A Peppered Past

MOTHS AND MOTHERS

Like Margaret Drabble who recently published an assessment of the matrilineal genes and memes that she inherited from the family of her mother, Kathleen Marie Bloor, I have come to feel an affinity with a moth.

Ms Drabble has titled her semi-fictional exploration of family history and the cascading intergenerational quirks of its female members, ‘The Peppered Moth’ – presumably because a moth is a moth and a Bloor is a Bloor, even though both may seek to change their spots to fit in.

The novel deals with difficult relationships - between parents and offspring, and between family and a sense of place. Away from the grime and gloom of South Yorkshire, the youngest in the line of ‘Cudworth’ women, Chrissie (Margaret’s self representation), comes to life in a perverse, wicked, rebellious streak, drawn to "lust, adultery and alcohol".

But fighting off the family curse of depression which has darkened the lives of her womenfolk, the fourth generation narrator finds it difficult to avoid a harsh, dismissive, censorious tone in assessing her forbears. In fact, she finds it hard to avoid sounding like her mother. And left to settle in Sheffield once more, no doubt the darkness would come to predominate in adjusting to nature.

So moths and mothers make an interesting counterpoint.

Let’s start by talking about the moths. The Peppered Moth (Biston betularia) is a dowdy, night-flying moth that used to haunt woodland trees in a greyish-white that blended well with lichen-covered bark.

When the early 19th century collectors first identified it, it was a predominantly light-winged with black speckles. But in 1848, a black variant was identified in Manchester that blended in much more effectively with the increasingly soot-stained trees of industrial Northern England.

By 1895, 95% of the Lancashire peppered moths were black – and this dark form then spread across Britain until the lighter form began a resurgence following the 1956 Clean Air Act.

The shift in hues in response to camouflaging and predation was seen by evolutionists as a clear vindication of the theory of natural selection, though disputes arose on the validity of the science and creationists seized the opportunity to argue that, as their had always been lighter and darker forms, proportionality was the only issue.

But Mike Majerus, Professor of Evolution at Cambridge University recently spent seven years repeating the earlier studies on the predation of the peppered moth. He compiled enough visual sightings of birds eating peppered moths to show that, in rural Cambridgeshire, the black form was significantly more likely to be eaten than the peppered now that air pollution had declined.

“The peppered moth story is easy to understand,” he explained, “because it involves things that we are familiar with: vision and predation and birds and moths and pollution and camouflage and lunch and death. That is why the anti-evolution lobby attacks the peppered moth story. They are frightened that too many people will be able to understand.”

Adding: “If the rise and fall of the peppered moth is one of the most visually impacting and easily understood examples of Darwinian evolution in action, it should be taught. After all, it provides the proof of evolution.”

And more recent research by Ilik Saccheri, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, and his colleagues has shown that show one mutation from a single ancestor causes increased dark pigment, called melanism, in the typically light-coloured moth.

Saccheri's team used a genetic technique called linkage mapping to search for the gene responsible. A linkage map puts traits in groups according to how often they are passed on to the next generation together, which indicates how close together they sit on a chromosome. The closer the traits are in the genetic sequence, the less likely it is that they will be separated during sex-cell division, and the more likely it is that they will be passed on together.

To make the map, Saccheri and his colleagues twice crossed a dark male moth with a light-coloured female; the result was 132 offspring with varying traits. The traits most often inherited alongside dark coloration were matched up with genes of the silkworm (Bombyx mori) — a closely related moth species with a sequenced genome.

The locations of the genes for the traits pointed to a narrow region on chromosome 17, where the scientists say that a single gene variant is probably responsible for the peppered moth's melanism, although they don't yet know exactly which one it is.

Once the chromosome region was identified, the researchers examined moth samples collected all over Britain between 1925 and 2009. The same group of gene variants huddled in the chromosome region closest to the mutation in the dark moths, providing strong evidence that natural selection had acted recently on an advantageous mutation from one individual. If a mutation had been in the population for a longer time, or had come from multiple individuals, the selection of traits that were inherited together would vary more widely.

"It's not just the one mutation that has been swept through the population, it's that whole chunk of chromosome that has hitch-hiked," says Saccheri.

"It's a big breakthrough as far as peppered moths' industrial melanism is concerned," says Laurence Cook, a retired population geneticist from the University of Manchester, UK. He has been studying the peppered moth since the 1960s. "We've been going on for an awfully long time knowing just the classical Mendelian genetics."

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SHORROCKS

Like Margaret Drabble, I have Northern English ancestors and a somewhat quarrelsome relationship with my family’s matriarchy. As my mother used to say ‘You can’t kill squitch’ (i.e. invasive couch grass). As if anyone would dare try?

But in my case it is the male-line ydna rather than the female-line mitochondrial dna that is of most interest from a genetic and behavioural point of view. I never knew my father as he was killed in the RAF in 1943 before I was born and, as my mother pretty much turned her back on his family, I grew up knowing very little about the ‘Johnsons’.

But as with the Peppered Moth, genetic techniques have uncovered a story about evolution – the evolution of my Johnsons from the Shorrocks family of Salford. In a similar effort to avoid being conspicuous – my grandfather changed his name when he left the North around 1905 (though oral history confirms that he could not divest himself of his cloth cap and pipe). Regardless, he could not change the genetic signature that he passed on to succeeding generations.

So we can match the darkening of the moth over the 19th century with the history of my family – though in our case, the change of hue and spots was much more abrupt.

As recounted by Derek Antrobus, pre-industrial Salford was ‘a pretty town with orchards, market gardens and homes of quite prosperous people arranged around a street called Greengate where the market square was to be found’. In 1773, its population was less than 5,000 – but this modest, historic town was already growing and my paternal ancestors who moved there from Blackburn were among the early immigrants.

In 1764 William ‘Sharrock’ married Sarah Rix at Prestwich, and a 1797 Trade Directory record William as a Calico-glazier, living Wood Street, Salford. William and Sarah had two sons, Richard (b 1788) and James (b 1793).

By 1801 the population of Salford had reached 29,495 and it was over 40,000 when James married Elizabeth Butterworth in 1815 (as James Shorrocks). The marriage certificate records James as a Brushmanufacturer, and Pigot’s 1821 Trade Directory shows that James and his brother Richard were joint owners of a workshop at 22 New Bailey Street, Salford.

By this time, Salford had become one of the first sparks off the anvil of the Industrial Revolution. Following the opening of the Bridgewater Canal in 1761, which halved the price of coal, and the development of the steam engine and textile machinery, urban growth caught fire, engulfing the old town. As described by a contemporary of James:

‘Houses have now displaced the verdure in all directions, and the pellucid character of the river has been destroyed by chemical refuse, and although the old localities still retain their favourite names – names suggestive of ‘Flora and the countrie green’ – they form so odd an amalgamation with the new streets to which they are wedded that the contrast raises our mirth along with our melancholy.

Wheat Hill has not an ear of corn to bless itself withal; Springfield has lost every trace of the vernal season; Garden Lane, Posy Street, Blossom Street and the Old Orchard lead to anything rather than fruit and flowers. Even Paradise [Vale] and Paradise Hill are shorn of their primeval attractions; and as to the Green Gate that once guarded Salford’s pastures – where shall we look for that?’

Later, by the time my great, great grandfather Walter Shorrocks was recorded as a 15 year old in the 1841 Census, the population of Salford had reached 91,361. And when my great grandfather Robert Edwin Shorrocks was recorded as a 7 year old in the 1861 Census, the population was 148,740 – with Walter living with his wife Ann (nee Collinge) and their three sons at 21 Islington Street, Salford, employing 2 workmen in the brush manufacturing workshop attached to the dwelling.

As contemporary photographs and the comments of Friedrich Engels make it all too clear, by the mid-1800s, the pleasant town known to William and James had become overcrowded and squalid in many areas. New rail connections in 1841 and 1881 and the opening of Salford Quays on the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 accentuated the process.

By the time my grandfather Harry Shorrocks was recorded a 2 year old in the 1881 Census, (living with his father Robert who managed the brush stocks as a warehouseman and mother Fanny Eliza [nee Mallinson]) the population of Salford had reached 228,822.

It was over 300,000 in the Dirty Old Town when, as a young man Harry turned his back on Salford forever, settling in South London under his new alias Harry ‘Johnson’.

MOTHS AND FATHERS

There are many young people who run away and start afresh. But going further and changing one’s surname is an act that has repercussions beyond the immediate and personal. It affects all those who come later.

It raises possible limitations to our rights of reinvention.

Coming to the end of his life, Harry must have mused that no harm had been done. His three sons had produced what looked like a final total of four grand-daughters and it would have looked as though the Shorrocks name and ancestry were safely moribund. Then I popped up as a posthumous child, just a year before he died in June 1945.

But as the grandson who was cut free from his family history, I take exception to the fact that my father and his brothers and I were forced to fly, so to speak, under false colours.

Then there are the many, many hours of family history research that I spent dredging through the Johnsons in the Censuses looking for brush manufacturers. And the subsequent loss of my adopted brush manufacturing Johnson family of West Ham – and the embarrassing illegitimacy of my relationship with some of their lovely descendants the Bosleys.

So what drove Harry to turn his back on all that he knew and seek anonymity in London? We’ll never know – but we do know that he died as overweight and probably alcohol dependent. And that he had a reputation within my mother’s family as someone who became animated and inappropriate at any Bit of a Do, trying too hard to impress the ladies.

Or another way of putting it is that, like Chrissie the Margaret Drabble self-insert, he had a ‘wicked, rebellious streak, and was drawn to lust, adultery and alcohol’. Come to think of it, that covers some episodes in my own life.

So an independent streak to the caterpillar can be seen later as selfishness and self-indulgence in the post-pupated moth.

Getting back to my mother, on bad days she saw my grandfather rather than my father born again in me – particularly if I was going through a stouter or more exuberant spell. ‘You are just like your grandfather Johnson’ was sure to bring me to heel.

But like so many of the participants in the ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ series, I have found a sense of resolution and affinity in re-establishing my more distant family links. Looking back, something always seemed to be calling me from the past.

And what of my younger boys – are they, like the Peppered Moth, in the process of returning to ancestral type?

This is a hard question. As with any empirical work in the social sciences, it is difficult to avoid the observer intruding on the experiment.

In fact my own role in the story is now centre stage. Looking back over the last 200 years or so from the marriage of James and Elizabeth Shorrocks in 1815 to the present, you have a neat division between a Shorrocks century and a Johnson century – and I have been around for a third of the overall total.

I would like to think that my boys have inherited Shorrocks virtues and avoided Shorrocks vices but the likelihood is that they will see their lives much more in terms of the present day – focussing on reinvention in the light of the genes that I exhibit and the memes that I have spun.

But the family home is now called ‘Shorrocks Hey’ and my younger boys and I sometimes sing a little song going to school in the car based on a Bob Marley classic - ‘I shot the Shorrocks - but I did not shoot the deputy’. And Sam my eight year old has expressed dissatisfaction at being given his mother’s surname and flagged some interest in renaming himself Sam Shorrocks when he gets older.

As for the thirty and twenty-eight year old sons, they have, for the time being, rejected their father’s mutation into a Kiwi and dissolved back into the life of London - perfectly camouflaged.

Friedrich Engels, the Cheshire Hunt, the Red Dragon & me

MY CONNECTIONS WITH THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNISM

In my post of June 10, 2010 ‘Fox Hunting and the Point to Points’, I sketched the emergence of two of the modern mainstays of life in rural Cheshire and illustrated how new and synthetic this culture really is.

I mentioned that when the original Hunt Club was founded in 1762 in Tarporley, Cheshire it started off with hare coursing (i.e. using beagle hounds) and that it was only prosperity, farm consolidation and the widespread introduction and proper maintenance of hawthorn hedges that made fox hunting viable.

I also quoted from a poem or ballad called ‘Farmer Dobbin’ written by Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton and published in 1853. This was almost certainly first recited to the assembled members of the Cheshire Hunt at a banquet in the Hunt Room of the Swan Inn in Tarporley.

The poem celebrates the acceptance of a new stratum of prosperous local dairy farmers into the Hunt and it mocks the brash young men of Manchester and Liverpool for moving off too early before the fox started from its cover.

Well, you may be more than a little surprised to learn that one of the world’s most important revolutionary thinkers, Friedrich Engels, may well have been one of the offenders in taking up the chase prematurely.

In 1850, Engels returned to England to assist in the management of the sewing thread mill that was part-owned by his father. The Ermen and Engel’s mill was located at Weaste in Salford and Friedrich started by keeping the accounts, while later becoming a full partner.

Fox hunting with the Cheshire Hounds was one of his weekend hobbies in the autumn.

And in my post of August 11, 2010, ‘Who Do You Think You Are – and what were they worth?’ I mentioned that my great, great grandfather Walter Shorrocks, who was a Brush Manufacturer in Salford, lived near to the Crescent Pub in Salford (formerly the Red Dragon) where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels once drank and discussed revolution and the theory of Communism.

So, I couldn’t let these connections pass without further comment.

Quite possibly, Friedrich (born 1820) may have crossed urban alleyways then with my great great grandfather Walter (born 1824) in Salford, and country lanes with my Cheshire farming step family (Abraham Darlington the elder born 1805 and his son, another Abraham, who was my great grandfather, born 1841).

And the covert revolutionary may have shared drinks with the Shorrocks’ in the Red Dragon and the Darlingtons in the Swan Inn.

So I’ll take the opportunity to say more about Friedrich Engels and his life in North West England.

SALFORD PAYS TRIBUTE TO ITS FAMOUS ADOPTED SON

According to a colourful article in Salford Star (No 6: Winter 2007) on Friedrich Engels:

“Fred Engels is the most famous person who ever lived in Salford.

And when he settled in Salford, at the age of 22, he was on the ale every night, copping off with local girls and stirring up all sorts of trouble. He was the original angry young man, slagging off developers, the council, the capitalists and the conditions that working class people were living in.

Born in Barmen, Germany, in 1820, young Fred was a major trouble maker after he discovered politics, so his dad – a rich mill owner – packed him off to Salford when he was 22 to work for the family's joint owned Ermen and Engels' Victoria Mill in Weaste, which made sewing threads.

By this time Fred already spoke 25 languages, was a top horseman, swordsman, swimmer, skater, artist, journalist, composer and philosopher – well, there was no telly in those days. And he'd published loads of political articles, stirring it up in his home town and prompting his dad to write:

"I have a son at home who is like a scabby sheep in a flock…"

Fred copped off with a young Irish girl called Mary Burns, who probably worked at his dad's mill, and she took him out at night in disguise so that he wouldn't get his German bourgeois head kicked in.

After twenty months Fred went home and wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England 1844 (published 1845). It was"dedicated to the working classes of Great Britain" but wasn't available in English until 1892. The explosive book described in intimate detail, street after street, the total squalor that working people were living in, based on what he'd seen in Salford and Manchester.

But he didn't just write about the conditions, and his hatred for the ruling class that allowed working people to live like that. Once back in Germany he got his sword out and took part in the revolutionary uprising against the Prussian army.

It was after this, in 1848, that Fred and Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto urging a worldwide socialist revolution.

With the authorities after him, Fred took refuge in Switzerland before arriving back at his dad's factory in 1850, exiled in Salford. He stayed for 19 years. This time, Fred was under surveillance from the secret police, and had `official' homes and `unofficial homes' all over inner city Manchester where he lived with Mary under false names to confuse the cops.

While Fred was in Salford and Manchester, Karl Marx used to come and visit him at least once every year. They would sit for hours researching in Chetham's Library – and then go drinking for hours in pubs all over town – possibly the Crescent and The Grapes in Salford, and the Gold Cup and Coach and Horses in Manchester”.

THE STORY CONTINUES

During the 19 years that Friedrich spent in Manchester and Salford on the management team of Ermen and Engels, he enjoyed all the perks associated with his growing wealth (he became a partner in 1864) - and as I mentioned above, he rode with the Cheshire Hounds.

And at the same time, he maintained two homes in Manchester so he could continue to enjoy the beds and domesticity offered by two Irish working class sisters Mary and Lizzie Burns.

But he also supported Karl Marx. Drawing on his salary and profits, it is estimated that Engels provided at least £35,000 a year at today’s prices until Marx’s death, to enable Marx to keep up a middle class lifestyle, especially for his three daughters.

In 1870, Engels moved to London where he and Marx lived until Marx's death in 1883. He died in England in 1895.

Fellow politicians regarded Engels as a "ruthless party tactician", "brutal ideologue", and a "master tactician" when it came to purging rivals in political organizations.

However, he was also seen as a "gregarious", "bighearted", and "jovial man of outsize appetites", who was referred to by his son-in-law as "the great beheader of champagne bottles”. At his regular Sunday parties for London’s left-wing intelligentsia it seems that "no one left before 2 or 3 in the morning."

His stated personal motto was "take it easy", while "jollity" was listed as his favorite virtue.

When Engels died in 1895 he left more than £2m in stocks and shares in today’s money. In the cellar of his grand Primrose Hill four-story house he had £20,000 pounds worth of fine wines and more stored with his merchant.

Unconcerned that this wealth compromised his communist convictions, he apparently argued that:

“the stock exchange simply adjusts the distribution of surplus value already stolen from the workers” and that it was possible to both dabble on the stock market and be a socialist”.

And he promised a “fine reception” for anyone who came to him seeking an apology for being a boss of a manufacturing firm.

SOME FURTHER QUOTES:

"To get the most out of life you must be active, you must live and you must have the courage to taste the thrill of being young”.

"I once went into Manchester with a bourgeois and spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful conditions of the working people's quarters…The man listened quietly and said when we parted `And yet there is a great deal of money to be made here; Good Morning Sir’.

"All the conditions of life are measured by money - and what brings no money is (judged) nonsense, unpractical idealistic bosh!"

"If we cross the Irwell to Salford, we find…one large working men's quarter, penetrated by a single wide avenue…All Salford is built in courts or narrow lanes, so narrow, that they remind me of the narrowest I have ever seen, the little lanes of Genoa….The working men's dwellings between Oldfield Road and Cross Lane…vie with the dwellings of the Old Town in filth and overcrowding.

In this district I found a man, apparently about 60 years old, living in a cow stable...which had neither windows and floor, nor ceiling… and lived there, though the rain dripped through his rotten roof. This man was too old and weak for regular work, and supported himself by removing manure with a hand-cart; the dung heaps lay next door to his palace.

The working people live, almost all of them, in wretched, damp, filthy cottages…the streets which surround them are usually in the most miserable and filthy condition, laid out without the slightest reference to ventilation, with reference solely to the profit secured by the contractor…"

"I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the middle classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so’

Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette ...."

"(I am) proud because I thus got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of everyone but an English money-monger ..."

"A class which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages…Who can demand that such a class respect this social order?"

"Exploitation is the basic evil which the social revolution strives to abolish, by abolishing the capitalist mode of production."

"Urban authorities…almost everywhere in England are recognised centres of corruption of all kinds, nepotism and jobbery – the exploitation of public office to the private advantage of the official or his family."

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…”

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win - Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

1861 CENSUS

Frederick Engels

Age 40
Estimated Year of Birth 1821
Relationship to Head of Household Lodger
Occupation Merchant
Address 6, Thorncliffe Grove
District Chorlton, Chorlton-Upon-Medlock
Parish Chorlton Upon Medlock
Administrative County Lancashire
Birth Place Prussia

[Lodger with Charles Lee, wife Ann (children Sarah 16, Charles 14, William 7, Emily 5 and Bertha 4)]

Walter Shorrocks (my great, great grandfather)

Age 37
Estimated Year of Birth 1824
Relationship to Head of Household Head
Occupation Brushmaker employing 3 men and 1 boy
Address 21 Islington Street
District Greengate
Parish Salford
Administrative County Lancashire
Birth Place
Birth County Lancashire

Abraham Darlington (my step great, great grandfather)

Age 56
Estimated Year of Birth 1805
Relationship to Head of Household Head
Occupation Farmer of...acres
Address Aston Green
District Nantwich, Nantwich
Parish Aston Juxta Mondrum
Administrative County Cheshire
Birth Place
Birth County Cheshire

[Son Abraham 20 years old born 1841 – good candidate for riding with the Cheshire Hounds c1860]

FOOTNOTE

I have also (once only) hunted with the Cheshire Hounds.

When I was about 10 years old, I badgered my mother and step father to be able to join the Meet of the Hounds at Calveley Hall Gates. I rode my overweight and normally ponderous pony Jonty (see photo below) - who however became a stampeding steed in the rush of horses.

Narrowly avoiding being maimed and crushed (parents were more stoic about risks and injuries in those days), I survived being dragged through a disintegrating post and rail fence in the fields between Calveley and Wettenhall.

This prematurely and permanently ended my enthusiasm for the sport!

Brothers Reunited

Well finally, we can reunite the two sides of a family that was divided in the period 1903-1905, with the descendants of the elder brother using the Johnson surname while those of the younger brother retain the old family name of Shorrocks.

The photographs above show my grandfather's brother Robert Mallinson Shorrocks (centre), flanked by own father 'Jay' Johnson (top), and Robert's elder brother Harry Shorrocks / Johnson (pictured below with Harry's youngest son - and Jay's brother, Eric Johnson).

The photographs are roughly contemporary (1934 to 1940).

The link-up has resulted from around 8 years of research that involved cross-matching male-line ydna data with census, birth, marriage and death records.

My Distant Cousin Norma Crossley (nee Norma Shorrocks) writes:

'Your original email helped explain a mystery in my research as I had found reference to granddad having an older brother Harry from the census records but it was complete news to my Dad.

We had a fun day though when we when to see Mum & Dad earlier this month with all your information & Dad has amended his family tree to include Harry, so the evidence must be enough to convince a solicitor!

As we talked Dad said he has some vague recollection in conversations between his mother & aunts of references to a relative who was 'a bad lot' who disappeared to London - but as he put it “it's over 40 years ago”.

We will probably ever know why Harry left but I have some sympathy with changing his name, Crossley is a vast improvement. I certainly found Shorrocks a difficult name when I lived in South East England for a spell'.

I had written to Norma as follows, after our initial contact:

Thanks so much for replying - it so good to be in touch (if only 105 years or so down the track!)

I was hoping that your family would be able to help explain Harry's disappearance but I am not altogether surprised that there is largely a blank. Whatever happened, it seems the rupture was pretty final'.

Robert it seems was a steady family man who looked after his mother when his father Robert Edwin Shorrocks died, and who then helped to look after a sister who was widowed in WWI.

Harry is seems was a bit of a gambler, a bit of a ladies' man, and a finally a heavy drinker - though I am sure he was good company in any hostelry.

Ironically, both sets of descendants identify with North West England (living not so far from the place of origin of the Shorrocks surname in Central Lancashire) and some members of the contemporary Shorrocks family live within 20 miles of some of their formerly lost 'Johnson' relatives in Cheshire.

Brushing Up on the Family Trade

As my great grandfather Robert Edwin Shorrocks, my great great grandfather Walter Shorrocks and my great, great, great grandfather James Shorrocks (bca 1794) were all members of a dynasty of craft Brush Manufacturers in Salford, Lancashire, I have developed an interest in their trade.

And in the possibility of actually seeing how the brushes were made by viewing the film made by Sam Hanna in 1968 of the operations of a small company (similar one assumes to that of my family) - Baldwin's of Burnley in this case, rather than Shorrocks' of Salford.

One day, I hope to get to see the film or even buy a copy - in the meantime, I'll just provide the background and the sequence notes.

BACKGROUND

Sam Hanna was a Burnley born amateur film maker whose collection of 587 reels of mostly 16mm film was acquired by the North West Film Archive at the Manchester Metropolitan University in November 2005.

Sam, who has been dubbed 'the Lowry of film making', had a lifelong passion for cinematography. Born in 1903, he became a teacher of handicrafts and, against strong opposition from the education authorities, pioneered the use of film in the classroom.

Self taught Hanna had a film-making spanning six decades, from the 1930s to the 1980s. He is perhaps best known for the Old Crafts Series which forms a unique record of such long-forgotten crafts as brush-making, coopering, clog-making, and charcoal burning.

Also of great interest are his films of local events and customs, notably colour footage of the 'Busby Babes' in 1957, records of children's street games from the 1950s and footage of training exercises performed by his local Home Guard battalion during World War Two.

In 2009/10, the legacy of Sam Hanna will be brought to life again through online access, exhibitions, screenings and workshops. This new project links the North West Film Archive with partners in Lancashire Museums, Libraries and Record Offices, Towneley Hall Museum, and the MMU History Department.

Film No. 5100
OLD ENGLISH CRAFTS; BALDWINS BRUSH MAKERS ESTABLISHED 1854
Producer: Sam Hanna
1968
colour , sound (sep), 12 min. 21 sec:

Depicts the dying craft of making yard and paint brushes by hand at Baldwin's Brush Makers, (established 1854) at Cog Lane, Burnley. It includes footage of a yard brush head being created by a stock knife, holes being bored using a treadle machine and bristles inserted skilfully using pitch and twine, before the brush is trimmed.

Also features the different process of applying bristles to a paintbrush, as they are strapped, levelled up, tacked and sealed to the handle. Other brush-making skills such as combing fibres, cutting bristles and wiring brushes are also shown.

SEQUENCES:

Shot of a man inserting bristles into a red hand brush. "Mr Baldwin is the last of a family that have made brushes for over a century in this workshop".

Cut to shot of second man doing the same job in the same location. The man is shown dipping the ends of bristles into tar-like substance (pitch), winding twine around the dipped area, re-dipping the ends and inserting the bristles into the brush.

Cut to shot of a worker operating a stock knife (that is associated with clog-making) to cut and shape the heads of hand-made yard brushes. The knife is held on the workbench by a hook on the knife and an eye that is fixed to the bench.

Cut to shot of a worker inspecting wooden cones that are topped with curved drill bits. "The holes to receive the bristles in the brush head are made by means of a spoon bit, fixed into a wooden cone, which screws onto the head of a treadle boring machine."

Close up shot of one of the drill bits on a cone. Spoon bits vary in size from small to large diameters depending on the bristles to be received. A treadle machine (operated by a pedal) is shown. The operator stands on one leg, operating machine with other foot, as holes are drilled into the brush head. The drilling process is shown and a yard brush head with the requisite number of drilled holes is shown to the camera.

Cut to whitewashed walls, the brush maker's workshop. A vat of boiling pitch (tar-like substance) is in the middle of the workspace, the brush maker works with the brush head and bristles next to him. He judges the correct clump of bristles, dips the ends in the pitch and wraps some twine (or "thrum") around the end of the bristles. The twine is pulled tight on a steel rod that is fixed to the bench. He dips the ends in the pitch once more before inserting the bristles into one of the holes in the brush head.

In a different location, the brush is then shown to be trimmed by hand-operated bench shears to ensure that the bristles are the same length.

Fibres are then shown being cut by guillotine. A length gauge is set so that bristles are cut to required length.

New close up shot from a different angle showing bristles being inserted into a yard brush.

Good view of the bench-fixed steel rod that has become worn down from twine being pulled tight against it.

Explanation of the different types of materials used to make bristles and which countries they come from.

The inspection of the brush head after shearing is the final operation, the worker is seen passing his hand over the bristles to check for irregularities.

Cut to shot of a 'comb' device that is fixed to a bench. This is used if a mixture of fibres is required, for example animal hair and bristle. The mixture is drawn through the teeth of the comb to produce "hackled" or "combed" bristle. This action cleans the materials before dividing or multiplying the rows of differing components, until uniformity is obtained. The device also helps to remove small or extraneous lengths of bristle as the sample is "dragged" through the comb by hand.

New shot showing bristles laid out on a bench, narrator explains that the bristle materials are naturally bent and the craftsman ensures that the bends lie in the same direction.

Cut to bristles being put onto a paintbrush. The bristles are spread out on the brush handle - a narrow thong of leather is nailed on to hold them in place.

From a different angle, the same process begins. Once the thong has been nailed down once, the bristles are levelled up with a knife. The centre of the brush is marked with a knife which helps to stagger the placing of tacks on both sides of the brush and avoid them meeting in the middle.

Cut to the finishing process, where the ends of the bristles are welded and sealed on to the brush handle using a hot iron powered by a gas-fired heater.

The final scene shows the skill of a female worker wiring bristles on to a brush head, to produce a brush that will be used to groom horses. The narrator claims the action had to be "filmed in slow motion" as the woman was working so quickly. Once the bristles are wired, the woman is shown trimming the brush with shears that are attached to her work bench.

Beware the Wrath to Come - Salford in the 1880s (YouTube Clip from the film Hobson's Choice)

Sir John Mills 'Hobson's Choice'

Harry Shorrocks' Choices

My Shorrocks' family's Brush Manufacturing business in Salford in the 19th Century puts me in mind of the British film 'Hobson's Choice'.

I suspect that some of the family feuding, bullying and class conflict that it portrays lies at the heart of my grandfather Harry's decision to throw off his Shorrocks surname and start a new life in London around 1905.

SYNOPSIS

Hobson's Choice is a 1954 film directed by David Lean, based on the play of the same name by Harold Brighouse. It stars Charles Laughton in the title role of Victorian bootmaker Henry Hobson, Brenda De Banzie as his eldest daughter Maggie and John Mills as a timid employee. The film also features Prunella Scales, in one of her first roles, as daughter Vicky Hobson.

Hobson's Choice won the British Academy Film Award for Best British Film 1954. Willie Mossop (John Mills) is a gifted, but unappreciated shoemaker employed by the tyrannical Henry Horatio Hobson (Charles Laughton) in his moderately upscale shop in 1880s Salford. Widower Hobson has three daughters.

Maggie (Brenda De Banzie) and her younger sisters Alice (Daphne Anderson) and Vicky (Prunella Scales) have worked in their father's establishment without wages and are eager to be married and free of the shop. Alice has been seeing Albert Prosser (Richard Wattis), a young up-and-coming solicitor, while Vicky prefers Freddy Beenstock (Derek Blomfield), the son of a respectable corn merchant.

Hobson doesn't object to losing Alice and Vickey, but Maggie is far too useful to part with. To his friends, he mocks her as a spinster "a bit on the ripe side" at 30 years of age. Her pride injured, she bullies the contented, unambitious Will Mossop into an engagement.

When Hobson objects to her choice of husband and refuses to start paying her, Maggie decides that she and Willie will set up in a shop of their own. For capital, they turn to a very satisfied customer for a loan. With money in hand, they get married and, between her business sense and his shoemaking genius, the enterprise is very successful.

Within a year, they have taken away nearly all of Hobson's clientele. Finally, at Maggie's urging, Mossop goes into partnership with Hobson, now an almost-bankrupt alcoholic, on condition that Hobson take no further part in the business.

Hobson's Choice (1954 film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shorrock(s) Country, Lancashire - Mellor Church & Pub

Vikings & Natives - Shorrock Hey!

I became interested male-line YDNA genetics, and in the Shorrock(s) family and its history, following the discovery (from male-line YDNA tests) that my grandfather changed his name from Harry Shorrocks to Harry Johnson when he left Salford around 1903 to 1905 and settled in south London.

In the light of this, I have become involved in the wider history of the Shorrock(s), Sharrock(s), Shurrock families and the degree to which people holding these names may descend from a common ancestor. The work of Professor Bryan Sykes who is a molecular biologist at Oxford University has suggested that around 50 percent of the males who share a relatively uncommon surname may descend from a single male progenitor.

Male line YDNA is a bit like a supermarket barcode that is passed down from generation to generation by the males in the family.

The website for the wider study that I am running can be found at:

www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?Group=Shorrock

PROJECT BACKGROUND

From Syke’s work, it seemed probable that all the males who share one of the Shorrock(s), Sharrock(s), Shurrock and related surnames originate from a single ancestor (i.e. the name is monogenetic). The name apparently relates to a former hamlet 4 miles west of Blackburn in Lancashire called Shorrock Green (there was also a nearby place called Shorrock Hey). The name probably comes from Old English 'scora' = bank + 'ac' = oak.

In the 1881 Census nearly all the UK name holders (about 2,200 in total) were strongly focused on Lancashire. It seems that the variants may also be monogenetic in that they broke away from the parent name 'Shorrock' (1,480 people in 1881) one by one with specific ancestors being associated with each name. In 1881, the main localities and numbers were:

Shorrock (1,480) Blackburn,Preston,Haslingden
Sharrock (938) Wigan, Ormskirk, Bolton, Liverpool
Shorrocks (395) Bolton, Chorlton, Salford, Manchester
Sharrocks (352) Rochdale

The study aims to build friendship and kinship while exploring the inter-relationships between the family groups (including Shurrocks and other possible variants). In 1881 in the UK the Shurrocks group were heavily focused on Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

The results for the 6 people who have tested so far are summarised below.

RESULTS AS AT SEPTEMBER 2009

Ken, Keith and John

John Shorrocks (Warwickshire, UK) and Keith Johnson / Shorrocks are confirmed as directly related through James Shorrocks, Brushmanufacturer of Salford, England born c1796. John is a descendant of James' son Edwin Shorrocks and Keith is a descendant of another of James' sons Walter Shorrocks. This solves a long-standing 'brickwall' in Keith's genealogy / family history, as Keith's grandfather Harry Shorrocks changed his name to Harry Johnson around 1905 when he moved from Salford to South London.

Interestingly, Keith's first inkling that there may have been a name change in his family from Shorrocks to Johnson came from a 12:12 match with Ken Grist on the Ysearch site. Keith and Ken then compared their markers at the 25:25 level and found a 24:25 match. Now Ken has a 25:25 match with John Shorrocks. It appears that the marker that Keith differs on with respect to Ken and John (464c) is sometimes prone to slipping back to the value of the marker that precedes it - hence his final four value sequence of 15:15:15:18 as compared to their 15:15:18:18.

The DNA that is shared by Keith, John and Ken has been typed using the classification devised by Stephen Oppenheimer for his study ‘The Origins of the British: a Genetic Detective Story – The Surprising Roots of the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh’. Basically the DNA is ancestral, aboriginal northern English. However, this does not mean that it is Anglo-Saxon. It goes much deeper than the invasions from the eastern North Sea coast of the period 450 to 600AD. Rather, it stems from the first hunters in Britain who followed retreating glaciers north from the Catalonia (Barcelona area) of Spain around 8,000 years ago hunting for mammoths and other game.

Oppenheimer calls the wider gene cluster that contains this strand R1b-13. About 4 percent of males in the British Isles belong to the R1b-13 group. It is most prevalent in the English Pennines, Cumbria, North West Wales, South East Ireland and South Central Scotland. Our ancestors, over the period 8,000 BC to 2000BC, gradually evolved from hunters into livestock keepers and then to farmer cultivators of limited patches of oats, rye and other coarse grains. They would have spoken a Basque-related language. Their religion probably included the sacrifice of treasured objects and human victims to sacred waters and bogs.

At some point in the first millennium BC, they would have come into contact with more advanced Celtic speaking farmers moving in from the east. Gradually, the Basque-related language of those who lived in what is now England was superseded by a Celtic language akin to Welsh (known as Cumbric). By the time the Romans conquered Britain, our ancestors would have been drawn into Celtic tribes – the most important of which were the Brigantes, who straddled the English Pennines and had an offshoot in South East Ireland.

Overall, it is worth noting that the North West of England was relatively sparsely populated, backward and conservative until the 18th Century, in comparison to the south and east of England. It is likely that there were as few as 2,000 people in Lancashire 1500 years ago. The area then underwent successive conquests and settlements that led to the eventual abandonment of Cumbric in favour of English. The invaders included the Romans, the Northumbrian Angles, the Danes, Norse settlers from Ireland, and the Normans (with periodic invasions from Scotland). No doubt most of these strands can be found in our wider DNA profiles.
David and Larry

THE SHARROCKS OF VERYAN, CORNWALL

There was a new development in the study when David Sharrock joined. David Sharrock has set up an excellent website at:

http://www.btinternet.com/~sharrock.family/

David joined the study to test the hypothesis that the Sharrocks of Veryan Cornwall are indeed part of the extended Shorrock family from Lancashire.

The historic reference is as follows from a Heraldic Visitation in the 16th Century:

"Sharrockes of Ribbelsdale in Com. Lanc. first of wh. was Ralph Shorrock of Shorockhayes wch in the Barrons' Wars was advanced to be a Captaine and therein lost his life, his descent grewe poore, and when the Scotts overan the Northern borders & parte of Lancashire and Chesheire the most part of this familie fled into Dublyn in Ireland, where by the Corruption of the Irish Ideoam they were termed Sharlock wch name of necessitie they were constrained to hold in the time of King Henrie the Seventh."

(The Barons War took place between 1258 and 1267. Henry the seventh was on the throne from 1485 to 1509.)

However, the results indicate that David is not directly related to Ken, Keith and John. David’s results are from the same general family (over 10,000 years ago) but there is no recent link. David has what is termed a ‘Friesian haplotype profile’ which has a geographical focus on southern and eastern England.

David then sought another person with the same surname (Larry Sharrock) to test the possibility that he could link to Lancashire through them. The results were intriguing. They show that Larry has an even weaker link to Ken, Keith and John – and the same weak level of linkage to David. The probability is that Larry is a descendant of Norse / Viking settlers in North West England.

There seems to be some possibility that the original Sharrock in Cornwall enlisted or colluded with the Heralds to identify a location that could be ‘tied’ to a supposed manorial, aristocratic origin. This was the 16th Century equivalent of boosting one’s CV!

A NEW RESULT

Keith identified a local subject John Shorrock from Feniscowles, near Blackburn when he visited Central Lancashire in September 2009.

Larry Sharrock has tested 12:12 with the new Study Member John Shorrock.

As already commented, Larry's YDNA appears to have a Viking tinge. The Vikings dominated the Irish Sea in the 7th and 8th Centuries and settled along the coast. In addition, in AD 902, significant numbers were expelled from Dublin and allowed to settle in Cheshire and Lancashire (e.g. the settlement of Thurstaston = Thor’s Stone Town, in the Wirral, Cheshire).

Two distinct groups therefore seem to be emerging in the wider Study Group that have direct links to Lancashire 1.) Larry Sharrock & John Shorrock, 2) Keith Johnson (Shorrocks), John Shorrocks, and Ken (Shorrock) Grist - with the first group being Viking, and the latter ‘indigenous’.

Whether one of these groups represents the original / authentic 'Shorrock' type tied to the small hamlets of Shorrock Green & Shorrock Hey, near Blackburn remains unproven.

It is interesting though that both Ken Grist's family and new subject John Shorrock's family both have links to Blackburn - perhaps there was a crossover / non-paternal event there at an early date.

ORIGINS OF THE NAME - AFTERTHOUGHT

There are possible multiple points of origin for the name in central / north Lancashire.

When I first started to research the name, I came across a reference to it being related to Sharoe Green - this was a hamlet that is now part of metropolitan Preston.

Ekwall's 'The Placenames of Lancashire' has this name as derived from 'scaru' (boundary), 'haugr' (hill) and mentions a reference to 'Charaudhoke', near Fulwood.

On the other hand, Ekwall derives Shorrock Green from 'the oak of Scorra' with Scorra being an Anglo-Saxon personal name, and cross-references a place called Scorranstone in Gloucestershire.

So it may simply be that we have multiple families because there were multiple placenames.