The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866. Mary McNeill
courtyard of the nearby Brown Linenhall.
Mechanisation was already in the air and outside his teaching hours Manson spent much time with his inventions, one of which was a spinning machine set in motion by one man and operating twenty spindles, thereby making it necessary for the spinner to use her hands only. He presented this model to the Poorhouse for the use of the girl inmates, and we can imagine how entranced he must later have been when Robert Joy’s new spinning and weaving machinery was being set up. He was much concerned about the effect of these new methods on the traditional economy of the countryside, and published a pamphlet in which he maintained that the new industry should be built round agriculture and not centralized in towns. All these points of interest he would present to his pupils in simplified form, and one young mind at any rate was obviously stirred and set on its ultimate course. But before everything else Manson was a teacher:
Every tutor, [he wrote] should endeavour to gain the affection and confidence of the children under his care; and make them sensible of kindness and friendly concerns for their welfare; and when punishment becomes necessary, should guard against passion and convince them ’tis not their persons but their faults which he dislikes … These things are easily comprehended; but the great nicety lies in the execution: for knowledge, diligence and sobriety are not sufficient qualifications for this employment without patience, benevolence and a peculiar turn of mind, by which the Preceptor can make the course of education an entertainment to himself as well as to the children.3
His interest in the education of girls was remarkable. “Young ladies”, it was recorded after his death, “received the same extensive education as young gentlemen. He, and the schoolmasters taught by him were the great cause of infusing into their delicate and tender minds the rudiments of the good sense and erudition for which our ladies during this age have been remarkable.”4 Elinor Joy progressed so quickly that while still a child she was able to help her father in comparing manuscripts and “correcting the press”, and Mary Ann McCracken attained at an early age an unusual accuracy at figures.
This benevolent and much loved schoolmaster was made a freeman of the town in 1779, and when he died in 1792 he was given the honour of a funeral by torch light, his remains being laid in the parish graveyard at midnight.5 Shortly afterwards, Elizabeth Hamilton, already arrived at literary fame, wrote of him thus:
David Manson’s extraordinary talents were exerted in too limited a sphere to attract attention. He consequently escaped the attacks of bigotry and envy; but the obscurity which ensured peace, prevented his plans from obtaining the notice to which they were entitled; nor did their acknowledged success obtain for him any higher character, than that of an amiable visionary, who, in toys given to his scholars, foolishly squandered the profits of his profession. A small volume containing an account of the school, rules of English grammar, and a spelling dictionary, is, as far as the writer of this knows, the only memorial left to a man, whose unwearied and disinterested zeal in the cause of education, would, in other circumstances, have raised him to distinction.6
Such was the person from whom Mary Ann received her formal schooling, and the place where her subsequently advanced views on education were no doubt nurtured. Much, too, was learnt at home. Her practical mother would instruct her in all the skills of housekeeping, which included, in those days, spinning as well as sewing, knitting and cooking and the preparation of simple medicinal remedies. Like all the McCrackens Mary Ann was clever with her hands. It is said that while still a child she made dresses for the Poorhouse children, the stout homespun being purchased with money which she collected from her friends. Dancing would be fitted in somewhere, and in that musical family music lessons would be a matter of course.
As for the small compact town of Belfast in which she was growing up – it, too, was beginning to expand. The population in 1782 is given as 13,105, having risen from 8,549 thirty years earlier.7 The High Street, with the Farset River flowing down the centre of it from Bridge Street to the “Key”, was still the main thoroughfare, flanked on either side by Waring Street and Ann Street and connected with them by Bridge Street and the Corn-market and by numerous Entries then the home of the smaller shopkeepers. In Bridge Street, Samuel Neilson, the oncoming son of a presbyterian manse in County Down, was building up the woollen drapery business that was shortly to be one of the largest concerns in the town, and in the adjoining North Street was the goldsmith’s shop of Robert Joy’s friend Thomas McCabe. Many of the dwellings in these streets still had thatched roofs, but at the Four Corners – the junction of Bridge Street, Waring Street, North Street and Rosemary Lane – stood the imposing Exchange, to which was added in 1777, as the first storey, the beautiful Assembly Rooms, designed by Sir Robert Taylor, whose name is perpetuated in the Taylorian Museum at Oxford. For this lovely gift the town was indebted to the munificence of the Donegall family.
An extensive development scheme was taking shape at the southern end of the town, where New Street [later Linenhall Street and later still Donegall Place] was being laid out to accommodate the splendid houses of the few very wealthy families. Here the Lord Donegall of the day was to have his town residence, the early family castle in the centre of the town having been destroyed by fire in the beginning of the century. So exclusive was this street that when it was completed no horse drawn traffic was permitted to pass along it, and on Sundays it was the fashionable parade for the well-to-do. After 1783 Mary Ann must sometimes have been taken by Uncle Henry Joy to watch the building of the White Linenhall at the end of the long vista up New Street.
This was not the first ambitious scheme for developing Belfast. As early as 1671 George Macartney, the foremost citizen of his day, on returning from a visit to Italy planned to make it a second Venice by utilising the extensive water-front and the various rivers that entered the Lough at this point. His scheme, however, did not materialise.
The Mall and the Bank were other favourite walks, which blossomed into finery on Sunday afternoons. The former ran from the site on which the White Linenhall was to be built towards Joy’s paper mill, along the pleasant Blackstaff, or Owen-varra, River, with trees and fields beyond. The Bank stretched from the present Arthur Square towards the Lagan, also amid rural surroundings. In Millfield corn was still being ground by the water wheel set up in the time of Elizabeth.
The older streets were ill-lighted and badly kept, and pigs from many styes wandered about at will. On market days the chief thoroughfares were crowded with booths and stalls. Second-hand clothing, imported from Glasgow and sold in the streets, was a profitable trade in times of depression and gave rise to many complaints from the more hygienically minded citizens. Samuel Foote might have included the beggars of Belfast when he remarked that “till he had seen the beggars in Dublin he could never imagine what the beggars in London did with their cast off cloaths.”8 In 1780 a gentleman travelling from Dublin to Scotland via Belfast wrote as follows to the News-Letter:
I was vastly surprised and hurt to see a long string of falling cabins and tattered houses all tumbling down with a horrid aspect, and the seeming prelude to a pitiful village, which was my idea of Belfast until I got pretty far into the town, when I found my error, for indeed with some trifling improvements it might be made to vie with any town in Ireland, save Dublin and Cork.9
And in 1785 another correspondent in the same paper inquires
if it is not inconsistent in the inhabitants to be daily giving proof of taste and increasing opulence in opening new streets, in public erections, etc. when they never once turn their eyes to shambles that for nastiness have not their equal in the meanest village in Ireland – tho’ they have been noticed by travellers and by some of them recorded to our discredit?
Leaving aside its beautiful situation, the Belfast of those days was a practical little town with few embellishments. By the 1790s Robert Joy’s slender spire on the Poorhouse, the cupola of the new Parish Church in Donegall Street, and the belfry of the Market House alone broke the low sky line, and when Captain McCracken’s ship was in port her masts, along with those of other vessels, were clearly visible from the opposite end of High Street.
In Rosemary Lane three Presbyterian Meeting-houses [two of them adhering to the “New Light” principles] clustered together, testifying to the growing numbers and differing views of that community, and in 1784 the first Roman Catholic chapel in the town was opened, an occasion made memorable by the attendance