Samuel Laycock (1826-1893)

Death: 15th December 1893
Location: Layton Cemetery, Blackpool, Lancashire, England
Cause of death: Influenza / Acute Bronchitis
Photo taken by: Milky
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Dialect poet who recorded in verse the vernacular of the Lancashire cotton workers. Laycock began work in a woollen mill at the age of nine. By 1837 he was working as a cotton weaver and later he worked as a cloth looker. 
The American Civil War badly affected the Lancashire cotton towns as supplies of raw cotton dried up. Laycock was one of the thousands unemployed and tried to earn a meagre living by writing verses which the unemployed could set to music and sing in the streets for pennies. In 1864, he published Lancashire Rhymes and in 1866, Lancashire Songs, poems which documented the everyday life of cotton workers.

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