SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



tions issued to the constable of Walsall borough. 89 Four sufficient house- 

 keepers are to be appointed to keep out all strangers from entering the town 

 unless they bring certificates that they do not come from infected places ; 

 and ale-house keepers are to refuse all guests save under the same conditions. 

 This was in 1637, but in 1665 the regulations are more detailed and rigorous, 

 and are interesting as a specimen of sanitary precautions in an age not given 

 overmuch to such things. 90 The first regulation says : 



That if any carrier Shall for the future desperately adventure to travel to London untill 

 it shall please God upon the removeall or good abatement of the Sicknes wee may goe with 

 lesse danger and more Safety, and shall presume to come home to his owne house at Walsall, 

 that his house shall be shutt upp for the space of one month at the least. 



The other regulations are similar in intention, and provide for the whole 

 body of citizens acting as special constables to keep out infected persons. 

 The strictest prohibitions are also laid on the inhabitants as to the entertain- 

 ment of the aforesaid carriers or any suspicious strangers, and nobody is 



to receve any goods or wares brought down (by the carriers) before the same have been 

 aired by the space of one month at the least, upon the payne of having their house shutt 

 upp and to be other wayes proceeded against as dangerous persons and contemners of 

 authority. 



From a document in the Corporation Records at Stafford we learn that 

 in 1646 there was a great visitation of the plague in that town, ' which by 

 that meanes is now growne so poore, that unless some speedie course be 

 taken for their relief, the meaner sort of people must of necessitie break out 

 for want of sustenance.' 91 



As for the Pottery district at this time, its area was much the same as 

 at present, but the population was scanty, probably not more than four 

 thousand ; and it was distributed in small hamlets and villages separated by 

 strips of wild moorland, with two or three potworks in each village, each 

 giving occupation to about eight persons. Sometimes the family alone were 

 sufficient to carry on the various processes of the primitive manufacture of 

 that day, and the women of the family usually had the task of driving the 

 loaded and panniered asses to the distant towns where they sold their 

 pottery, and whence they brought back food and other household necessaries 

 on the backs of their animals. As late as 1653 Burslem is described as a 

 mere village, with few houses and a scanty population. Hanley was still 

 smaller, and Stoke on Trent a small aggregation of thatched houses and two 

 potworks gathered round the ancient parish church. 92 



The pottery industry had existed in some rude form in North Stafford- 

 shire from time immemorial, but though certain advances had been made in 

 the seventeenth century, such as the discovery that glazing could be effected 

 by salt in 1680, the manufacture of pottery was still in a primitive stage of 

 development, was a purely domestic industry, and was confined chiefly to the 

 making of common vessels of everyday use. No serious general advance was 

 made indeed until the genius and industry of Josiah Wedgwood in the 

 eighteenth century transformed a rude and primitive industry into an elabo- 

 rate and beautiful art, and in so doing changed the social condition of a wide 

 district and a large population. 



89 E. L. Glew, Hist, of Borough and Foreign of Walsall (1856), 119. * Ibid. 1 20. 



91 J. L. Cherry, Stafford In Olden Times, 56. M Meteyard, Life of Joslab Wedgwood (1865), i, 96-9. 



I 289 37 



