude’, and latterly to have a private income in excess of £100 a year.
Changes in Tudor times saw the Quarter Sessions administering the Poor Law and therefore replacing the Sheriff as county administrator. In the centuries that followed they acquired a whole range of other administrative responsibilities, from registering boats and barges, to licensing gamekeepers, printing presses and county militia. Thus, Quarter Sessions records cover much more than petty crime and are a key source for the family historian.
The Potteries was served initially by the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions at Stafford until the establishment of a separate court at Hanley in 1880. In 1846 County Courts, dealing with civil cases, were created. In 1894, many of the administrative functions of the Quarter Sessions, including the Poor Law, were transferred to the new County Councils, although they retained responsibility for licensing, betting and gambling.
Regular Petty Sessions courts began in the eighteenth century, due to the increase in workload for the justices of the Quarter Sessions. These met far more often – daily by the nineteenth century – and dealt with minor crimes, licensing, juvenile offences and civil offences such as bastardy and child maintenance. Under legislation of 1839, a stipendiary magistrate was appointed for the pottery communities, with lock-ups in each of the Six Towns.
Assizes, Quarter Sessions and Petty Sessions were abolished by the Courts Act of 1971 and replaced by the present arrangement of High Courts, Crown Courts and Magistrates Courts.
The SRO holds the records for Staffordshire Quarter Sessions under series Q. The best place for family historians to start is with the Order Books [Q/SO] or Printed Order of Court [Q/SOp], which summarize the outcomes of individual cases. From there it may be possible to find supporting documentation in other series. ‘Indictments’ were charges brought against an accused as a means of beginning criminal proceedings, while ‘presentments’ were reports by parish officials noting offences in a particular parish [both are catalogued under subseries Q/SPi]. Testimonies given by the accuser and witnesses prior to the case coming to court are found in the depositions [Q/SBd], while examinations of this evidence once the court was in session are contained in the session rolls (also referred to as session bundles or files) [Q/SB, Q/SR]. Petitions to the justices may also be found here but are sometimes catalogued separately.
The most common document – making up the majority of all surviving Quarter Sessions records – was a ‘recognizance’, which was a bond or obligation entered into between the court and an accused or witness [Q/SPr]. The recipient could be required to attend court either to give evidence or answer a charge. They could also be required to keep the peace (pace ferund) or to be of good behaviour (de se bene gorend). The principal was required to find two sureties or guarantors, who were bound for £10 each. The idea was that those bound with an offender would act as a restraining influence upon them. If a recognizance was broken and the offender could not pay they would go to gaol.
Further record series deal with appeals and transfers of cases to and from higher and lower courts (the Assizes and Petty Sessions respectively) [Q/SPa, Q/SPk, Q/SPt], and with calendars of prisoners held awaiting trial (see below).
Petty Sessions were held initially in town halls, country houses or public houses. Returns of Petty Sessions convictions are found in the Quarter Sessions bundles, mainly 1850s–70s. There is a separate series for convictions before magistrates sitting in Petty Sessions under series Q/RC, divided into: Convictions [Q/RCc]; Notices of convictions of habitual drunkards [Q/RCd]; Convictions under Juvenile Offenders Act [Q/RCj]; and Registers [Q/RCr]. The SRO has a few surviving records from Petty Sessions held at Trentham Hall, mainly from the period around 1805 [classified under ‘Petty Sessions for Pirehill North Hundred’].
Later Petty Sessions records (1886–1939) are under D1123 and there are separate series for the Staffordshire Potteries Stipendiary Magistrates Court, 1871–1939 [D1142 and D3612]. These include court registers, registers of convictions and orders, juvenile court registers, licensing convictions, bastardy orders, married women orders, and orders of judicial separation. Other series cover petty session cases at Leek, Tunstall, Newcastle, Longton, Cheadle and elsewhere compiled from police records covering various periods, some of which are still closed [series C/PC/].
The records of the Assize courts are at TNA. For the Oxford Circuit these comprise Minute books, 1657–1971 [ASSI 1-3], Indictments, 1627–1971 [ASSI 5], Depositions and Case Papers, 1719–1971 [ASSI 6], Pleadings, 1854–90 [ASSI 8], and Miscellaneous, 1660–1888 [ASSI 4, 9 & 89]. These records are very formal in style, were written mainly in Latin until 1733 and may have gaps. The William Salt Library holds a collection of around 200 Staffordshire Assize Calendars covering the period 1746–1861 with many gaps [WSL: s600/1], with separate volumes for the period 1860–1903 [WSL: D1905] plus some other years. A transcript of four Assize Calendars from 1842–3 has been published in the Fourth Series, Vol. XV (1992) of Collections for a History of Staffordshire.
Criminal Cases on the Crown Side of King’s Bench in Staffordshire, 1740–1800, in Collections, Fourth Series, Vol. XXIV (2010), presents the records of all cases in the Court of King’s Bench arising in Staffordshire between those two dates. King’s Bench was the supreme court of criminal law for England and Wales, and this is the first publication of its records for the eighteenth century for any English county.
In the days before the regular police force, responsibility for local law enforcement fell to the parish. Parish constables acted as law enforcement officers, usually on an unpaid and part-time basis. They were expected to monitor trading standards and public houses, catch rats, restrain loose animals, light signal beacons, provide local lodging and transport for the military, perform building control, attend inquests and collect the parish rates. Most offences could be dealt with by fines, or referral to the Petty or Quarter Sessions (see above). But many parishes maintained their own local lock-up as a place of detention. These were used to detain vagrants and local drunks, as well as more
Irish nationalists interred at Stafford Gaol following the Easter Rising, 1916. (An Post Museum, Dublin)
serious offenders prior to being sent to the nearest gaol. In Leek, for example, the lock-up was part of the Old Town Hall on Market Place.
North Staffordshire had no substantial gaol of its own and, like the rest of the county, relied on the county gaol at Stafford. There has been a gaol at Stafford since the end of the twelfth century. By the eighteenth century there was both a Gaol and a House of Correction, both located near to the town’s North Gate. Executions were carried out at Sandyford Meadow along the Stafford to Sandon Road. The new Staffordshire Gaol opened in May 1793 and was substantially enlarged during the nineteenth century. This huge edifice dominated the county town for decades, striking fear into all who saw it, not least because it was the designated site for executions.
Prisoners were put to work on treadwheels, pin-heading or stone-breaking, forms of punishment that also enabled the prisoner to earn his keep. The treadwheels, introduced in 1817, powered the corn mill and pumped water from wells within the prison grounds.
Stafford Gaol grew into a huge complex. The gatehouse stood on Gaol Road and contained the reception ward and a room for the warders. Its roof was used as the place of execution until 1817, when new gallows were built on a cart and brought out before the gatehouse when required. The prison infirmary was originally located in rooms above the governor’s house, but was later moved to a new building in the prison grounds to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. A women’s prison was added in 1852 with a separate female infirmary. The most visible landmark was two imposing towers which stood on the corner of Crooked Bridge Road and Gaol Road. These were built in the mid-nineteenth century as accommodation for prison warders and their families. They were found to be unsafe and were demolished in 1953.
In a notorious case in 1820, three young men from the Potteries were convicted of rape, a crime which then carried the death penalty. William Toft was a 21-year-old painter on china; John Walklate, aged 24, was a potter’s printer and was known as a good, steady workman; and Daniel Collier, aged 18, worked as a miner. They had been found guilty of raping Hannah Bowers of Sneyd Green. A large crowd travelled from Stoke-on-Trent to Stafford, where the execution was due to be carried out on Saturday, 15 April. Many of them had walked through the night to make sure of their place in front of the gallows. The Staffordshire Advertiser of 18 April 1820 carried this account of their execution, as the chaplain started to address the crowd: ‘During this address, the prisoners prayed devoutly; and while they were expressing, “Lord, remember me”, the drop fell, about five minutes past eight. Walklate died instantly, Toft struggled a little, but Collier was much convulsed. After hanging for the usual time their bodies were cut down, and delivered to their friends.’ John Taylor, the Hanley town crier (known as ‘Tambourine John’), was charged with retrieving their bodies and they were buried in Hanley churchyard the following day.
The William Palmer website, dedicated to the notorious ‘Rugeley Poisoner’, has details of other prisoners executed at Stafford (http://staffscc.net/wppalmer/), while Standley (1993) documents 200 years of the prison’s history. The Capital Punishment website (www. capitalpunishmentuk.org) has listings of all known British executions back to 1735, together with information on the methods used.
The SRO has early records for gaols and houses of correction within the Staffordshire County Quarter Sessions [Q/AG]. The individual series are:
•Stafford Bridewell Register, 1792–1806 [D(W)1723/1].
•Stafford House of Correction Register, 1806–15 [D(W)1723/2].
•Stafford Register of Debtors, 1793–1807 [D(W)1723/3].
•Stafford Register of Felons, 1793–1816 [D(W)1723/4-5].
•HM Prison, Stafford, Registers, Admission and Discharge Books, 1878–1964 [D5112].
SNI has an extensive list (known as a calendar) of prisoners who appeared at Staffordshire Quarter Sessions, 1779–1900. The Stafford Gaol Photograph Albums Index, 1877–1916 on the same site comprises around 6,300 entries of prisoners compiled from surviving photograph albums [D5112 and 6957].
The Discharged Prisoners Aid Society, North Staffordshire branch has a list of those donating to the charity, 1865–1917 [P(L)/6/4].
Every year parish officers drew up new lists of those qualified for jury service at the Quarter Sessions. The list was then displayed in the parish so that objections could be made. Under the Act for Better Regulation of Juries, 1730, jury panels were selected from the jury lists by lot, with the intention of preventing eligible jurors of higher social status from evading their responsibilities through undue influence with local officials.
Jury lists are found in the Quarter Session records. They generally show: surname and forename(s), place of residence, parish and hundred, and title/nature of qualification. Staffordshire Jurors’ Lists, 1811–31 are on SNI; survival is good for North Pirehill hundred, the area covering most of the Potteries, as well as for North Totmonslow hundred (Leek and the Staffordshire Moorlands).
Although an ancient office dating back to Norman times, the Coroner’s system as we know it today stems from the Victorian era. There was growing concern that, given the easy and uncontrolled access to numerous poisons and inadequate medical investigation of the actual cause of death, many homicides were going undetected. Under the Coroners Act of 1887, coroners lost many of their earlier fiscal powers and became more concerned with determining the circumstances and the actual medical causes of sudden, violent and unnatural deaths.
The Coroner’s involvement in investigating a death will be shown on the death certificate. If a post-mortem were held (but no inquest), this will be indicated in the ‘cause of death’ section on the certificate as: ‘Certified by [coroner’s name] . . . after post mortem without inquest’. If an inquest was deemed necessary, the certificate will give the date it was held and the verdict: ‘accidental death’, ‘natural causes’, ‘murdered’, ‘took own life’, etc.
Coroners’ records are generally held in the Quarter Sessions archives. In North Staffordshire coroners reported initially to the Quarter Sessions for the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and later also for the Borough of Hanley. A limited run of nineteenth-century coroners’ reports survive and are listed in the Quarter Sessions Coroners’ Reports, 1850–61 index on SNI. These derive from police reports relating to coroners’ cases rather than the court’s own records. Case papers can be consulted at the SRO under reference Q/APr/7. Coroners’ inquests would almost certainly be reported in the newspapers and this may be the only source of information for cases outside the period covered by the SNI indexes.
The juxtaposition of avid social reformers alongside conditions of grinding poverty made the Potteries a natural breeding ground for charitable efforts. Outraged by the plight of the urban poor, people of a charitable disposition – many though not exclusively Nonconformists – banded together to perform social works. Their targets were numerous. Women and families were frequent recipients, in particular children and unmarried mothers; the elderly and infirm, prostitutes and drunkards were cared for too. Some operated their own homes, refugees and schools, while others sent volunteers out into the communities. Missions overseas were also supported, especially by church groups.
A prominent charity was the North Staffordshire Cripples’ Aid Society which ran the Cripples’ Hospital at Hartshill. It was founded by Sydney Malkin, a prominent businessman and Mayor of Burslem. The Society was initially located at Hanchurch, before moving to Wodehouse Street, Stoke, where mothers would bring their disabled children for treatment. Demand was such that new premises had to be found and Malkin acquired Longfields at Hartshill, which had belonged to the Minton family. He established the Cripples’ Hospital there in 1918. It later became the Limes Maternity Hospital.
A similar organization was the Mount School for the Deaf, founded by A.J. Story at the Mount, Hartshill in 1897. Originally known as the North Staffordshire School for the Blind and Deaf, it was the first residential school for deaf children founded under the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act, 1883. Fresh air was considered to be stimulating and many of the lessons were taken outside.
The SSA holds the records of many charitable organizations, including: North Staffordshire Cripples’ Aid Society, 1802–1948 [SD1321 and D5188/E]; Mount School for the Deaf, 1896–c. 2000 [SD1224]; Potteries Association for the Blind, c. 1841–2006 [SD 1557]; the Chatterley Dole Charity, 1886–1974 [SD 1507]; and the Hanley and Shelton Anti-Slavery Society, 1829–39 [SD 1121]. The Old Nortonian Society was a charitable society in Norton-in-the-Moors with records at the SSA under various references. University College London has records from the North Staffordshire Society for Promoting Spiritual and Temporal Welfare of the Adult Deaf & Dumb and of the Blind, 1868–1911 and related organizations (http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-rnid/2012/04/13/stoke-story-staffs/).
Various non-political mutual societies were established to assist members financially in time of illness, old age and hardship. By law, society rulebooks had to be submitted to the Quarter Sessions and sometimes these include membership lists as well. There are separate series for charities and trusts [Q/RSb], friendly societies [Q/RSf] and savings banks, building societies and loan societies [Q/RSb, Q/RSl, Q/RSs]. The Ancient Order of Foresters is one example: it had ‘courts’ (branches) at Biddulph and Knypersley. Under the Unlawful Societies Act of 1799 freemasons also had to register with the Clerk of the Peace of the local Quarter Sessions [Q/RSm]. TNA holds some society records.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Potteries had no discernible form of local government. Local powers, such as they were, were vested in the parishes, which were loath to burden their rate payers with anything that might be considered unnecessary expenditure. The area had no representation in Parliament and did not even have an authorized market. The situation contrasted sharply with nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme: it had been a borough since medieval times, a position that brought significant power and privileges (see Chapter 8). As early as 1783 there had been calls for the creation of a corporation for the whole of the Potteries. It came to nothing and meanwhile the need for local government increased.
What filled its place was competition between under-developed and ill-equipped authorities. Burslem, Hanley and Stoke each tried to assert leadership over the district. Civic rivalry played out in many forms, most visibly through ever more ambitious municipal building programmes. As a result, the Potteries ended up with probably the highest concentration of nineteenth-century municipal buildings in the country. Libraries, public baths, markets, mechanics institutes, water works: all proliferated as the Six Towns vied to outdo one another in shows of civic power. The situation was exacerbated as the towns became boroughs, a status that was acquired in turn by Hanley (1857), Longton (1865), Stoke (1874) and Burslem (1878). Tunstall and Fenton remained urban districts only, though still had their complement of municipal buildings.
Fenton Town Hall, completed in 1889, in a pen drawing by Neville Malkin. (Courtesy of thepotteries.org)
Nowhere was this one-upmanship more evident than in town halls. Each of the pottery towns had established a town hall as a seat of local administration; often these were alongside and/or grew out of the market. But from the mid-nineteenth century town halls began to take on a new meaning as statements of power. At one point there were thirteen sites within the Six Towns that were or had been functioning as town halls. In Burslem, for example, a new town hall in an elaborate baroque style was built in 1854–7 to replace the existing eighteenth-century building. Following its incorporation as a borough, and as part of an attempt to retain its autonomy, a third town hall was built on a new site in 1911. In Hanley, a town hall was built in Town Road in the early 1800s, followed by a second in 1845, twelve years before incorporation. This, in turn, was superseded by a third town hall, which was formerly a hotel, in 1884. In Stoke, the plan involved not just the building of a new town hall but the creation of a whole new town centre. Under a scheme led by local personalities including Josiah Spode, the modest settlement set around the ancient church was to be significantly enlarged in order to establish Stoke as the municipal as well as ecclesiastical seat of power. Among other developments, it resulted in Stoke Town Hall on Glebe Street, a massive edifice that was (and remains) the largest of the Potteries’ old municipal buildings.
By the beginning of the twentieth century the case for federation was becoming irresistible. Despite the support of the Duke of Sutherland, a further attempt failed in 1901, the existing towns still believing that they had too much to lose. Federation, as the County Borough of Stoke-on-Trent, was finally achieved on 31 March 1910. The new borough covered some 11,139 acres and had a population of 234,000. Its first Mayor was Cecil Wedgwood. In 1925 the County Borough was raised to city status and the title of Lord Mayor was conferred in July 1928. In common with other cities around the country, Stoke-on-Trent moved to a system of elected Mayors in 2002 but this was subsequently abolished after a local referendum.
Parliamentary representation dates back to the thirteenth century with English counties and most English boroughs electing two or more Members of Parliament. However, it was not until the Representation of the People Act 1832, also known as the Great Reform Act, that the franchise was extended and electoral registers were first created.
Before 1832, Staffordshire was represented by two MPs for the county and two for each of four parliamentary boroughs: Stafford, Lichfield, Newcastle and Tamworth. The county MPs were elected by males aged 21 and over, owning freehold land worth £2 net per annum, while the boroughs had various different systems for electing MPs. Approximately 1 per cent of the adult population was entitled to vote. Reforms during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the increased representation of manufacturing towns such as Stoke-on-Trent, and in the decision to create constituencies roughly equal in population. Large-scale maps of parliamentary constituencies from 1885 as well as borough maps of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Hanley and Stoke can be found online (www.londonancestor.com/maps/bc-staff-th.htm).
The Representation of the People Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 extended the franchise (right to vote) to more and more of the male population, although it was always based on the ownership or tenancy of land of a specified annual value. Despite these changes, by 1911 only 58 per cent of adult males were registered as electors. In 1918 the franchise was extended to all males aged 21 and over, and to women aged 30 and over who were, or whose husbands were, local government electors. Eventually, in 1928 all women aged 21 and over were given the vote.
Electoral registers are lists of persons entitled to vote compiled annually. Before 1918 they include the nature of the qualification of each person that entitled them to vote. Draft registers were compiled by parish overseers and town clerks, and later by electoral registration officers. Anyone might then object to someone’s name appearing on the list, or appeal against their name not being included. Other sources were also checked so that persons having died or moved from the area could be removed from the register.
The STCA has electoral registers for the original Stoke-upon-Trent constituency, 1857–63; for certain wards within the new post-1885 Stoke-upon-Trent constituency up to 1918; and for the Hanley constituency (which included Burslem), 1885–1915. There is good coverage for all Potteries constituencies post-1918. Registers for the county constituencies (1832–67) within the Pirehill and Totmanslow hundreds are also at the STCA, with some duplicates at the WSL. The SSA’s Guide to Sources No. 9: Electoral Registers 1832–2001 provides detailed coverage of all these holdings.
Newcastle Library has occasional series for Newcastle-under-Lyme. Certain registers are available on microfiche at the SRO and on microfilm at the British Library, London.
Baker, Diane, Workhouses in the Potteries (City of Stoke-on-Trent Historic Buildings Survey, 1984)
Chadwick, Max and David Pearson, The History of St. Edward’s Hospital, Cheddleton (Churnet Valley Books, 1993)
Davies, Alun, The North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary, 1802–1948 (Churnet Valley Books, 2006)
Gibson, Jeremy and Colin Rogers, Coroners’ Records in England and Wales (3rd edn, Family History Partnership, 2009)
Gibson, Jeremy, Else Churchill, Tony Foster and Richard Ratcliffe, Quarter Sessions Records for Family Historians (5th edn, Family History Partnership, 2007)
Higginbotham, Peter, Workhouses of the Midlands (Tempus Publishing, 2007)
Kivland, Sharon, Memoirs (Staffordshire University, 2001)
Lawley, Ian, If Walls Could Talk: Images of the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary and the City General Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent (Phillimore & Co., 2011)
Standley, A.J., Her Majesty’s Prison Stafford: Sentenced to 200 Years (n.p., 1993)
