The following text is an attempt to outline the life of my Gt.Gt.Grandfather, Reuben Niblett, combining information from the records I have unearthed and linking them to the local and national events that occurred during his lifetime.

To begin, Life the early 19th century was a time of continual change which resulted from a combination of events due to the Napoleonic war, bad harvests, industrial mechanisation, changes in working practices and economic uncertainty all of which had a detrimental effect on certain sections of the working classes. Also reorganisation in the cloth industry was taking place against a background of frequent depressions in the trade and poverty and unrest among hand loom weavers, the majority of who worked in their cottages.

Reuben Niblett was Born in 1812 at Ruscombe Village, which is within the tithing of Pagenhill and in the western division of the parish of Stroud, Gloucestershire. He was the second child of Thomas and Hester Niblett. They lived with Hester's parents, Samson Browning and Sarah his wife, (the Daughter of Benjamin Bennet) who rented a house in the tithing of Pagenhill from Josepeh Gardner.

Reuben's parents earned their living as hand loom woollen weavers and produced cloth for local clothiers. His father did the weaving and his mother the spinning. This is most likely way, how Reuben learnt his future trade as a weaver. As a child he would have probably helped in "carding" the wool, this being a process of preparing wool prior to spinning.

Reuben was baptised 16th February 1812 at Stroud Parish Church. It seem that they were a very poor family because they were recorded on the 1820 rates return for the Pgenhill Tithing as "Poor on ye parish". To explain this what this means, one must be aware of an act of parliament which was passed in 1796 known as the "Speenham system" which between 1796 - 1834 gave relief to the poor if they were able bodied and unemployed, but without them having to take the workhouse test.

The conditions in and around the village of Ruscombe was supposedly very poor at this time for it was stated in an extract from Notes and Recollections of Stroud (Fisher 1871) Page 223 "For many years, and even for generations the population of Whiteshill, Ruscombe and the immediate neighbourhood exhibited "a very Low Type", and a very degraded state of social and moral life, it had the evil reputation of supplying all the beggars. This deplorable condition was caused chiefly by its distance from the parish church and the town of Stroud with their civilising influences, and thus it continued not withstanding the zealous application of many and long continued individual efforts to ameliorate it.

But at length by the actual residence of a clergyman at Randwick from the year 1819, by the erection of a church and school at Whiteshill with a resident clergyman there, by a chapel of Congregational Dissenters at Ruscombe, and by the other religious and educational processes in operation the character of the population greatly improved."

This photo of Randwick Village taken in 1980.

Reuben had an elder sister, Elizabeth, baptised 1807, and also between 1817 and 1823 had three sisters and a brother:- Anne, Hephzibah, Esther and Henry, all of whom died as infants, and buried at Stroud Parish Church.

A school was rebuilt and in operation at Whiteshill in 1816, so he may have attended until he was seven years old (when most young children left to work in the woollen industry) he was able to write in future years because he signed his name in the register when he married in 1833.

Hester, his mother, died aged 40, when Reuben was only twelve and was buried at Stroud Parish Church on 10th August 1824.

When Reuben was 18. Thomas, his father, remarried to Miss Eliza Bafsett on the 1st August 1830 at Randwick Parish Church, and then lived in Cashes Green.

This photo of their cottage was taken in 1980.

The next time we find Reuben in the records is when he married Mary Workman of the parish of Bisley on 8th December 1833 at Bisley Parish Church. Why or when he went to the Bisley area I as yet do not know; it was probably that, he being a weaver, there was the possibility work in the mills around there. After they were married Reuben and Mary lived at the village of   Eastcombe, near Bisley, which was a village created on common land. And where their first two children were born. The first son Reuben, was baptised at Bisley Church. 24th August 1834, and John, their second son and my second grandfather, was baptised 22nd May 1836 also at Bisley Parish Church.

Employment in the Bisley area during this decade was at its lowest, mills were closing and only one mill was paying wages in cash, the rest were paying in "truck". which meant wages were paid in order notes given by the employer for goods at a "truck" shop which cost 10% to 20% above market price.Truck was illegal, but unfortunately the truck act of 1831 was frequently evaded, Although illegal it was difficult to eradicate as the weavers were afraid of speaking openly about it for fear of being put out of work. During the eighteen thirties weavers were being encouraged to migrate to other districts where labour was more in demand and were also assisted to emigrate to America and Australia. in 1841 it was said that 176 houses were unoccupied in Bisley. In such circumstances it is difficult to conceive how the poor managed to live, the situation was aggravated by the most pernicious beer act of 1830, which empowered any rate payer to open his house as a beer shop, free from any justice's licence or control, merely on payment of two guineas to the local office of excise.
These beer-houses, for which lonely spots seem frequently to have been designedly chosen, were to often the haunts of bad characters and receivers of stolen property, particularly of   "Slinge".
Slinge (as the theft of wool,Yarn,Waste, ect., was locally termed) had become so common a practice that manufacturers were obliged to allow for it in their calculations of manufacturing costs. This illicit trade was fostered not only by the existence of of the beer-shops, but also by the inactivity of the parish constables, and by the singular provision of the law which forbade the search of suspected persons between the hours of sunrise and sunset,. as a consequence "slinge" was carried with impunity during daylight hours by women and children.

Reuben must have taken their advice because he and his family moved to Bradford on Avon, Witshire which was another woollen cloth area with mills about 50 miles south of Bisley. The census records that they were living in the district known as White Hill in 1841. Esther their first daughter was baptised 12th May 1839 at Holy Trinity Church, Bradford, but died in infancy. Their second daughter Esther O'Conner Niblett was born at Bradford on 6th October 1841. I believe she was given the second name of O'Conner because it relates to Fergus O'Conner the leader of the "physical force" Section of the Chartist movement. And because a Chartist Chapel was situated at White Hill, Bradford in April 1841 and was still used for meetings in July 1842, I believe Reuben and Mary were members of these Bradford Chapels.

In 1836 the Chartist movement was set up by a group of skilled tradesman and small shopkeepers in London which aimed to 'seek by every legal means to place all classes of society in possession of equal political and social rights' and drew up a charter of political demands. The six main points being:-

1. The vote for all adult males.

2. Election by secret ballot.

3. Equal electoral districts.

4. Abolition of the property qualification for M.P.s.

5. M.P.s. to be paid a salary.

6. Annual parliaments, with a general election every June.

In January 1839, the Chartist movement which had established itself in Bradford had two associations one for each sex. The Bradford Working Men's Association and the female society called Bradford Female Patriotic Association, each had its own premises, which in May 1839, the membership of these associations numbered 517 and 342 bodies respectively. Chartism, however, though sufficiently prevalent in Bradford, does not seem in the earlier troubled months of 1839 to have assumed such alarming forms as it did in other places, This may perhaps be attributed to the continuous presence of troops in Bradford from early May 1839.

The movement seems to have died out by 1848, and the leader Fergus O'Conner went out of his mind and died in an asylum in 1855.

One of the financial institutions collapsed in 1841. So the year 1842 is often cited as marking the catastrophic decline of the woollen industry in Bradford on Avon. The crisis is generally ascribed to the failure of the Bank of Hobhouse & Co in the previous autumn. But this failure was itself caused by the insolvency of two of the largest factories, Coopers of Staverton and Saunders of Bradford, which the Bank had been supporting for the previous five years. Distress among weavers was extreme here as well and it was reported in 1840 that average full time wage clear of deductions was eleven shillings per week, and within twelve months had reduced to five shillings and six pence per week. And that 182 looms out of 367 were idle. During the next decade the population fell by 25%.

I do not know exactly how long Reuben lived in Bradford , or why they left, but I think it must have been due to the depression, because Reuben and family are next found living in the Workhouse at Stroud where their third son Thomas was born 25th January 1847 and died age seven months.

At this time the government expected every man to provide for himself and his family entirely by his own efforts. The poor laws amendment act of 1834. discouraged the able bodied poor from applying for relief by making it necessary for them to enter a workhouse to get it. So to deter idlers from trying to get free board and lodgings, life in the workhouse was deliberately made less comfortable than that of the lowest paid labourer. It was intended to be nothing more than the last resort for the totally destitute. The Inmates were set to work, in return for which they received the bare minimum of food and some kind of bed. Discipline was strict and families were separated, visitors prohibited and smoking and drinking not allowed.

In 1849 the Stroud Parish Church Register records their fourth son William was born and baptised.

The 1851 Census records Reuben and Family living in the village of Slad in the parish of Painswick, the Hundred of Bisley. Together with his wife and children Mary, Reuben, John, Esther and William.

Reuben their first son was married to Harriet Brown at Stroud. on 21st March 1856 and John their second son, my second grandfather was married to Elizabeth Bullock on the 29th August 1857 at Bedford Street Independent Chapel, Stroud.

The 1861 census reveals, Reuben living as a lodger at Lawn in Randwick, aged 49 in the house of John Alder. Both listed as wool hand loom weavers. He confirms he was born in Ruscombe. Why he was living apart from his wife and daughter is not known. Mary and her daughter Esther were living at number 12 Westrip, Stonehouse and their occupations listed as woollen cloth weavers. Mary as head of the house and their ages listed as 47 and 19, they also confirm they were born in Bisley and Bradford on Avon respectively.

John and his family, Reuben and Mary's second son, and my second grandfather, had left the Stroud area and moved to Sun Street Cottage, Sun Street, Cheltenham, both aged 24, occupations milkman and laundress and they also by then had a daughter Elizabeth age 2 years. This move was the beginning of one hundred years of the Niblett's living in Cheltenham until John's great grandson Ray left Cheltenham in 1958.

Nothing more is known about Reuben at this time, other than he worked at Ebley Mills until his death on the 21st August 1866, age 56, at Westrip, near Stonehouse, which occurred under very unfortunate circumstances.

(Views of Ebley Mills 1980)

Ebley Mills   Ebley, Stroud. Gls.   Painting by   Daniel N. Smith   c1825

His death certificate states the cause of death as inflammation of the Lungs and Pleura resulting from injuries sustained by falling on weights or from being precipitated with a truck into the canal or both. The informant was John G. Ball coroner for Gloucestershire. An inquest on his death was held and a transcript of the coroner report is as follows:-

Gloucestershire towit;- an inquisition indented taken for our Sovereign lady the Queen at the Parish of Stonehouse in the said County on the twenty third day of August in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty six. Before John G Ball one of her majesties Coroners for the said county on an inquisition taken on view of the body of Reuben Niblett on the oaths of Henry Smith, Henry Hooper, Samuel Powell Lewis, Joseph Cooke, Matthew Neate, William Salisbury, Charles Jefferies, Edward Stockwell, Joseph Cottle, Jacob Latham, William Keen, and Thomas Strewson, Twelve good and lawful men of the said county duly chosen and who being here and there july sworn and charged to enquire on behalf of our said lady the Queen when, where and how and by what means the said Reuben Niblett came to his death. on affirming their oaths say that the said Reuben Niblett a Weaver of the age of fifty two years or thereabouts on Saturday the Eight day of August not being sober fell twice on certain weights and scales and afterwards when being drawn upon a truck by the side of the canal was precipitated accidentally with the truck and the persons pushing and drawing the same into the Stroud canal and by one or both of the means aforesaid sustained such injury that he died at the same parish of inflammation of the lungs and Pleura resulting therefrom on the twenty first instant and so the jury do say that he accidentally came by his death in witness thereof the said coroner and jurors have here unto set there hands and seals on the day and year and at the place first aforesaid.

An article on the coroners inquest on his death was written at that time in the local paper and gives a lot of details as to his condition in his last days.
Reuben was buried on the 25th August 1866, at St Laurence Church, Cainscross. near Stroud. Which is situated approximately in the centre of the area where he spent most of his hard life, may he rest in peace.