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Rambles about Morley with Descriptive and Historic Sketches
Rambles about Morley with Descriptive and Historic Sketches Author:William Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: time, should result in the production of fabrics, the fame of which should reach to the very ends of the earth, and that foundation was laid by them. The popu... more »lation of Morley at the time of which we are writing, was small, probably not exceeding four or five hundred persons. No record is preserved of the number of the population, previous to the year 1800, but from the seven official returns of the census, the increase in the population of Morley, from that time to the year 1861, may be thus exhibited:— The number of inhabitants in 1801 amounted to 2108 1811 2457 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 8031 3819 4087 4821 6840 Since the last census the population has very greatly increased, and may now be computed at 8000. In 1801, the Village contained 422 houses, 442 families, 45 persons engaged in agriculture, and 897 in trade. In 1861, the number of houses had increased to 1464. In 1765 its poor rate at sixpence in the pound, amounted to £88 10s.; in 1865, at one shilling in the pound, to £1829 18s. In 1815, the amount of property assessed to the poor rate was JB5,964 ; in 1865, £26,589, on an area of 2698 acres. The earliest records belonging to " Our Village " date from a Town's Book in my possession, which has on the back of it, " Morley Town's Book, 1749." The first entry is as follows;— " A Catalogue of the names of such persons w has served the office of the Constable in the township of Morley."—Similar Catalogues follow, of persons who served the offices of Churchwarden, Overseers of the Poor, and Surveyors of the Highways, from the same time, and all these lists are continued, in the same book, down to the year 1817. We shall print these Catalogues in the Appendix, believing theywill be interesting, especially to those who can trace in them, the names of their ...« less