Is there evidence that this story is based on actual places and events or is it just made up? From the start Martha insists that ‘Bugsville’ is a town of imagination and we will let it go at that’. But like much of the story this is a little ‘tongue in cheek’. The first scene is set in a Gentlemen’s Club. There were two Gentleman’s Clubs in Smallbridge, according to Allen Holt, ‘Smallbridge, A lost village’(George Kelsall 2007) these Clubs might have been ‘The Reform Club on Halifax Road and ‘The Egerton( Conservative) Club on Wardle Road(Lane). In Martha’s book she places it on ‘Hilltop’ in Bugsville the Gentlemen in the Club are local business men and clearly, she wishes to capture the tension and banter of the scene in her opening paragraphs.
In the 1921 census Martha is working for Kelsall and Kemp; they were an innovative woollen business specialising in worsted, for which Rochdale was famous. Shirting is a fabric used in making men’s shirts and may be cotton or worsted. There would have been high demand for wool-based shirtings during both World wars, when supplies of cotton would be unreliable. and K.&K. did make huge amounts for the military, mostly in WW2. Think denim and Cambray. This suggests a later date for Martha’s writing. She refers; to the Great Slump, which was 1929/30, so this part of ‘the book’ was most likely written in the 30’s. She also refers to ‘the means test’ which was not introduced until 1931 The book is however shot through with memories and anecdotes from the 1920s and attitudes from the 1830’s Folk memory is very persistent, but not historically reliable!
The Geography of the walk from the Gentleman’s Club to the Churchyard and towards where Mr. Kamm and Mr. Bouncer lived is unlikely to be accurate, but the description of the grave might have some local meaning. From a historical point of view the story is placed very much in the early 1930’s when the Dole and the Means test were very much resented by the people affected, who were poor and unemployed. The dole was loathed, because it was half the average wage and was levied on household income, so if you were found to have earned too much your whole family could potentially starve. Households would often be caring for elderly releatives and since their pension, however niggardly, was included in the household income, it might be time to cart them off to the workhouse. The Means test and the dole were very destructive of family life and who knows what it Was like for the comfortable little family with four working children in 1921, when areas like theirs were blighted by unemployment in the early 30’s?There was apparently a riot about the Means Test in Rochdale in the early 30’s though I have yet to find any actual historical evidence for this.
The effect of the means test on a thrifty family ,with possessions, who were maintaining elderly parents at home, would have been quite significant, even if they never had to claim dole. They would have seen less well-off and less careful families, who were not working, being given state assistance and know that the effect of the means test on themselves would be to drain them of property and savings and penalise them for looking after their parents. In a gossipy and mixed community it would have been extremely divisive and hateful. We can find these attitudes even today,: welfare scroungers and the undeserving poor began to be stigmatised significantly in the 30’s . There is much in Martha’s book about alleviating worklessness through cohesive community endeavour; at a guess this was spoken/written through gritted teeth!
This section raises questions about what the town was actually like in the 1920s ,or 1930s, the characters of the deputy sexton and the deputy-deputy sexton are very 1930’s when the dole and the Means Test were features of the life of the unemployed,. The 'Cattle-Buyer' and ‘The Bleater’ seem to be from a different time; the 1920’s or possibly before WW1. Were they characters from local oral history? When was there a slaughter house in Rochdale or Smallbridge? When was there an actual living to be made from livestock in the town, which involved renting land and grazing cattle? The account of the trading standards issues about milk delivery ring a bell with me, Milk was delivered in Mizzy Road by horse and cart in my own living memory; I remember it quite vividly, an ornate, gold and yellow coloured cart with shiny milk churns; my grandad used to nip out to collect horse droppings to put on his roses; that was in the 1960’s.