Window on a Changing World: Edwin Butterworth and the early nineteenth century provincial press Abstracts Robert Poole Andrew Walker

James Butterworth and the Autodidact Tradition
Robert Poole
St Martin's College, Lancaster

James Butterworth (1771-1837) was an outstanding product of the autodidact tradition. A weaver with a large family to support, he survived domestic tragedy and economic hardship to become Oldham’s postmaster and latterly a pioneer writer of local history. His work here was carried on by his son Edwin, but the two men – born 41 years apart – represented different ages. While Edwin was a prosaic Victorian improver, urban in his outlook and Chadwickian in his methods, James was a more versatile Hanoverian figure, an antiquarian, a lover of customs, and a poet with a “rustic muse”. Culturally insecure and dependent on gentry patronage, his published works used conventional form to stake a claim for the value of artisan experience. He also saw himself as the heir of the dialect writer and satirist “Tim Bobbin”, whom he may have known in youth and whose work he anonymously continued. He was also a radical and (as the Home Office papers show) as postmaster privately enjoyed twisting the tail of his state paymasters. The radical and writer Samuel Bamford knew both men, but it was James with whom he most identified and made common cause in the post-war reform movement. James Butterworth also knew and lived amongst the self-educated weavers of the period, particularly the remarkable circle of weaver-mathematicians in Oldham whose life stories are scattered through the cuttings collections of Oldham and Manchester.

The development of the provincial press in early nineteenth-century Britain
Andrew Walker
University of Lincoln

This paper seeks to contextualise the career of Edwin Butterworth by examining in broad terms the state of British provincial newspapers and journalism in the first half of the nineteenth century.

During this period, significant changes took place in the world of provincial journalism. The number of regional newspapers grew considerably and, increasingly, these newspapers began to develop their own particular voices as provincial titles moved away from the heavily London-influenced ‘scissors-and-paste’ approach to journalism which characterised much of the eighteenth-century regional press. This paper will examine the shifting character of the early nineteenth-century press through an analysis of both a range of key secondary works and also a variety of primary materials, including both urban and rural provincial newspaper titles.

The regional press’s changing relationship with the metropolis will be examined, both in relationship to national London-based newspapers and also in regard to the role of the state in regulating the output of journalists through this period.

In addition to considering the content of the regional press, attention will also be paid to the producers and consumers of the local newspaper during the first half of the nineteenth century. This will be undertaken in part through an examination of early editions of Mitchell’s The Newspaper Press Directory which reveal much information about the role of regional newspapers’ editorial staff. Consideration will also be given to the readership and influence of the provincial newspaper towards the middle of the nineteenth century at a time of substantial social, economic and political change, especially in urban Britain.