pop 1/a Clayton

pop 6 The Potteries 1839 – A reflection of the period.

£4.00

This four-page article is reproduced from the Potteries Mercury of 1839. The writer commences with a gloomy view of his visit to the potteries with its slag heaps, air pollution, hovels and a general demise of the area. It then explains how he finds potteries people, dirty, downtrodden, no ambition where every day is a challenge with long hours and little pay.

The writer in one section describes his feeling: All this time imagine yourself marching beneath great clouds of smoke, and breathing various vapours of arsenic, muristic acid* sulphur, and spirits of tar, and you will have some taste and smell, as well as view, of the potteries; and, notwithstanding all which they are as healthy as any manufacturing district whatever.

The place is described further with large chapels that are scattered throughout the whole region and describes it as one of the strongholds of dissent and democracy. Nine-tenths of the population are dissenters. The towns have sprung up rapidly, and comparatively in a few years. In fact, and why it has been reproduced here as it is probably the most depressing but sad to say a factual essay of the potteries. It is certainly worthy of a read and an assessment and a most valuable piece of social and economic writing to stimulate, thoughts, discussion and perhaps on how the city now appears in comparison to that of 1839. *getting rid of mould and rust from a variety of surfaces including brick, concrete and stone and swimming pools.