George Dewhurst (8 August 1789 – 14 August 1857) was an English Radical, reformer and reedmaker, best known for his contribution towards working class Radicalism in the first half of the 19th century and reform in his home town of Blackburn.

Early life

George Dewhurst was born in the English town of Blackburn on 8 August 1789, one of seven children of George Dewhurst the elder and his wife Ann Hanson. His father was a whitesmith and grocer of the town.

George Dewhurst married Ann Green in February 1810 and the couple had four children together (Hanson, Alice, George and Mary) before Ann's untimely death in 1816. He married his second wife, Alice Hitchen, in November 1823.

Dewhurst was a reed maker by trade, providing reeds for the weaving and calico industry.  He remained in this line of work for a large part of his life, despite this traditionally handcrafted process being increasingly mechanised (reeds originally made from strips of reed became replaced by flattened brass and steel wire and began to be made by machinery.The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power Alfred Barlow, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, Jan 1878

Radical beginnings

George Dewhurst could scarcely have been born at a time more resonant with the hope and possibility of betterment for the poor, together with the fear, despair and anger that such change would never be realised. It was a time ripe for a man such as George Dewhurst, whose life was to be defined by fighting against injustice and reforming the conditions of the working men, women and children of his hometown of Blackburn.

The French Revolution began the year of Dewhurst's birth, and the possibility of a similar upheaval befalling the established order in England must have been occupying the thoughts and haunting the dreams of the privileged. The prevailing sense of corruption in politics (such as the rotten and pocket boroughs denying proper representation of people's grievances) was compounded by the financial constraints caused by the end of the Napoleonic War, the tariffs and trade restrictions of the Corn Laws and the burden of taxation. Throughout the country there was an increase in British political radicalism and restlessness to improve the lot of the working poor.

In addition to the general maladies affecting the country as a whole, workers in areas such as Blackburn, dependent so much on cotton, were threatened continually with the onward march of industrialisation in the factories and the fluctuations in the price of raw materials. As Abram points out:

It was this upheaval that prompted those like George Dewhurst to act, and he did so with increasing fervour. He became involved in a number of meetings that Radicals like him hoped would persuade the authorities to improve conditions. He promoted an open-air meeting at Factory Hill in 1816 - to urge an extension of the franchise and a repeal of the Corn Laws - Blackburn: The Evolution of a Cotton Town G. C. Miller, Blackburn: Blackburn Town Council, 1951 and a number of others in the three years that followed. He became "by dint of earnestness, downrightness, and the use of plain, forceful Saxon words" someone who "understood and felt by the most illiterate of his hearers".

This agitation and confrontation with the authorities was to come to a head on 16 August 1819 in what is now known as the Peterloo Massacre where a cavalry charge into a crowd of several thousand people in Manchester led to the deaths of eighteen people and the injury of many hundreds of others.

Though no doubt aware of the tragedy in Manchester (and possibly present at the event although that is currently unknown) Dewhurst still attended and addressed a further meeting of Radicals only three months later (15 November 1819) at Habergham Eaves near Burnley and was soon after arrested on a charge of high treason. Abram contends that simultaneous to the events in Manchester the Government was determined to deal a blow to other Radical leaders and that the Magistrates of the Blackburn Hundred had been keeping a close eye on Dewhurst as one of the most egregious facilitators of the revolt.

Arrest and imprisonment

A number of newspapers, both local and national, recorded the arrest of Dewhurst and his co-accused. The Blackburn Mail (8 December 1819):

The next day, following further questioning at Preston by Colonel Hargreaves, Dewhurst, Fletcher and Adamson were committed to Lancaster Gaol on a charge of High Treason.

The consequent trial took place on 1 April 1820 at Lancaster Assizes under Mr Justice Bayley.  It was certainly not a propitious time to face justice as the Cato Street conspirators had been captured less than two months earlier. Dewhurst was sentenced to two years imprisonment at Lancaster Gaol. As recorded in the delivery of Gaol documents at the end of the two years Dewhurst was further instructed to find sureties of £40 and enter into recognizance to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for three years longer.

Dewhurst petitioned Parliament in May 1820 regarding his ill-treatment complaining that he had been made to do hard labour and "compelled to wear the felon's dress".A petition to Parliament regarding the ill-treatment of the prisoner George Dewhurst Hansard, London, UK, 31 May 1820. [Online]. Available: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1820/may/31/petition-of-george-dewhurst-complaining This is just one indication of the hardship that he endured during his imprisonment, further insights can be gained from a letter he wrote in August 1821 from his cell at Lancaster. Although the full text of the document is no longer available, Abram in his book on Blackburn Characters provides a number of extracts that gave an idea of what Dewhurst endured.

A friend of Dewhurst, C. Cottam (a fellow Reedmaker) had visited him in gaol and was horrified at the thought of human beings having to spend years in such conditions and having to be "confined within a yard about twenty yards long and ten broad."

Perhaps most moving is the copy of a petition he had sent to the Annual Meeting of County Justices held in Preston in June 1821 in which hopes for his sentence to be commuted:

Dewhurst was finally released in the Spring of 1822 and must have welcomed the opportunity to return home and be reunited with his children. He must have also been aware of the stipulation made when sentenced to keep the peace and be of good behaviour. A widower before he was imprisoned, he married Alice Hitchen on 9 November 1823 and returned to reedmaking.

The deprivations of prison however did not keep Dewhurst quiet for long. Three years later he was again speaking on behalf of the poor, specifically on the evil of taxation:W. Cobbett, ‘Cobbett’s Weekly Register, Volume LXI from January to March 1827. Speech by George Dewhurst originally recorded in the Bolton Chronicle and given on 25th December 1826 and reproduced on 6th January 1827’, Print. Publ. W Cobbett No 183 Fleet Str. Lond. 1827, vol. LXI, 1827

He then made a reference to his imprisonment, and its injustice:

However, the feeling of indignation in this speech and the prevailing sense of injustice it spoke of foreshadowed not further attempts at reform in Blackburn but the determination to start anew in the United States.

Travel to America

Between 1826 and 1827 there was renewed distress in Blackburn and great difficulty in trade.Blackburn Characters of a Past Generation by William Alexander Abram (Blackburn, 1894) This depression left only about one third of the population around Blackburn in work and the consequent hardship led inexorably to robberies and even mob violence including an attack on the house of the clerk to justices and passengers on market coaches.P. J. Gooderson, A History of Lancashire, 2nd ed. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 Gooderson further records that a large crowd destroyed power looms in Accrington and Blackburn and fatalities occurred in a conflict between soldiers and rioters outside a mill in Grimshaw Park.

The privations endured by the poor around Blackburn (and doubtless similar towns) were truly severe:

It is likely as a result of this difficulty (and possibly to start a new life for himself now that his imprisonment was behind him) that George Dewhurst made the decision to set sail to America. One certainly gets the feeling that he would not be sorry to escape contact with what he described (only the year before he left for America) as "the pestilential breath of the English Parliament".

He was certainly not the only inhabitant of Blackburn to make such a decision. An article in the Blackburn Mail comments on increasing numbers travelling to America to seek better conditions, but warns that things might not always be as positive as they seem:

It is known that George Dewhurst travelled from Liverpool on 22 July 1827 to New York on the Dalhousie Castle, a "fine fast-sailing ship" of 470 tons with accommodation for passengers that were "extensive and very comfortable", and "with beds and bedding at the ship's expense".Humberston, Charles (1827), ‘To sail on Sunday the 22nd instant’, Manchester Guardian, 1827

Remarkably, an aurora borealis was recorded by the Captain Robert Walton in the Dalhousie Castle log whilst Dewhurst was on board. The event took place on Tuesday 28 August 1827, South of Nova Scotia, about a week before Dewhurst arrived in America.  We can only hope he was on deck to see the sight. Tuesday, August 28th, 1827.— As daylight closed, the moon had a remarkably red aspect, the sky was clear, and stars brilliant. At 9,30, a dark cloud was rising to the northward, and soon afterwards strong perpendicular rays of light were seen from the N. E. to N. N. W.— these rays rose in shape of a cone, or to a point, the lower part resembling much the tail of a comet, becoming now and then more or less bright. This continued till 10 o’clock, (in which interval the moon had sunk below the horizon) when a far stronger ray of light appeared in the N. W. in width about eight or nine degrees, and which ascended to thirty five degrees. After remaining stationary a short time, it ascended till it reached the zenith, and afterwards formed an arc. This continued till about 11, 30, when the upper part inclining to the southward, gradually died away.  The dark cloud remained stationary all this time, from fifteen to twenty degrees high, and till midnight, and the strong light from N. E. to N. N. W. continued till after one, A. M.— the intermediate space between the lower part of the cloud and horizon filled with a dense haze. On the 27th, we experienced squally weather with rain and bright lightning. The whole of the 28th was fine weather with light breezes. On the 29th fine weather with light breezes. No appearance during the evening or night of the light.

[The situation of the ship at 10, P. M. was lat, 42° 12’ N. lon. 63° 9’ W]Dewhurst arrived in America on 6 September 1827 New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957. Ancestry.com, 1897 1820. [Online]. Available: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/ but so far no more is known of his time there, or the exact date of his return to Blackburn (although this cannot have been later than 1830). It seems that Dewhurst met with little success in the United States, and Abram reports that some of his old neighbours made fun of him for having discovered that the "American Republic was no better than, if so good as, king-lord-squire-and-parson-ridden England". Dewhurst himself said on his return to England that he had found plenty of 'black coats' (persons who lived without working) in America, in truth more than in England.Man, East Lancashire (1878), ‘Recollections of Blackburn and Its Neighbourhood’, Preston Chronicle, 1878 sec. Chapter 7 p. 3.