Archive reference: MH 12/11198/92.
Date of Letter: 30 December 1849
Poor Law Union: Wolstanton and Burslem Poor Law Union
12 Jan 1849.
Letter from Joseph Lowndes, Clerk to the Guardians of the Wolstanton and Burslem Union, to the Poor Law Board in reply to their letter of 4 January 1849 enclosing a copy of a letter from John Cartwright, an inmate of the union workhouse, complaining about the baker and asking for the guardians’ observations.
The guardians regard the matter as closed now that Cartwright and [John] Hawley, an inmate of the union workhouse, have been removed from the bakehouse. He encloses copies of statements from Charles Wellum, the Master of the Workhouse, John Cartwright, the complainant and William Stubbs, the Baker. Stubbs regards Cartwright as a ‘scoundrel’ constantly abusing those in authority and ‘of thorough Chartist principles and a dangerous man’. Cartwright accuses Stubbs of threatening violence to him, and Wellum has no doubt that the principal reason for Stubbs’s complaint was to get Cartwright out of the Bakehouse, regarding him as dangerous and a Chartist.
Annotated: by H B Farnall [Poor Law Inspector], that he visited the workhouse on 16 January 1849 and recommends the matter be permitted to rest.