History is complicated. There are so many stories,so many ways of telling the story:so many ways to play down the influence of one group of people and over represent the views of others.   Take for example the magnificent interior of  Devonshire Royal Hospital in Buxton,Derbyshire, now home to the University of Derby, Buxton campus. If you look up into the extraordinary domed area you will see an inscription which recognises the grant given by the Cotton Districts Convalescent Fund. It was this grant that enabled the Victorian architect, Robert  Rippon Duke, to complete his ambitious plans. The central open area was to be covered with a dome, thus offering patients exercise and recreation in cold and wet weather. Importantly it meant that wards could be improved and bed capacity doubled to 300,an important factor in the granting of £24,000 or the equivalent of almost £2 million in today’s money.

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The following pictures show the dome being erected due to a generous grant from the Cotton Districts Convalescent fund.

But how did this fund come into being and what was it?

By 1825 cotton was the biggest British import and the Lancashire climate provided ideal conditions to spin and weave the raw cotton. The economic power of King Cotton was undisputed but it was achieved because the cotton in the Southern States of America was picked by slaves.Eventually the American civil war erupted between the North (federal) and the Southern(confederate) states. These originally were the seven slave holding states of South Carolina,Mississippi,Florida,Alabama,Georgia,Louisiana and Texas.

The American federal navy blockaded the Southern ports and cut off the supply of raw cotton to Europe, including Lancashire. At the start of this depression, Lancashire mills had a four month supply of cotton already stockpiled but by 1861 mills closed. There was mass unemployment and poverty struck Northern Britain. Cottonopolis, the alternative name for Manchester and a mere 21 miles from Buxton saw unbelievable suffering. Meanwhile stocks of raw cotton did exist and were kept back so that the merchants could sell back when prices were at their highest..The British government started to provide some help for the cotton workers but it was not enough and agents even came from America to recruit for the cotton industry over there.

America hoped that Europe would intervene in their Civil War but an intervention that helped the South would have also been an intervention that supported slavery.

By the end of 1862 cotton workers from across Lancashire met in Manchester at the Free Trade Hall and made the decision to support those against slavery despite their own desperate state.

Money started to be donated to the cotton workers from across the country, none by the way came from the wealthy cotton manufacturers themselves. By 1875 the cotton Districts Convalescent fund was founded to make use of the undistributed balance of the money collected to relieve the distress caused by the Cotton Famine. Its object was to provide for convalescent care of needy persons from designated areas. A convalescent home was built at Southport and later money was contributed to the enlargement and reconstruction of the Devonshire Hospital, Buxton.

So it was through the solidarity of Lancashire cotton workers and those that supported them that the Devonshire Royal Hospital was eventually finished and that in Manchester a statue of Abraham Lincoln stands to recognise  “the support that the working people of Manchester gave in their fight for the abolition of slavery during the American Civil War…….

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