I was kindly given some old copies of ‘Manx Life’ recently and whilst looking through the December 1984 edition was interested to read a piece written by Ivy Robinson entitled ‘A Not So Merry Manx Christmas’. I think it is worth sharing again some of her research, in which she tells stories from Christmas in Douglas in 1896.

She stated that, in this season of goodwill, the townsfolk were split into many factions. Shopkeepers were attempting to bring renegade brothers into line. Their assistants were fighting the same battle for a different reason. Grocers were voicing their grievances in print. Workmen of all trades were threatening to strike. Educationalists were protesting against the Baume trustees’ decision to make scholarships ‘open’ instead of confining them to clever but poor children, as Baume had wished. Meanwhile, teetotallers were preaching against the granting of boarding house licences and petitions for Sunday opening, quoting from an article in the ‘Sunday Manchester Umpire’ declaring that Douglas was ‘the rowdiest, most drunken and immodest town in Europe’. The ‘haves’, with indifference beyond belief, were adding to the humilities and miseries of the ‘have-nots’.

One would have thought that December would have seen the shopkeepers rubbing their hands in anticipation, ushering the customers in with happy smiles to sample their bunloaf at 2d per lb, bacon at 7d per lb, coffee at 2/- per lb or leg of mutton at 5d per lb… Not so. The masters’ thoughts were concentrated on how to prevent ‘rogue’ shopkeepers from unfairly stealing custom by ignoring the agreed winter closing hours of 9pm with half-day closing on Thursday. At a meeting at the Coffee Palace on the quay, Mr Emmett, outfitter, had suggested a polite approach to point out the error of their ways. Mr Hough gloomily thought only a Shop Hours Act would answer and Mr Barron, tea merchant, added that 9pm should be standard summer and winter.

The assistants had a more practical approach. Customers were handed leaflets entreating them to complete their shopping before 8pm on weekdays, observe Thursday half-day closing and boycott shop owners who stayed open beyond these times. Their concern was with the hours that employees were required to work. It was commonplace for assistants to work from 8am to 11pm on Saturdays in winter, a 15-hour day, and equally commonplace to work a 96-hour week in the summer. The grocers were complaining that the custom of giving Christmas boxes, a custom which they themselves had initiated, was costing each one as much as £120 (two years’ wages for an assistant). They were totally in agreement that this must stop, but they trusted each other so little that no one was willing to start the ball rolling.

Amongst artisans there was also unrest. Joiners, one of the eight trades with a union, had declared their intention to strike if a new wage structure was not agreed by February 1, their present wage being 24/- (£1.20) for a 57-hour week. The plasterers, also with a union, were already in dispute, which began with men working on the Metropole buildings. Plasterers’ labourers had an agreement by which no man was required to carry materials above two storeys. Higher than that, a platform had to be erected for every two floors, with a set of labourers for each. A labourer was ordered to carry materials to between the second and third floors. He refused, and in the ensuing fracas their spokesman was sacked. The rest, secure in the knowledge that they would receive 15/- each from the society across the water to which they were affiliated, downed tools. The plasterers refused to use non-union labour and joined them, although they were receiving the relatively high wage of 31/6d per week.

The carters were the most ill-used of all. Without a union, they worked unspecified hours, no half-day, for 15/- a week, and Eli Barnett, carrier, boasted to the High Bailiff that he could get a yard full of able-bodied men at that figure. This was undoubtedly true. The unemployment situation in the island, as in Britain, was grim. Work schemes on which the men had worked all summer had ceased. In November a deputation of four men, representing 150 outside the town hall, respectfully begged the mayor to inaugurate work schemes to employ them. ‘Many of the men outside have had no breakfast,’ they pleaded.

The mayor, a wealthy man, Major R S Stephen JP, MHK, genuinely lacked the imagination to understand their desperation. Moreover, he was strongly anti-union, seeing them as a threat to his class. He first queried whether the men were not seasonal workers from across the water. The borough surveyor was adamant that they were all local men who had worked on the Marine Drive and Snaefell Railway, whose ranks had been increased because the only work scheme in operation, cemetery drainage, had halted through shortage of pipes. The mayor harangued the silent men on the evils of unions, ‘the cause of unemployment’. He could not expend ratepayers’ money on schemes of work. He then gave them the following extraordinary advice: ‘Single men must go to Liverpool or Barrow to look for work’ (neither understanding nor caring that men who could not afford a breakfast could much less afford the fare, and enough to keep them in a strange town). ‘Those of you who have families must just do the best you can, and wait for the clouds to roll by.’

The mayor’s banquet was scheduled to take place the following week. All newspaper editors had been invited but only the Examiner was adversely critical: ‘The mayor’s remarks were flippant, even heartless… equivalent to giving a stone to those who asked for bread.’ Letters to the editor were less restrained. At that time, there were 600,000 workless in Britain. There was no dole nor old-age pensions in 1896. The old were willingly cared for by their children. The word ‘pauper’, never heard now, was commonplace. The poor could apply to the Poor Law Guardians for limited relief. A letter to the Examiner stated: ‘The burden falls always on the poor. A man earning only £1 a week repays as much as 2/- of it in basic food taxes, but the man with £500 per annum pays less than 3d in the £1.’ But the Keys stated income tax was unworkable in the island.

The mayor’s banquet at the Peveril Hotel took place the week after the interview with the unemployed. The Manx Sun pronounced it as a lavish affair, with a choice of 18 dishes ranging from oysters to caviar by way of York ham with champagne sauce and other delicacies. Great reading for breakfastless men whose hungry children queued in the cold for free dinner.

Of course, there were many concerned and generous folk. High Bailiff La Mothe was renowned for his generosity to the poor in Ramsey. The Reverend George Paton, in a letter to the Manx Sun concerning free dinners in Ramsey, wrote: ‘We have more than usually large number of guests this year, but my friends have never failed me, nor do I fear of their failing me now.’

Contrast his kindly ‘guests’ with Mr Ring’s report on Douglas free meals. After saying that 14,157 dinners at a cost of one penny each had been served to the end of December, he assures all generous subscribers that ‘every possible precaution is taken to see that only children in real need have the gift of a free meal’.