Section 6 - 'The Isle of Man in the 1860s'

Just above Rhenass waterfall in Glen Helen there are three pot holes which are the finest specimens in the British Isles. They date away back to the time when these valleys were filled with ice in the form of glaciers. At the bottom of the glacier there was a little stream of water caused by the ice melting as it moved slowly down the valley. This water was under a lot of pressure. It did not run in a straight line but was twisted this and that way by the rock underneath. As it reached the end of the upper valley and was about to fall to the lower valley it twisted into a little circle under the ice and into this circle there came down some pieces of hard stone probably spar. This hard stone was whirled-round and round in this circle and slowly wore away the softer slate rock into a circular pit. This pit got deeper and wider through the ages,as more hard stones were carried down. As the water came out of this first pit it was also whirling round and a second pit was gradually formed also growing deeper and deeper. And then a third pit was formed and it went on getting deeper like the others, the water under the pressure of the ice being driven with force. This went on through the ages until the ice melted higher and higher up the valley and finally disappeared leaving the pot holes much as we see them today terrible places to fall into with their smooth sides and no hope of escape. So they remained almost unknown until the eighteen sixties when my father had a rustic bridge thrown across the top so that they could be seen in safety no one should miss seeing this remarkable freak of nature.

When my father eighty years ago made this beautiful glen available to the sight seer visiting the island very few people imagined that the Island would become so popular or that the prosperity of the Island would come to depend so much on its beauty or indeed that it could be made beautiful at all. They took visitors as they took the weather something that occured,and that they could not influence one way or another, like a fine summer.

Lodging houses and hotels were put up more people came. Grocers sold more food farmers sold more lamb and milk and butter more and bigger steamers were built the railway came and the cars and car drivers increased, and people began to see that the island was attractive. In the towns they built piers and promenades and picture houses and attempted to imitate Blackpool and Southport but the country and the hills and the coast were left alone except for a few places where a glen was closed to the public who were let in for a small charge and if possible a drink licence obtained, The motive behind all this to make our island more beautiful or more free to the visitor but to extract more money from his pocket. Tynwald, the Manx government . did nothing to make the Island more beautiful or more accessible. It however began to realise that the visitor was worth attracting and instead of making it more attractive by making the mountains the coastal cliffs and the hidden valley more free and acquiring the waste places capable of bring made beautiful and free, it began to spend money in advertisments in England all saying in various forms come to the Isle of Man. Some of these advertisments were futile and a sheer waste of money.

These advertisments cost about £12000 a year while nothing whatever was spent on making the Island more worth coming to.

All over the island there are places where it is waste and covered with thorns or briars with perhaps a little stream close by.

I was just too late to see the last of the flax industry in the island.

The house I now live in was built in 1765 as a flax mill, at that time almost every farmer grew a little patch of flax for his own use, this flax was a beautiful light green colour. It was not cut like corn but pulled up and tied in little bundles that could be grasped by the hand, after that it was immersed in a "dub" or stream to rot off the outer glossy covering just as you immerse leaves in water to make skeleton leaves. When sufficiently rotted and very offensive in smell, it was taken out and spread thinly on the grass to dry and make the outer coat brittle so that it could be easily brated or brushed off. Then it was taken to the flax mill to be "skutched" in the skutch mill. This was done by revolving horizontal beaters or skutchies enclosed in casing having openings or slots through which the flax was held until all the outer husk was beaten off and the fine lint fibres was left. This was taken home and spun into linen thread by the "spinsters" that is the women young and old in the household. This thread was passed on to the weaver of which there were many in the country, to be spun into cloth. This cloth was fine or coarse according to the thread and most old families had special designs of their own, after the manner of the scotch tartans. This was either plain white or coloured with bands of blue or other colour. My grand mother used to grow flax and send it to the old mill which I have converted into a modern house.

How the flax industry died out is interesting, when Lancashire began to import cotton and spin and weave it into cloth it became cheaper than linen and could be made into finer cloth than the coarse farm house linen then when steam came in it became still cheaper, with the result that the housewife bought it and did away with the work of the spinster who ceased to function but carried the name still on the register of marriages,

There was still flax needed for the sails of ships and some flax was still grown, but when steam came to be used in "steamers" and sails were no longer required then the farmers ceased to grow flax and the flax mills died out and the country weaver like the spinster turned to other work. Some of the old linen was still in use in my young days and the spinning wheels were still in common use for making woolen thread, the soft hum of the wheel was quiet and soothing, and as the fingers rather than the eyes were the main factors, in turning the soft fleecy rolls into fine thread the spinning could be carried on in the dim light of the fire or of a candle,and the quiet talk continue.

It has been very interesting to have watched the transformation in the Island from the individual to the communistic ownership. When I was young ownership was for the most part individual that is one man owned a farm or a house or a shop or an inn. There were hardly any combined ownwrship except in the case of boats and in that a man owned a definite share in a particular boat one or more sixty fourths. This was had its origin in the old feudal laws which enjoined on everyone of the lords tenants to furnish a share in a boat and his proportion of the nets. This resulted in the Lord gaining his "castle mease" of herrings from the boats free of cost and the church its tythe of herrings and other fish, but at the same time it benefited all the people since it made them work.

All these operations were within the capacity of a single man, but they were compelled by law to join their efforts, they learned the lesson of mutual help. From that slowly arose the voluntary company and later the limited liability company, applied to businesses, hotel and ships, in which a member did not own a definite proportion of the thing but a share in the capital in a company in an abstraction.

What one man could not do two work able to do, what two could not do four could do, and so on getting bigger and bigger combinations and able to do bigger things and then combinations of these companies into trusts and so on towards the biggest combination the national one the complete socialism and still on from that to the internationalism and the co-operation of humanity.

All this a steady and inevitable growth not to be much retarded or hastened by the quarreling of groups of men who wish to hasten or retard the pace. Within the compass of my life this progress has been going on in the Island and with it there has been a different standard of life. I do not know if that standard is better or worse on the whole. There is now different and wider interests, more variety in food and in clothes, and in reading. The money wages is now three or four times greater,but there is less inclination to do laborious and dirty work, or to do odd jobs for neighbours.

There is now a levelling to a common standard of education and thought and also of behaviour and speech. There are fewer "characters" now we are becoming more and more "merged in the Empire's mass".

Some time after my early school days there was opened at Bishops Court a sort of theological college for the training of young men as parsons. One of my schoolfellows went there for training. Many years after I met a farmer and was asking for this old schoolfellow and this was the reply I got, "Oh he is doing fine,they sent him down to Bishops Court yonder and put_a rub of learning on him and made a parson of him".

I think this kindly tolerance is about as far as the prophet gets in his own country and among his own people.

At this school we had occasional fights, never very serious affairs,and there was more talk than damage, the fighting capacity of particular boys was known to a dot, and was much disputed, and sometimes tested out, going home from school on day with some other boys the question cropped up and it was asserted that I could fight another boy with one hand tied behind my back. This boy was a great friend was a year or two older than a but not quite so big, we decided to try the matter on the spot, so we took off our coats just where the road climbs up to laurel bank near Balig Bridge, my muffler was tied round my wrist my arm placed behind my back and the muffler tied round my waist while four other boys made a ring. So we went at it. I do not remember how many points each of us scored, but we survived and were life long friends. There was at that time something of the gang element similar in essence if not in quality and quantity to the boy gangs of big towns, Glasgow for instance. It was firmly believed that the Foxdale boys the sons of miners, could easily beat the Peel boys the sons of fishermen, there was also some sort of feeling between the Northside and Southside of the island. I dont know if these distinctions (shall we call them) yet survive but they were at that time quite strong and were no doubt, the survival of old clan or tribal emnities and wars. Surviving because of isolation from want of inter communication there being neither roads nor vehicles to go upon them until a century or two ago, while the hills were like high walls dividing the districts from each other.