This publication accompanied an exhibition at the Gallery Oldham featuring the cartoons and writing of Sam Fitton (1868 – 1923). Fitton worked as a local mill worker until ill health forced him to leave in 1907. Thereafter he took a courageous decision to earn a living as a writer and artist. Over twelve years Fitton contributed some 400 cartoons to the Cotton Factory Times. A popular newspaper for Lancashire and Cheshire mill workers, it had a weekly sale of 50,000 and a shared readership much in excess of that.
Fitton’s work was the humour of hardship and this is well illustrated in this publication. They are a fascinating insight into harsh factory life – Oldham had 11 million cotton spindles before 1914 and vast inequalities in wealth.
This publication is not simply a guide to the exhibition. It is a fascinating essay describing Fitton’s life and times. Working conditions in the mills, housing conditions, the pleasure of the annual workers’ outing to Blackpool, industrial disputes, the grim experiences of women in the workforce are graphically detailed and supplemented by numerous contemporary photographs.
The use that Fitton made of dialect to connect with his audience is extremely important. As the authors illustrate, Fitton was one of a number of writers, including Ben Brierley, Edwin Waugh, Sam Laycock and, in Rochdale, Tim Bobbin, who were attempting to preserve dialect culture as industrialisation and urbanisation were reducing regional differences in speech and writing and indeed threatened to wipe it out altogether.
This was, as the authors acknowledge, regrettably a lost cause, but the importance of this publication is that it not only reminds us of this valiant attempt to preserve a local culture but provides examples of its richness. Here is the humorous response of a husband to his wife’s annual house Spring clean :
Na, then, yo’ worried factory chaps,
Who strive through muddle strife,
Yo’r beawn to get another dose,
Fro’ her yo’ co’n yo’r wife
This publication is a fascinating contribution, derived from the authors’ scholarship and enthusiasm, to our region’s history and has a valuable guide to further reading on the many important aspects that are covered. Highly recommended. Copies priced at £5 can
be obtained from: Gallery Oldham,
35 Greaves St, Oldham OL1 1AL
E-mail: galleryoldham@oldham.gov.uk
Eddie Little