Collection of literary manuscripts by Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Darwin, a distant cousin of Elizabeth Gaskell.

The Library holds the world’s most important collection of literary manuscripts by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), including the only complete manuscript of one of her novels (Wives and Daughters) and her celebrated biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. Her archive also contains nearly 400 letters from notable figures – including Brontë, Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, John Ruskin and many more – some of which were sent to Gaskell herself and some which she acquired for her own autograph collection. In addition there are artefacts (such as Gaskell’s inkstand) and famous portraits. Two related collections also contain significant Gaskelliana: the Jamison Family Archive, and the papers of Gaskell scholar and collector J.G. Sharps. Material from all of these collections has been digitised, along with some items which remain in the possession of Gaskell’s descendants. Together, these constitute an outstanding digital resource relating to Gaskell, her work and the circles in which she moved. luna.manchester

gaskells-novels

Elizabeth Gaskell knew Martineau and Newman, became friends with some American Unitarians, and definitely embraced the spiritual side of Unitarianism. She thought Priestley's brand of Unitarianism was cold and hard. Jesus, though not Christ, was a living presence, and the Bible remained an indispensable book. But Elizabeth Gaskell was also of the social reform school of Unitarianism, in company with Harriet Martineau and Florence Nightingale in England, and Theodore Parker and Dorothea Dix in this country.

Gaskell was writing at a time when the mill owners struggled against a social system in which the landowners were paramount and often charged exhorbitant rents to the industrialists. Thomas Malthus direly predicted that population would soon outstrip food supply. Utopian socialists planned alternative, cooperative societies. And Frederick Engels presented his dark picture of the situation in Manchester in "The condition of the Working Class in England." Gaskell's writing seems to us far from radical, and those on the left found her solutions paternalistic. But hers was a paternalism of aiding adult children and watching them become independent agents rather than the "Father Knows Best" paternalism prevalent at the time. In both Mary Barton and North and South she shows the folly of mill owners refusing to inform workers of even good reasons for their actions and assuming that workers wouldn't understand or had no right to know, anyway. Gaskell was one of the few writers with some sympathy for workers's unions. In North and South, she envisioned union leaders acting in an advisory capacity in the affairs of the mills.

Charles Darwin, a distant cousin of Elizabeth Gaskell, published On the Origin of Species, in 1859 and evolution was the center of the public debate throughout the 1860s. Unitarianism still was primarily the rational and scientific religion of Joseph Priestley despite the move toward more spirituality, and Unitarians welcomed the theories and as usual loved discussing Darwin's concepts. At the time, Oxford and Cambridge only allowed Anglican students, and studies concentrated there on ancient languages, literature and history. Science, as a discipline for study, was not valued. Gaskell, in Wives and Daughters illustrates the attitude with a vignette of two sons. The parents hail the eldest, a student of poetry, as the genius of the family, while they view the younger son, with a keen interest in science and nature, as slow-witted. Unitarians studied at other Universities, such as in Edinburg, that may not have been as prestigious, but had great science departments. They were among the Theory of Evolution's staunchest defenders in the early confrontations between science and religion. The Gaskells had two liberal Anglican friends at Oxford, Benjamin Jowett and Mark Pattison, who were charged with heresy for embracing Darwinism and denying the existence of hell. I'm not sure which outraged the Anglican establishment more, but a conviction of heresy was overturned on appeal. uufhc.net

wiki/Charles_Darwin

Temperance reformation and Catholic Emancipation.

Although a strong Tory Patrick Bronte was sympathetic to many Whig ideas. He supported Roman Catholic Emancipation, was against the death penalty for minor crimes, like stealing a loaf of bread, against the workhouse system where families were separated, a man from his wife and parents from their children, and against rotten boroughs where the few voters were bribed to vote for particular members of Parliament. Patrick was one of the few Tories in Haworth, a great believer in the established (Church of England) church among a majority of Dissenters. In Haworth he was a founder member, as was Branwell, of the Haworth Temperance Society.  He was a great believer in education and fought hard to raise money for, first of all a Sunday School and later a day school. He raised money for the poor when there was little work. He raised a subscription to replace the three bells of the church by six new ones so the bell ringers could take part in competitions. brusselsbronte 

Temperance reformation
During 1830, at the beginning of the temperance reformation, twenty temperance societies were founded, totalling between two and three thousand members. The first period of the temperance movement was focused on controlling drunkenness rather than abolishing all alcoholic beverages. history/journal

This photograph proudly displayed alongside other Brontë mementos at the Temperance tea rooms in the family's home village of Haworth in West Yorkshire, the picture was auctioned by Sotheby's in 1898 when the Museum of Brontë Relics closed down and sold off everything it owned. It has not been seen since, although copies of the picture are known to exist. independent

Catholic emancipation

Catholic emancipation was the subject of political debate in the United Kingdom, which intensified in the 19th Century after the Act of Union in 1801. Catholics were not allowed to sit in Parliament¹ and therefore were represented by Protestants. Catholic emancipation — Catholic relief — was designed to give Catholics the right to sit in Parliament.

O'Connel

In 1823, Daniel O'Connell, an Irish Catholic lawyer and politician, began a campaign for Catholic emancipation. He was widely successful and raised a great deal of money through 'Catholic Rent', a subscription to an association which cost only one penny a month. His popularity led to his election for the county of Clare in Ireland, even though he could not take his seat in Parliament. Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington felt that the threat of insurrection in Ireland surpassed the threat of allowing Catholics to sit in Parliament⁴. The Catholic Relief Act was passed on 24 March, 1829. It contained a number of securities for the Protestants, including not allowing Catholics to attain certain positions and disenfranchising the 40-shilling freeholders. This meant that people who owned or lived on property worth more than forty shillings had previously been allowed to vote in Ireland, but that the property requirement would now be ten pounds.

Opposition to Catholic Emancipation
The Duke of Wellington, famous for his successes in the Napoleonic Wars, was the Prime Minister of Britain from 1828 - 1830 and the leader of the Tory party, which generally stood for the defence of the status quo. Both Wellington and his second-in-command and future Prime Minister Robert Peel had been against Catholic emancipation in the past, and their about-turn was seen as deceitful and disloyal. Wellington and Peel were of the opinion that the potential unrest in Ireland was preventable only by allowing Catholic emancipation. Many members of their own party opposed the measure, which was only passed with Whig support. The Duke of Newcastle was a strong opponent of Catholic emancipation, and in his diary described how Wellington and Peel 'betrayed their country'. He also attributes this speech to the Duke of Cumberland:

Nothing shall induce me to abandon the principles which I have always maintained and what is more to do my utmost to defeat measures which in my conscience I believe to be destructive of the Throne, the altar and the Protestant Constitution.

The opposition to Wellington and Peel's Catholic emancipation split the Tory party and led to the Whigs taking power for the first time in more than twenty years.
bbc.co.uk

On this day in 1841 Charlotte Bronte became a governess for the White family who lived at Upperwood House, Rawdon, near Bradford.

William Leavens (born 1747), whose name is preserved in the housing development on the former goods yard at Apperley Bridge, was a wealthy woolstapler, and had acquired it before Hird’s death in 1818. He left it to his nephew, John White (1790-1861), the employer of Charlotte Brontë. She was not particularly happy there but what Victorian parson’s daughter was happy as a governess, in limbo between upstairs and downstairs? Her letters to her friend Ellen Nussey include the remarks “the house is small but exceedingly comfortable and well regulated”. The children, Sarah Louisa (born 1832, later Mrs Atkinson) and Jasper Leavens (1837-67, died unmarried) were not particularly well behaved. She suggests that Mr and Mrs White were “of low extraction” and that Mrs White’s father was an Exciseman.⁴ She does not use the words nouveau riche, but the implication is there. The house was demolished in 1878 a-history-of-rawdon

 

The governess by Richard Redgrave

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Upperwood House, April 1st, 1841.

‘My dear Nell,—It is twelve o’clock at night, but I must just write to you a word before I go to bed. If you think I am going to refuse your invitation, or if you sent it me with that idea, you’re mistaken. As soon as I read your shabby little note, I gathered up my spirits directly, walked on the impulse of the moment into Mrs. White’s presence, popped the question, and for two minutes received no answer. Will she refuse me when I work so hard for her? thought I. “Ye-e-es” was said in a reluctant, cold tone. “Thank you, m’am,” said I, with extreme cordiality, and was marching from the room when she recalled me with: “You’d better go on Saturday afternoon then, when the children have holiday, and if you return in time for them to have all their lessons on Monday morning, I don’t see that much will be lost.” You are a genuine Turk, thought I, but again I assented. Saturday after next, then, is the day appointed—not next Saturday, mind. I do not quite know whether the offer about the gig is not entirely out of your own head or if George has given his consent to it—whether that consent has not been wrung from him by the most persevering and irresistible teasing on the part of a certain young person of my acquaintance. I make no manner of doubt that if he does send the conveyance (as Miss Wooler used to denominate all wheeled vehicles) it will be to his own extreme detriment and inconvenience, but for once in my life I’ll not mind this, or bother my head about it. I’ll come—God knows with a thankful and joyful heart—glad of a day’s reprieve from labour. If you don’t send the gig I’ll walk. Now mind, I am not coming to Brookroyd with the idea of dissuading Mary Taylor from going to New Zealand. I’ve said everything I mean to say on that subject, and she has a perfect right to decide for herself. I am coming to taste the pleasure of liberty, a bit of pleasant congenial talk, and a p. 86sight of two or three faces I like. God bless you. I want to see you again. Huzza for Saturday afternoon after next! Good-night, my lass.

‘C. Brontë.

‘Have you lit your pipe with Mr. Weightman’s valentine?’
---------------------------------------------------
Upperwood House, May 4th, 1841.
‘Dear Nell,—I have been a long time without writing to you; but I think, knowing as you do how I am situated in the matter of time, you will not be angry with me. Your brother George will have told you that he did not go into the house when we arrived at Rawdon, for which omission of his Mrs. White was very near blowing me up. She went quite red in the face with vexation when she heard that the gentleman had just driven within the gates and then back again, for she is very touchy in the matter of opinion. Mr. White also seemed to regret the circumstance from more hospitable and kindly motives. I assure you, if you were to come and see me you would have quite a fuss made over you. During the last three weeks that hideous operation called “a thorough clean” has been going on in the house. It is now nearly completed, for which I thank my stars, as during its progress I have fulfilled the twofold character of nurse and governess, while the nurse has been transmuted into cook and housemaid. That nurse, by-the-bye, is the prettiest lass you ever saw, and when dressed has much more the air of a lady than her mistress. Well can I believe that Mrs. White has been an exciseman’s daughter, and I am convinced also that Mr. White’s extraction is very low. Yet Mrs. White talks in an amusing strain of pomposity about his and her family and connections, and affects to look down with wondrous hauteur on the whole race of tradesfolk, as she terms men of business. I was beginning to think Mrs. White a good sort of body in spite of all her bouncing and boasting, her bad grammar and worse orthography, but I have had experience of one little trait in her character which condemns her a long way with me. After treating a person in the most familiar terms of equality for a long time, if any little thing goes wrong she does p. 87not scruple to give way to anger in a very coarse, unladylike manner. I think passion is the true test of vulgarity or refinement.
‘This place looks exquisitely beautiful just now. The grounds are certainly lovely, and all is as green as an emerald. I wish you would just come and look at it. Mrs. White would be as proud as Punch to show it you. Mr. White has been writing an urgent invitation to papa, entreating him to come and spend a week here. I don’t at all wish papa to come, it would be like incurring an obligation. Somehow, I have managed to get a good deal more control over the children lately—this makes my life a good deal easier; also, by dint of nursing the fat baby, it has got to know me and be fond of me. I suspect myself of growing rather fond of it. Exertion of any kind is always beneficial. Come and see me if you can in any way get, I want to see you. It seems Martha Taylor is fairly gone. Good-bye, my lassie.—Yours insufferably,
‘C. Brontë.’
---------------------------------------------------

‘Upperwood House, Rawdon,
‘May 9th, 1841.

‘Dear Sir,—I am about to employ part of a Sunday evening in answering your last letter. You will perhaps think this hardly right, and yet I do not feel that I am doing wrong. Sunday evening is almost my only time of leisure. No one would blame me if I were to spend this spare hour in a pleasant chat with a friend—is it worse to spend it in a friendly letter?
‘I have just seen my little noisy charges deposited snugly in their cribs, and I am sitting alone in the school-room with the quiet of a Sunday evening pervading the grounds and gardens outside my window. I owe you a letter—can I choose a better time than the present for paying my debt? Now, Mr. Nussey, you need not expect any gossip or news, I have none to tell you—even if I had I am not at present in the mood to communicate them. You will excuse an unconnected letter. If I had thought you critical or captious I would have declined the task of corresponding with you. When I reflect, indeed, it p. 88seems strange that I should sit down to write without a feeling of formality and restraint to an individual with whom I am personally so little acquainted as I am with yourself; but the fact is, I cannot be formal in a letter—if I write at all I must write as I think. It seems Ellen has told you that I am become a governess again. As you say, it is indeed a hard thing for flesh and blood to leave home, especially a good home—not a wealthy or splendid one. My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world—the profound, the intense affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other when their minds are cast in the same mould, their ideas drawn from the same source—when they have clung to each other from childhood, and when disputes have never sprung up to divide them.
‘We are all separated now, and winning our bread amongst strangers as we can—my sister Anne is near York, my brother in a situation near Halifax, I am here. Emily is the only one left at home, where her usefulness and willingness make her indispensable. Under these circumstances should we repine? I think not—our mutual affection ought to comfort us under all difficulties. If the God on whom we must all depend will but vouchsafe us health and the power to continue in the strict line of duty, so as never under any temptation to swerve from it an inch, we shall have ample reason to be grateful and contented.
‘I do not pretend to say that I am always contented. A governess must often submit to have the heartache. My employers, Mr. and Mrs. White, are kind worthy people in their way, but the children are indulged. I have great difficulties to contend with sometimes. Perseverance will perhaps conquer them. And it has gratified me much to find that the parents are well satisfied with their children’s improvement in learning since I came. But I am dwelling too much upon my own concerns and feelings. It is true they are interesting to me, but it is wholly impossible they should be so to you, and, therefore, I hope you will skip the last page, for I repent having written it.
p. 89‘A fortnight since I had a letter from Ellen urging me to go to Brookroyd for a single day. I felt such a longing to have a respite from labour, and to get once more amongst “old familiar faces,” that I conquered diffidence and asked Mrs. White to let me go. She complied, and I went accordingly, and had a most delightful holiday. I saw your mother, your sisters Mercy, Ellen, and poor Sarah, and your brothers Richard and George—all were well. Ellen talked of endeavouring to get a situation somewhere. I did not encourage the idea much. I advised her rather to go to Earnley for a while. I think she wants a change, and I dare say you would be glad to have her as a companion for a few months.—I remain, yours respectfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

The above letter was written to Miss Nussey’s brother, whose attachment to Charlotte Brontë has already more than once been mentioned in the current biographies. The following letter to Miss Nussey is peculiarly interesting because of the reference to Ireland. It would have been strange if Charlotte Brontë had returned as a governess to her father’s native land. Speculation thereon is sufficiently foolish, and yet one is tempted to ask if Ireland might not have gained some of that local literary colour—one of its greatest needs—which always makes Scotland dear to the readers of Waverley, and Yorkshire classic ground to the admirers of Shirley.
Read more letters of this period on: Gutenberg

William Wilberforce and Patrick Bronte.

On 12-07-1827, William Wilberforce arrived at Keighley for a four-day visit to Theodor Dury. Given his friendship with Dury and his own connections with Wilberforce, it seems more than likely that Patrick Bronte was one of those fortunate  enough to be invited to Keighley vicarage to meet the great man.

William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) was a British politician,philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native ofKingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian, resulting in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform. In 1787, he came into contact withThomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave-trade activists, including Granville Sharp,Hannah More and Charles Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition, and he soon became one of the leading English abolitionists. He headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. wiki/William_Wilberforce

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It was this connection that led Bronte to St John's College (renowned for its evangelical tradition) where he was personally sponsored by William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton.

discover/ancestors_bronte

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Patrick Bronte, Emily’s father, was a friend of William Wilberforce’s and joined the campaign to end slavery. wuthering heights

------------------
Wilberforce’s concerns consolidated into 10 categories.

Human rights

1. Literacy programs
2. Universal education
3. Arts
4. Encouraging the talents and gifts of others
5. Science
6. Health care
7. Prisoner Rehabilitation and Re-entry
8. Broadening Philanthropy
9. Faith Leadership the better hour

1834 Poor Law Amendment Act

When Patrick Brontë opposed the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act little could he imagine that more than 170 years later his words would be so adequate for the current economical situation of his native Ireland. He wrote in 1837 to the Leeds Intelligencer.

Liberty or Bondage
To the Labourers, Mechanics, and Paupers or Slaves of England

(...) A law has lately been passed called the Poor Law Amendment Bill - a great misnomer I never read nor heard. It is a monster if iniquity, a horrid and cruel deformity, even in regard to what before was no very shapely or symmetrical representation. I know a comittee is sitting to amend the bill - but let me tell you, my dear friends, that it cannot be amended; it must be repealed altogether. (...)

We are told in the five books of Moses that the poor shall never cease from the land, and are exhorted to open our hands wide to relieve them. And the eternal God says multiply and replenish the earth. The blessed Saviour, also, follows up these injunctions with still more forcible admonitions. But a set of unfeeling, antiscriptural men, have lately arisen, who, being themselves only paupers on a larger scale, (as they are, in mnay instances supported by the country, and in a great measure, by the very men whom they wish to oppress) - who, nevertheless, teach doctrines in direct opposition to the law and to the gospel. What, then, my friends, are we to do under these circumstances? Why, verily, I see no plan better for us than that adopted by the Apostles, namely, to obey God, rather than man. (...) Then let me request you to do your duty - petition, remonstrate, and resist powerfully but legally, and God, the father and friend of the poor, will crown all your efforts with success. (Patrick Brontë to the Editor of the Leeds Intelligencer, 22 April 1837)

http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/

After a long struggle, justice had been done

One of the most famous incidents during Patrick's curacy at Dewsbury concerned a young man called
William Nowell of Dawgreen, Dewsbury; who had been arrested and wrongly imprisoned as a deserter of the army. Britain was at the time in the middle of the Napoleonic wars and in order to maintain a supply of soldiers, recruiting officers were sent to local fairs to offer a 'recruiting shilling' to any likely candidates.  In September 1810, a soldier named James Thackray, stated that Nowell had accepted the King's Shilling at the horse fair held at  Lee Fair, near Wakefield and had therefore been formally enlisted to the 30th Regiment.
On 25 September 1810, soldiers appeared at William Nowell's home to arrest him for failing to report at the Regimental headquarters.  Nowell pleaded that he had not attended Lee Fair and had several witnesses who could testify that he had been in Dewsbury that day.  The magistrate refused to accept the testimonies of these witnesses and committed Nowell to Wakefield Prison. The case caused an immediate outcry in Dewsbury and Patrick was one of four men who went to meet with the magistrate in Wakefield to plead for the case to be re-heard.  They were accompanied by two new witnesses who swore that they had been with the soldier James Thackray at the Lee Fair, and he had not enlisted any new recruits that day. The magistrate refused to examine the new witnesses and William Nowell remained in prison. Determined not to be beaten and to see justice being done, Patrick, together with the churchwardens and principal inhabitants of Dewsbury, wrote to the Leeds Mercury and the War Office to demand a retrial. Eventually, a hearing was arranged for 2 November 1810.  Patrick  and eminent Dewsbury men attended the hearing along with fifteen witnesses who could testify that Nowell had not been at Lee Fair on the day in question.  Following the hearing, the evidence was sent to London and five days later William Nowell was released from prison after spending ten weeks in custody. After the hearing, Patrick Brontë received the following letter from the Secretary of War,

Lord Palmerston:
WAR Office, 5th December, 1810.
Sir,
Referring to the correspondence relative to William Nowell, I am to aquaint you that I feel so strongly the injury that is likely to arise to the Service from an unfair mode of recruiting, that if by the indictment that the lad's friends are about to prefer against James Thackray they shall establish the fact of his having been guilty of perjury, I shall be ready to indemnify them for the reasonable and proper expenses which they shall bear on the occasion.                           
I am, sir, Yours, & C.,
PALMERSTON
To the Rev. P. Brontë, Dewsbury, near Leeds.

On 7 December 1811, the soldier James Thackray was found guilty of perjury at York Assizes and
sentenced to seven years transportation.  After a long struggle, justice had been done

Read on: kirklees.gov.uk/visitors/documents/patrickbronte A lot of information and pictures. 

Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 and Patrick Bronte

In 1833 Earl Grey, the Prime Minister, set up a Poor Law Commission to examine the working of the poor Law system in Britain. In their report published in 1834, the Commission made several recommendations to Parliament. As a result, the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed. The act stated that:

(a) no able-bodied person was to receive money or other help from the Poor Law authorities except in a workhouse;

(b) conditions in workhouses were to be made very harsh to discourage people from wanting to receive help;

(c) workhouses were to be built in every parish or, if parishes were too small, in unions of parishes;

(d) ratepayers in each parish or union had to elect a Board of Guardians to supervise the workhouse, to collect the Poor Rate and to send reports to the Central Poor Law Commission;
(e) the three man Central Poor Law Commission would be appointed by the government and would be responsible for supervising the Amendment Act throughout the country.

Patrick Brontë (1777–1861)
Born into poverty in Ireland, he won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, and was ordained into the Church of England. He was perpetual curate of Haworth in Yorkshire for forty-one years, bringing up four children, founding a school and campaigning for a proper water supply.
Although often portrayed as a somewhat fobidding figure, he was an opponent of capital punishment and the Poor Law Amendment Act, a supporter of limited Catholic emancipation and a writer of poetry.
.