Lancashire

Wigan was a rapidly expanding manufacturing town 18 miles west-north-west of Manchester: its population, which included a large Irish Catholic element, almost doubled between 1801 and 1831. Its main industries, which had been stimulated by local improvements in canal transport, notably the Douglas navigation (1732-42) and the Leeds-Liverpool canal (1770-7), were coal mining and metal and textile manufacture.E. Baines, Hist. Lancs. (1825), ii. 602, 611; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 205; J.

Newton was a small manufacturing town with one main street, five miles from Warrington and seven from Wigan. It had no corporation and was governed by the borough steward and the bailiff of the manor, who held a court baron and court leet three times a year and were the returning officers.E. Baines, Hist. Lancs.(1824), ii. 433; J.P. Earwacker, E. Cheshire, ii. 161-3; PP (1831-2), xxxvi.

The county town of Lancaster on the River Lune had been polled four times between 1790 and 1818. Its politics were influenced by attempts to restore its eighteenth-century prosperity and civic pride by reversing the decline of its port and staple industries of shipbuilding, cabinet making and sailcloth manufacture, following the loss to Liverpool in 1799 of its West India trade; and by the campaign to prevent the transfer of its assizes to Liverpool, Manchester or Preston.Hist. Lancaster ed. A.