Copy Book Archive

Character Witness A former convict told Henry Morley about his debt to Thomas Wright, the prisoner’s friend.
1847
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Music: Cipriani Potter

© Steven Lek, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0. Source

About this picture …

‘G.J.’ was a screw-cutter, a labourer who made screws using a small lathe, the culmination of a series of British inventions from the 1760s onwards and especially associated with Henry Maudslay (1771-1831). The screw itself was invented by the ancient Greeks.

Character Witness
Thomas Wright (1789-1875) was a foreman in a Manchester iron foundry and a father of nineteen, who never earned above £3 10s a week in his life. But he helped hundreds of ex-convicts back into society, using his own money to indemnify their employers against any relapse.

“FIVE years ago I was” owns a certain G. J. “in the New Bailey, convicted of felony and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment. When I was discharged from prison, I could get no employment. I went to my old employer to ask him to take me again.

“He said that I need not apply to him, for if he could get me transported he would; so I could get no work until I met with Mr Wright, who got me employed in a place where I remained some time, and have been in employment ever since.

“I am now engaged as a screw-cutter - a business I was obliged to learn - and am earning nineteen shillings and twopence a week. I have a wife and four children, and but for Mr Wright I should have been a lost man.”

19s 2d in 1852 is roughly equal to £93.88 per week or £4,880 per annum today. At 33d (2s 9d) per day, this is a little short of the average male wage for the time as calculated by Gregory Clark of the University of California, Davis, for Measuring Worth (.pdf file). Mr Wright’s wage as a foreman would be equivalent to around £15,000 a year now.

Précis

A former prisoner known only by his initials ‘G. J.’ recounted how Thomas Wright had helped him back into work when, following a spell of four months in jail, his old boss had angrily refused to take him back. He attributed his unblemished employment record since, and his happy family life, to Wright’s kindness. (55 / 60 words)

Source

As quoted in ‘Household Words’ Vol. 4, No. 102 (March 6th, 1852).

Suggested Music

Symphony No. 8 in E flat (1828)

Andante con moto ma sostenuto

Cipriani Potter (1792-1871)

Performed by the Milton Keynes City Orchestra, conducted by Hilary Davan Wetton.

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IRead it aloud, twice or more. IISummarise it in one sentence of up to 30 words. IIISummarise it in one paragraph of 40-80 words. IVMake notes on the passage, and reconstruct the original from them later on. VJot down any unfamiliar words, and make your own sentences with them later. VIMake a note of any words that surprise or impress you, and ask yourself what meaning they add to the words you would have expected to see. VIITurn any old-fashioned English into modern English. VIIITurn prose into verse, and verse into prose. IXAsk yourself what the author is trying to get you to feel or think. XHow would an artist or a photographer capture the scene? XIHow would a movie director shoot it, or a composer write incidental music for it?

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