Quote Originally Posted by Pleater View Post
Although in England, mostly, the effects of the reduction in income/wages must have been country wide - look up Chartist riots.


The hand loom weavers were upper working class, their income was not rock bottom until the work was taken from them - their homes were often two stories with the upper one having windows!! There were even two story homes with workshops in the back, in the long thin 'burghs' which was how the medieval town centres were laid out.
And the Clearances, of course! Which went on for a longer period. Thank you.

Hmm, my previous life (what I did in Texas before moving to NH) was as a papermaker, and those did make fortunes in old times (not me!), yet the workshops were crowded and unsanitary. I might be projecting. Of course the black-and-white images extant of the last surviving beart-mhor weavers make it all look more drab than reality... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly-lFONTuGk

Yup, my grandad was doing peaches, in Uruguay, as a skilled painter of buildings. His specialty was faux wallpaper and trompe l'oeil. He even built his own house soon after he arrived. Not grand, as made out of shipping boxes, but much better than his options in the Old Country...