‘Disorderly’ pubs were still refuge for the poor

THIRTY-ONE per cent of Brits don’t believe in the theory of evolution.

A poll to mark Charles Darwin Day found only 50% are certain his theory is correct, while almost a third don’t. And 17% of under 29s believe we got here because of divine creationism.

The research comes from Puffin Books for the launch of a children’s edition of The Origin Of Species. And wait, there’s more: 40% didn’t realise we shared our ancestors

Twith apes, 13% confused Darwin with Charles Dickens and 7% thought that he wrote The Da Vinci Code, the Dan Brown bestseller.

Oo-er mum. Whatever happened to education?

A Natural History Museum spokesperson said: “Evolution theory is accepted as fact by the scientific community, on a level with the theory of gravitation or the round Earth theory.”

What? You mean the Earth isn’t flat? HE Horseshoe Inn was in Kirkgate in the heart of Huddersfield. It was a casualty of urban renewal in 1883 when the textile industry was king and wool barons lived in Edgerton mansions.

Northern towns and cities vied with each other to display their success through municipal buildings in a flaunting of wealth that ignored the poverty and hardship of workers whose daily struggle was to survive.

The photograph was posted on the Facebook page of Odersfelt – Huddersfield of the Past, by Stephen Crook. He also supplied additional information about the pub, taken from police court reports from 1851 and 1852:

Landlord Henry Bentley charged with keeping a disorderly house after Inspector Brier found “two prostitutes, one of whom was sat upon a man’s knee”. Bentley was fined 5s plus 10s expenses; Bentley charged with allowing gambling. Fined 10s plus 16s expenses. Bentley charged with selling beer outside of allowed hours. Charge withdrawn after he paid nine shillings expenses.

I wonder what the expenses were for? Police surveillance allowance?

Was the pub really a den of iniquity or symptomatic of a broken society when the chasm between rich and poor had no safety net? Those divisions remain and times are hard with even Tory minister Amber Rudd admitting problems with Universal Credit had driven people to food banks.

This emotive picture had me delving into the past to reflect on conditions our ancestors might have suffered at a time when pubs and churches were often the only comfort for the poor.

Fifty per cent of men and 18 per cent of women in Huddersfield worked in textiles in 1851.

The excellent Huddersfield Exposed website provides the town map of that year that shows wells, water troughs, tenter fields (where cloth was hung out to dry), smithies and names that touch upon a hidden history, such as Fanny Keye’s Yard. Who was Fanny?

This was a town that relied on horses, the newly arrived railway and canals. Industry was thriving, fortunes were made, wages were abysmal and working class living conditions appalling.

There was no National Health Service, old age pensions or food banks. But there was a vagrant office and a Huddersfield Workhouse for the sick and poor on Blacker Road at Birkby, which had provoked a national scandal when investigated in 1848. By comparison, Oliver Twist had it easy.

Inmates wore rags, were fed a starvation diet and 40 children slept in a room 24ft (7.3 metres) by 15ft (4.5 metres) up to 10 in a bed. Thirty women and 50 men slept in similar sized rooms.

During an outbreak of typhoid, sheets were never changed, hygiene standards abandoned and sufferers were put two to a bed. “A living patient has occupied the same bed as a corpse for a considerable period after death.”

The report apparently changed little in the years that followed.

It’s no wonder pubs, like the Horseshoe Inn, became a refuge for the poor, for whom a pauper’s plot was likely to be their final refuge. And the wool barons?

Some are still in Edgerton, in the most expensive part of that splendid cemetery that was opened in 1855, with a scale of fees separating the grounds into nine different areas to ensure that, even in death, wealth mattered.