Hi Bernie i had also seen this her name was Susanna McGee
Deaths Jun 1840 (>99%)
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McGEE Susanna Preston 21 582
There was also a John Rooney who died i think it was 1847.If you look in the free BMD listings you will see it.What i found out there was an Epidemic of Cholera.This is why they opened the house of recovery.It was caused by the sanitation.No running water.They added new pipes for running water in later years.Typhoid was caused by Dirty water.So it looks as if thats what caused Thomas's Death.The railway Was started i believe in 1838,with workers being brought in to lay tracks etc.They had railway workers houses and also Those who worked in the Cotton Mills.In preston in 1830 there were 31 Cotton mills.I will list wages lol.
Wages in Lancashire in 1830
Age of Worker Male Wages Female Wages
under 11 2s 3d. 2s. 4d.
11 - 16 4s. 1d. 4s. 3d.
17 - 21 10s. 2d. 7s. 3d.
22 - 26 17s. 2d. 8s. 5d.
27 - 31 20s. 4d. 8s. 7d.
32 - 36 22s. 8d. 8s. 9d.
37 - 41 21s. 7d. 9s. 8d.
42 - 46 20s. 3d. 9s. 3d.
47 - 51 16s. 7d. 8s. 10d.
52 - 56 16s. 4d. 8s. 4d.
57 - 61 13s. 6d. 6s. 4d.
This next section Explains a few facts
Many parents were unwilling to allow their children to work in these new textile factories. To overcome this labour shortage factory owners had to find other ways of obtaining workers. One solution to the problem was to obtain children from orphanages and workhouses. These children became known as pauper apprentices. This involved them signing contracts that virtually made them the property of the factory owner.
One of the first factory owners to employ this system was Samuel Greg who owned the large Quarry Bank Mill at Styal. Greg had difficulty finding enough people to work for him. Manchester was eleven miles away and local villages were very small. Imported workers needed cottages, and these cost about £100 each.
By 1790 Greg became convinced that the best solution to his labour problem was to build an Apprentice House and to purchase children from workhouses. The building for the apprentices cost £300 and provided living accommodation for over 90 children. At first the children came from local parishes such as Wilmslow and Macclesfield, but later he went as far as Liverpool and London to find these young workers. To encourage factory owners to take workhouse children, people like Greg were paid between £2 and £4 for each child they employed. Greg also demanded that the children were sent to him with "two shifts, two pairs of stockings and two aprons.
The 90 children (60 girls and 30 boys) at Styal made up 50% of the total workforce. The children received their board and lodging, and two pence a week. The younger children worked as scavengers and piecers, but after a couple of years at Styal they were allowed to become involved in spinning and carding. Some of the more older boys became skilled mechanics.
1) John Birley was interviewed by The Ashton Chronicle on 19th May, 1849.
We then worked till nine or ten at night when the water-wheel stopped. We stopped working, and went to the apprentice house, about three hundred yards from the mill. It was a large stone house, surrounded by a wall, two to three yards high, with one door, which was kept locked. It was capable of lodging about one hundred and fifty apprentices. Supper was the same as breakfast - onion porridge and dry oatcake. We all ate in the same room and all went up a common staircase to our bed-chamber; all the boys slept in one chamber, all the girls in another. We slept three in one bed. The girls' bedroom was of the same sort as ours. There were no fastenings to the two rooms; and no one to watch over us in the night, or to see what we did.
One on the major complaints made by factory reformers concerned the state of the buildings that they children were forced to work in. A report published in July 1833 stated that most factories were "dirty; low-roofed; ill-ventilated; ill-drained; no conveniences for washing or dressing; no contrivance for carrying off dust and other effluvia".
Sir Anthony Carlile, a doctor at Westminster Hospital visited some textile mills in 1832. He later gave evidence to the House of Commons on the dangers that factory pollution was causing for the young people working in factories: "labour is undergone in an atmosphere heated to a temperature of 70 to 80 and upwards". He pointed out that going from a "very hot room into damp cold air will inevitably produce inflammations of the lungs".
Doctors were also concerned about the "dust from flax and the flue from cotton" in the air that the young workers were breathing in. Dr. Charles Aston Key told Michael Sadler that this "impure air breathed for a great length of time must be productive of disease, or exceedingly weaken the body". Dr. Thomas Young who studied textile workers in Bolton reported that factory pollution was causing major health problems.
Most young workers complained of feeling sick during their first few weeks of working in a factory. Robert Blincoe said he felt that the dust and flue was suffocating him. This initial reaction to factory pollution became known as mill fever. Symptoms included sickness and headaches.
The dust and floating cotton fibre in the atmosphere was a major factor in the high incidence of tuberculosis, bronchitis, asthma and byssinosis amongst cotton workers.
Elizabeth Bentley, interviewed by Michael Sadler's Parliamentary Committee on 4th June, 1832.
I worked from five in the morning till nine at night. I lived two miles from the mill. We had no clock. If I had been too late at the mill, I would have been quartered. I mean that if I had been a quarter of an hour too late, a half an hour would have been taken off. I only got a penny an hour, and they would have taken a halfpenny.
Typhoid
Typhoid is a disease that killed lots of people in Britain in the 19th century. It was caused by bacteria, which lived in dirty drinking water
It makes interesting reading,So worth following up.There may be records of Rail workers.But unsure on that.I believe When reading some of the facts That Thomas Was working Either in the Factories or Railway.Living in Those Cottages Or houses.I think it was like a Community type housing.You will be able to find info at the library on that.It looks like also they Employed Youngsters from the Workhouses age 11 being the minimum age.They worked as scavengers collecting all the cotton for re using.So mary Callaghan who is on that list would also have been employed.She may have been a Cousin or Relative.Or just living with the Family.But Most of the Irish that were employed came from Northern Ireland,As did the Flax that was used in making the linen.I know this is not finding where Thomas Came from But it will give us leads.
Mike
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