A new book from on a rediscovered memoir views the Victorian age in Manchester through the eyes of a working man.

A Bread and Cheese Bookseller: The Recollections of James Weatherley’ is edited by Michael Powell and Terry Wyke.

Powell was Librarian of Chetham’s Library, an active figure in the history of the region. He died in 2019. Wyke taught social and economic history at Manchester Metropolitan University.

James Weatherley was born in a workhouse in Salford in 1794 and, 66 years later,  would have suffered the indignity of a pauper’s funeral had it not been for the generosity of his friends.

Shortly before his death he was persuaded to write down an account of his life.  The manuscript was acquired by Chetham’s Library in the 1880s where it has remained for some 140 years, unopened and forgotten.

Now,the new book provides the full text of Weatherley’s manuscript and provides surprising new evidence on those crucial decades in the history of Manchester when the town became a world city.

“It is unusual in that it captures the voice of a working man who lived through the changes that saw Manchester transformed from market town into the ‘the city of tall chimneys’ – a place of extremes that appalled and fascinated observers. ” says co-author Terry Wyke

“As such, it provides one of the very few first-hand accounts of an ordinary working man’s experiences of living through the industrial revolution.”

Weatherley provides memories of working as a child in the new cotton factories, the dangers of the machinery and the random cruelties of factory life.  This is one of the very few first-hand accounts by a factory worker at this time.

Working in the cotton factories:

“I still kept scavenging – this work is to keep the machinery clean from the dirt and flyings that is the dust from the cotton that clogs up the machinery. We have to do it while the machines are working which is often very dangerous if you are not very sharp and wide awake. Drums shafts pulleys rollers or cog wheels which may make you minus a limb or two or perhaps your life,  I knew several that were killed in the factorys. I have had many a rap and squeeze but never lost a limb but I have been very near it”

When trade was slack in the mills, Weatherley made money by selling Eccles cakes on the streets and at the races. But It was to be the harshness of his life in the mills that led him to try and earn his living selling books.

Aged 17, he left the mills. Selling second-hand books was to prove a hard and precarious life, but one which was to bring him into contact with the lower reaches of the local book trade and its customers  –  the honest and dishonest.

Weatherley was to spend the rest of his life selling second-hand books. For most of these years he sold on a stall on the streets. In good times he was able to rent a cellar. Weatherley was not to be part of the retailing revolution that was also happening in these years, an important reminder that Manchester was establishing itself as a major shopping destination. But as the number of purpose-built shops increased, Weatherely scraped a living selling on the street, including on the aptly named Pennyless Hill, close to the Exchange, where sellers laid out their wares on the ground, unable even to afford a stall.

Weatherley lived through some of the most crucial decades in Manchester history and in his recollections he recalls many of those events that made Manchester known across the country.

These included the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and the disturbances at the time of the passing of the Reform Act in 1832. There are also less well remembered events such as joining the crowds to view the bodies of executed criminals at the Infirmary before they were dissected.

On the Peterloo massacre:

On the 16th August 1819 a large meeting took place on Saint Peters field where the Free Trade Hall now stands  I went that morning to watch them come on the field it was then a large open space from the Quakers Chapel to Windmill Street behind the Theatre….and as Mr Hunt began to speak, Nadin and a long line of constables came and took Hunt and others prisoners. One of the Constables was killed. His name was Ashworth, the Landlord of the Bulls Head Market Place. Then the Manchester Cavalry came galloping to the hustings from the Oxford Road end. They were led up by Meager an Irishman and Trumpeter to Yeomanry. He was the first to begin the assault. He was four or five yards in advance of the others. He kept laying on the people right and left with his sword.

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