Dr Andrew Hobbs writes…

I’m writing something on weekly publications produced during the 1853-54 Preston Lock-Out in North-West England, when thousands of cotton workers were locked out of the mills over their demand for a 10% restoration of wages (the event which inspired Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South).

These publications called themselves balance sheets — they list donations to the locked-out workers from across the UK, and how the money was spent. We might call them circulars, subscribers’ lists, bulletins, updates etc. Each union produced its own, and they typically include an opening address, list of subscribers (full of rich, allusive nicknames), amounts in, and payments out. Many also include stirring verse and not-so-veiled threats to those who haven’t paid. Lancashire Archives has a good collection, although they don’t appear in the catalogue.

Dickens writes about them in some detail in his Household Words article, ‘On Strike’ (11 February, 1854).

My questions:
1. Have you seen them in any other archives?
2. Are there any academic analyses of this genre?

Please email AHobbs2@uclan.ac.uk.

Dr Andrew Hobbs is a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, with an interest in provincial print culture.