Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

8 Chapter Two Early days (1841-1866) Thomas ‘Tom’ Emmett was born in Crib Lane, Halifax on 3 September 1841, an address he later observed was a very suitable one for a new baby. Emmett’s father, John was an overlooker (or superintendent) of power looms, although in the 1851 Census he was recorded as a handloomweaver and in 1861, as a labourer in a wool warehouse, which suggests some uncertainty in his employment. His mother, Sarah (formerly Dilworth) was a servant from Halifax at the time of their marriage, and the couple appear to have moved there after their wedding in June 1841. Tragically, Sarah died of ‘dropsy’ (now known as oedema, a swelling caused by accumulation of fluid) in May 1854 when Tom was just 12. In January 1856, his father married another woman, Susannah, at least 10 years his junior, and just 11 years older than Tom. He was the eldest of the children; his brother Robert was two years younger, and his sister, Mary-Ann, seven years younger. It is hard to know what kind of childhood Emmett experienced, but it would have involved work at an early age. Although he was at school aged nine in 1851, his sister was working aged 12 at the time of the next census and there is no reason to think he did not have a similar experience. The sense that it might not have been an entirely happy time comes from a comment that he made to the sports journalist, ‘Old Ebor’ (A.W.Pullin), many years later. When Emmett was struggling to write his memoirs in the 1890s, he commented that, ‘I should have to give a description of the difficulties I had to contend with when I was a boy.’ The early death of his mother and the appearance of a step-mother may have been what was he was referring to here. The early 1840s were momentous times for Halifax. Crib Lane was in the shadows of the huge mills that were being established in Halifax. The same year Emmett was born, the first of the new mills was built on the Dean Clough site, followed by others in the following years. By 1850, there were 24 mills in the town, and rapid industrialisation was accompanied by growth in the population to over 25,000. This led to intense infilling of the central area of Halifax, with a series of congested commercial, industrial and residential courtyards, and appalling living and working conditions for many, followed by progressive expansion outwards to the north and west. 3 Unsurprisingly, given the extent of displacement of domestic outworkers in the woollen and worsted industries and the speed of change during the 1830s and 1840s, the town was the focus of significant political unrest, and less than a year after Emmett’s birth, some of the most serious disturbances in the country occurred in Halifax as rioters attempted to stop the mills. 4 At the same time, however, the town saw the development