ABSTRACT
WHEN Michael Hughes arrived in St. Helens in 1779, sent by the Parys Mine Company to be the manager of their new Ravenhead smelting concern, he could fairly be described as one of the new rich, for his family had only been enjoying the profits of their sudden mineral wealth for a few years. 1 The district was only just beginning to know his social type, soon to be much more familiar. Significantly, the men who became Hughes’s closest friends were of the new industrialist class : George Mackay, glass manufacturer, 2 Joseph Churton, surgeon and partner in a colliery and a glassworks, 3 Robert Sherbourne, manager of the plate glassworks at Ravenhead. 4 Where we can trace their origins it is rare to find that the new leaders of industry had begun right at the bottom of the ladder, but even if speech, habits or tastes did not betray them, their climb to a prominent position in society had its difficulties.
