Samuel Laycock

Samuel Laycock ~ Dialect Poet ~ 1826-1893
Words by Derek Stanton ~ Lancashire Dialect Society

Samuel Laycock was born in Yorkshire at a small hill farm in Marsden on 17th January 1826. His father was a hand loom weaver and Samuel had little education apart from the local Sunday School. He began his working life in a woollen mill at the age of nine.

In 1837, when Samuel was eleven the family moved to Stalybridge and he became a power loom weaver in a cotton mill. By the time of the Cotton Famine he had risen to become a cloth-looker, but the depression of the 1860's threw him and thousands of others, out of work.The Cotton Famine changed Laycock's life - he published poems inspired by the crisis and as a result he never worked in the mill again.

Samuel Laycock

In 1865 he became the librarian and porter at the Mechanics Institute. He left this post six years later after which he seemed to drift for some time. Various unsuccessful enterprises - a bookstall on Oldham market, a photography business in Mossley, a short term as Curator at the Whitworth Institute in Fleetwood - belong to this period. In 1868, he settled in Blackpool as it was thought the climate would be good for his health.

He worked as a photographer at this time and his poems were published in book form, but it is probably safe to assume that his income remained somewhat precarious. Samuel Laycock died in Blackpool in 1893.
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