Hi, I recently received a detailed account of the life of an ancestor and I had previously wondered why so many children had died in this family - out of 14 live births at least half died as babies or young children. Well the conditions they lived in were horrific, no drains or sewerage, houses crowded together and this describes Huddersfield town, the lower end in particularly and I too remembered Wesley's comments and thought I could well understand how he must have thought the people wild. and they were probably dirty and unkempt in appearance because of their living conditions. Ironically, to me at least, the less a man earned the more he appeared to drink, seeing this as his right rather than feeding his children. In Meltham other ancestors appeared to be able to raise their children so I wonder if they appeared quite as wild to John Wesley. He certainly made an impressing on many of our ancestors anyway. Because Huddersfield has become a large central town and the other places only small villages we don't realise how different it was in 1757. The mills brought a mix of prosperity and misery. Working conditions weren't ideal but houses were built to accommodate the workers and probably to a better standard with better sewerage etc than those in Huddersfield town bottom. It would be interesting to compare housing conditions of the various areas. I found a higher infant mortality amongst my ancestors in Golcar too and wondered at the conditions there. Jean in S. Australia. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Micklethwaite" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 8:57 PM Subject: Re: [WRY] Almondbury queries > At 23:07 08/02/2010, Lesley wrote: >>The quotation Andy was talking about refers to John Wesley's visit to >>Huddersfield in 1757, when he said 'I never saw a wilder people in >>England'. > > That's the one. > > Best Wishes, Andy. > > > > > Some useful websites - > FREECEN - http://www.freecen.org.uk/ > FREEBMD - http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/ > Want to know where a place in Yorkshire is - Try Genuki > http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >