By B Clarke

“I see no point in reading” (Louis XIV, 1638-1715)

There has been some interest in local levels of literacy in the 17th to 19th centuries (J.D.Marshall at the Mourholme Society in 1982; N.Thomas and J.Chatterley in the Mourholme Magazine). Dr Marshall thought that literacy in the north-west was high from the 17th century on and that this showed the value placed on education in northern England. Mrs Thomas, using the limited measure of the percentages of men and women who signed their names at marriage, found Warton men well up to the standard or Dr Marshall’s sample of north Lancashire parishes, and the women above the average of their sex. In Silverdale in the 18th century a similar percentage could sign. The significant rise in the figures there since the late 17th century could be related to the activities of an exceptional man, James Atkinson, curate and schoolmaster, and to the educational endowments (‘to teach boys and girls to read and write’) which carried on the work after his death in 1727.

At Warton there had apparently been some teaching in the 15th century at the school held in the chantry chapel of the church, presumably by the priest. (Cartmel Fell church still retains a partitioned-off school area.) Near the end of the 16th century a Free Grammar School was founded at Warton, presumably for boys, and other schools appeared in the area in the next century or so, including the Friends’ school in Yealand Conyers parish (Briggs, 1983).

Lupton, a few miles north-east and then a chapelry of Kirkby Lonsdale parish, had a schoolmaster among its 150 inhabitants in the 17th century, though there was no school; perhaps he taught in his own house, like a contemporary at Killington. From the mid-16th to the early 18th century, half the men of Lupton signed their wills; only one of ten women initialled hers, the rest using marks. Twenty-six of 146 Lupton inventories mentioned books, but only one, from an early Quaker family in 1679, named any — Book of Martyrs, Eusebius, Bible, Josephus (Macfarlane, 1978). But the range of available general reading matter was very restricted for rural populations and often confined to almanacs and popular pamphlets hawked at fairs or by bagmen. Their contents would tend to be read by only a few and disseminated orally. Universal reading ability was still not an urgent social need, and for a majority there were few occasions when it mattered to be able to write.

The authors of an 18th century history of Cumbria remarked that ‘it is a rare thing in this county, to find any person who cannot both read and write tolerably well.’ This begs the question of how representative were the persons they met, of course. More widely – we mostly take historical evidence of literacy for granted as a progressive social sign, but we can wonder how important it was in life for a large majority of people in rural (and indeed urban) communities. History is said to give a perspective on the present, but the present can sometimes provide a perspective on the past, as here with an individual case.

It is difficult, researchers find, to elicit people’s memories of their education. They will talk of friends and games and anything but the process of being taught: it involved constraints and too many moments of felt inadequacy or humiliation to be recalled comfortably. But one farmer in the Lupton area, an open man, does remember a good deal about an education in the early 1950’s which turned him out in the end below average in fluency of reading and writing despite plenty of intelligence. ‘John’ (to give him a name for the present purpose) was the only child of a farmer, middle-aged at marriage. He went to the village school, which had about 18 pupils and one teacher. The building was adequate, with two fires and a central stove; meals were delivered from Kirkby Lonsdale at first. The teacher was strict, not a very clear explainer or patient, and was quick to punish with slaps or (later) ‘lines’. John found he forgot the letters and numbers he had picked up before school, and became diffident in class. He was left to find his own pace and, when doing reasonably for him, was only told he had a long way to go. His parents left him to the school and did not visit the teacher. At home his pastimes were practical, not reading. (A Commons Select Committee has just been told of the importance of parental interest in hearing a child’s reading; even if the parent is illiterate, the sense of what is read can be monitored.)

Later, an assistant teacher was appointed and the classroom divided. John, with the junior group, now had to work and made some progress, which his parents noticed. The school also had a canteen built, and meals were cooked there with the help of local women. They thus had a contact with the teacher, who could take an extra interest in their children. John has had a touch of class-resentment over this, though in fact the village’s social gradient is not steep, and he also believes he would have had more attention if his mother had pushed. (There is, by the way, no reason to think him dyslexic.) In lessons he felt ‘vulnerable as teacher’s target’ and ‘timid’ under her strictness. The pupils divided into three groups – those who got ‘high-light attention’, those who ‘got by’ and ‘the struggling end’ (John’s group) who were not encouraged.

John did not take the eleven-plus examination, but spent his last years at a Kirkby Lonsdale school and came on more rapidly. On leaving he was told that he would have caught up in another half- year. He regrets not having gone on to night school but at the time was glad to leave: school had been ‘heavy going and not anything to be desired’. Apart from reading he was still unsure with numbers and knew little of geography; he could not take in history at all because of weakness in reading. On the other hand, he could always cope with machines from an early age; he has an unusually strong spatial sense and is quick at working with manuals and diagrams on major dismantling or repair. He is only diffident in formal matters. (He now has a charitable view of his teacher, despite her strictness then.)

Reading has improved over the years, though he doesn’t think he has read a book in his life. He can cope with a lot of words but reading unseen is difficult. He is still weak on numbers and sometimes likes help in checking change; but so do many in a period of altering coinage. He takes a couple of farming papers, but is very selective in what he reads in them. He has for long been much involved with an evangelical chapel and has spoken, sung and recited and can take a meeting, with an extempore sermon. Limited literacy has held him back here, for he would have wished to become a qualified preacher.

At work the pressure is less. Official forms are inescapable, but his wife takes charge of those and of most letters. In day to day work the literacy standards required are not high, in fact. Kendal market is well organised, so that sales call for little writing – an address card, farm number, numbers of animals in sale. In paying out, John just pushes his cheque-book across for the payee to fill it in, and has practically never been refused.

But that last is not an individual quirk or inadequacy. It is a common custom in the area (and is other areas also), and perhaps a sign of social cohesion, at least among farmers. This and John’s experience suggest that even in an age of forward technology and a large amount of print basic rural functioning doesn’t depend on high literacy. An historical implication is that one needs to be cautious about facilely taking low literacy in the past to be an indication of incompetence, lack of sense or a limited grasp of the world. This often seems to be an assumption made in general historical writing; conversely, the significance of the growth of literacy in the past can be overestimated. Current excavations of iron-age forts in southern Britain are disclosing a network of communities with a structured society and a developed economy stable for up to half a millennium until shortly before the Romans came. The people seem to have been illiterate at all levels – for there was no writing.

Notes

Published in Mourholme Magazine Issue 11 Spring 1985