most complete isolation from the rest of humanity they were, as Smiles puts it in his “Life of James Brindley,” “almost as rough as their roads.” They were ill-clad, ill-fed and wholly uneducated; they lived in dwellings that were little better than mud huts; 杭州夜生活交友网 they had to dispense with coal for fuel, since the state of the roads made its transport too costly for their scanty means; they had no shops, and for such drapery and household wares as they could afford to buy they were dependent on the packmen or the hucksters from Newcastle-under-Lyme. Their favourite
amusements were 杭州按摩服务哪里有 bull-baiting and cock-fighting. {176}Any stranger who ventured to appear among such a people, devoid as they were of most of the attributes of civilisation, might consider himself fortunate if he escaped rough usage simply because he was a stranger.
Of 杭州品茶会所余杭 conditions such as those to be found in the Potteries at the period in question one gets some glimpses in William Hutton’s “History of Birmingham” (1781). He tells of a place called Lie Waste, otherwise Mud City, situate between Halesowen and Stourbridge. The houses 杭州滨江不正规Spa consisted of mud, dried in the sun, though often destroyed by frost. Their occupants, judging from the account he gives of them, could have been little better than scarcely-clad barbarians. Of a visit he paid to Bosworth Field in 1770 the same writer says:—
“I accompanied a gentleman with no other intent than to view 杭州足疗项目 the field celebrated for the fall of Richard the Third. The inhabitants enjoyed the cruel satisfaction of setting their dogs at us in the street, merely because we were strangers. Human figures, not their own, are seldom seen in those inhospitable regions. 杭州不正规足浴店地址 Surrounded with impassable roads, having no intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors of nature.”
How industry and improved communications may tend to civilise a people, as well as ensure economic 杭州油压哪家好 advancement, was now to be shown in the case of the Potteries. Wedgwood’s enterprise led to the employment of far more people; the better means of communication allowed both of the industry being greatly developed and of the introduction of refining influences into a district no longer isolated; and the combination 杭州上门的可信么 of these causes had a striking effect on the material and the moral conditions of the workers.
In giving evidence before a House of Commons Committee in 1785, eight years after the Mersey and Trent Canal was opened, Wedgwood was able to say that there were 杭州足疗手推 being employed in the Potteries at that time from 15,000 to 20,000 persons on earthenware manufacture alone—an increase of from 8000 to 13,000 in twenty-five years, independently of the opening of new branches of industry. Work was abundant, and the general conditions 杭州水磨按摩会所 were those of a greatly enhanced comfort and prosperity.
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Then, also, when John Wesley visited Burslem in 1760 he wrote that the potters assembled to laugh and jeer at him. “One of them,” he says, “threw a clod of earth which struck me on the side of the head; but it neither disturbed me nor the 杭州夜生活论坛 congrega