The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866. Mary McNeill
punishments awaiting informers, that the unfortunate young man was reduced to abject terror. Everything that Harry touched drew from him a whole-hearted response – be it political discussion, family merriment, friendships, or the welfare of those suffering from injustice or poverty – everything, that is, but business. His courage [he was noted for the alacrity with which, in days of thatched roofs and poor water supplies, he answered every alarm of fire] and personal charm made him a natural leader, but behind all the high spirits there was in his sister’s words, “a deeply contemplative character which afterwards developed.”14
Captain McCracken was anxious to settle all his sons in the cotton industry and at the age of seventeen Harry began work at one of the mills; soon he was sent to Scotland to recruit skilled workers. Humdrum routine bored him, but he revelled in close contact with the working people. For them he started the first Sunday School in Belfast, finding a room in the old Market House and collecting some of his friends as teachers. Girls, men and boys were his pupils: “Writing as well as reading was taught. They did not presume to impart religious knowledge, but they taught their scholars how to obtain it for themselves, by which every sect might equally profit. It was afterwards found to be practised in England [probably a reference to Robert Raikes.]; and then Mr. Bristow [the Sovereign] came to the place of meeting with a number of Ladies, with rods in their hands as badges of authority, which put to flight the humble pioneers.”15 Thus did Mary Ann describe this early attempt at social service, which included also a lending library. How different from Hannah More’s statement to the Bishop of Bath and Wells that she taught in her schools only “ such coarse works as may fit them [the working class] for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is … to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.”16
John, the youngest of the family, united great business ability with an infinite capacity for enjoying the leisured accomplishments of life. “Designed by nature to be a painter,”17 – so Mary Ann described this brother – drawing and music delighted him, and his father’s love of the sea became in him a passion for sailing and yacht-racing. Politics meant nothing to him, or rather, an activity to be most carefully avoided as likely to lead one into nasty and difficult situations: there was nothing, absolutely nothing, of the social reformer in John’s make-up. He married young and his wife was very beautiful, and he became one of the most successful cotton manufacturers in the town.
Mary Ann’s character will unfold itself as her story is told. Physically she was slight of build and lacked the commanding presence that others of the family had inherited from their father. No early portrait of her exists, but from the miniature, painted about 1801, we can derive some idea of what she looked like in her early twenties. Of all the family she seems to have most resembled her mother in appearance – the same round face, full lower lip and dark eyes set wide apart, eyes that gave some indication of the powerful will and strong emotions that inhabited her slender frame. She had been a delicate child and retained the fragile appearance that often accompanies tubercular tendencies. She gathered up in herself the outstanding qualities of all the others so that each of them found in her companionship and understanding. Very early she showed a marked interest in figures and book-keeping, and when barely out of her teens persuaded her sister Margaret to join her in starting a small muslin business in order, so she said, that she might have a little money to use as she pleased.
These apparently light-hearted ventures into industry, undertaken first by Mrs. McCracken and now by her daughters, sound formidable to us with twentieth century notions of factory regulations, trade unions and so forth. For Mary Ann, however, it would be a case of distributing cotton yarn to hand-loom weavers who worked in their own homes. But, comparatively simple though the venture may have been, it demanded much from the proprietors: a knowledge of weaving; a variety of patterns always available, for trends of fashion were fickle then as now; the marketing of finished goods; an adequate system of book-keeping; some financial outlay; and the continual correspondence that such transactions would demand. Mary Ann was responsible for the office end of the undertaking, and recalled years afterwards how she revelled in the daily errand to the post office, which had to be accomplished before breakfast.
It remains only to mention young Edward Bunting. Sometime in 1784 a fatherless lad of eleven arrived in Belfast to take up his duties as assistant to Mr. Ware, organist of the new parish church of St. Anne. The child had shown unusual talent and for two years had been trained by his brother Anthony, an organist of some repute in Drogheda. We know nothing of the introductions or the circumstances that led young Edward to Mrs. McCracken’s home, but there he was received as one of the family, and there he was to live for the next thirty years. Very shortly after his arrival Mr. Ware was obliged to travel to England and he left his juvenile assistant not only to deputise for him at the organ but also to undertake the instruction of his pupils. The deputy was much more exacting than his master, and Bunting afterwards recorded with amusement that one of these pupils – Miss Stewart of Wilmont – was so taken aback by the audacity of her young instructor that, on being reproved a second time “she indignantly turned round upon him and well boxed his ears.”18
Such a youthful genius cannot have been a simple addition to Mrs. McCracken’s family. “Atty” as he was called [probably a corruption of Eddy] was, naturally enough, a self-opinionated boy; he had a biting tongue that remained with him to the end of his life and, except in his professional work, he was self-indulgent and lazy. He was the same age as young John. Mary Ann was two years his senior.
This then is the picture of her family circle and her home surroundings. Next comes the political background.
CHAPTER 5
THE UNITED IRISHMEN
1783–1791
Parliamentary independence, won so dramatically with Volunteer support in 1782, had proved a bitter disappointment to those who looked to it as a first step towards essential and radical reform. In the very year of its achievement William Drennan declared that “the collars of the Knights of St. Patrick will in time strangle the freedom of this nation” and his warning was swiftly justified. The armed forces, the appointment of judges, and all patronage in Church and State was still controlled by Britain; the landed interest remained supreme at College Green [where the Irish Houses of Parliament were situated], to be exploited by the Westminster government when desirable; parliamentary reform was strenuously opposed; and in 1785 Britain refused, in spite of Pitt’s efforts to the contrary, to modify her crippling import duties on most Irish manufactures, except on terms destructive to the newly won independence. These were serious blows to those constitutionalists who sincerely hoped that the political achievements of ’82 would prepare the way for happier relations between the two Kingdoms.
Nowhere in Ireland was the disappointment more keenly felt than by the enterprising mercantile community in Belfast. While the sole foundation of its new found prosperity was trade it was virtually unrepresented in Parliament, for Belfast was a pocket borough, its two members being returned by the handful of burgesses who were nominees of Lord Donegall. Of the 300 members of the Irish House of Commons 124 were returned by fifty-three peers, 91 were returned by fifty-two commoners, 13 were returned mainly by individual influence, and only 72 were freely elected.1 Shocking as this was for the Protestant interest, the Roman Catholics, numbering approximately 9/10ths of the total population of the Kingdom, were not represented at all. Little wonder, then, that parliamentary reform was the constant preoccupation of the Belfast citizens. Early in 1784 they set out their case in a long petition, forwarded to the independent members for County Antrim for presentation to the Irish House of Commons, and opening thus:
Your Petitioners in the most humble and respectful manner, take leave to represent to your Hon. House,
That Belfast is a large and populous town, containing above 15,000 inhabitants, carrying on a very extensive foreign commerce, as well as inland trade, and paying annually upwards of £80,000 towards the public revenue.
That this numerous body of people not being represented in your Hon. House, are, contrary to the fundamental principle of the constitution, governed by laws to which they give no assent; for although the borough of Belfast sends two Members to Parliament, yet those members are returned (under the immediate direction of a noble peer) by five or six Burgesses, in the appointment of whom your Petitioners have