The Bancrofts of Charles Mill, Oxenhope

Wool Skep Plate

Oxenhope, near Keighley is one of those villages which has had a high number of Bancroft families living there over the last couple of centuries..... most of them descended from the  family line of Joseph Bankcroft [spelt with a 'k'] and Grace Greenwood who were married in 1752 at Bradford Parish Church.

Most prominent amongst these Bancroft families in Oxenhope, was one who ran a worsted spinning business from Charles Mill for nearly one hundred and fifty years.

Our story starts with the building of Charles Mill about 30 years before the Bancrofts came on the scene The earliest reference to the mill is an indenture of 17^th August 1803 concerning a mortgage on land and ‘the mill or building being erected on the Little Ing in Oxenhope and intended as a worsted mill’. The parties to the mortgage, value £310, were Henry Wright, gentleman, and Charles Ogden. In another indenture of 25^th November 1803, water was diverted from Leeming Water to provide a mill pond for Charles Ogden, described as a worsted manufacturer. The mill pond is still there today, and is now part of the garden of a nearby house built and once owned by the Bancroft family.

Mill Pond with Charles Mill in background

It is likely that the Charles Mill got its name from Charles Ogden, who seems to have quickly failed in business, because by 1808 he had sold machinery and other equipment including wheels, shafts, frames, engines, combs and combing pots belonging to the mill’s two combing shops for £700. There were also two cottages included in the sale.

In a deed of 30^th May 1810 the Rev. James Charnock, incumbent of Haworth paid £945 for 'the land with the mill for spinning worsted yarn and the cottages’ and Ogden was described at that time as a ‘Worsted Manufacturer, Dealer, Chapman and a Bankrupt’. Rev. Charnock probably acquired the mill as an investment with the help of his wife, who was a wealthy heiress, and when he died in 1819 the mill was inherited by his son Rev. Thomas Brooksbank Charnock of nearby Cullingworth. Rev. Thomas Charnock was a man of independent means but had no parish of his own. He was a good friend of the famous Patrick Bronte of Haworth and therefore used to help him out from time to time in his parish.

By 1833, Charles Mill had been let to a George Feather and among his employees was his nephew John Bancroft [1815-1869],the son of Jonas [1791-1880] and Betty Feather. On the 1841 census John Bancroft is described as age 25 years and an overlooker at the mill. Rev. Thomas Charnock died suddenly in 1847, by committing suicide, and was succeeded by his widow Mary Charnock. John Bancroft was therefore given the the opportunity he was looking for….he took over the tenancy of the mill in 1848, and by the 1851census he is shown as a ‘worsted spinner, employing 22 hands, 13 boys and 22 girls’, some of which were possibly outworkers, and he was at that time shown as actually living at the mill, as was his father Jonas. Both were probably living in the two cottages which were part of the mill complex ,and Jonas  was listed as a woolsorter, which was a job that could be quite hazardous in the mid-19th century, as can be read on the following article by clicking here. By 1861 the Charnock family had sold Charles Mill to George Feather, and two years later John Bancroft formed a partnership with three other individuals, who were probably financing him, and started trading as ‘John Bancroft & Co’

John and his wife, Mary Ann, had a married life of only twelve years which was touched with tragedy in as much as three of their seven children died as infants, and another son called Walker Bancroft was killed in a mill accident Their infant children Jonas died of the croup age three, John died of worm fever age one, George died of teething, inflammation of the lungs and convulsions age one. Their mother Mary died a year after their third infant death in 1853, age 33 years, after a long illness of Phthisis pulmonalis [tuberculosis]

Walker Bancroft

Eleven years later their second child, Walker Bancroft was killed at the age of 21 years at Charles Mill where he worked as an engine tender. An enquiry was held on 3rd March 1862 by the Deputy coroner for Yorkshire, and the cause of death was given as 'accidentally crushed, when working in a steam engine'. Walker appears to have been an unlucky young man because he had also previously been involved in earlier accident, when he lost his left hand, and this early photograph shows him with his large cap strategically placed to hide his missing hand. The local newspaper described the fatal accident as follows:

‘Fatal Mill Accident.....On Saturday morning, during the breakfast half hour, a young man named Walker Bancroft, son of Mr. John Bancroft senior partner of the firm Messrs John Bancroft & Co of Lowertown, went to the engine to repair it [while the mill was standing]. Something went wrong, and he was strangled by the engine being set in motion because the buckets of the water-wheel having become filled with water.’

 

The father, John, died , age only 56 years, in 1869 and the cause of death was described as “chronic ulcer of stomach etc”. Their gravestone in The Oxenhope Wesleyan Graveyard at Lowertown tells the sad fact of the family's life.

 John was succeeded in the business by his sons Joseph Riley Bancroft [1838-1890], and his brother Jonas Bancroft [1850-1913] who eventually became joint owners of the mill property in 1876 when their Uncle George Feather died the previous year and left it to them. Joseph  was a prominent member of the community being a member  of the Oxenhope Council Board for twelve years, three of them as Chairman. Looking at the census records for this period, it would seem likely that Joseph probably bought his brother out of the property because Jonas, who was twelve years younger than his brother, had his occupation  recorded as either 'wool merchant' or 'wool agent' whereas his brother Joseph lists his occupation as ' master wool spinner' on the census records.

 During the period 1870-1885 the mill underwent a great deal of alteration. It had originally been powered by just a water wheel, but by the mid 1880’s a steam engine had been installed to supplement the water power system because water power alone was probably incapable of providing the requirements for the expanding business.A great deal of structural work was undertaken to alter and double the size of the existing building from what had originally started life as two cottages. The rebuilt mill was  two storeys with an attic, and was double the width of the earlier building.The Bancrofts consistently referred to themselves as worsted spinners in the trade directories and a stock list of 1881 itemised the manufacturing process and the machinery in the mill floor by floor....the ground floor was where the wool was washed, dried and combed, the first floor was used for spinning and the attic area [sometimes known as the garrett] was used for winding and warping. The mill at this time was  lit by gas and heated by steam pipes, as confirmed by records from 1881 which proudly say that ' gas meter pipes are now fitted through the mill, and all steam pipes are now fit up to and from the boiler'
 Here  is an old photograph of this period showing the flywheel of the steam engine being removed from the mill.

Joseph Riley Bancroft continued to run the business until his death in 1890, and his two sons John Walker Bancroft [1867-1945] and Frederick Riley Bancroft [1872-1939] then took over and continued to run the business as 'John Bancroft & Co'. By 1915 the mill produced hosiery, knitting and weaving yarns from its 4,200 spindle machines.

John Walker Bancroft [1867-1945] and family

Frederick Riley Bancroft [1872-1939]

Frederick Riley Bancroft was obviously something of a textile engineer, as can be seen from the following picture which is a scale model of a weaving loom made by him. He attended a Night Class and was awarded a First Class Diploma in the Elementary stage of Machine Construction and Drawing from the Science and Art Department South Kensington, age thirteen. The loom may have been part of the practical side of the examination. He was also a lifelong member of Oxenhope Methodist Church, being a Circuit Steward, Trustee and Teacher in the Sunday School.

 When Frederick Riley Bancroft died  suddenly at his home 'Brookfield' in 1939 his brother, John Walker Bancroft, exercises his legal right in line with a previously drawn up agreement, and bought out his late brother’s shares.   Frederick Riley Bancroft’s son Norman, was asked to leave the firm, which had been started by his great-grandfather, and he then went  into business on his own [more about this later]

A year later John Walker Bancroft brought his only son Sydney into the business and when his father died in 1945, Sydney continued running the business . John Walker's obituary in the local newspaper described him as '  a senior partner in the family firm for 54 years, and a member of the Bradford Wool Exchange for over 50 years....he was also a wireless enthusiast and designed and built the first car to be used in Oxenhope in 1900...he lived at Hillcrest in Oxenhope'.

 Documents dating from the period of the second world war show that the mill had moved from producing yarn for weaving and knitting to its war time products of ‘government khaki warp and weft yarn for serge battledress’. Records from this time also show that the steam engine and water wheel of the late-19th century had been replaced by an 80 h.p. diesel engine and water turbine, although a boiler had been retained to provide steam heating. Lighting was now by electricity, from the mill's own supply.

 Sydney had married Maud Riley, and retired from the business in 1957 and then spent much of his time working for several charities and for the community as a local councillor, and eventually became Mayor of Keighley from 1971 to 1972.
He was a lifelong member of Oxenhope Methodist Church and was a steward of the Haworth & Oakworth Methodist Circuit, and also had the unique distinction of being elected an Alderman by the local council, when he was no longer a servicing Councillor. He died in 1984.

Sydney and Maude Bancroft

 As Sydney and his wife Maude had no children to take over the business when he retired, the firm of John Bancroft & Co together with Charles Mill was sold to his cousin Norman, who had had previously had to leave the family firm in 1939 after his father’s death.

Norman Bancroft

Moving back in time again....Norman had been forced out of the Charles Mill business previously in 1939 by way of his Uncle buying his father’s shares and at the time of his death. With the help of many business friends and employees of his former firm, he bought into a business in Keighley called Arthur Ratcliffe & Co at Eagle Mills in Keighley, which had 3000 spindles, and  the firm went from strength to strength as it was wartime and all mills were working flat out producing goods for the war effort. Norman’s business eventually merged with the owners of Ponden Mill near Stanbury, who had 2000 spindles and became Bancroft & Sunderland Ltd and they then bought out his cousin Sydney’s business after his retirement, at Charles Mill in Oxenhope, which at that time was operating 3260 spindles, spinning hosiery, hand knitting and weaving yarn. The group eventually consolidated their business at the three mills, and  ceased production in 1973 at both Ponden Mill and Charles Mill to concentrated its business at Eagle Mill in Keighley.


 Charles Mill was then left unoccupied for many years until it was finally converted into residential use as apartments in the 1980’s, and today is known as Charles Court.
  

A collection of old Bobbins from Charles Mill

 The Bancroft's business at Charles Mill shows an evolution involving rebuilding, expansion and additions, but it always remained a small mill concentrating on just one aspect of the textile manufacturing process….spinning, rather than adding weaving to it's range of operations, as other mills in the area did. It is a demonstration that concentration on just one aspect of textile manufacture could permit the survival of a small firm into the modern age.






 [I am grateful  to Mrs Norma Mackrell and Mrs Dorinda Kinghorn, who are both members of the Bancroft family, for providing some of the information for this article.]

"La maladie de Bradford”….The Woolsorter's Disease

Woolsorters at work

Many of our Bancroft ancestors, who were living in the towns of  West Yorkshire in the 19^th century, earned a living as woolsorters in the textile trade. The skill of the woolsorter was to identified the correct quality of fleece for a specific cloth. This was essential to ensure top quality fabrics and required a high level of skill. The woolsorter worked at a bench incorporating a wire grill on which the fleece was unrolled. Badly soiled parts were discarded, and then the fleece was sorted by sight and touch into wool of the various qualities found in the different parts of each fleeces. It was a highly skilled job requiring a seven year apprenticeship and was a much sort after job, because of the relatively high wage, when compared to other work within the textile industry.

The West Riding of Yorkshire’s phenomenal growth during the 19^th century was founded on the Wool Industry….925 factories employed woolsorters ...a total of about 25,000 individuals ....45,000 in Bradford alone....but this  industry had a dark side….alongside bad working conditions and poverty, a deadly disease awaited some woolsorters. Their job was far from a safe occupation for many…..read on for the full story. 

Many West Yorkshire Mill owners, particularly in Bradford, started producing textile material from the early 19th century, based on new wools from overseas such as alpaca and mohair.  These bales of wool were often contaminated with blood or skin and sometimes contained the anthrax bacillus.  Workers quickly made the link between these wools with  “bronchitis, pneumonia, and so-called blood-poisoning of a peculiar deadly nature which created open sores on the skin and a painful sudden decline in the victim.  Workers who sorted the bales when they arrived in the mill, were most vulnerable to what became known as the “woolsorters’ disease”, or “la maladie de Bradford”, though other cases of people who had do direct contact with the raw wool were recorded, for example a woman, who washed her husband’s contaminated clothes, or a boy who feel asleep on a bale of wool.  Death could result within a day or so, accompanied by terrible pain.

CT Thackrah

In the early part of the nineteenth century the celebrated “father of British occupational medicine”, Charles Turner Thackrah, an acknowledged expert on industrial diseases, noted in 1831 that 'woolsorters are occasionally annoyed with dust from the lime, which in some kinds of wool is employed for separating the fleece from the skin, with no sensible effect is produced on health. There was thus no perceived risk which attended the job of woolsorting'.... at least as far as Thackrah was concerned!...His view of the situation is understandable, bearing in mind that this was the first signs of the troubles ahead for the industry. Thackrah himself was to died two years later in 1833, from tuberculosis, another disease of the lungs.

Over the following twenty years, however, merchants and manufacturers in Bradford began to make far more extensive use of ever-more-readily available imported fleeces, whose long fibres made for a high-quality end product.

The first reported case of the woolsorter’s disease had been officially reported in Bradford in 1834, but it was however much later, when a letter appeared in the Bradford Observer newspaper in 1878 which provoked local correspondence into action, resulting in a campaign for better understanding, when it reported that three woolsorters within a month ‘had died from blood poisoning contracted in the same shed of the same factory’

One of the main suspect raw materials in the mid-nineteenth century was mohair from Turkey. The increase in the scale on which such materials were used in Bradford’s wool trade coincided almost exactly with the supposition amongst operatives that these foreign fleeces were  responsible for causing a peculiarly fatal condition amongst woolsorters. One of the earliest recorded cases came in 1855, when Dr Samuel Lodge Jnr, a local medical practitioner performed an autopsy on a woolsorter who had died following respiratory complaints. Lodge surmised that death was due to the build-up of dust, hair and lime in the lungs, and recommended the use of respirators by the men, and chlorination of the air in order to dissipate and neutralise any disease-causing miasmas. Respirators proved an unpopular items for the workers to use, as many workers were still not convinced that the disease was linked to the wool they were working with, so they just carried on regardless, with sometimes tragic consequences.

Eventually Two Bradford doctors played key roles in researching and removing the disease: Dr J.H. Bell, who established in 1879 that “woolsorters’ disease” was indeed anthrax, and Dr Fritz Eurich.  In his capacity as bacteriologist to the Bradford Anthrax Investigation Board, Dr Eurich spent many years of dangerous work, growing and experimenting on the bacillus.  Dr Bell described the problem as 'a formidable disease, and one which could be fatal to woolsorters, but which could be completely removed by simple means'. In his opinion the poisonous wools were alpaca, mohair, camel hair, perian and east indian materials which are classed as  'dry, dirty, low class wools'. and he initially found a method of killing the anthrax bacteria by firstly exposing the wool to fresh air for 24 hours after unpacking the bales, and then washing or steaming the wool at high temperature,which seemed to render it  safe to start handling. He later modified his views and decided that disinfecting  the fleeces, removing the danger without spoiling the fleece or harming the workers.

Many employers were initially reluctant to bring in changes to working practices, until a report in the British Medical Journal in 1880 reported that in the previous year, woolsorters at one mill in Bradford had gone on strike because their employer had refused to wash the wool before sorting, and another firm had given the excuse of being too busy to wash it. When it's workers had refused to handle it they were replaced and within a few days three out of the twenty replacement sorters were dead. It was also reported that at another mill three out of nine sorters died within a month.

An insight into the working conditions for woolsorters was given at an inquest on 19th June 1884 at Bradford into the death from woolsorter's disease of an employee of Mitchell Brothers Mill in Bowling, Bradford. When questioned, Mr A Mitchell, the owners, stated that in his sorting room, 
'fourty sorters worked with a working space of twelve feet per man. The carrying out of the regulation of sweeping the room daily was left to the men, as the firm thought it was best to do so, but some of the men did not comply with this regulation. There was also no need for sorters to take their meals in the room, as other accommodation was provided....and hot and cold water was provided for washing purpose. The firm employed two hundred and seventy sorters on average, and had lost seven men from all causes in the last four years, four of them from woolsorters disease.'

Factory Notice - Inquest Recommendations

The recommendations from the inquest were as follows:
1- The floor of the sorting room should be sprinkled and swept daily, after the work is finished and not while any sorters are in the room.
2- The walls should be whitewashed half yearly and disinfected once a year.
3- Dust from the wool should be extracted by fans in all sorting rooms, and must not be discharged into open air but into properly constructed boxes. 
4- Each sorting board should have independently constructed with an extractor shaft in order that the dust arising from the material be drawn downwards, away from the sorter.
5- The dust collected, must be burned twice a week.
6- Floor sweepings, dead skin, scabs and clippings etc must be removed from the sorting room daily and disinfected before being dealt with.
7- A separate room should be provided for woolsorter's coats, and no meals should be taken into the sorting room.
  
 Clearly this situation of so many workers dying of this disease could not be allowed to continue, and the consequences that  the disease could have for mill owners and their employees led to a set of regulations known as the Bradford Rules had been drawn up, which largely followed the recommendations of the inquest earlier that year, and from this time, local employers adhered voluntarily to the measures that centred upon practical safety measures. The rules were viewed to be of such importance that they were later adopted nationally. Today the threat of industrial anthrax is minimal in this country.

To finish the article, here is a short verse, written in a publication called 'The Yorkshirmen' in March 1878...probably by a woolsorter.

' Woolsorter's Lay'

Yes, they all mean us well, it is plain  
And we've all got to work for our gain  
And we've all got to risk getting slain
But we hope for a day, and not far away
When our work can be done with less risk and pain

An 1880's cartoon depicting death from woolsorter's disease

The disappearance of John Hiram Bancroft

Marriage Certificate John Hiram Bancroft & Rhoda Blakey

 Here is a rather intriguing story about a Bancroft individual , born and brought up in Leeds, Yorkshire, who suddenly disappeared, leaving his wife at home…. then turned up in South Africa…. then changed his name to cover his tracks and start a new life....then remarried, probably bigamously....and then going on to father a family of ten children!

Our story starts with John Hiram Bancroft who was the son of Joseph, a night watchman in a foundry, and Sarah [nee Briggs], and was one of their 9 children. He was born in Bramley near Leeds on 11^th December 1856

John married Rhoda Blakey , the daughter of William Blakey, a tailor from Lower Wortley, Leeds on 5^th October 1878 at the Parish Church in Leeds and on the marriage certificate was described as a ‘Hammer Man’ which was a hard manual job carried out in an iron foundry

The census of 1881 shows him and Rhoda living at Prince Street, Lower Wortley, Leeds and lists him as a 'Forgeman'. The couple were still in the same area in the following census of 1891, but were now living at Lower Wortley Road with Rhoda’s parents and still without any sign of children. By the time of the 1901 census however he had vanished. On the census of that year Rhoda had a choice of entering either single/married/widowed or divorced on the census form. She chose to enter ‘married’, and then crossed it out, as if she did not know what her status was…or maybe because she did not know where her husband had disappeared to!

His disappearance may, or may not, have something to do with an incident reported in the Leeds Times newspaper on 22nd July 1893, at a time when John Hiram was employed as the porter at Bramley Workhouse, near Leeds, with his wife Rhoda helping him to supervise. An inmate of the workhouse, called Thomas Walker, died through loss of blood from an ulcerated leg, after climbing back over the workhouse wall to get in, after having made an unreported and unsupervised visit to a local public house to fetch beer back. John Hiram was  the porter left in charge at the time, because the workhouse manager and other staff had gone out for the afternoon to a nearby park. At the inquest into this death he was questioned about the incident, after having found the inmate bleeding badly in a mistal within the workshop grounds. He said he took the inmate to the workhouse hospital and started to undress him, but within 10 minutes the inmate was dead. When questioned as to why he had not tried to stop the bleeding he stated " It's nothing to do with me...I know nothing of these things" and when the coroner told him he ought to have done something for the sake of humanity, his reply was " It's nothing in my line". The coroner in his summing up said " there was a total lack of prudence on the part of the porter, [John Hiram Bancroft], who's duties were certainly not to drag the man from the mistal to the hospital, and so accelerate death...he should have obtained medical treatment on the spot!...he seems to have regarded the matter very indifferently indeed!" The jury at the inquest reinforced this statement by expressing their opinion that the management of the workhouse " was not what it should be"

[ Life for any poor individual who had to live in a workhouse was extremely grim, and was meant to be so because the authorities generally tried to make sure that only the most needy were accommodated in a workhouse for as short a time as possible, and anyone who could exist in the outside world was encouraged to do so. I wrote an article about life in the Keighley workhouse which can be read by clicking here.]

Rhoda, his wife, did not have any children to her marriage to John Hiram, and never remarried, and continued to live in Leeds until her death age 84 years in 1938.

There is some conjecture about how and when John Hiram arrived in South Africa. I did wonder if he got there as soldiers in the Boer War, and then stayed on after the war finished, but no records have been found to substantiate this and in any case it fairly certain that his family would have made a big thing of this if it had been true. The story told down the family generations is that he came from Ireland to help with the building of the first railway in South Africa, but this may well have been just another tale invented by him to throw the authorities off the scent of the past he had left behind in England. It is also possible that he just stowed-away illegally on a ship. We do know however that his marriage to Rosabella Kelly is officially recorded as 25^th May1897. His name on the record is given as William John Bancroft at that time, but the actual record clearly shows that it was first written as John Bancroft, with the 'William' being added later. Was this the first stage of him changing his name slightly to throw anyone off the scent, if he was marrying bigamously?  His wife’s name was given as Rosabella Kelly…without the Catherine name.

The birth records of their first child also make interesting reading as it predated the marriage. This entry about the birth of their son, John Joseph Bancroft, where the parents are given as (once again) John Bancroft (no mention of William) and Rosabella Kelly. The birth-date of the child, John Joseph, is given as 11^th November1896. The baptism took place a little more than 6 months later, on 24^th May1897. Interesting  the remark in the baptismal register (in Latin), is that the child was born illegitimate but was made legitimate by the subsequent marriage of John (William) and Rosabella the following day!

The couple went on to have ten children in total….one of being named ‘Hiram’ which is another clue confirming the fact that John Hiram and William John are one and the same person.

John seems to have spent certainly the latter part of his working life with the Railway Company, as a ‘Ganger’ and when he retired in January 1924, the following internal letters are on file regarding this.

Retirement Letters

He died on 5^th August 1926 at his home 1 Paradise Row, Grahamstown, Albany, Cape, leaving his wife and eight surviving children. His will, signed in Grahamstown on 24^th August 1918, was filed on 24^th August 1926 in the name of William John Bancroft which states that he left all his entire estate to his wife, Catherine Rosabella, and his estate was lists as follows:

Immovable Property valued at £230

Furniture valued at £100

Cash amounting to £1-19-00

Claims owing to the estate £124-17-10

Shown below is a copy of the South African death certificate, in the name of William John, and describing him as a Railway Pensioner. It lists his parents as Joseph and Sarah [born Briggs] which finally confirms the origins and identity of William John as John Hiram Bancroft

No photograph seems to exist for William John Bancroft or his wife, but with regards to Catherine Rosabella, her death notice states that she died on 9 Dec 1947 at the age of 71 years 6 months which gives her a birth date of June 1876. This gives her an age of 20years 11 months when she got married and not 23years as stated on the original marriage record. She was actually 19years 2 months old when their first child was born…..was she therefore underage at the time of her marriage?....which is probably another story!

If anyone knows anything about John Hiram Bancroft, [also known as William John Bancroft in South Africa], which might help to solve this mystery of why he suddenly disappeared from England, please leave a comment in the section on the bottom left of this page and I will reply.

Three Generations of Bancroft Druggists from Halifax

Sailing into New York

Here is the story of James Bancroft and his family..... and his interesting live before he emigrated to the US, together and his eventual return to the town of his birth....Halifax.

James was born in the Southowram area of Halifax around the late 1790's. It is difficult to research exactly who his parents were, but there is a possibility that he was the illegitimate son of a Sarah Bancroft from Warley, near Halifax and was baptised at the parish church in Sowerby Bridge near Halifax on 19th February 1797.  The earliest census records of 1841 show him as a married man with four children and a wife Mary, listed as a ‘porter’, and living at the Halifax Infirmary and Dispensary with fourteen other members of staff.

His job, listed as ‘porter’ on early records, was what I suspect was we would call today a person who made up compounds for patients and dispensed medicines, and must have been a very interesting and sometimes difficult job, as can be seen by the following entry in the local newspaper of 29^th December 1838.

‘Inquest before George Dyson Esq.

At the Infirmary on Friday evening, the body of Joseph Hilton of Senior Fold, a shopkeeper of age 46, was found. Death was from taking Prussic Acid. The deceased was not a patient there, but had called, as was usual for him, to see Mr. Bancroft, the Porter to the Infirmary. When having been left alone for a few minutes, he took the opportunity of trying the effect of the deadly draft and died almost immediately. The deceased was a socialist and atheist and the verdict was Temporary Derangement’

More detailed information about James and the details of his work are explained in the following articles written in the Halifax Reporter Newspaper on 25^th April 1844, which explains the circumstances of his emigration to Illinois in the US with his family in 1844.

‘Mr James Bancroft, for twenty years laboratorian and compounder of medicines at the Halifax General Hospital, left the town this week, with the intention of taking his departure with eight other persons for America. He and his companions, members we believe of an emigration society established some years a go in Halifax, go to settle themselves upon a tract of country purchased by them in Illinois, to which others of the society had gone before. Mr Bancroft has given up his situation against the urgent entreaties and wishes of the medical officers and friends of the Infirmary, from whom he received a flattering testimonial as to his meritorious services to the institution. At a meeting of the Board, the following resolution was passed:-

That in consideration of the long and faithful service of James Bancroft, the Board cannot allow him to leave the town without the expression of their good wishes for his future welfare, and placing in his hand a gratuity of 20/- as some little token of their sense of his exemplary conduct and usefulness as a servant of this institution.These circumstances reflect humour on all the parties concerned, and such kindness will doubtless afford to the deserving object of it “Pleasure of memory” in his new home and in other years.’

Waggons Ho!

As is mentioned in the newspaper story, James was a member of an Emigration Society which was a popular arrangement in the 19^th century in England, where groups of residents, particularly those from a farming background, pooled there resources to buy land in areas of the US which were being opened up to settlement. The US government at the time were putting out promotional literature to try and increase immigration from Europe, which was mainly from England, Germany, and in particular Ireland because of their potato famine, with tempting statements such as:
'The land is rich natural meadow, bounded by timbered land, within reach of two navigable rivers, and may be rendered immediately productive at a small expense. The successful cultivation of several prairies has awakened the attention of the public, and the value of this description of land is now known; so that the smaller portions, which are surrounded by timber, will probably be settled so rapidly as to absorb, in a few months, all that is to be obtained at the government rate, of two dollars per acre...'

We can see from the newspaper details that James was following in the footsteps of other local Halifax families, and also his eldest son William who had already emigrated to the US two years earlier, to start a new life. James and the other members of his family, together with the wider group of the Emigration Society sailed from Liverpool on a ship called the ‘Patrick Henry’ and landed in New York on 27^th May 1844.

The Patrick Henry

 Interestingly, all the family were shown as having jobs, which I suspect did not tell the true story for some reason….possibly because members of the family were required to have a certain types of employment to gain entry to the US at that time?...James was listed as a weaver rather than chemist or druggist, his wife and daughter as dressmakers, and his two sons as tailors.

The voyage must have been a harrowing experience for James and his family, taking on average 32 days in less than comfortable surroundings. Here are some diary notes made by a fellow traveller on the same ship during a similar transatlantic voyage.

‘After a rough and disagreeable passage of 28 days, we had 16 days head wind, and three heavy gales. I was very sea sick;

Forward are two hatches for cargo with the ship's boat on top. Around the boat stand our future meals---a milk cow, pigs, ducks, hens and sheep!  In the centre section, if there is no fine freight, huddle steerage passengers. It is not a happy sight to look down on them because there, crowded in a common dormitory for 38 days, each cooks his fast dwindling supply of food. If our ship has one bath, it is in the cabin section. The steerage passengers' bath at best may be a bucket of icy seawater, dashed over them on deck. Perhaps the plague breaks out and no Doctor is on board. The ship's Captain does what he can but that is little.’

When James and his family arrived in the US they made their way, with a journey of nearly 1000 miles, to Racine County, Wisconsin after having purchased land for a farm in Dover Township. This Township was known as ‘English Settlement’ because of the twenty-five or so families who settled there in the 1840’s

There were plenty of reasons, public and personal, that caused people to immigrate to Illinois. In England in the eighteenth century, for example, farms were consolidating to grow in size and become more commercially viable. This left small farms with tenant farmers at an economic disadvantage. It also created a large sector of landless hired workers who had no future as landowners. In addition, the inheritance laws of England, which left property only to eldest sons, left many younger siblings without hope of land ownership, and although James was not from a farming background he possibly wanted to make sure his children had some land to settle on and raise a family.

The Federal Land Grant Law of 1851 granted 2.5 million acres of Illinois public land to the new Illinois Central Railroad. The land ran along the planned route of the I.C. Railroad from Chicago to Cairo, a distance of 700 miles. The railroad could sell acreage after the other federal land in an area had been sold. From the sales of these lands, the railroad financed its lines. In turn, the farmers hired the railroad to ship its commodities to market. Land where it is known a railroad will locate was a strong attraction to prospective buyers. Shown below is an advert put out by the Railroad Company to entice people to settle in the area.

Railroad Company Advert

The open lands available for settlement in the United States, particularly areas such as the newly opened Illinois prairie, appeared as a great opportunity for these small farmers and labourers. They would be able to become entrepreneurs and create their own farms in a short time.

However it seems that James, his wife Mary and youngest son Anthony returned to the UK within a few years because Mary become homesick. The rest of their children had by then married locally and moved to their own farms, leaving James and Mary with just Anthony to help run their farm, and a particularly bad winter one year, must have made England look very good to them. One can only imagine what a wrench it must have been for James & Mary to return to the UK, leaving their other children there, probably never to be seen again.

By 1851 they and was now back in the UK, living at 4 Barnum Top Halifax, and James is now described as a ‘Druggist’ on the census of that year. His son Anthony, age 26 years, is still living with his parents, and he has the same occupation.


James’s occupation as a druggist, sometimes carried a heavy responsibility with it, as can be read from a local newspaper story reported on in 1853, when an inquest on a Dr Alfred Wainhouse decided he committed suicide, after purchasing 2 ounce of  ‘tincture of opium’, also known as ‘laudanum’ from James’s Druggist Shop. The man bought the medicine and having taken the full amount, went to bed and died the following day. No blame was apportioned to James as he had quite legally sold the drug, which was commonly administered at the time without prescription, and was a mixture of 10% morphine and 90% alcohol, and was used as a remedy for pain and sleeplessness.
 

James must have become rather a prominent person in Halifax, because the local newspaper of March 1851 reports on the appointment of the panel of local people who's responsibility it was to oversee and elect the officers, such as Church Wardens to St John's Parish Church in Halifax and James is shown as a member  of the panel. A year later in March 1852, his name appears again in the newspaper as a one of eight local people appointed as Assessors for the Auditors of the Town...James being responsible for the North constituency for a period of one year.

As members of the Halifax and Huddersfield Union Bank, both James and his son Anthony were listed between 1860-1864 as 'persons of whom the Company considers' ...James is described as a 'Gentleman' and Anthony as a 'Druggist'.

James wife Mary, died in September 1851, and by the time of the next census in 1861 he is now living with his daughter Mary and her husband William Smythies at 269 Hirst Mill, near Huddersfield and is described as a ‘Independent Gentleman’

I am unsure exactly when James died, but it would have been sometime in the 1860's. His son, Anthony carried on with the family business of being a Chemist and Druggist, and ran the business from premises in Harrison Road Halifax. He unfortunately had a brush with the authorities in 1875 when the local newspaper reported that he was fined £2-10s for ‘deficiencies in his weighing scales with 5 deficient weights’

 After Anthony’s death in 1876, his son James [Jnr] was listed as a ‘Pharmaceutical Chemist Manufacturer’ from the same premises with his widowed mother and sister living with him. His mother Sarah is listed in the occupation section as ‘Freehold Property’ which presumably denoted that she did not work, and had private means at the relatively young age of 47 years.

James [Jnr] has a very interesting story. He continued to live at 35 Harrison Road in Halifax with his widowed mother and unmarried sisters, and was described as a ‘Pharmaceutical Chemist Manufacturer’. By 1891, at the age of only 33 years he is now listed as a ‘Retired Pharmaceutical Chemist’, and his mother and two sisters are all shown as ‘living on their own means’….the question which has to be asked is….how did the family manage to be so affluent, with the main breadwinner James still only 33 years old?....there is no evidence of James having to work again so did they sell a flourishing business?.... did he come into an inheritance such as some property?....or did James invent some sort of wonder drug? James eventually moved to the Midlands, married  a Martha Johnson in 1907 in Alcester Warwickshire and lived for the rest of his life in a large house called ‘Rooklands’ at Headless Cross, Redditch until his death at the age of 66 years on 21^st March 1924

William Bancroft and the North Bridge Cotton Mill

Burnley...a Cotton Mill Town

 Most of the Bancroft individuals who originate from the West Riding of Yorkshire, and who were involved in the textile industry, were workers in wool, either as weavers, combers or spinners.….but here’s the story of one individual who moved a few miles over the border to Burnley, Lancashire and eventually became a Mill Owner and Cotton Manufacturer of quite a large enterprise…..North Bridge Mill in Burnley.

COTTON weaving and spinning was Burnley's staple industry for almost 200 years.
Without cotton, Burnley as we know it, may never have existed, and in it's heyday it became the cotton manufacturing  capital of the world. Over 140 mills once operated in the town, and at the peak of the cotton industry in 1929, 63 per cent of the town's working population worked in some capacity at one of the mills in the town.

Husbands, wives, sons and daughters often worked together at the looms, although children under nine were forbidden to work under an Act of 1833. The mill owners got round that by hiding the under-aged in sacks, should word get around that an inspector was on tour in the area!

By 1875 the hours of work for the mill and factory workers were reduced to 56 a week, and at the turn of the 19th century, the mill engine was stopped on Saturday lunchtime. The 45-hour week was introduced in 1945.

And so here is the Bancroft  connection to this story.....William Bancroft was born on 19^th April 1823 in the Keighley Parish area, known as Ponden, near the village of Stanbury and was baptised on 22^nd July of that year at Haworth Parish Church, which was geographically nearer to where the family lived than the Keighley Parish Church. His parents were Abraham and Hannah [ne: Mitchell] Bancroft and he was one of seven children.

Life must have been hard for the young William, as his mother Hannah died in 1834, aged only thirty-one years old, when he was only eleven years old.

The 1841 census shows his father Abraham, as a stuff weaver, widowed and having to look after his children and living at Back Lane Stanbury near Haworth. [Stuff weaving was a common Cottage Industry in these times which produced a course cloth made from long or combed wool, and unlike higher quality cloth, had no pile or nap. It was common practice for cloth merchants in the area to provide the raw material of combed wool to many families in their home, so that they could then produce this course cloth on their hand-looms. The merchants would then call back later and collect the finished cloth to sell at the nearest cloth market in either Bradford or Halifax]

The young William  was shown as working in a worsted factory at the time of the 1841 census. Within a year his father Abraham had also died , aged about 42 years,leaving the remaining family of now only four children to fend for themselves....three of the siblings having  died at an early age.

By the time of the 1851 census, the remaining family of four siblings had all split up. Two of his sisters, Nancy and Mary Ann were living with an Uncle, their mother's brother James Mitchell, who took them under his wing. He was obviously a man of means because he owned the Oakworth Mill employing over 1000 people. William's younger brother James, turns up as a scholar at a private school in Scarborough....possibly paid for by Uncle James Mitchell? William himself had made the move over the border, about 10 miles away, and made major strides in his employment. He is now listed as a single man in lodgings at Fenkin Street, Burnley, and at the age of 27 years is described as a ‘Manager in a Cotton Mill’

William went on to married Mary Clarkson from Todmorden, near Halifax at St. Peters Church, Burnley early in 1857.  Their first child, a son Thomas, was born the following year but sadly he died in 1861, when he was three years old. The census of that year shows the married couple living on their own at 14 Ashworth Street, Burnley with William’s occupation still being shown as a ‘Manager in a Cotton Mill’.

Their second child, a daughter, Lucilla, was born in 1863 but sadly she also died in infancy the following year aged only 14 months and was buried in April 1864. Then just to add further tragedy to this story, William's wife Mary also died, less than a month after her baby daughter, at the young age of 29 years and was buried in the same grave on 1^st May 1864.

Palatine Square circa 1900

William was therefore left a childless widower at the age of 39.  By 1871 he had become a cotton manufacturer in a small way at North Bridge Mill, where he employed 67 people.  He was then living in Hallwell Street with 27 year old Elizabeth Speak from Barrowford as his housekeeper.  She was still with him when he moved to the more upmarket and fashionable area of Palatine Square in the 1870s and they married in 1882. Eventually they moved again, this time to 175 Colne Road, where William at last settled.  He was still living there with Elizabeth when he died on 6^th January 1905 at the age of 81 and was buried at Burnley Cemetery.

His obituary in the local newspaper was as follows:
'We regret to announce the death of Mr William Bancroft, which took place early yesterday morning at his residence of 175 Colne Road. No one will be surprised at this, when they consider that he arrived at the ripe old age of 81 years. He was a man who had been well known and highly respected for more than half a century. Formally, and until reaching old age, he was a cotton manufacturer. He was a trusted executor of the late William Halstead, and had handled the administration of his estate, which involved a great deal of characteristic enterprise. No one who knew Mr Bancroft, would have the slightest misgivings as to his ability and honour. Faithfulness characterised his conduct. He had been associated with the Colne Road Wesleyan Chapel, and was a trustee for probably at least 25 years.He was always kindly, and received kindness from all quarters. With his death, there is removed from Burnley one of it's oldest citizens. He is survived by his wife.'

 His wife Elizabeth, died on the 17^th August 1907.

The mill, which is still situated in Elm St. Burnley, was originally owned by John Hurtley and Son - cotton spinners and manufacturers, who were operating from this mill from around 1868 to 1879. From this date it's name changed to William Bancroft and Co. Ltd., cotton manufacturers, and continued to operating at the mill under that name till about 1923, even though William had long since ceased to have any involvment with the business.At it's hight the mill was shown to be operating 228 looms. From about 1912, the mill building was shown as  'New Hall Mill' on all the maps of the area in addition to a second New Hall Mill further up Elm Street. In the mid 1940s, John Walton and Son Ltd., cotton manufacturers were operating at the mill.

North Bridge Mill

  The mill is now part of the North Bridge complex, a group of small commercial units.  North Bridge Mill consisted of a three storied sandstone spinning mill, with a smaller four storied apex section.  Modern additions are to the rear, with a small weaving shed and warehousing on the Daneshouse Road side.

The Bancrofts and the Denholme Independent Chapel

Denholme Shared Church...[formally Independent Chapel]

 I wrote an article about St Paul’s Church in Denholme some time ago about it having  to close due to extensive dry rot being found in the building, which can be read by clicking here. After the closure of their building, St. Paul’s Church continued to meet in the temporary premises of the Mechanics Institute until the Bradford Diocese purchased a property on Longhouse Lane, which was the former doctors’ surgery.  Despite its limitations, the building was adapted as a church and the congregation continued to worship there until August 2008 when a decision was made to join the other churches in Denholme and rename the Independent Chapel 'The Denholme Shared Church.'

Many Bancroft individuals were involved with the running of the Independent Chapel, with it's social and religious matters and most of them are descendants of Thomas [b circa 1810] and Pricilla Bancroft ,who came over to Denholme from the Hebden Bridge area sometime in the late 1830’s. Thomas was listed as a ‘Bookeeper’ in the 1841 census, and was drawn by employment to the  local business of 'W & H Fosters', who ran the local mill, which was expanding rapidly at that time, and was the main employer in the area.

A clue to Thomas's sense of public duty , and that of his employers the Fosters, can be found in an article in the Bradford Observer newspaper dated 14th November 1849:

 'A New Mechanics Institute....and institution of the above description has been formed by Messrs W and H Foster, manufacturers of Denholme,. These gentleman with there customary liberality have generously given the use of a room, fitted it up and lighted it with gas. There are already upward of 40 members. Messrs Eli and Benjamin Foster, sons of the senior partners, have kindly volunteered their services as teachers, as has Mr Thomas Bancroft, bookkeeper to the above firm. All these men connected with the above work are all equally industrious in promoting the success of the institution, which it is hoped will meet with every encouragement.'
It seems hard to understand today, the purpose of Mechanics Institutes, but many such establishments were set up in the 19th century to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects to working men. They were usually founded by local industrialists to provide ultimate benefit to their business by having a workforce which was more knowledgeable and skilled. The Institutes were also used as libraries for the adult working class , and helped provide an alternative pastime to illegal gambling and drinking in public houses.

  The skill of being a bookkeeper seems to have been passed down the family, because his eldest son, Thomas [Jnr] [1836-1911] also gives this as his occupation together with the similar job as ‘Mill Cashier’ at Foster’s Mill. I think that Thomas [Jnr] must have been a rather modest man when it came to describing his job on the census records, judging by his home, his standing in the local community and the family monument which still dominates the graveyard due to it’s height. I suspect that Thomas was probably one of the more important members of the management at Foster’s Mill, and today would be know as the 'company accountant'.

Thomas [Jnr] married Hannah Whalley in 1857 and they went on to have thirteen children, of which only six survived into adulthood. They initially lived in an area called ‘New Road Side’ in Denholme when they first started married life, but by the  1860’s, when Thomas’s situation had  improved, they had moved to a large house in Denholme called ‘ Maine Villas’, which he had built around 1859 for himself and his family, and he stayed there for the rest of his life. After his death, the house was sold to the local council, and because of it's size and position in the middle of the village, the council then ran it as their offices for many years.

Maine Villas

Thomas and Hannah must have had great sadness in their lives, as seven of their children died as infants, as the grave monument lays testament to:

Hephzibah died 1853 age 4 months

Jemima died 1862 age 2 years

Tirzah died 1865 age 9 months

Jeddidah died 1870 age 2 years

Mary died 1871 age 1 day

Ferdinand died 1874 age 9 months

Pricilla died 1875 age 4 years.

 

They obviously had strong religious principals in the family, as can be seen by the christian names of some of their children….Hephzibah, Tirzah, Jeddidah, Othneil and Shealtiel are all names with strong Hebrew and Biblical connections, and indeed Thomas must have been a well known and respected member of the Chapel, as the following plaque denotes.

 

Looking at the Chapel records, curiously the first listing of Thomas with his wife and two sons as a full member of the Chapel is in 1879, although it likely that his involvement will have been much earlier, from the 1850’s when his children started to arrive, and sadly were buried in the graveyard.  He is also listed in the church records on many occasions as the person who officiated at the many funerals between 1880 to 1894, probably in the role that  was know as ‘Deacon’ at the time, and he is also mentioned in the Church’s 50^th Anniversary booklet

Chapel Members Book

The family monument in the small graveyard is impressive, much taller than anything else on site, and it's construction was only made possible because Thomas bought five adjacent plots and had them turned into one large plot…..which is another clue to the status Thomas must have had in the village.

After Hannah’s death in 1898, Thomas remarried Mary Jane Britain, a lady 20 years younger than himself in 1900, and when Thomas died in 1911, she went to live in Morecambe, Lancashire, where she died in 1916.

Thomas, like his father,  was obviously also a man who felt that public service to the local community was an important duty, because he was at one period a Local Councillor, elected in 1874. He was also appointed to the Denholme School Board, together with his employer, the mill owner Mr. WH Foster and another local businessman, Mr Jonathan Knowles. All three men were elected as 'Churchmen' on the School  Board....William for his involvement with the Independent Chapel, and Messrs Forster & Knowles, with their involvement with the other church in the village, St Paul's.

Thomas and Hannah must have put great store in a good education for their children because all their surviving sons went on to have good careers.

Shealtiel  and Thomas Vivian were both clerks in Fosters Mill, possibly taking over from their father at some point....making that three generations of the family doing the same job.

Ernest was the Railway Station Master in nearby Cullingworth.

Othniel eventually became the Principal Clerk for Customs and Excise in Lancaster.

Hugh Victor was a Bank Accountant.

Workers at Foster's Mill

Like many other villages in the West Riding, Denholme saw a big increase in population in the 1800’s.  People like Thomas Bancroft [Snr] would have been attracted to the area for employment, because of the establishment of a textile mill build by the Foster family, and others came because of  the many new jobs created with the building of local reservoirs and the new railway. Foster's Mill was first built in 1838, but was blown down during a storm the following year. It was then rebuilt in 1840 but suffered a fire in 1857 and was again rebuilt in 1858. It then continued in the hands of the Foster family until 1969 when Fosters sold the premises.  Many workers seeking employment, settled in the housing built by the mill owners and Foster's Mill was the largest employer in the area, as can be seen from the above picture of village workers making their way to the mill for the morning shift which start at 5.30am. I wrote a story about one of these young workers, a boy called Tom Bancroft, who describes his first day at Foster's Mill at the tender age of 11 years, which can be read by clicking here.

 Many of the new arrivals in the village had belonged to a church or chapel in the area in which they had previously lived and they brought with them a desire to continue worshipping at their chosen denomination.

Date Stone

A date stone of 1844 is built into the boundary wall of the Chapel graveyard but the founding group were meeting earlier than this and from 1838 they worshipped at the Old School, a building used, from time to time, by all denominations. The Reverend James Gregory, a minister at Kipping Chapel in nearby Thornton, supported the Chapel’s founding. Students from Airedale College also helped. Whilst a Congregational foundation, they chose to be called Independent and the members of the Church who helped to build the Church, called themselves the Independent Group of Workers. Some of the folk who settled in Denholme belonged to the congregational movement and they originally travelled to Kipping Chapel in Thornton to worship. However that must have seemed a long way for them to walk, and they started meeting in rooms borrowed from the Methodists in the Sunday School at Lodge Gate.  In February 1843 a Denholme Congregational Chapel was founded with a membership list of 9 people.  Revd James Gregory  was involved in the setting up of the chapel and led the first service at Denholme.  An appeal was started for a building, and enough money was raised so that in 1844 the foundation stone, shown above, was laid.  The cost of the land purchased was just £100 and the building itself finished and opened on the 11^th May 1845 at a cost of £1000.  The costs were greatly reduced due to the labours of the congregation, who worked in the mill during the day and laboured on the building during their spare time.  These chapel folk were know as the ‘Independents’ a name which was frequently given to the Congregationalists because they were free from the established church, they governed themselves independently.  Hence the name 'Independent Chapel'.  Things seemed initially to be going well, however by the 1860’s the Chapel were floundering and Mr John Hill a lay pastor from Allerton came over to preach and help the with improving things in 1868.  The congregation were greatly encouraged by his presence and in 1869 numbers had grown again and a Sunday School was built at a cost of £100. [the picture below shows the Sunday School alongside the Chapel, shortly before it’s demolition.]

The Sunday School....shortly before demolition

  The Jubilee Booklet in 1894 however records number of scholars down to 157, but things much have been going well for the chapel building was extended in 1896. In 1948 dry rot was discovered in the timbers of the roof and after extensive repairs it was re-opened with a dedication service on the 23^rd March 1951.  In 1972 the Congregational Churches voted to create a new denomination called the United Reformed Church, so the building became Denholme United Reformed Church. In 1986 Denholme URC were approached by the Baptist Church members asking if they would consider the two churches joining together.   On the 12^th of October 1986 the first joint service was held in the URC building, and subsequently the two churches went on to become 'Denholme Edge Church', a new name for a new partnership between the URC and Baptists. In 1989 the building was extensively refurbished, the pews removed and the floor levelled.  The old Sunday School building was demolished and a new meeting room, toilets and a kitchen added to the chapel building.  This was at a cost of over £100,000 raised from grants, monies given from the sale of the Baptist Chapel, and funds raised by the congregation.

Change came again, when in 2008 the congregation of St Paul’s had been fully installed and the Church changed it’s name again to what is it know as today…’The Denholme Shared Church’. At this time, whilst most of the fixtures and fittings at St Paul’s were removed and sold off, two splendid stained glass windows from St Paul’s were restored and installed in the Denholme Shared Church. They  illustrate ‘Joshua, Captain of Israel’ and Christ, Calming the Storm.

Joshua, Captain of Israel

 

Christ, Calming the Storm

 Today the Church has a relatively modern look inside…..gone are the rows of pews, replaced by new loose seating, and all look towards the magnificent organ as can be seen from the following photographs.

 

Around the Church interior are various other items which denote the involvement of many Bancroft individuals from this family......here are just a few:

To finish off this article, here's an amusing little story about Victor Bancroft, commemorated on the above plaque, who was one of Thomas's sons, and was also involved with the Independent Chapel. Between the two world wars, Victor used to put on a magic lantern show in the various churches and chapels in the area.  On one occasion, he was giving a slide presentation at nearby St Paul's Church using his large brass adorned projector to show his collection of coloured glass images, usually of a religious nature. The images were  projected onto a screen  which was lowered by a rope and pulley in front of the chancel arch. On one occasion someone let go of the rope, and the screen fell into position with a crash, striking the vicar on the head in the process!