North Staffordshire History

An appalling family tragedy occurred in Hanley on Saturday 1 August 1807, when Robert, John and James Wilson, three sons of David Wilson, a ...

The Rough Fleet, an amorphous gang of street thugs under the leadership of John ‘Mad Jack’ Wilson were a terror to the locals, notably in an...

According to the tale told, in the 19th century the Etruria Grove, a copse planted on the orders of Josiah Wedgwood near to his factory alon...

At about 10.10pm on the night of 28 May 1837 in Lane Delph, Fenton, on hearing a cry of ‘Murder’, a man in a nearby house and two customers ...

On 26 January 1895, 27 year old George Stevenson, a habitual petty criminal and deserter from the British army was shot and mortally wounded...

Brownhills Hall, from an engraving made some years later. Source: John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon Trent (1848) In 1796 whilst visiting...

During a visit to Liverpool, a financially insecure pottery manufacturer, Theophilus Smith of Tunstall, asked one of his creditors, a merch...

In early March 1783, the local economy was in decline and people were going hungry. A poor harvest the year before plus the knock-on economi...

Thomas Cooper, the Chartist whose fiery speeches sparked the riots. In 1842, a prolonged miner's strike had crippled the Staffordshire P...

Between 1799 and 1801 food riots, brought on by scarcity and high prices which in turn had been caused by poor harvests and the effects of N...

Burslem town centre in the early 19th century. The oldest profession in the world had its place in soft underbelly of the Regency Potte...

On the morning of Wednesday 8 April 1908, the curious adventures of Moses Newell a somewhat grimy but innocent-looking 13 year old boy, wer...