ABSTRACT
Stephens, a religious leader and Chartist speaker who was involved in resistence efforts against the Poor Laws and oppressive manufacturing conditions during the 1830s and ‘40s, complains here to a group of workers about how the poor were treated in a humiliating fashion by relief committees during the Cotton Famine. Stephens brings to the discussion the personal repercussions of poverty and the identity of the worker. He lived in the environs of Stalybridge and helped to agitate for the town’s more activist response to authorities during the Stalybridge Riots of 24 March 1863. Great dissatisfaction has for a long time existed in the borough of Stalybridge, owing to the unsatisfactory manner of administering relief by the present relief committee.
