Author:
John Whittaker of Wigan, journalist [ pseudonym 'A Lancashire Lad' ] [ The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861-1865; Wigan Standard newspaper ]
Publication details:
'"Standard" Office | Wigan | May 27th. 1862.'
For the background to this letter see William Otto Henderson, 'The Lancashire Cotton Famine 1861-65' (1934) and Angela V. John, 'By the Sweat of their Brow' (2013). Between 14 April and 16 October 1862 Whittaker published a dozen letters on the 'Lancashire Distress' in the London Times, under the pseudonym of 'A Lancashire Lad'. Edwin Waugh, in his 'Home Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk During the Cotton Famine' (1867), describes Whittaker as 'one of the first writers whose appeals through the press drew serious attention to the great distress in Lancashire during the Cotton Famine.
