Samuel Laycock
Samuel Laycock (1826–1893) was a
cotton workers. He was known as the Marsden poet.He was born on 17 January 1826 at Intake Head, Pule Hill, Marsden, West Yorkshire, the son of John Laycock, a hand-loom weaver. His formal education consisted of attending Sunday school and a few months at a local school. Laycock began work in a woollen mill at the age of nine. In 1837, when the family moved to Stalybridge, Cheshire, he worked as a cotton weaver and later cloth looker. The American Civil War (1861–1864) badly affected the Lancashire cotton towns as supplies of raw cotton dried up. Laycock was one of the thousands unemployed and tried to earn a meagre living by writing verses which the unemployed could set to music and sing in the streets for pennies. In 1864, he published Lancashire Rhymes and in 1866, Lancashire Songs, poems which documented the everyday life of cotton workers.
In 1865, Laycock became the librarian at
In 1850, Laycock married Martha Broadbent, a cotton weaver, but she died two years later. He remarried in 1858 to Hannah Woolley, who died in 1863. His third marriage was to Eliza Pontefract in 1864 and she survived him. He had several children by Hannah and at least two by Eliza, including Arthur, who became a novelist.
Laycock died of
See also
- Simon Armitage, poet laureate, also born in Marsden
References
- ^ Hollingworth, Brian, ed. (1977) Songs of the People. Manchester: Manchester University Press; p. 153
- ^ Biographical notes
- ^ "Laycock biography". Archived from the original on 14 June 2008. Retrieved 5 May 2008.
External links
- Samuel Laycock, Lancashire Poet Archived 14 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- A Tribute to Samuel Laycock 1826 - 1893
- Works by Samuel Laycock at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)