Altogether remarkable private and autobiographical manuscript record compiled by Richard Cardwell (1749-1811) a hugely successful Lancastrian cotton magnate from the first phase of the industrial revolution. In his two mini-memoirs that bookend this manuscript Cardwell attempts to make sense of the industrial transformation that he has witnessed in his lifetime and what it means to him. He contrasts his father’s early life as ‘apprentice to a fustian manufacturer, or Weaver, in West Houghton’ with the immense wealth he had garnered as a successful industrialist. Proudly, Cardwell records the birth of his son Edward in the manuscript: Edward Cardwell would be educated at Brasenose College Oxford and became the longest serving occupant of the university’s Camden Professorship of Ancient History; Cardwell also records his nephew’s birth here, another Edward Cardwell (1813-1886) educated at Winchester and Balliol, later Secretary of State for War under Gladstone. In these pages Richard Cardwell describes in words and numbers the prototypical story of social mobility engendered by the industrial revolution.
Cardwell’s two family memoirs are written at either end of the manuscript, bookending his Annual Statements of his Effects which run from 1783 to 1819.
In ‘A Short Genealogy of My Family’, [pp] 3, Cardwell writes of his father who was born in 1706 and registered at Broughton Church near Preston, came to Blackburn in early adulthood, with Richard himself being born in 1749. He pays moving tribute to his father: ‘a Man of the strictest Integrity; comely & neat in his Person; agreeable in his manners, useful and benevolent’, signing off this section ‘Richard Cardwell December 1793’. At the other end of the manuscript Cardwell tries to construct a brief history of manufacturing in Blackburn, beginning with an account of a long conversation with ‘Henry Astley of Witton who was born 24 May in the year 1716 & whose faculties are now very perfect. 1802.’ Cardwell reports Astley’s assertion that ‘William Ward was about the year 1712 the only Manufacturer in Blackburn & the only goods he made were cotton and line check & stripes - The second was John Sudell...’ continuing with a narrative that describes the introduction of ‘Blackburn grey cottons... for printing, & the first printer of those goods...’ Following this 5 page history, Cardwell has recorded the births of his own children, notably ‘Son Edward born at Wigan on Friday 3d August 1787... baptized privately the 12th & publickly the 19th at St George’s Chapel’ - the future Oxford theologian emerging into the world, and of course his namesake, his nephew Edward Cardwell in 1813 - future Cabinet Minister under Gladstone.
Cardwell’s annual summaries were clearly private reckonings undertaken for his own benefit, beginning on 1st January 1784 and they record how far the Blackburn man of industry had come even by the 1780s. In this first year of these records he had ‘Stock in Trade - £13940 6s 10d.’ There are records of bonds and loans to his half brother Hodson and investments in other businesses including ‘a contingent Interest of £2000 & upwards by the Will of Thos Walker Salford Manchester who died 8th June 1788’. Cardwell also records the impact of bankruptcies such as Livesey & Co £2993 in 1788. His annual report records his subscription to the building of the Manchester Road and ‘Three Seats [later three pews] in St John’s Church’.
With each year Cardwell’s property portfolio expanded; by 1793 it includes an ‘Oswaldtwisle Estate - £1150’ as well as Cottages at Woolley Bridge, Houses in Penny Street and ‘Ten Shares in Sierra Leone Company’ - the British corporate body established to create a free settlement and trading base in West Africa, largely drive by abolitionists - this stake had increased to ten shares valued at £500 by the following year. Only in 1804 was there a slight decrease from £77000 to £74000 in the size of his estate with later additions including ‘Seven horses and carriage - £250’ and ‘Furniture, Wine & Stables Contents £900’. By 1817 Cardwell can be seen dispersing assets and the annual account ends in 1819, five years before his death.
DESCRIPTION: Marbled wrappers, lightly soiled; quarto (25x18.5cm) horizontal chainlines and an armorial watermark. [pp] 92 Two passages of family and Blackburn history, [pp] 5 and [pp] 9 bookending 78 pages of ‘Richard Cardwell’s annual Statements of his Effects: From the Year 1783’. The manuscript is almost entirely in Richard Cardwell’s own hand with a few annotations by a family members made after his death which note his own death and that of other family members.
