Heroes, transport, feud, mutiny
The theme for the week is canals: anniversaries this week relate to the creation of Leven, Market Weighton, Driffield and Pocklington Canals. Improvements in the transport of goods enabled the Industrial Revolution. Raw materials could be taken to industrial centres more quickly, and the finished goods taken to market more easily. Improved transport also enabled the growth of cities, with a pool of workers for the new factories, by easing the movement of food from the countryside to the city. It was possible to live in a city area with no garden, but with shops. A double-edged sword – working people moved to the towns to earn more, but living conditions deteriorated, thus creating the need for local heroes such as Henry Cooper, commemorated this week, to stand up for the need for health and housing improvements.
Other heroes marked this week:
- Amy Johnson landed in Darwin after a pioneering flight;
- Sir John Hotham explained his reasons for preventing the King’s entry into Hull the month before;
- Lilian Bilocca’s birthday, one of the Headscarf Revolutionaries working to improve the shocking safety record of the trawler industry;
- Mick Ronson’s birthday, much missed musical hero.
An incident took place this week in the great 175-year feud between the Constable and Angell families over the ownership of ‘a few scrubby acres and a rabbit warren’ that is Spurn Point. The Constable was Lord Dunbar, the murderer, who appears elsewhere in this Calendar.
A very mundane incident took place when the Navy bought a small ship, the Bethia, made at the Blaydes shipyard. They changed the name to the Bounty, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Hull & East Yorkshire History Calendar 