ABSTRACT
Bolton is as bad a specimen of a nucleus of cotton manufacture as can be conceived. It is an old spinning and weaving station, and the great mass of the houses are built in the oldest and filthiest fashion. Cellars abound on every side, and I saw few or none unoccupied, while the people appeared to me to be fully as squalid and dirty in appearance as the worst classes are in the worst districts of Manchester. Bolton is inhabited by what in this part of the country is known as the “old” population – a population which in a great degree preserves hurtful old prejudices and filthy old fashions, which have little hold in the more modern seats of industry. In common with Stockport, the town of Bolton was awfully afflicted by the stagnations of business in 1842 and 1847. In the latter year, the unemployed population was supported at a weekly cost of from £400 to £500. And even at present, when trade is reasonably brisk, the weekly amount of poor-rates is nearly £230. The last poor-law returns, dated Somerset House 17 July, 1849, inform us that the number of inmates of the Bolton workhouse on the 1st of July 1848, was 418; while no less than 7,371 individuals had, up to that date in that year, received outdoor relief.
