26 June –
“The eyes of the working classes are now fully opened, they begin to cry: Our St. Petersburg is at
Employee worker relations, child labour, alcohol and the need for temperance, impending elections with surprise results, penal reform, and economic success for our manufacturing industries; the very issues that concern us in 2010 were preoccupying the people of Preston 150 years ago. People in
Industrial Revolutionaries is a major new temporary exhibition at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery,
Multi-sensory and hands-on, the exhibition puts people’s stories at the forefront. Visitors will discover the connection between familiar historical figures and lesser-known individuals. They will see how the actions of these people in
Sir Richard Arkwright: Preston-born inventor of the water-frame, entrepreneur and developer of the factory system, Arkwright rose to become the richest commoner in the country.
Charles Dickens: author and social commentator, who visited Preston during the lock-out and strile of 1853, no doubt influencing his novel Hard Times.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were also writing about these events and asking will Preston be a test case for proletarian revolution?
Elizabeth Gaskell, author with a social agenda, influenced by events during the lock-out and strike of 1853-54. She fictionalised
Joseph Livesey: Champion of the poor and temperence campaigner.
Henry Hunt: Preston’s first radical MP and people’s hero.
Father Joseph ‘Daddy’ Dunn: Well respected and affectionately nick-named, he pioneered
Rev. John Clay: Prison chaplain and reformer in the fields of crime and public health
Annie Hill: Half-
John and Samuel Horrocks: industrial innovators who developed the Yard Works and created
This brilliant and thought-provoking exhibition also animates one of the museum’s social history collection’s most iconic objects – the Horrockses Yard Works model, a large scale model of a cotton mill. Forerunner of the multinationals, Horrockses was by 1913
Other exhibits include Joseph Wright of
