The dark side of textile success

To the outside world, Victorian Bradford was a thriving success story at the driving seat of the woollen industry.

As textile capital of the world, ‘Worstedopolis’ earned huge fortunes for the district’s wool barons and mill-owners.

“You only have to visit the magnificent promenade at Undercliffe Cemetery where, set in stone, their former wealth and influence is expressed by huge ornate monuments that still dominate the skyline today,” writes social historian Mark Davis. “However, the success of these men was set against a backdrop of misery, suffering and exploitation. Millworkers worked long hours in dangerous conditions for small wages – their graves reflect their inferior status and are mostly unmarked.”

Mark’s fascinating book lifts back the veil of Victorian society to reveal shocking, moving and gruesome stories of human suffering. Each account of events that took place in Bradford – taken from graphic Bradford Daily Telegraph and Bradford Observer reports – reflects an age when children toiled in mills, whole families shared a bed, and a life of poverty was brutal and filled with despair. The book shows how despair and desperation drove people to take the lives of their loved ones, and themselves.

Among the horror stories is Margaret Sutton, described by the Bradford Observer in 1860 as a “poor, unhappy frenzy stricken mother” whose “downward spiral of sin and shame” led to a shocking double murder.

Margaret, 34, was living in a single room in Barkerend Road with her family when, plagued by mental anxiety, she cut the throats of her two daughters, and her own. Only then did it come to light that she was unmarried, with the man living with her claiming she was simply a jealous mistress.

Then there was James Kirkby, a Lister’s Mill worker who strangled his pregnant wife and infant son, before hanging himself on the stairwell of their Manningham home. A police constable arrived to find their three-year-old daughter whimpering in a corner.

On May 12, 1890, residents of Lord Street, off Wakefield Road, were awoken by screams from a woman running from her home in a nightdress and bare feet. Her foster son, James Harrison, was attacking his wife, Hannah, with a carving knife. Hannah managed to get the knife and was heard begging for her life. “Spare me!” she cried. “If you don’t like that job, stay at home! I will work and keep you while you get a night job!”

Her plea for mercy was in vain, as Harrison went on to drag the poor woman downstairs then set about beating her to death with a poker from the fireplace.

When he was later led from the house by police, a smiling Harrison greeted onlookers with a cheery “good morning”.

It emerged that Harrison had been sacked from Messrs Ripley dyeworks and spent much of his time drinking away the meagre wages brought in by his wife and children. Only three of the couple’s eight children had survived infancy and for 12 years his wife, pregnant or not, walked two miles daily in all weathers to her job as a weaver at Holme Mills.

In each murder case, Mark goes beyond newspaper reports to investigate the background and outcome. The stories follow a depressingly familiar pattern – in most cases violent men, driven by drink, despair and poverty, take out their rage and frustration on their wives and children, often taking their own lives too.

It’s a fascinating read, but Murder By Gaslight is also a sad reminder of the desperate lives endured by working men, women and children in Bradford’s industrial heyday.