Report: Kate Hurst

2018 has been a busy year for Ormskirk and District Family History Society. A time of change, a time to make plans for the future - and a time to see a few ideas become reality!

Early this year, it had been a while since we’d published any new data CDs, but with hard work and determination, this spring saw six new discs released in just a few weeks.

Family and local history research doesn’t start and finish with census records and birth, marriage and death certificates, and there is no better example to demonstrate this than the Burscough Township Book. It’s an old document, spanning the years 1770 to 1849, stored at the Lancashire Archives in Preston, that we secured permission to photograph and publish on CD, and it really is a mine of information about Burscough as it once was.

Eighty years is essentially a lifetime, and the Burscough Township Book covers a particular period that saw significant change. The first entries were made on 11 May 1770, eight days before the Act of Parliament needed to start the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was given Royal Assent. The last entry in the book (concerning a church rate, charged at 1d. in the pound) was dated 27 February 1849, just thirty-three days before Burscough Junction railway station was opened. Burscough was transforming, bit by bit.

There are all sorts of references in these records, painting a fantastic picture of what was going on in Burscough in the past. In 1798, an unnamed organist was paid 5s. 3d for keeping the church organ in tune for the previous two years. If you’ve tried to trace your family tree you might know that census records are only available online for the years between 1841 and 1911, but a few statistics for earlier censuses were recorded in the Township Book; on 27 May 1811, another nameless person received £1 1s. 0d. for “Taking the Number of Inhabitants”. (In case you wondered, 'Males 1761. Females 731. Total 1492 Souls'.)

Amongst the references to overseers, mole-catchers (on a salary of £25 per year in 1813), High Constables and the Bull and Dog (John Berry and Robert Wareing Junior, overseers of the poor, settled their accounts there on 2 April 1771), you can also find a few notes that are a bit . . . unusual. On 18 December 1812, a simple observation was made:

“Paid Expences at Beef donation £1 - -, Paid for Bread at Beef donation £0 12s 6d”

It’s the week before Christmas, a month before 'Pride and Prejudice' was published. St. John the Baptist’s Church won’t be opened for another twenty years. Boatmen working the Leeds and Liverpool Canal are already settling in Burscough and other villages along the waterway - so why were people in the village given joints of beef?

In 2017, one of my many searches on the Lancashire Archives’ online catalogue turned up an irresistible find. Fourteen lists, from various years between 1800 and 1825, concerning “Poor housekeepers of Burscough who had Beef”. I had no idea what it was, but it fascinated me so much, I had to find out! So I went to Preston, ordered it up, and stepped back in time . . .

There were fourteen of these lists, from 1800 (reused in 1801), 1807, 1809 (reused in 1810), 1811, 1812 (reused in 1813), 1815, 1817, and for seven successive years from 1819. Most contained about fifty or sixty names, and every list bore a date in December. This was clearly some kind of charitable distribution connected to Christmas, founded by a Mr. John Houghton; if this was the same John Houghton who left £10 to build a school near the pinfold in 1733, with £100 as an endowment, the arrangement might have been established long before the surviving lists were written.

So what insights do the lists offer into people in need in Regency Burscough? In some senses, not a lot. If I study the oldest list (dated 18 December 1800), I can count sixty distinct names, although lines have been drawn through eight (Edwd Berry, Alice Denton, Richd Dutton Senr, Will Farrington, Margt Gaskell, John
Hesketh, Nanny Latham and Jane Lunt). Perhaps they died or went to live with other relations, and so didn’t need the beef any more?

Although there is no clue about how most of the recipients usually supported themselves, two did have trades. There were two John Howards - one a plasterer, the other a sawyer - so this might have helped to distinguish them. Of the sixty from 1800, twenty-six were women but only sixteen were identified by name; the rest were described as “James Ashtons wife”, “Widow Stringfellow” or even “Widow Leyland’s Daughter”.

As time moved on, other details appear on the beef lists, in the form of casual notes on the back or side of each sheet of paper. That’s how I learnt that, when fifty-five people received their donation of beef in 1807, it was distributed at the Black Horse and Rainbow, but it doesn’t seem that any particular public house had a firm connection to the charity.

The 1809 list reveals that, three days before Christmas, the beef was handed out at the Bull and Dog, so it has kept its name for more than two hundred years! Once again, whoever took notes had to find ways to distinguish people with the same names - this time, “James Taylor Senr” and “James Taylor Junr” were included, along with the two John Howards from 1800. Surnames familiar to those with canal families in their ancestry appear - John Gill, Hector Mawdsley, Martha Baybutt, Peter Dutton - but the most enigmatic one on this list must be Henry Prescott . . . the words “bread done” are written after his name!

Ten years on, we could be forgive for thinking that the distribution of beef was a last-minute affair; that list was dated 24 December 1819, and once more, the “Black horse” was the hub of activity, but in fairness, this particular list was a long one, including 109 names (although three were crossed out, and the note “Dead” followed Betty Rawsthorn’s name). Of these, fourteen women were widows, and the occupations of two men were given - James Culshaw the blacksmith and Richard Forshaw the hostler.

Something else about the 1819 list is worth noting; it was the first time that any hint was given about the costs involved in this festive charity. Someone took the trouble to note down the value of the beef that was handed out - an astonishing £14 19s. 2d (or £1,079 in modern terms . . . which would get you about 120kg, or 264lb., of beef roasting joints today!)

I mention this because, by 1821, someone in Burscough actually did take the trouble to note down the quantities of food involved. Between them, Mr. Prescott and Mr. Tasker provided £15 4s. 0d., which paid for Peter Berry’s 10st. 4lb. cow and a larger animal (35st. 8lb.) from Edward Banks, at a price of 4s./lb. Perhaps it’s not so surprising that the list of recipients that year totalled ninety-one people? On average, each one should have had just over 7lb. of meat - about right for one meal.

We can only guess how those poor housekeepers of Burscough cooked their meat, and what they served alongside it on Christmas Day, but it is heartwarming to think that so many people and businesses - local officials, inns and farmers - must have come together, and planned everything so far in advance to be sure that the beef was ready to be given out in the days before Christmas two hundred years ago.

Whatever is on your dinner table this year, Ormskirk and District Family History Society wish you a very Happy Christmas. Our Burscough Township Books disc, including the Beef Lists (£10, including photos) and a separate Burscough Beef disc (£5, including photos) are available directly from the Society. Please see www.odfhs.website for details.

Our last help desk of 2018 will run from 1-3pm on 13 December at Ormskirk Library, and our Research Library at the Scout Hall will be open from 2-3pm on 17 December. After a short break, we’ll be back at our Research Library on Mondays (except Bank Holidays) from 7 January 2019, and our Ormskirk Library Help Desk will run every other Thursday from 10 January 2019.

Our programme for 2019 begins on 23 January with Roger Blaxall’s talk on World War II Evacuees 'Should I stay or should I go?'. As usual, our venue at the Guide HQ on Moorgate, Ormskirk will open at 7.30p.m., for an 8pm. start. All welcome; £1 donation requested from non-members.