The Story of the House of Cassell
This Boniface of an industrial suburb was John Cassell's father, and it was at the Ring o' Bells that John Cassell was born. The family enjoyed fair comfort during the first ten years of the boy's life; but Mark Cassell, disabled by a fall, became a helpless invalid, lingered so for three years, then died. Mrs. Cassell courageously faced the heavy burden of maintaining the family. She was a capable and resourceful woman, who had somehow acquired skill in upholstery, and at that craft she contrived to earn a living. But so laborious a life left her little time for the care of her son, who went to factory work. His "education" had been meagre. It is thought that before his father's death he had attended one of the schools of the British and Foreign Society, then largely used by the children of Nonconformist parents. The little knowledge thus acquired was eked out at a Sunday school conducted by the Rev. Dr. McAll. And this was the sum of his schooling.
The lot of the unlettered poor in the Lancashire of the early nineteenth century was vividly described by Thomas Whittaker [1], a friend of Cassell in his youth:
Cassell entered on this Calvary probably at a little earlier age than Whittaker, and soon revolted from it. He first tried working for Mr. Phythian, who made tape
- ↑ Thomas Whittaker, a well-known Temperance advocate, sometime Mayor of Scarborough.
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