Barrow-in-Furness

History  part 3

The Town of Barrow in Furness - 1780 to 1930 - page 3

Population of Barrow in Furness
Year   1801      1845      1851      1859      1861      1871      1875      1881      1891      1901  
 Numb   65        68       690       800     3,135   18,774   41,000   47,259   51,712   57,500  

1911 it was 63,770 and by 1921 it was 74,244

The following description gives a flavour of how life was lived in early Barrow.                                                                                                                    

"When the blast furnaces were erected in Hindpool in 1859, a grid-iron of streets of uniform type dwellings for the workpeople sprang up in the immediate vicinity; what they lacked in aesthetic appeal they perhaps made up in sound construction, wide streets and adequate sanitation - a marked contrast to the slums a decade or two earlier, which sprouted in the older Lancashire industrial towns. In the 1860's and 1870's Barrow was a center of immigration, workers poured in - miners from Cornwall, iron workers and builders from Staffordshire and Scotland, navies from Ireland - they came by rail, by boat and on foot. Houses were built on a mass scale, first in sandstone in the Paxton Terrace and Church Street area, then by William Gradwell who was Barrow's leading building contractor after 1855, using locally produced bricks. The Strand was the first centre of the town's life, and Greengate the first main thoroughfare. By 1867 the town was built-up as far Rawlinson Street inland and Blake Street along the coast; and Gradwell showed that he could build churches, schools, and offices etc., as speedily as he could mass-produce houses. But quickly as houses were provided, the rate of immigration was such that were never enough; between 1872-74 Barrow's population jumped from 28,000 to 35,000, and finally the Shipbuilding Company decided to build wooden huts on Barrow Island to house their workers. Each hut had two rooms, twelve feet square, and by end of 1873 there were 349 of them in 30 rows; into these nearly 3,000 people were squeezed, and the site was un-drained, unlighted and there was only one open privy per 80 people; the rent, originally 3s. per week, was raised to 3s. 6d. in 1874. Meanwhile, between 1860 and 1870, the value of land in Barrow was increasing by 100% every two years."
Giving the population for Barrow is complicated because of the large variations in the area of land that comprised the towns limits. The figures shown above are indicative only. The population peaked during the first War when some authorities claim that it exceeded 100,000 people.

It was not all-good news on the employment front for the people of Barrow for they suffered badly in the years 1876, 1884 and 1893 which were the years of the so called 'National Depressions'. The town also suffered after the boom years brought about by the armaments work generated by the First World War. There was mass unemployment in all of the engineering sectors in the country at this time and Barrow registered a 44.1% rate of unemployment amongst the adult male population.

Once again the 1920's saw a period of decline as another National Depression during this decade had a powerful effect upon the town because of its reliance on heavy engineering, particularly at Vickers Armstrong Shipbuilding & Engineering Company of later years. As previously mentioned this organisation had 31,000 people on its payroll in 1917, but by 1922 it had been reduced to 3,150 workers because of the state of the national economy.

The result of these reversals in fortune, was that families were both arriving and leaving during the period covered by this article. Very often the people leaving the town were emigrating to other countries to escape the boom & bust economy of the country. Both my father & grandfather both migrated to the USA at this time and returned before the start of WW2.

Nev.Ramsden - 2002

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