SHEERNESS (1860) — Encyclopaedia Britannica Historical Editions

SHEERNESS

Volume 20 · 4,582 words · 1860 Edition

a seaport and market-town of England, in the county of Kent, on the north-west corner of the Island of Sheppey, at the confluence of the Medway with the Thames, 20 miles N.N.E. of Maidstone, and 47 E. by S. of London. It consists of three parts, Sheerness proper, Bluetown, and Miletown; the first contains the dockyards and fortresses, and this, as well as the second, is encircled by fortifications, beyond which lies the suburb called Miletown. The town has been much improved, especially within recent years, and now contains several handsome streets, with good brick houses. The dockyard and buildings connected with it occupy an area of 60 acres, enclosed by a brick wall. Here there are all the establishments necessary for the building, repairing, and equipment of ships. There is a basin or wet-dock 520 feet by 300, covering an area of 3½ acres; two others of smaller size; three dry docks, each 248 feet by 88; sheers for lifting masts, 127 feet high; a building slip; store-houses, joiners' and smiths' shops; residences for the commander-in-chief; and various other offices; besides an ordnance-office, and heavy batteries of 100 guns. The dockyard is built on piles; and since 1815 about 3,000,000 sterling have been laid out upon its improvement. Near the dock-gates stands a large and handsome chapel, attached to the garrison; and in the town is a Gothic district church, belonging to the parish of Minster. The other places of worship belong to the Wesleyan Methodists, the Baptists, the Roman Catholics, and the Jews. There are also various schools, a mechanics' institute, reading societies, and a savings bank. A county court is held in the town, and there are weekly markets. The trade is very considerable; but depends chiefly on the dockyards, although corn and seeds from the Isle of Sheppey, and oysters from the adjacent banks, are conveyed to London. Copperas is manufactured at a short distance from Sheerness, the materials being supplied in abundance from the multitude of pyrites found in the rocks to the east. Sheerness is resorted to as a sea-bathing place to a considerable extent. There is a pier 1000 yards long, for the steamers that ply daily between this and London. The town is of comparatively recent origin, as it is not yet 200 years since its foundation. In the time of the Commonwealth, the site was a mere swamp, on which a fort with 12 guns was built after the Restoration. But before the works could be completed, the Dutch, in 1667, entered the Thames, and took and destroyed the fort. It was afterwards restored and enlarged, the dockyard was established, which has become one of the finest in Europe, and additions were made to the works at various subsequent times. In 1797, Sheerness was threatened by the mutiny of the fleet at the Nore; but was saved by the suppression of that movement in the same year. The town suffered from an extensive conflagration in 1827, but was speedily restored in a superior style. Pop. 8549.

SHEFFIELD is an ancient manufacturing town, near the southern extremity of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and about 160 miles N.N.W. of London. The manor of Sheffield, with several of the adjacent manors, was anciently called Hallamshire, and its lord had his castle at the confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don. The name Sheffield is commonly supposed to be derived from the Sheaf. In Doomsday Book the town is called Escafelt, and antiquaries derive its name from the British word ea, water. The Don is the principal river, and at or near the town it receives the waters of its tributaries, the Sheaf, the Porter, the Loxley, and the Rivelin. All these have their source in the high moors a few miles west, south-west, and north-west of the town. To the abundant water-power thus supplied, and to the coal and iron obtained here at a very early period, may be ascribed the devotion of Sheffield to working in iron and steel. The valleys are studded with grinding-wheels and tilts, worked by water-power. These valleys are separated from each other by bold and steep hills, and though the effect is to render the neighbourhood remarkably picturesque and beautiful, in the town the inequalities of surface have their inconveniences, for some of the streets are so steep as to be quite unsuited for loaded vehicles. A hundred years ago Sheffield was described as a smoky town, but now the reasons for that reproach are increased ten thousand times. A bye-law of the corporation requires the consumption of smoke from steam-engines, and the manufacturers have incurred great expense in endeavouring to obey the law, with only partial success. Besides the Castle of Sheffield, the Earls of Shrewsbury, who were its lords for 200 years, had a lodge or manor-house in a finely wooded park, a mile east of the town. The greater part of the captivity of Queen Mary of Scotland was passed at the castle and manor-house at Sheffield. The castle was demolished by order of parliament in 1648. Only such names as Castlehill, Castlegreen, &c., remain to mark the site. The manor-house has crumbled away under the hand of time, and only a few poor traces are left. The park was divided into farms in 1707, but the district still bears its old name. By the marriage of the heiress of the seventh Earl of Shrewsbury with a member of the house of Howard, the estates have passed to the Duke of Norfolk. The present Sheffield duke has had a mansion called "The Farm," immediately adjoining the town, enlarged and furnished for his occasional residence. During the suit brought by Lord Talbot successfully in 1858, to support his claim to the earldom of Shrewsbury, the Shrewsbury vault under the chancel of the parish church was searched for evidence, but without result. The modern history of Sheffield has been for the most part peaceful, but on the night of the 11th January 1840, the town narrowly escaped from a Chartist conspiracy to burn and capture it. The scheme was not disclosed to the authorities till almost the last hour. Sheffield has grown rapidly during the present century. The population of the borough is four times as great as it was at census of 1801, being now computed at 180,000. At the census of 1851 it was 135,907. The rateable value of the property of the borough was L272,161 in 1848, and L425,044 in 1859. The parochial and municipal taxes for the years ending in 1858 and 1859 were from L96,000 to L98,000 each year.

The town and neighbourhood of Sheffield are indisputably the chief seat of the following important manufactures: — Cast, shear, and blister steel, of all kinds; steel wire; railway and carriage springs; buffers; files; saws; all kinds of joiners', masons', shipwrights', and mechanics' edge-tools generally; scythes, sickles, hay and straw knives; table, pocket, shoe, butchers', and similar cutlery of every variety; all classes of silver, silver-plated, electro-plated, German silver, Britannia, and other white-metal goods; women's and tailors' scissors and shears; razors; silver and silver-plated cutlery; sheep-shears, skates, spades, and shovels; surgical instruments; many kinds of horticultural and agricultural tools; adzes, axes, hatchets, hammers, angers, hoes, bill-hooks, &c., in all varieties of pattern and quality. In a more limited sense, too, this town is an important seat of such manufactures as those of hair-seating and curled hair; combs of all kinds; powder-flasks and shot-belts; optical instruments; needles, fish-hooks, awls; stove-grates, and fine foundry-work of all varieties; many kinds of machinery, and railway and mining tools. The manufacture of snuff is also carried on here on an extensive scale, Messrs Wilson and Co. and J. and H. Wilson producing an article, as snuff-takers know, which has a reputation almost equal to that of the celebrated pocket-knives of the Messrs Rodgers themselves. This list of trades is very different from that given in the charter of the Cutlers' Company in 1624, which enumerated only "knives, scissors, shears, sickles, and other cutlery." The natural advantages of this neighbourhood, however, for the production of hardware are sufficiently pre-eminent to have justified the expectation of a still larger extension of local industry, and of course a proportionate increase in the town itself. There can be no doubt that the dominating power and influence of the trades' unions have tended, by making skilled labour artificially dear, and by stereotyping the occupations of men too much, first, to encourage foreign manufacturers, especially in Germany and the United States; and, second, to discourage attempts to introduce and localise any new and experimental manufactures, to the success of which cheap, abundant, and unprejudiced mechanical skill was absolutely essential. In spite of all this, however, energy and perseverance on the side of the masters, and the crushing effect of reason and experience on the side of the men, have been sufficient, in a great degree, to override the suicidal effects of trade combinations. It is a law in commerce, that if a trade be once fairly wrested from a locality, it never can be wholly, or even materially, recovered. This is the experience of Sheffield. Whatever branches of manufacture the policy of trades' unions has thrown into the hands of the Americans or the Germans, they keep; but they will not easily take any more. Meanwhile, the new employments of the town are rapidly growing into importance. It has been stated by one of the principal manufacturers of railway-springs, that the quantity of them made weekly in Sheffield is 150 tons. The buffer trade is increased at a corresponding rate. Twenty years ago it was estimated that about 700 tons of Swedish iron were annually brought to Sheffield, and converted into steel. Since that time experience and competition have forced English irons to a very large amount into use for the purpose of making steel, and hence the importation of Swedish and other foreign marks, though not perhaps on the decline, is almost stationary. Some of the principal railway-spring makers have recently erected puddling furnaces, and produce their own malleable iron from the pig-metal. They can thus combine the various kinds of iron best suited to their purpose. East Indian and Nova Scotian irons are coming into use among other varieties. From the statistics furnished by Messrs Sanderson and Unwin, of Sheffield, to Mr Tyler, for his report on metal work in the Paris Exhibition, we gather that, in 1856, there were in Sheffield 206 converting or blister steel furnaces, and 2113 melting holes, or cast-steel furnaces. At the rate of 250 tons each per annum, the blister steel furnaces were estimated to have produced 51,500 tons of steel, of which 37,800 tons were then made into cast-steel, and the rest sold as bar, German, faggot, spring, and shear steel. If the cast-steel be taken as worth L40, and the rest at L25 per ton, it will be found that, in 1856, steel to the value of L1,854,500 was made in Sheffield. From what has been already said, it will be inferred that the trade of Sheffield is very widely spread. In truth, every country abroad, as well as the whole home-market, are directly or indirectly her customers. Next to the home trade, perhaps no other calls for a larger quantity of goods than that of the United States and British North America, Australia, South America, both east and west coast, and the Cape of Good Hope, are, however, excellent markets; and the demand for steel, files, saws, railway-springs and buffers, and tools generally, of course naturally springs up wherever railways are being constructed, or ships and machinery built. At present Russia, several other European countries, and India, are large purchasers of these classes of goods. From the fact that reliable local statistics are very difficult to procure (the nature of the trades not rendering any attention to these points necessary), it is impossible to say, with much approach to accuracy, how the population is divided as regards employment in the various trades. The rate of wages, however, usually paid in some departments of labour can be ascertained with greater truth. According to returns made at the request of Mr Fonblanche, at the head of the statistical department of the Board of Trade, the average wages, per day, paid in the following trades (taking the trades in whole and not in detail) during 1855–56–57, were:

When it is borne in mind, that as a rule the families of the working classes here occupy separate houses, and that cellars or "flats" are unknown as human habitations, it will be obvious that a very great degree of comfort is within the reach of the working-man, and that it is his own fault if, with such wages and such collateral advantages, he is not a thriving man, and his family well fed, well clothed, and decently educated.

In 1832 Sheffield was empowered to return two members to parliament; and in 1843 it was incorporated by royal charter. The parliamentary and municipal borough is co-extensive with the old parish of Sheffield, which consists of six townships. The parliamentary voters are about It is ascertained that a £6 rental qualification would enfranchise about 20,000 voters; and a £6 rating, 11,000. The town has a bench of borough magistrates, but no separate court of quarter sessions. Persons committed for trial are sent to the West Riding quarter sessions, or to the assizes at York. The old manorial courts, for the recovery of debts to the amount of £5, have been superseded by the county court, with jurisdiction up to £50, and holding frequent sittings here. The Sheffield barracks, erected in 1794, having become too small, as well as dilapidated, were pulled down in 1855, having been replaced by new barracks, occupying a site of 25 acres. They have since been further extended. A free library, maintained by rate, was established in 1856. In 1859 it had 9119 volumes, and the issue of books for the year was 125,555. Most of the church and chapel yards having been closed as places of interment in 1855, and the Sheffield Cemetery, established in 1836, being insufficient to meet the case, several new township cemeteries have been formed. Previous to 1820 Sheffield had only its old parish church, built 1110; St Paul's and St James', built during the last century; and two small chapels of ease in out-townsships. Since that time a vast increase of ecclesiastical buildings has taken place. Between 1820 and 1830 four churches were built under "the million act." During the following years, and chiefly during the last fifteen, a crowd of new churches has been built and endowed by voluntary effort. In 1846, the old parish of Sheffield was divided into twenty-five parochial districts, which are for the most part independent of the old parochial head, except that the old parish of Sheffield now forms a deanery, of which the Vicar of Sheffield is the rural dean. Most of the new districts or parishes are already supplied with churches. Of old and new churches there are now twenty-three, and others are projected or in progress. The Nonconformist bodies have nearly doubled their places of worship since 1833. They now number about forty. The Roman Catholics have replaced their small chapel, erected in 1814, by a large and handsome church, with a spire rivalling that of the ancient parish church. In 1856 they erected a smaller church in another part of the town. Both these churches have schools. A school has also been erected near the residence of the Duke of Norfolk, and a convent and school of the Sisters of Notre Dame has been established. All the religious denominations have their Sunday schools, and in connection with many places of worship are efficient day-schools. It is to be regretted that the people do not fully avail themselves of the many facilities for education offered to them.

Among the educational establishments of the town are the People's College, a self-supporting institution, conducting efficient day and evening classes; the Church of England Educational Institute, managed by several of the clergy and influential laymen with great success; and the Mechanics' Institution, which here languishes. The Government School of Art at Sheffield is one of the best conducted of these institutions in the provinces. The Wesley College and the Collegiate School (Church of England), with the old endowed Grammar School, are the principal institutions, excepting private schools, for the education of the middle classes.

The Cutlers' Company, known throughout the kingdom by its anniversary, called the "Cutlers' Feast," had its origin in the sixteenth century in certain trade regulations, wholly opposed to modern ideas, "agreed upon by the whole fellowshipe of cutlers," sanctioned by the then Earl of Shrewsbury, and enrolled among the records of his manor court. The company was incorporated by statute in the 21st James I., but its restrictive powers, having been mitigated in 1801, were swept away in 1814. It has since had little further power than to grant marks to the manufacturers of "knives, sickles, shears, scissors, and other cuttery wares." Application will be made to parliament in 1860 for a new act, to enable the company to admit the "makers of razors, files, forks, saws, edge-tools, and other articles of steel, or steel and iron combined, having a cutting edge, and manufacturers of steel." This measure is necessary to reinvigorate the company, which is the trustee of several important charities. Sheffield is well and cheaply supplied with gas and water by joint-stock companies. The relations of Sheffield to the railway system were for many years unsatisfactory. Surrounded by hills, except on the north-east, it suffered peculiar disadvantages. In 1838, the Sheffield and Rotherham line connected it with the Midland, which was soon after opened. In 1845 a line was opened from Manchester to Sheffield; and in 1849 the line was continued eastward to New Holland, on the Humber, and Grimsby, on the Lincolnshire coast. Till 1857 this line was allied to the London and North-Western, but in that year a treaty was made with the Great Northern, which thus obtained access to Manchester, and put Sheffield on a main line from that town to London. Out of this change of policy arose the memorable war of 1857-8 between the London and North-Western and the Great Northern. By the South Yorkshire Railway, Sheffield has connection with Barnsley, Doncaster, and Goole; and by the canal made in 1818, now in the hands of this company, it has water communication with the Humber. The old private banks of Sheffield have been replaced by joint-stock companies. Freehold land societies, formed to purchase estates, and divide them in allotments among thriving artisans and small tradesmen, were introduced here in 1849, and have been very successful. Up to 1858 these societies had purchased thirty estates, containing 477 acres, for £96,000. They had spent in drains, roads, and fencing, about £29,700, and in buildings about £130,000. They had formed 2600 allotments, at an average cost of £48. Upwards of seventy acres more have since been purchased. The present value of the allotments, with the buildings upon them, is estimated at £400,000.

Sheffield is rather behind other large towns in facilities for the amusement and recreation of the inhabitants. There is great want of a capacious public hall for the holding of important meetings and for popular concerts. The town-hall, built fifty years ago, is inadequate to the present necessities of the town. The corporation, instead of erecting a hall, have rented the old assembly rooms. The botanical gardens, consisting of eighteen acres, beautifully situated, are well maintained. The Duke of Norfolk has laid out a park on the east side of the town for the benefit of the public.

The benevolent institutions of the town are well sustained. The infirmary, opened in 1797, has been considerably enlarged. Hospital wards have this year (1859) been added to the public dispensary. The Shrewsbury Hospital, opened in 1673, the Hollis' Hospital of 1703, and the Licensed Victuallers' Asylum of 1848, afford refuge for decayed and deserving old people. The Deakin institution, established in 1852, grants pensions to unmarried females above forty years of age, and has conferred a great boon on a number of ladies reduced to very deplorable circumstances. The savings bank has made moderate progress, and is well managed. In 1832, its deposits were £89,085; in 1856, £147,136; in 1858, £276,738.

During the last thirty years the social habits of the town have greatly changed. It has become the custom of nearly all the manufacturers and richer tradesmen to reside in the suburbs, and luxury has immensely increased. The streets in the centre of the town are now thronged with cabs, omnibuses, and other vehicles, but they still remain narrow, crooked, and steep, as they were fifty years ago. In 1852, an act was obtained, under which several much-needed bridges, with approaches, have been made, and a rate at 3d. in the pound is expected to defray the cost in from twenty to thirty years. Two attempts to obtain an act of parliament to improve the town in sanitary and other arrangements, have been defeated by popular hostility. Sheffield is well situated for drainage, but as no power exists to make drains on a comprehensive plan, independently of township boundaries, each township pours its separate contribution into the rivers flowing through the town, by which they are rendered very pernicious and offensive.

In regard to the sanitary state of Sheffield, we are indebted for the following particulars to C. J. Shearman, Esq., M.D., who has been engaged in elaborate investigations on the subject:

According to the returns of the Registrar-General, the gross mortality of Sheffield is 1 to each 27 of the population, male and female; whereas the normal mortality of England, when free from pre-disposing causes of disease, is 1 in 17. One great cause of this increase of mortality is the prevalence of children's diseases. The mortality of males and females per cent. at each age, calculated for the 7 years 1848-54 inclusive, is below:

| Ages | Males Sheffield | Females Sheffield | |------|----------------|------------------| | 5 | 1:196 | 5:166 | | 10 | 0:548 | 1:458 | | 15 | 1:557 | 1:286 | | 20 | 0:986 | 1:015 | | 25 | 1:311 | 1:390 | | 30 | 2:003 | 1:699 | | 35 | 3:502 | 2:651 | | 40 | 6:618 | 5:172 | | 45 | 11:401 | 9:312 | | 50 | 22:03 | 13:63 | | 55 | | 27:917 |

The mortality of children's diseases for the same years being to 100 population—

| Disease | Rate | |------------------|------| | Smallpox | 0:07 | | Measles | 0:11 | | Scarlet fever | 0:17 | | Hooping cough | 0:09 | | Croup | 0:03 | | Diarrhoea | 0:03 | | Water on the brain| 0:08 | | Typhus fever | 0:04 | | Pneumonia | 0:08 | | Asthma | 0:05 | | Consumptive | 0:05 | | Cardiac | 0:05 | | Jaundice | 0:06 | | Liver disease | 0:02 | | Bronchitis | 0:00 | | Hydrotherapy | 0:01 |

The births for the same years were in the proportion of 1 to each 24 of the population annually.

From the returns of the Registrar of Sheffield (arranged through the kind permission of the Registrar-General), the following results are deduced as to the mortality in 81 occupations, the majority of which are peculiar to Sheffield:

Mortality per cent. of out-door heavy occupations: 1:5 Mortality per cent. of light occupations: 1:82 Mortality per cent. of in-door heavy occupations: 1:18 Mortality per cent. of light occupations: 1:84 Mortality per cent. of masons and bricklayers: 1:5 Mortality per cent. of file-cutters: 1:98 Mortality per cent. of cutters, fitters, bench-work tailors: 1:72 Mortality per cent. of shoemakers, &c.: 1:98 Mortality per cent. of merchants, manufacturers, and gentle men: 2:9 Mortality per cent. of labourers: 5:0 Mortality per cent. of grinders: 4:7

The grinders suffer markedly from diseases of the lungs, of which one disease has been considered peculiar to them—grinder's asthma or rot—induced by inhaling the dust from the grinding-stones. It is most prevalent among dry grinders. This affection is less common than in former years, from the dust being carried off in many factories by a fan. Bronchitis and pneumonia are the other prevailing causes of death in this class. Gentlemen suffer most from intestinal, stomach, liver, and kidney diseases; considerably less than other large towns from tubercular disease, either general or of the lungs; and are prone to the inroad of typhus and other fevers. Cutlers are much affected with diseases of the heart and inflammation of the lungs, with secondary affections of the abdomen, more particularly after the 40th year of age. They suffer less from consumptive disease, but are prone to attacks of continued and remittent fever. The other occupations carried on in shops, as fitters, engaged in brass, Britannia metal, and German silver work, &c., are especially liable to disease of the heart, apoplexy, disease of the liver, and fever; less so to consumption. File-cutters suffer little from tubercular disease of the lungs after 35 years of age; but after that time most markedly from apoplexy, pleurisy, liver disease, and secondary abdominal disease, partly induced by cutting on lead. The other occupations present no great peculiarity of inducing special diseases.

The mortality per cent. from various diseases of Sheffield for the years 1848 to 1854 is annually to the living population as follows:

Habits of improvidence, fostered by the high scale of wages, marked tendency to free living both in the operative and employer, together with a malarious character of atmosphere, are the chief agents in raising the rate of mortality in Sheffield. The state of the rivers, and the proximity of some of the reservoirs which supply the town, furnish the latter element of disease. The great proportion of publicans to the population (1 to 142 over 20 years of age) is an indication of the state of supply and demand of this agent of disease.

The chief book of authority on the history, antiquities, &c., of Sheffield is *The History of Hallamshire*, by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., published in folio in 1819.

(Sir L.)