Abstract
This article analyses three plays by the Lancashire working-class writer Sam Fitton (1860–1923) arguing that they are best understood as an extended dramatic experiment in which the conventions of melodrama and farce, inherited from the Victorian stage, are tested against the realities of everyday working-class life. It considers Fitton's plays in relation to the representations of working-class life offered by both Victorian dramatists and those of the ‘Manchester School’. It traces Fitton's career as a performer before offering extended analyses of his handling of the interplay of the politics of class, gender, and age in working-class life in three plays; Jeremiah Flint (melodrama), The Buckleys (comedy), Mugs (a one-act play). It argues that Fitton's drama anticipates aspects of a number of late-twentieth-century situation comedies dealing with working-class life.
Laughter is not a luxury, sir, it is a stern necessity.
1
This article offers the first sustained consideration of the dramatic output of the Lancashire working-class writer Sam Fitton (1860–1923) better known for his poems, cartoons, and sketches produced for the Cotton Factory Times. 2 It situates Fitton's plays in the context of the evolving relationship between the industrial working class and the British stage from the Victorian period onwards and argues that the significance of Fitton's work resides in its ability to illuminate the problem of finding dramatic forms capable of representing the quotidian lives of working-class people. The article begins by tracing both the onstage and offstage relationships of the industrial working class to British theatre in the first half of the nineteenth century. It continues by considering Ben Brierley's The Lancashire Weaver Lad (1870) as a precursor to the emergence of the ‘Manchester School’ of dramatists, particularly Stanley Houghton and Harold Brighouse in the early twentieth century. It then explores Sam Fitton's engagement with the theatre beginning with his experiences as a performer before moving on to an analysis of three of his plays; Jeremiah Flint (a melodrama), The Buckleys (a comedy), and Mugs (a one-act play). I argue that these typify Fitton's development (only partially successful) as a playwright seeking to develop a form adequate to the representation of daily working-class life (particularly the interplay of class and gender politics and inter-generational conflict) and, insofar as they are successful, that they anticipate aspects of a number of influential class-based British situation comedies from the second half of the twentieth century.
The Industrial Working Class and the Nineteenth-Century Stage
As Frederick Burwick demonstrates in British Drama of the Industrial Revolution, the industrial working class enjoyed a variegated relationship with the drama, both on and off stage, across the nineteenth century. Prior to the repeal of the Combination Acts (in 1824), the theatre offered a relatively safe space wherein workers could meet, afforded an arena for impromptu class conflict (Burwick notes instances of ‘textile workers often behav[ing] offensively to wealthier patrons’ in Rochdale and Halifax), and provided opportunities for reciprocal gestures of solidarity such as the sponsorship of productions by local Friendly Societies and the hosting of benefits on behalf of, or lectures in support of a variety of radical causes. 3 Indeed, as Greg Vargo shows, most of the major London theatres ‘catering to working-class audiences hosted one or more Chartist benefits between 1842 and 1851’. 4 Moreover, Chartists also created their own theatre groups in order to perform a variety of dramatic works including some written by Chartist authors. 5
In addition to these ‘off stage’ and amateur engagements with the theatre, the British stage sporadically offered representations of the industrial-working class in dramas such as Douglas Jerrold's The Factory Girl (1832), John Walker's The Factory Lad (1832), or the anonymous Damp Fire: or, The Murder in the Mine (1842). Kate Newey observes that The Factory Girl offers a realistic portrayal of the ‘inhuman and unjust conditions of factory employees’ while The Factory Lad's working-class characters ‘are given the legitimacy and status of tragic heroes through their language’. 6 Burwick observes that Damp Fire ‘was too provocative to be performed in the coal mining regions of Lancashire, Yorkshire, or South Wales’ where firedamp was a deadly danger. 7 As Newey argues, these melodramas are structured by a ‘dialectical movement … between the conservative forces of personal and social reconciliation, and the radical impulse towards documentary realism’. 8 Indeed, Newey observes that the final tableau of The Factory Lad represents a ‘class battle’ and notes that both the publication of the play (advertised in the leading Radical newspaper, The Poor Man's Guardian) and its performance for a Chartist benefit in 1846 suggests the play's continuing appeal to working-class radicals. 9
Following the decline of Chartism in the 1850s, the working-class qua class was largely absent from the British stage until the final decades of the century. The combination of an upsurge of trade unionism and the socialist revival in the 1880s turned the spotlight onto class conflict and gave rise to what Michael R. Booth describes as a ‘long line of plays about capital and labour and the exploitation of the worker’. This sub-genre included Arthur Henry Jones’ The Middleman (1889), The Case of Rebellious Susan (1894), and George Moore's The Strike at Arlingford (1893) before, in Booth's words, reaching ‘an Edwardian climax in John Galsworthy's Strife (1909)’. 10
Lancashire Drama/The Manchester School
From Jerrold's The Factory Girl (1832) through to Galsworthy's Strife (1909) the dramatic representation of the working class has two dominant modes; workers either appear as oppressed, suffering individual victims (the melodrama) or as a collective problem in need of a solution (the strike play). This distinction only refers to the practical staging of the drama in question (i.e., whether the play focuses on a single worker or a group of workers) rather than the question of the extent to which the individual figure within melodrama is capable of representing wider ‘systemic’ forces. 11 Notably absent from this tradition are plays written by working-class authors and plays which deal with the quotidian lives of working-class people. Ben Brierley's The Lancashire Weaver Lad (1870) is a rare example of a nineteenth-century play written by a working-class author. Ben Brierley (1825–96) was born into a radical family (his father was a Peterloo veteran) and a radical community (Failsworth). Brierley developed a love of the theatre as a young man when the mutual improvement society to which he belonged began to stage plays, including Wat Tyler (which itself suggests a strong Chartist influence in Failsworth). 12 Brierley worked as a handloom weaver until 1855 when he was able to pursue a full-time writing career until his death in 1896.
The Lancashire Weaver Lad: A Domestic Drama in Three Acts (1870) was adapted for the stage from The Layrock of Langleyside: A Christmas Story, which was serialised in the Manchester Weekly Times from November 1863 to January 1864.
13
The plot of The Lancashire Weaver Lad is strongly influenced by melodrama; Harry Andrew, a young weaver, loves Mary Hartley (the daughter of his employer, the benevolent mill-owner Aaron Hartley) but feels unable to court her due to her higher status. Mary reciprocates Harry's love but is being actively courted by George Watson (her father's friend and business partner). When Mr Hartley's warehouse is robbed, suspicion falls on Harry who is only saved from a wrongful conviction by the intervention of Joe O’Dick's, an old handloom weaver. After the trial, Watson persuades Harry to emigrate to the USA and work for the firm and, with Harry out of the way, he proposes to Mary who rejects him. Five years pass and Mr Hartley receives news that a US bank has collapsed and fears that this will bankrupt his company. However, Hartley then discovers that Harry had withdrawn the firm's money prior to the crash and placed it in a safe Manchester bank. Harry returns in triumph to the UK (and with a thousand pounds of his own money), saves his mother from the workhouse, and proposes to Mary who accepts. As Taryn Hakala notes, Brierley himself played the role of Joe O’Dick's when the play was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Manchester in 1871. Hakala also observes that the play enjoyed a ‘robust two-decade performance history’ following its premiere.
14
Further evidence of the play's ongoing popularity is provided by David Lawton's prose sketch ‘Th’Owd Weighvur At Owd Ab's Monnyment’ (written in August 1905) in which Lawton (th’owd weighvur) visits and talks with Brierley's statue. Lawton reassures Brierley that The Lancashire Weaver Lad continues to delight audiences: Mon, i' country places [The Lancashire Weaver Lad] seems to come up as fresh as a daisy abeawt every eight or ten yer. Thoose 'at's never yerd it wanten to yer it, an' those 'at has are fain to yer it agen.
15
In Brierley's play, the pressure exerted by the melodramatic form is all too evident and a more naturalistic portrayal of working-class life in industrial Lancashire only arises with the emergence of the ‘Manchester School’ of dramatists associated with, and encouraged by, Annie Horniman's Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. The best known of these dramatists were Stanley Houghton (1881–1913) and Harold Brighouse (1882–1958). Although neither dramatist was from a working-class background, both had had some experience of the textile industry prior to becoming full-time writers; Houghton had worked in the office of his father, a Manchester cotton merchant, and Brighouse had worked as a textile buyer. Both were responsible for plays which subsequently became films, Hindle Wakes and Hobson's Choice, which mediated a culturally influential vision of industrial Lancashire far beyond the county's historic borders.
Hindle Wakes, written by Houghton in 1910 and first performed at the Gaiety Theatre in 1912, is the story of a young weaver, Fanny Hawthorn, who enjoys a sexual dalliance with the mill-owner's son (Alan Jeffcote) during wakes week. When their relationship comes to light and the question of marriage arises, Alan's parents are initially reluctant as they suspect Fanny of having designs on the family fortune. However, they eventually agree to the marriage only for Fanny to announce that she has no wish to marry Alan (whom she considers poor husband material) and intends to continue to earn her living as a weaver. The play's frank treatment of extra-marital sex caused controversy but the play remained popular and enjoyed a long run on the London stage and was filmed three times in 1918 and 1927 (both silent versions) and as a sound film in 1931.
Hobson's Choice, written by Brighouse and first performed in New York in 1915, focuses on a drunken bootmaker who tyrannizes over his employee, Will Mossop, and his three daughters who work unpaid in his shop. His eldest daughter, Maggie, proposes marriage to Will (who, somewhat reluctantly, accepts). When Hobson opposes the marriage, Maggie and Will leave and set up their own business with capital borrowed from one of Hobson's wealthier customers. Maggie proves herself to be both a successful businesswoman and a capable matchmaker, securing advantageous marriages for her two younger sisters. Loss of trade almost bankrupts Hobson, who is also on the point of drinking himself to death. In the grip of delirium tremens, Hobson asks each of his daughters to take care of him and Maggie eventually agrees on the condition that Will be allowed to take over Hobson's business. Hobson's Choice transferred from New York to London where it enjoyed a lengthy run and was made into a silent film in 1920 and a sound film in 1931. A further film version, directed by David Lean and featuring Charles Laughton as Henry Hobson, appeared in 1954.
Sam Fitton
As noted earlier, neither Brighouse nor Houghton was from a working-class background. However, their near-contemporary Sam Fitton (1860–1923) did have direct experience of working in the mills having started work (as a half-timer, aged eleven) as a doffer before working as a little piecer in various mills around High Crompton, near to Oldham. Sam's health was never robust and in his mid-twenties, shortly after his marriage to Jane Cockayne (a weaver, who would become a dialect writer using the pseudonym ‘Th’Owd Fossil’), he had to give up work in the spinning room. He returned to factory work as a weaver, but continued poor health forced him out of the factories in 1903 and he turned to the pen to make his living. He became a regular contributor to the Cotton Factory Times where his cartoons, poems, and dialect columns featuring characters such as Peter Pike, Sally Butter’orth, and Billy Blobb proved immensely popular. 16 Sam also had a great love of the theatre and wrote many plays, many of which were performed by local amateur theatrical groups although none ever reached the professional stage. 17
Sam Fitton's gravestone which reads, ‘In loving memory of Samuel Fitton/Lancashire author, playwright, cartoonist etc’ suggests the significance which he himself attached to his dramatic work. In the following paragraphs, I explore Sam Fitton's earliest experiences of the theatre before moving on to an analysis of three his plays; Jeremiah Flint (a melodrama), The Buckleys (a comedy), and Mugs (described by Sam as a ‘humorous sketch’). 18 Despite the fact that his plays are the least remembered (and regarded) aspect of his work, I want to argue that Sam Fitton's engagement with the theatre remains important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it provides an insight into a long-standing, if occluded, tradition of working-class theatre-making which stretches for over a century from Chartism, through the Clarion Dramatic Clubs and into the Workers’ Theatre movement. 19 Furthermore, precisely because Fitton's involvement was local and independent (i.e., not affiliated to either the Clarion or the Workers’ Theatre movements) it offers an insight into the significance of theatre within the wider working-class community. Additionally, because Fitton's plays are largely concerned with the day-to-day lives of working-class people when the mills and factories are running, as opposed to focusing on strikes or periods of economic depression, they constitute some of the earliest attempts at writing naturalistic working-class drama. Similarly, Sam's plays provide an insight into the interplay of the politics of class, gender, and age in the working-class communities of industrial Lancashire, where the presence of large numbers of women within the industrial workforce imparted a distinctive flavour to working-class culture. Finally, I argue that we treat Fitton's work as an extended dramatic experiment in which the conventions of melodrama and farce (inherited from the Victorian stage) are tested against the reality of working-class life. 20 In this respect, Fitton's plays are instructive because they represent the theatrical equivalent to the problem identified by Raymond Williams in relation to the novel, namely that of finding a form appropriate to the accurate representation of working-class experience. 21
Towards the end of his life, Sam wrote a series of reminiscences for the Cotton Factory Times entitled ‘My Stage Memories’. These memories begin with Sam offering facetious accounts of his earliest years using terms borrowed from the stage, such as referring to his acrobatic prowess (falling down the stairs) and the frequent ‘hand-claps’ received from his father for speaking the ‘wrong’ lines.
22
Yet, as he makes clear at the end of his recollections, he did regard the stage as a metaphor for life: So you and I and all of us are actors of a degree, whether it be on the stage of life or boards of a travelling ‘blood tub’ … Hereunder are a few of the winning lines spoken on the stage. ‘All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.’ ‘To be or not to be that is the question.’ Actors off the stage:– ‘This bacon is the very best, mam, and I couldn’t really afford to sell it for less than four shillings a pound.’ ‘I am sorry, but I shall really have to drop your wages. You wouldn’t like to see me bankrupt, would you?’
23
In similar fashion, Fitton's account of how he became a theatrical impresario at the tender age of eight foregrounds self-deprecation but also gives an insight into the values of mutual help, aesthetic pleasure, and a commitment to democracy which informed working-class cultural production: By the help of a pot of glue, a cardboard box begged from a sympathetic milliner, and a box of water-colour bricks, I owned my own theatre by the time I was eight… I was manager, costumier, scene painter, and author all combined. My actors were a democratic lot of little people [cardboard figures]; they worked for the common good[.]
24
It's surprising what a small boy with a mouth-organ can do in a cardboard theatre. He played overtures, dance, pathetic, and incidental music, all with one hand, and worked the limelight with the other; and all went merry as a dumb-bell, until one night the left-hand candle, that helped to serve as one of the footlights, toppled over and set the theatre on fire. As luck, and lack of scenery would have it, it didn’t spread far, and there was no panic. The audience arose – from its knees – like one man, or rather one lad (there was only one of him), and ran out in the street shouting to his mates – ‘Ee! Come on lads! Sam Fitton's paper show's a-fire’.
25
Fitton's first taste of ‘real’ theatre came when he was given a minor role in a Sunday School production of Box and Cox, a popular Victorian farce first performed at the Lyceum Theatre, London in November 1847 (and later adapted as a comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand in 1866). Fitton records that he had a single line, ‘Here's your coat, sir’, which he managed both to learn and to stammer out in performance.
Working life did not interfere with Fitton's love of the theatre and he became the ‘coach’ (director) of a ‘hard-working set of amateurs, chiefly factory lads and lasses’.
26
This group rented a small four-roomed cottage to serve as a rehearsal space and Fitton was clearly proud of the company's abilities as well as their commitment: I can truthfully say that ours was no barn storming, vowel maltreating, dial disfiguring, teeth grinding company of affected stage walkers… If we lacked the ability to treat a play kindly we had the good sense to refrain from murdering it. We tried to hold the mirror up to nature we did. Too true, nature was often surprised to see itself.
27
In addition to directing and performing in plays, Sam Fitton appeared as a solo performer. As his promotional material makes clear, his repertoire included ‘Humorous Songs, Patter Sketches, Monologues … Readings from his Original Writings … both in and out of the Dialect’, it was also respectable or as his advertising put it contained ‘No Vulgarity’. 28 The earliest reference I have found for a solo performance by Sam Fitton is December 1902, when he was engaged by the York Street, Congregational Church in Heywood for their Annual Christmas Tea Party and Entertainment. 29 Thereafter, he often performed for local churches and schools. By 1904 he enjoyed a regional reputation spanning both Lancashire and Yorkshire performing, for example, at the Annual Soiree of the Hebden Bridge Industrial Co-operative Society. 30 In April 1906, he provided the entertainment for the third annual meeting of the Manchester Dickens Fellowship. 31 Around this time Fitton's plays were being performed by local amateur groups. For example, the Heywood Advertiser reports that the High Crompton Dramatic Society performed Julius Morton's Remorse in March 1908 and The Inventor's Daughter in November 1908. Both performances were given in aid of the National League for the Blind. 32 The Fitton archive also has an undated poster advertising William Enery's Baby performed by ‘Sam Fitton & Co’ at the Palace Theatre, Middleton. It is entirely possible that Fitton's plays were performed regularly in and around Oldham in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century. 33
Throughout 1912, he appears to have been particularly active for the Lancashire Authors’ Association, reciting ‘To A Caged Lark’ and ‘The Knocker-up’ at a meeting of the Association in Heywood in January, performing humorous sketches at their May meeting in Wigan and at the December meeting in Chetham's Hospital, Manchester.
34
He also performed regularly at entertainments organised by the Co-operative Movement including, a ‘Grand Smoking Concert’ organised by the Educational Department of the Heywood Industrial Co-operative Society in October 1913. Admission for this event coast 3d but included ‘a Sample Packet of Tobacco’ (which probably meant that this was a ‘men only’ event).
35
A measure of how highly regarded Sam Fitton was by local audiences is given by the report of the Chetham's Hospital event which commented: Needless to say, the ‘star’ turns of Sam Fitton were, as per usual, ‘top hole’. We look upon him as our Harry Lauder – could praise go farther?
36
In 1912, this was high praise indeed for Harry Lauder (a Scottish singer and comedian) was then the highest-paid performer in the world, the first British artist to sell a million records, and had topped the bill at that year's inaugural Royal Command Performance given in front of King George V. 37 Fitton's career as a performer (whether solo or as part of a local amateur company) provides a window onto a local working-class theatrical culture which combined a desire for aesthetic pleasure and an appreciation of individual skill with a commitment to the values of respectability and the common weal.
In the archives at Oldham, a couple of Fitton's ‘patter’ books survive so we have some sense of his material. For example, ‘I’m a Poor Married Man’ combines comic song with patter. It features a familiar figure in Lancashire comedy, the hen-pecked, put-upon husband who has this to say for himself: ‘They say, ‘troubles never come singly’. They don't: it's when you're married you get 'em’. Throughout the routine, he claims that he's never given enough to eat by his wife, ‘But we do have supper I’ll describe it, every night my wife has chips and onions; the children have their faces washed, and I chop the firewood’. 38 Two themes which recur in Fitton's work are the role of gender politics within working-class culture, frequently formulated as the question of ‘who wears the trousers’ (or where the power resides in a marriage), and that of cross-generational tension. The former is the subject of his longer play The Buckleys, while the latter informs Mugs.
Many of Fitton's plays can be described as ‘naturalistic comedies’ of everyday working-class life in industrial Lancashire as opposed to the highly contrived farces of the Victorian period. In both The Buckleys and Mugs the comedy largely arises from the interaction between realistic characters in an equally realistic domestic setting. In this sense, Fitton's comedies might be said to anticipate post-war British television sit-coms such as The Likely Lads, The Liver Birds, Sykes, and Till Death Us Do Part. It is important to acknowledge just how novel this was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of the plays Fitton had been involved in during his amateur theatrical days, whether melodrama or farce, depended on highly contrived plots. Fitton was acutely aware of the gap which existed between real life and its theatrical representation (particularly in respect of working-class life): In real life, when suing for the hand of Lizzie Ellen round the dark corner of the village tripe-shop window, whither she has wandered for her evening quartern of honeycomb or her more succulent chish and fips [sic], in a voice quivering with emotion, you cast one loving eye on her blushing cheek and the other on her steaming bowl, and say ‘Gi’ us a chip, Lizzie.’ If she lovingly complies to your request and smiling says, ‘Help thizel’ you can take heart, and p’raps two chips. And if she says: ‘Goo on mon, have another; tak’ one or two,’ you can make sure your love has been reciprocated; […] Ah, but on the stage it is different. You meet your rosy-cheeked fair maiden … on the bridge of the abbey ruins, and you say, ‘Lydia Ermyntrude (there are no Lizzie Ellens among stage sheroes [sic]) be mine and you will make me the happiest man in the world. I have waited for this hour ever since I beheld your sylph-like form flitting in and out of the mulberry bushes of your father's mansion.’
39
Jeremiah Flint, the first of Fitton's plays that I want to discuss in detail, is a melodrama which deals with the plight of the seamstress or, more accurately, sweated female labour in the figure of the seamstress. 40 It occupies an important position in Fitton's oeuvre because he also produced, Jeremiah Flint: A Tale of the Sweater, a novelistic treatment of the same plot (this appears to be Fitton's only attempt at writing a novel). 41 It is unclear which came first, the play or the novel, or indeed when either was written. I suspect that it is an early piece for it is written in standard English rather than Lancashire dialect, has a rather overwrought plot and an uncertain setting (it is unclear whether this play is set in Lancashire). In short, due to its over-reliance on, and rather clumsy handling of, established melodramatic plot devices, the play has the hallmarks of an early work.
The play opens in a ‘sweating den’ with a group of women singing ‘The Song of the Shirt’ (Thomas Hood's famous poem about the overworked and underpaid seamstress). The relevance of Hood's poem is made painfully clear when one of the needlewomen, Mary Wakefield, faints from hunger and exhaustion. This prompts Sally Sunlight to confront the play's villain Jeremiah Flint. Flint, fearful that his partner Mr Mildew will hear the commotion, attempts to pacify Sally by sending all the needlewomen home early. The needlewomen depart leaving the recovering Mary alone and Flint tries to take advantage of her. Mary resists and the arrival of the morally decent foreman, Jack Fearnley, prevents Flint from harassing her any further. Fearnley tries to alert Mr Mildew, Flint's well-meaning but ineffectual business partner, to Flint's abuses but Mildew is reluctant to acknowledge the truth of Fearnley's account. The scene ends with the arrival of a mysterious stranger, Bob Crawford, seeking news of his sister.
In scene two, Flint's scapegrace nephew Bertie is involved in an altercation with Tommy Nibbler, the office boy. Tommy is supported by the butcher, Bill Kidney, and the seeds of a romance are sown between Bill and Sally. We also learn that Crawford is a former acquaintance of Flint and that he has been imprisoned for forgery (probably committed by Flint). Flint married Crawford's sister, now dead and there is a strong suggestion that he killed his aunt for her money.
Act Two, scene one finds Mary at home with her mother. Miss Mildew arrives on a charitable visit and Mrs Wakefield tells her that she would rather receive a decent wage than charity. After Miss Mildew's departure, Mrs Wakefield reveals that she is not really Mary's mother and that Mary's real mother was ‘a lady’ who died shortly after being taken in by Mrs Wakefield. Next Bill Kidney enters with news that Sally has inherited money. Flint returns to harass Mary but is prevented by Sally who knocks him down. Scene two opens with a comic battle of the sexes, in the form of a debate between Bill and Sally on the subject of marriage and mastery. Mr Mildew enters with news that the firm has suffered a big loss. In scene three, Fearnley tells Miss Mildew about his concerns regarding Flint's treatment of his workers. Mr Mildew is seriously ill after the shock of hearing of the firm's losses. Flint comes ostensibly to visit Mr Mildew, but takes advantage of the confusion in the household to forge a cheque in Mildew's name (although he is seen doing this by Tommy, the office boy). Flint also reveals to his nephew that he's carrying a bottle of poison to ensure that Mildew dies. However, Mildew dies without Flint's assistance.
Act Three sees Fearnley informing the police of Flint's swindles. Fearnley then proposes to Mary and we learn that Sally and Bill have married – this provides an opportunity for another comic interlude on the theme of the battle of the sexes. Meanwhile, Bob Crawford sees a photograph of Mary's mother and recognises it as his sister (which means that Mary is Flint's daughter). The final scene takes place in Flint's sweating den. Mary enters to ask for work and is harassed by both Flint and his nephew Bertie. Sally enters, knocks down Bertie and Flint and tries to persuade the seamstresses to rebel before leading them off to a meal to celebrate her wedding. Bob Crawford arrives and confronts Flint; Flint tries, unsuccessfully, to poison him. Crawford reveals that Mary is in fact Flint's daughter. Bertie rushes in to warn Flint of the imminent arrival of the police, drinks the wine poisoned by Flint and dies. The police arrive, arrest Flint and take him away. Sally and Bill return and Fearnley and Mary decide to leave the sweater's foul den forever.
As is clear from the foregoing summary, Jeremiah Flint has an overwrought and not entirely convincing plot which is heavily dependent on melodramatic conventions. The dialogue, written in standard English, lacks the sharpness and verve of his dialect writing. Moreover, the focus on the seamstress is unusual both in historical and literary terms. The figure of the suffering seamstress became a staple of English literature following the publication of Thomas Hood's ‘The Song of the Shirt’ in Punch in 1843 and that makes Jeremiah Flint seem dated even for the early twentieth century (which is presumably when it was written). 42 Furthermore, Fitton's decision to focus on seamstresses as victimised individuals (while explicable in terms of melodramatic convention) seems surprising given Fitton's direct experience of the Lancashire cotton belt where women not only worked in large numbers but were also ‘the best paid, most highly unionized female manual workers in Britain’. 43 In short, Jeremiah Flint demonstrates all too clearly the incomplete fit between melodramatic conventions and working-class lives in industrial Lancashire. On the positive side of the balance sheet, melodrama provides a way of dramatising the ongoing struggle for economic justice (conceived in essentially trade unionist terms as a fair reward for labour), and recognises that the female worker can be subject to sexual as well as economic exploitation. 44 However, this is achieved at the expense of telling an atypical tale: the tale of the individual seamstress rather than that of her unionised sisters in the weaving sheds.
Fitton offers a far more convincing portrayal of Lancashire working-class life in The Buckleys. 45 Set in ‘1912 or thereabouts’, this play traces the tensions within the eponymous Buckley family as they try to accommodate their eldest daughter's desire to move ‘up’ in the world. Additionally, the play explores the gender politics of domesticity as Mr Buckley seeks to assert his position as head of the household. The play begins in the Buckley's home in Lower Lane where Mr Buckley (who works ‘feeding the devil’, in the relatively low-paid and low-status job of cotton mixer) is content to live. However, his eldest daughter, Betsy, who has escaped the factory floor and works as a typist, is determined that her family will improve themselves by moving to Mushroom Villa, Upper Avenue.
The play opens with an attempt by Mr Buckley to assert his patriarchal authority, ‘Who's th’ boss? Me, I reckon’. This receives the crushing reply, ‘Then th’art a bad reckoner!’ from his wife, who also announces that the family will soon be moving to a new home that Betsy has found for them. Aggrieved that he has not been consulted over this decision, Mr Buckley enquires, ‘an’ where do I come in?’ His wife's reply shifts the debate from questions of ‘reckoning’ (i.e., the economic sphere, where Mr Buckley as breadwinner presumes superiority) to the realm of the social where Mr Buckley's lack of (middle-class) gentility places him at a distinct disadvantage: ‘Tha’ll be allowed to come in at th’ back door if thy shoes are clean, an’ tha’ mends thy manners’.
The wider Buckley family is equally divided as to the merits of moving; the two oldest children, Betsy and George are in favour. However, Phylis, the younger daughter, is sceptical. When Betsy argues that the family will ‘get on better’ by moving, Phylis retorts, ‘And perhaps our Betsy will ‘get off’ better’, alluding to her sister's hope of securing an offer of marriage from Bertie (a rich young man), while Tom (the younger son) declares, ‘I’m not gooin’ o’ livin’ in a jerry-built semi-detached dolls-house that's o’ outward swank an’ inward uncomfortableness’. In similar fashion, Mr Buckley is concerned that the higher rent for Mushroom Villa (almost double their current one) will mean a lower standard of diet: Why should we lower our stomachs to raise envy among our neighbours?… Gi’ me a clean door-step an’ some sand on th’floor, then yo’ can keep your fancy knockers an’ entrance halls. A family canno’ get fat on affectation!
These exchanges foreground competing value systems and forms of desire. The desire for upward social mobility demonstrated by Betsy, George and Mrs Buckley is derided as ‘swank’, or social pretension, by Tom, Phylis, and Mr Buckley. The relative merits of external display and internal sustenance are also highlighted as the play registers the impact of a burgeoning ‘consumer culture’ on the working class.
Act Two, which opens in the front parlour of Mushroom Villa, makes it clear that Mr Buckley has lost the argument. Confirmation that the Buckleys have gone up in the world comes with a visit from the local clergyman, Rev. Lastly. On being introduced to the family, Lastly comments that Phylis's face seems familiar. Phylis replies that she and Tom have been regular attenders at his church and Sunday school for years. Somewhat disconcerted, Lastly wonders why he has not visited the family before and Phylis suggests ‘P’raps it's because we were living in Lower Lane sir’. Phylis continues to satirise both the superficiality and ignorance of Lastly's views and values; when the Reverend gentleman laments the general lack of ‘refinement either temporal or spiritual in a low-class environment’ and talks of his duty ‘to try to uplift those poor people … [who] have sunk down to that – er – state of life – er – er – er’, Phylis completes his sentence and compounds his difficulties by offering ‘Unto which it has pleased God to call them sir!’ Not fully realising the depth of the hole he is in, the reverend gentleman keeps digging: Rev Lastly: …why cannot the people of the lowermost slums try to attain a state of ablutionary respectability? Phylis: P’raps it's because they haven’t got a bath-room sir.
This is class-conscious comedy, exposing both the intellectual and spiritual limitations of the middle classes and highlighting the moral decency of working-class loves.
Following Lastly's departure, the Buckleys are visited by Betsy's new friends, Miss Highbrow and Miss Goodenough. The stage directions describe the former as a ‘conceited stuck-up lady about twenty-five … all gaudy show, carries a small poodle’, and it quickly becomes clear that her main aim in conversation is to assert her own superiority and that of her family. When Betsy, seeking to impress, says she will show her visitors the greenhouse presently, Miss Highbrow declares that her family has two ‘very big’ greenhouses and when Mrs Buckley reveals that Betsy irons Mr Buckley's collars, Miss Highbrow replies ‘We send ours to the laundry!’ Betsy and Miss Highbrow are rivals in love and when they fall out, Miss Highbrow departs commenting that her rival's behaviour demonstrates ‘the coarse environment of Lower Lane … showing through the mushroom veneer!’
Sandwiched between these visits is the renewal of the debate between Mr and Mrs Buckley and Betsy about the merits of the move to Mushroom Villa. Mr Buckley, who is normally banished from the front parlour if he is wearing his work clothes, complains: Mr B: I work extra overtime to pay extra rent for a fancy drawing-room where I dar’nt show my face for fear somebody scratches it. An’ what is your Mushroom Terrace after o’? Just an artificial cardboard rabbit-cote in which yo’n come o’ playin’ a game o’ make-believe! Betsy: It's our duty to get up in the world. Mr B: What's thi good o’bein up ith’ world when yo’re down ith’ mouth? When yo’re gotten up ith’ world yo’ll allus find somebody a lot higher! It's a game o’ beggar mysel’ to vex my neighbour. […] Betsy: Ridiculous! It's our duty to do the best for ourselves. Mr B: Within reason it is. But not wi’ greed an’ jealousy an’ envyin’ our neighbours …It isn’t everyone ‘at finds happiness i’ stonnin’ at a front garden gate to show off their flimsy finery. Outward elegance is nowt to a chap who cannot afford steak- puddin.
After this exchange Mr Buckley goes off to the pub and on his drunken return announces that he is reasserting control over the family and, as a result, they will be returning to their old home. Act Three opens, back in Lower Lane, with Mr Buckley no longer banished to the back room but rather dominating the home's primary social space by sitting contentedly in his armchair, reading the paper, and smoking his pipe. It appears as if his visit to the masculine world of the public house has been sufficient to restore Mr Buckley's patriarchal authority and he declares, ‘I feel like a gradely barn-yard cock now! I con crow!’ To which Mrs Buckley, who is missing the ‘niceness’ of life at Mushroom Villa, responds rather disparagingly, ‘Well, keep on crowin’ on thy own Lower Lane midden!’ She also reminds him that Betsy is thinking of leaving home, to which Mr Buckley retorts that both Betsy and George can leave if they don’t like living at Lower Lane. Having earlier described himself as ‘boss in his own house’, Mr Buckley declares that he is ‘th’ manager here I tell thee!’, which prompts a warning from Mrs Buckley, ‘Well, keep managin’, but mind thy childer dunno’ goo on strike’. Mrs Buckley's warning reflects the worldview of the spinners’ union (which was central to the founding of the Cotton Factory Times) simultaneously respectful of ‘legitimate’ authority, but always ready to challenge the illegitimate use of power by factory managers and owners. Thus, for the first time in the play, the audience's sympathies are directed towards Mrs Buckley rather than her husband.
Mrs Buckley's warning proves timely as first Tom and then Phylis defy their father's authority and insist on their right to go out for an evening's entertainment. Mr Buckley then argues with Betsy and George in quick succession which leaves him in a very bad temper when Bertie comes visiting. Bertie has come to ask for permission to marry one of Mr Buckley's daughters. In a lovely moment of visual comedy, both Betsy and Phylis enter through different doors as George makes this declaration; Betsy is convinced that he means her, Phylis (and the audience if they have been paying attention) know he means her. Mr Buckley expresses his reluctance to part with his ‘best an sweetest flower’ and this leads to one final challenge to his authority: Phylis: I shall have him whether or not. Mr B: Now Phylis! Remember I’m still thy boss. Phylis: Don’t say ‘boss’ dad! Say you’re my fayther! Say it!
The distribution of rewards and punishments at the end of the play indicates its preferred values. Betsy is punished both for her ‘stuck-up’ ways and for her selfishness. Phylis who understands that a person's worth does not necessarily correlate with their social status is rewarded – she gets to marry Bertie. Mr Buckley learns that it is a mistake to insist on an absolute patriarchal authority and by the end of the play is once more attending to the wishes of both his wife and children. Ironically, the play ends with Mr Buckley's announcement ‘We’re flittin!’, in effect acceding to his wife's desire to leave Lower Lane for somewhere better. The play thus ends on a note of both compromised patriarchal authority and what might be styled an ‘improving’ compromise – an attempt to better themselves. In both instances, the play reveals a homologous relationship with the kind of trade unionism championed by the Cotton Factory Times, respecting the authority of owners and managers yet seeking to improve the condition of the workers, both ‘within reason’ as Buckley himself puts it within the play.
Both Jeremiah Flint and The Buckleys belong to a recognisable genre. In contrast, Mugs, described by Fitton as a ‘humorous sketch’, is a one-act play which despite being broadly comedic also contains elements which gesture towards a distinctively working-class theatrical form without fully realising it.
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As with so many of Fitton's plays, it is difficult to date Mugs; one of the characters Jammy Butterworth (a cross between a bric-a-brac man and antiques dealer) drives a motor-car, but beyond that there is little to help place the action in a specific time. However, there are extensive stage directions (running to two manuscript pages) which offer a detailed description of the domestic interior of a working-class home: Scene – The living room of a Lancashire working woman's home. Table down L.C. on which is a neat white cloth, laden with dinner utensils, teapot, two cups and saucers, spoons. Sugar in basin; two egg-cups on table. Plate of bread and butter; knife; salt cellar etc… Old fashioned steel fender and fire-irons, homemade rug on the hearth, rather shabby carpet on floor. Four or five chairs.
The play, which takes place on a Saturday afternoon, centres on the relationship between a widow, Mrs Crabtree (around forty-eight years old), and her daughter, Betsy (about twenty-five), who works as a weaver. Both women are frustrated with the restrictions imposed by their economic situation, as their opening exchange makes clear: B: What is there fort’ dinner? Mrs C: What wer ta’ expectin’ fort’ dinner? A cock-chicken or a turkey or summat? B: (seeing here mother taking eggs from her pan) By go’ are we havin’ eggs again? (Mrs C puts egg in her cup) it's sickenin! Mrs C: Nawe! Tha aren’t havin’ eggs! Th’art havin’ egg. I’d nobbut two an I think I deserve one on’ em shuzheaws. (pp. 100/101) Nawe. Thi money's good enough but that knows as much as me 'at theres noan enough on it. I've ta job to mak' it spin eawt I can tell thi (p. 102)
Mugs suggests that Betsy deserves more for her efforts and Sam Fitton was generally supportive of attempts to improve women's wages. In a poem entitled ‘A Factory's Girl Plea’ (written in response to complaints from mill managers that women weren’t working as hard now that they had higher wages), the factory girl declares: As I would live, I must confess Hard work may be a treasure; There's dignity in Labour – yes, And perhaps a bit in pleasure.
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B: An what abeawt love mother [?] Mrs C: Love! bless thee lass! Love's o' reet to have under a glass-case… Love an ornaments are o' reet, but a mugful of good stew is better nor oather on 'em. B: It's better nor one egg for your dinner isn’t it? Mrs C: To be sure it is. I’m glad th’art beginnin’ to see things in a proper leet.
Is this a deeply cynical ploy by Mrs Crabtree (tantamount to pimping her daughter) or a realistic recognition of their best chance of escaping from poverty? Unlike Shaw, Fitton is reluctant to pursue this question further and the rest of the sketch consists of some neatly contrived misunderstandings (in the tradition of farce) and a resolution which sees the mug (which Jammy in fact wants much more than he desires Betsy) getting broken when Betsy drops it out of shock on hearing that her ‘felly’ has thrown her over for another woman: B: We’ve o’ bin playin a mugs game. Jammy: An we’ve o’ lost. Mrs C: An it serves us o’ jolly well reet!
In Comedians, a play written by some fifty years after Sam Fitton's death, Trevor Griffiths (another working-class Lancastrian playwright) reflects on the social responsibility of the comedian. Eddie Waters, one of the play's central figures, a former comic turned comedy tutor, insists on the social importance of comedy: A real comedian – that's a daring man. He dares to see what his listeners shy away from, fear to express. And what he sees is a sort of truth, about people, about their situation, about what hurts or terrifies them, about what's hard, above all, about what they want … a true joke, a comedian's joke, has to do more than release tension, it has to liberate the will and the desire, it has to change the situation.
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Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful to the staff at the Oldham Local Studies and Archives (OLAS), where the Sam Fitton archive is held, for all their assistance.
