How America's war changed the North West

Queens Park was created to make jobs for unemployed cotton workers

As work gets underway to return Bolton's Queens Park to its former glory, it's intriguing to find that its original splendour came out of one of the hardest times that the North West faced.

Opened in 1866 as simply Bolton Park, it was one of four in the region that came into being because of the Victorian Cotton Famine.

The parks were all created to make work for unemployed cotton workers in Greater Manchester and Lancashire.

Alongside the creation of these municipal gardens, new sewers and canals were dug and roads built to provide employment.

While all these improvements undoubtedly changed the North West for the better, they would never have come into being had it not been for the American Civil War.

The trans-Atlantic trade in cotton was a lucrative one in the mid-1800s, as the mills of the North West span bundle after bundle, and by the boom years of 1859 and 1860, there was more woven cotton being produced than could be sold.

Such a situation would have led to a reduction in production regardless of global events, but when the American Civil War broke out in April 1861, matters were taken out of the mill owners' hands.

Lincoln's blockade

In 1859 and 1860, more cotton was produced than could be sold

Across the Atlantic, President Lincoln ordered a blockade of the Confederate southern ports, from which the ships with raw cotton sailed to Liverpool.

Starved of the raw material, the North West's spinning mills and weaving sheds began to close down and unemployment soon rose.

Efforts were made to provide a different source of cotton, with both Egypt and India suggested as alternatives, but the plant produced in those countries was inferior to the American variety and couldn't make the woven product to the same standard.

A lack of support?

By the end of 1862, three fifths of those in the cotton industry were without work.

The lack of employment wasn't entirely down to the lack of raw materials, as there was cotton being held by merchants, but they were keeping it in storage as they waited for the price to rise.

Whatever the reason for the shortage, over 300,000 men and women found themselves in dire straits and were forced to find handouts or relief from the poor law system.

Attending sewing classes was rewarded with poor law payments

The local relief committees experimented with soup kitchens and direct aid, and sewing classes were organised by local churches, with attendance triggering a Poor Law payment.

Despite the hardships, on New Year's Eve 1862, a meeting of cotton workers at the Free Trade Hall resolved to support the Union in its fight against slavery.

That liberalism was being tested to its limits by the poverty though, and while the workers ostensibly supported the American North, pressure was put on the British Government to break Lincoln's blockade and get the trade in cotton moving again.

Riots lead to law

Something had to give and in 1863, it did in the most violent of ways.

Riots broke out in Stalybridge, Ashton, Hyde and Dukinfield

In March, riots broke out in Stalybridge, Ashton, Hyde and Dukinfield, as the unemployed protested against increasingly harsh restrictions on the poor relief.

The violence worried the local authorities, who feared it could turn into something similar to the Chartist uprising of 20 years earlier.

The Government decided to take action, passing the Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act in 1863, which allowed local authorities to borrow money to fund urban improvement; a process that would, most importantly, provide labour for the local workforce.

Too little, too late?

As welcome as that was to town councils, who eagerly accepted the opportunity to improve their municipal facilities, to some it was seen as too little, too late.

While projects were started, such as parks in Bolton and Oldham and sewers in Blackburn, in truth employment was already on the rise again.

Queens Park: the restoration Bolton Park became Queens Park in 1887 in honour of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee It has been given £4.3m of Heritage Lottery Fund and Big Lottery funding The renovation will include: building of a new community pavilion with café refurbishment of the Grade II listed lodge restoration of the sunken garden creation of a new formal 'World Garden' dredging and cleaning of the ornamental lakes

By late 1863, raw cotton was beginning to make it through to the region, with the first batches swallowed up by Manchester's mills.

That trickle increased slowly across the following year until the summer of 1864, when large batches began to arrive again, allowing the mills across the region to reopen and re-employ their workforces.

After the famine

The famine was over, but its effects were much more far reaching than simply producing new parks, canals and sewers.

Countries like Australia has encouraged immigration, after making it known that it would welcome skilled spinners and weavers, which lead thousands affected by the unemployment to make the decision to emigrate.

And as cotton was restored, the mills became larger, centralising the industry around the major owners and leading towns which had looked for other income during the fallow period to increasingly diversify away from cotton.

As a result, the industry, look and population of the North West would never be the same again.