JOHN WILLIAM WHITTAKER: BLACKBURN AND HIS RELIGIOUS,
EDUCATIONAL AND POLITICAL LEGACY
John William Whittaker was appointed vicar of St. Mary’s in 1822 and was still in post at
the time of his death in 1854. He very nearly never came here. Whilst working for the
Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace he seriously considered taking up a position
at the Missionary School in Calcutta, India. Instead he accepted a post in another far
flung outpost of the Empire: industrial Lancashire. The fact that we are here today
unveiling a memorial to his memory is evidence enough that his incumbency was to be
no ordinary one. What I wish to explore in this short talk is both the effect that this
gentleman had on the town during his lifetime and his legacy in the years that followed.
In order to do this I intend to look at three areas of Blackburn’s history: its religious
development, educational development and political development.
But to begin I wish to discuss two events that occurred in his early years in Blackburn,
both of which I feel may well have contributed to his later actions.
The first is that of his proposal of marriage to Mary Feilden in 1824. It was a proposal
that was not welcomed by her parents who dwelt at Feniscowles Hall. The Reverend
Whittaker’s family background was somewhat chequered. His father, who traded in
cotton in Manchester, was declared bankrupt in 1794 and fled to America a year later to
avoid debtors prison. Luckily for the very young John his mother’s fortune was safe in
trust and they both remained behind in England.
Mary’s father, William Feilden, had been one of the founders of the factory system in
Blackburn but being related to the Feildens of Witton Park, the local Lord of the Manor,
and having surrounded his new home with a deer park, he now saw himself as one of the
landed gentry, a social cut above most of the cotton masters in the town. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the possibility of the Reverend Whittaker, the son of a bankrupt
as a son-in-law, did not please either him or his wife. Even worse the whispers went
around the Feilden family that one of the Reverend’s aunts had been forced to become a
governess for a short while whilst another had had to marry a music teacher. Both were
deemed grave social errors. However, for once the heart won and their engagement was
finally announced and the couple married in 1825. The point of interest that emanates
from this tale is did Whittaker’s desire to cement his new found social position with his
in-laws mean that in the years that followed he tended to champion, with increasing
fervour and vigour, Blackburn’s ruling class.
The second event that helped mould, or at least reinforce the Reverend Whittaker’s
beliefs and future actions, is that of the attempted imposition of a church rate in 1827.
This cathedral, then the parish church, had just been rebuilt and it was decided by the
vicar and the churchwardens to raise the money to install heating and lighting by way of
the church rate payable by householders. The result was an outcry. Many of those who
would have to pay were non churchgoers or even nonconformists or Catholics. Many
were poor and some getting poorer as handloom weavers were beginning to worry about
the financial effects of the introduction of power looms. Mass protests broke out and the
church was invaded by a rowdy mob that damaged pews, ripped hymn books and tore
prayer cushions. As a result the church authorities were forced to put the rate increase to
the vote of the ratepayers. Even when the vote took place middleclass householders were
jeered and jostled. The question is did this humiliating and frightening experience
reinforce the Reverend Whittaker’s belief that any such future forms of mass protest
should be sternly dealt with? It should also be borne in mind here that visions of the
French Revolution were still in the memories of many. It was only twelve years earlier
that the Battle of Waterloo had finally ended the French and Napoleonic wars that
followed that blood soaked upheaval. For men like Whittaker and his social class the fear
of revolution was not an idle one.
Now let me discuss the effect that the Reverend Whittaker had on the three aspects of
Blackburn’s development that I drew attention to earlier: the areas of religion, education
and politics. First, as befits a churchman, let me look at the effect Whittaker had on the
development of religion in the town. He was an ardent Anglican who strongly believed
that nonconformist ministers and Catholic priests led people away from the true Christian
path. As regards the latter he made his views public in a series of five sermons delivered
in this building in1835 to commemorate the Reformation. In his first sermon he preached
that there is just one God and one mediator between God and man and that was Jesus
Christ.
“But”, he cried from the pulpit, “What says the Church of Rome to such a simple
doctrine? She refers you to a whole calendar of canonized saints, to dead men
who are to intercede for you … She commands you to bow down before … the
effigies of those who were men like yourselves …..You are directed to appoint
their glittering shrines with humble prayers and costly offerings, to induce and
bribe them to use their influences with heaven for you.”
Such emotive words speak volumes of his intense feeling that the teachings of the
Catholic faith were wrong. For the Reverend Whittaker to save souls from being
gathered by such as the Church of Rome was of overwhelming importance just as it was
to stop others being seduced by nonconformist teaching.
One answer, he believed, was to build more Anglican churches in the expanding areas of
the town. On his appointment, Blackburn had only three Anglican churches whilst the
population had reached 22,000 and was rapidly growing. This situation was compounded
by yet another problem: Church attendance was dangerously low. In 1822, when
Reverend Whittaker arrived, he found his own church of St. Mary’s under construction,
St. John’s only one third full and St. Peter’s with an average congregation of just 50.
Building more churches was obviously a necessity but these new churches had to be
accompanied by new ways of attracting people to attend them.
He also had a secondary motive in wanting an expansion of church building. By having
more churches more of the working classes could attend and this could be a method of
social control. Within months of Whittaker arriving here the Blackburn Standard was
calling for increased church attendance to “reform the manners and morals of the lower
orders.” The new incumbent fully agreed. The new working classes, freed from the
relative claustrophobia of village life under the all-seeing eye of the local vicar and
squire, found anonymity in the terraced backstreets of Blackburn. As a consequence
crime and drunkenness grew. Church attendance could be the key in reinforcing respect
for rank and property, preaching sobriety and encouraging the people to be content with
their allocated role in society. To this end he fully supported the decision by a number of
the mill owners in 1834 to switch payday away from Saturday to a Tuesday so that there
would be fewer hangovers on a Sunday and one less excuse for missing church services.
His early efforts at church building were only partially successful. He demonstrated the
urgency of the situation by sending out curates into areas of the town that he believed
required an immediate Anglican presence. Missions were opened in suitable buildings.
Here were offered religious services and sometimes Sunday Schools. These Missions had
the dual task of increasing overall attendance whilst holding back and even reversing the
tide of Dissent, Catholicism and even secularism. In the meantime finance was searched
for to enable permanent churches to be built. This is where the first problem was met.
The difficulties in building Christ Church to serve the growing industrial districts of
Grimshaw Park and Nova Scotia make a good example. Whittaker, in 1840, managed to
persuade one of his wife’s relatives, Joseph Feilden, to donate the land required, but it
took another 17 years to raise the finance to actually begin building the church. Missions
even failed through lack of finance. The one attached to Bottomgate School had to close
in 1847 after just two years.
Nevertheless, there was progress. The new church of St. Paul’s was consecrated in 1831
and three others were planned, one of which, St Michael’s and All Angels, was to be built
on the site of an old Wesleyan chapel. This, no doubt, gave the Reverend Whittaker great
pleasure. His primary motive for church building was always clear at all times: to ensure
the local populace was not lured away to become Dissenters or Catholics. The need for a
church in the Daisyfield area of the town was because “close to this place is a Popish
chapel.” Again, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury explaining the need for the
construction of Holy Trinity church, he said it was needed because it was rumored that a
breakaway group of Independents were to build a chapel in the Mount Pleasant area.
The Reverend Whittaker’s crusade in defence of Anglicanism was not just limited to
within the borough boundaries. He also saw the need for it in the expanding industrial
villages on the outer fringes. The building of St. James in Lower Darwen was to counter
the growth of nonconformism in that village. Soon after, Immanuel Church at
Feniscowles opened its doors in the 1830’s as did St. Mary’s in Mellor. This latter church
was deemed greatly needed because, he believed, the village was becoming a hotbed of
Wesleyanism. For the Reverend Whittaker religious rivalry was always the main spur,
civilising the crowd was important yet secondary.
His death in 1854 did not see the end of this spate of church building. His legacy lived on
as the next incumbent took over the reins. Christ Church in the Grimshaw Park area was
finally completed in 1859, twenty years after it was first mooted by Whittaker himself.
By 1892 Blackburn boasted fourteen Anglican churches.
The second string to Whittaker’s bow, as regards defending and expanding the Anglican
cause in Blackburn and increasing church attendance, was the Sunday school movement.
The need to begin religious instruction as early as possible was seen as crucial: mould the
child and you mould the adult. Begun by the Church of England in Blackburn in 1786,
Sunday schools expanded greatly but Anglican attendance at them had fallen behind
other churches by 1824. Under Whittaker’s encouragement a fight back took place. The
rivalry he instilled ensured that by 1875 26% of the population attended Sunday classes.
This amounted to nearly every child in the borough: a resounding success by any
measure.
To sum up, the spate of church building begun by Whittaker and his insistence on the
expansion of the Sunday school movement were major reasons that Blackburn remained
a Church of England town. Nonconformism, compared to many urban areas in the North
West, remained weak, whilst any growth in Roman Catholicism was limited to the
amount of Irish immigration, making little encroachment into the local population. If the
Reverend Whittaker could have returned at the end of the nineteenth century he would at
least have been satisfied that the Anglican faith still dominated.
The Reverend Whittaker’s interest in religious education for children leads me on to
discuss his role in the development of education in general in Blackburn. As regards
weekday education it was the nonconformists that took the lead, the British and Foreign
Schools Society opening a school in Ainsworth Street in 1810. The Anglican National
Society replied by opening their own a year later in Thunder Alley. When Whittaker
became Parish Priest he worked in close conjunction with the National Society to open
further schools. By 1842 there were 17 Religious based Voluntary Schools in the borough
and Anglican National Schools were in the majority. He even persuaded local mill
owners like Hornby to finance and build such schools near their mills.
However, since education was not compulsory and child labour was seen as necessary to
supplement family income, schools were not overcrowded. As one contemporary
commented in 1844: “Blackburn with its teeming population is at the present time behind
every other town in England in intelligence, for it appears that out every of 100 men only
39 can write their name; and out of 100 women only eleven are able to do so.” But
Whittaker’s legacy, though it cannot be measured in educational achievement can be
measured in the control that the Church of England had over education in Blackburn for
years to come. This is seen in the composition of the town’s first School Board set up
following the Education Act 1870. It was dominated by a continuous cotton Anglican
majority. Under the Act the School Board had to ensure that every child had a place
available to them. Co-operation between the Board and the church was so close that in
the following 32 years only two secular Board Schools were built in Blackburn and two
voluntary schools taken over. When it was deemed that a new school was needed in an
area the Board duly informed the Church of England of the fact and then delayed acting
until the church authorities raised the necessary finance to build one.
The result was that by 1900 out of the 24,700 pupils who attended elementary schools in
Blackburn 96% attended church schools and the overwhelming majority of those were
Church of England schools. The Reverend Whittaker has to be credited with the fact that,
for good or ill, primary education in Blackburn today is still dominated by Church
schools. Again, for good or ill, Church schools also have a firm foothold both in
secondary and sixth Form education in the town. The efforts of one man nearly 150 years
ago have reverberated down over the years.
The third area I wish to discuss is the effect that the Reverend Whittaker had on the
political development of Blackburn. Perhaps the most famous event that he is
remembered for is his sermon preached to a congregation of Chartists in 1839. His
political views, however, were well known before then as was his attitude to public
disorder. Back as early as 1826, just four years after taking up his post at St. Mary’s, he
was approached by fifteen of the town’s leading citizens and asked to take up the position
of magistrate. This was prompted by fears of industrial unrest following the introduction
of power looms and resultant lower incomes and unemployment of handloom weavers.
Indeed, rioting and machine breaking did break out in Blackburn. What these citizens
who wrote to Whittaker wanted, was a magistrate who would stiffen the resolve of fellow
members of the bench and not hesitate in supporting the reading of the riot act and the
calling in of troops to protect property. For them the Reverend Whittaker was just such a
man. For him the social and political status quo was sacrosanct and property rights in
viable.
Given this aspect of his character, it was not surprising, therefore, that the clash with the
Chartists took place. The Chartist movement emerged in 1838/9. The name derived from
the fact that its agenda for social and political reform was set out in the form of a Great
Charter. As regards the established church the Chartists saw it as corrupt. They called for
a church of the people rather than one that appeared to support the ruling classes and to
be part of the ruling system. And, through the levying of tithes and church rates, they also
saw the church as making the poor poorer
In the summer of 1839 the leadership of the Chartists challenged the vicars of 31 parishes
to preach sermons on texts that they had chosen. Some churchmen sidestepped the
challenge whilst others substituted their own passages from the bible. Whittaker did
neither of these. He took up the challenge and preached on the passage from the Book of
James that was given to him. This was chapter 5 verses 1-16 that begin: “Go to now ye
rich men and weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.”
On the appointed day the church was full. It is claimed that a congregation of 4,000
crammed into this church. Many Chartists came in their work clothes. The local paper
described them as “uncombed, unwashed and unshaven.” This appearance was deliberate;
a protest against what they saw as the typical Anglican churchgoer. They also arrived
early some holding pikes with the heads of Tories impaled on them in effigy. They seated
themselves in the private and rented pews much to the annoyance of their owners. Even
the Reverend Whittaker’s wife and children found themselves evicted and had to sit on
the altar steps.
It was in this atmosphere that Whittaker gave his sermon. True to character he offered no
olive branch. Not one iota of sympathy was extended. He reminded the congregation that
James was stoned to death “by a tumultuous assemblage of the poor and lower classes.”
A stark warning of what can happen if the lower orders try to change things that they
cannot understand. He argued that the “rich men” may have been the oppressors of the
poor when James was living but that today’s rich men - “the gentry of England” - were
the poor mans friend. It was they that promoted and financed public institutions. It was
they that set up charities to help those in distress. The real oppressors were the Chartist
leaders who manipulated their followers and led them astray. He argued that the call for
equal property rights was just a call to seize your neighbours goods by force. He also
argued that the call for one man one vote would just mean that the ignorant would be
making the laws. One can only imagine the effect that this diatribe had on the audience.
How should we judge the success of this sermon? Admittedly when published it sold
well. Admittedly it may have rallied the town’s middle and ruling classes. But did it have
any effect on the Chartist movement in Blackburn? The answer has to be no. In fact it
could be argued that it made matters worse. To most of those who sat here listening to his
address the Reverend Whittaker’s words just emphasised all that they believed was
wrong with the church and with those that preached within it. When Chartist agitation
peaked three years later the scale of protest was certainly significantly lower here than in
many other northern towns. But this was not down to the memory of a sermon preached
three years before. It had more to do with the size of the mills and the paternalistic
relationship that had developed with the mill owners.
So what is my overall conclusion as to the importance of the Reverend John William
Whittaker’s time as vicar of St. Mary’s? He was certainly a man who stood out amongst
his peers. He was a driven man, a man with a mission and with the determination to fulfill
it. It was he who ensured that Blackburn was to be a rock of Anglicanism. It was he who
ensured that religious schools and especially Church of England schools would dominate
education in the town. As for the realm of politics his legacy, though colourful, is far
more muted. The Reverend Whittaker deserves his memorial; he deserves that his
memory is recorded here in the building he loved and defended. Whatever your view as
to his legacy for Blackburn he at least left one. Not many can say that.
Dr. Derek Beattie
June 2008.