Old shoe used to keep away bad luck in't Mill

 

As many of our Bancroft ancestors will know, many of men, women and sometimes children were textile workers, working long and poorly paid hours in local mills from the mid 19^th century when mechanisation in the industry took hold from home working.

Here's an interesting story from the Telegraph & Argus newspaper [T & A] about a find in Dalton Mills in Keighley, West Yorkshire about life working in the mill....not sure that any of our Bancrofts were involved in this old tradition!

[I acknowledge that most of this information came from the Telegraph & Argus Newspaper]

'From out of a void between two floors at Dalton Mills, Keighley, emerged a woman’s shoe, possibly having lain untouched for more than 120 years.

'It could be a product of the ancient Yorkshire superstition that by secreting away a shoe in the bowels of a building, it kept the devil and bad luck at bay or warded off witchcraft.

Women particularly believed that a walled-up worn shoe prevented evil being put on them.'

'The shoe is likely to have been placed between the floorboards soon after the mill was constructed in the 1870s.

It was rescued by joiner David Dunbar and his colleague Mark Briant, who are among the team working to transform the mill into homes and business units.

Covered in dust, the brown leather, side-buttoned left shoe is a size three or four.

It was already well worn when its last owner disposed of it. Two of the buttons are missing, including the top one, and the former mill worker had been forced to use the third to fasten it tightly.

She had also soled and heeled it on a number of occasions.

Mr Dunbar told the T&A: “You can almost picture the person who wore it. Someone like those women you see on film footage from the turn of the last century flooding out of the mills in their shawls and ankle length skirts.

“She probably worked for very little wages, had three or four kids at home where she stood the chance of getting a good hiding from her husband when he rolled home drunk from the pub.

“Finding her shoe like this I think brings those times back to life again very vividly.”

Mr Briant added: “I reached into the void to remove what I thought was some paper and pulled the shoe out. I tried to find another and reached further in but I couldn’t find anything.'

Both hoped the shoe could be preserved and perhaps put on display at Cliffe Castle Museum, in Keighley.

They handed it over at the museum to Liz McIvor, Bradford council’s museums officer for social history.

They handed it over at the museum to Liz McIvor, Bradford council’s museums officer for social history.

She said it would be scrutinised by the acquisitions group to decide whether it was worthy of being included in the collection, but because of its history and links with the old and new Dalton Mills, it had a very good chance of being accepted.

And she confirmed that it was likely to have been placed there as a spell breaker.

“It is a very ancient folk tradition to place a shoe in a wall to ward off evil spirits or a curse, “ she explained.

“It is a fascinating find and is interesting not just because it is an example of what working women wore then, but of what it tells us about the person and about the times, “ she continued.

“It has been soled and heeled a number of times and the owner has slashed the leather upper at the side to make it more comfortable.

“This was a common thing to do at the time because feet can swell when someone is standing all day.”

Cliffe Castle conservator Dale Keaton who has a special interest in the history and development of shoes, said by its design, particularly of the heel, it was a shoe of the late 19th century.