Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/819

Rh O L D O L E 759 streets and a number of imposing public buildings. Among these the principal are the town-hall, a fine struc ture in the Grecian style, with a tetrastyle portico copied from the Ionic temple of Ceres near Athens, enlarged by a new wing erected in 1880 at a cost of 24,000, the nucleus of much more extensive municipal buildings ; the lyceum, in the Italian style, erected in 1854 and enlarged in 1880; the public baths, erected in 1854 partly by money raised for a memorial to Sir Robert Peel and en larged in 1880 ; the workmen s hall, erected in 1844 and enlarged in 1854 ; the Werneth mechanics institute, 1867 ; the infirmary, erected in 1870 and enlarged in 1877 ; and the new post-office, 1877. There is a grammar school, founded in 1611 ; but a more important educational en dowment is the blue -coat school, for which a sum of 40,000 was left in 1808. On account of a legal dispute the money was allowed to accumulate for over twenty years, so that the school started with an endowment of 100,000. The town possesses a commodious general market, opened in 1856, and also a fish market, opened in 1873. Both the gasworks and waterworks have since 1853 been in the hands of the corporation. Additional reservoirs have been added to meet the increasing needs of the town, their total capacity being now 1,233,500,000 gallons. During the cotton famine occupation was given to many of the distressed operatives in laying out 72 acres as a public park, which, under the name of the Alexandra Park, was opened in 1865, at a cost of about 37,000. The town, which is one of the most important seats of the cotton manufacture in the world, owes its prosperity in great part to its situation on the edge of the Lanca shire coal-field, where the mineral is very easily wrought. There are many valuable seams of coal in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, those in highest repute being the Black Mine and Bent Mine coals. From entries in the church registers it would appear that linens were manufactured in Oldham as early as 1630. Watermills were introduced in 1770, and with the adoption of Ark- wright s inventions the cotton industry spread with great rapidity. After the introduction of steam power the town, owing to its proximity to the coal-beds, soon assumed a leading place in the manufacture of cotton. The total number of persons engaged in the industry is over 30,000, the annual consumption of cotton being over 700,000 bales, or about one-fourth of the whole quantity of cotton im ported into the United Kingdom. The principal manufac tures are fustians, velvets, cords, hats, shirtings, sheetings, and nankeens. There are also large foundries and mill and cotton machinery works, the most extensive establishment being that of Platt and Co. The gas-meters made at Oldham have a high reputation, and there are also several large manufactories of sewing-machines. The town is divided into eight wards, and is governed by a mayor, eight alder men, and twenty-four councillors. The area of the town ship is coextensive with that of the municipal borough, and comprehends 4730 acres, of which 13 are water. The parliamentary borough has an area of 12,310 acres, and, in addition to Oldham, includes the townships of Cromp- ton, Royton, and Chadderton, and part of the parish of Ashton- under -Lyne. Within the present century the growth of Oldham has been very rapid. In 1714 the population numbered only 1750, which in 1801 had in creased to 12,024, in 1841 to 42,595, in 1861 to 72,333, in 1871 to 82,633, and in 1881 to 111,343. The popula tion of the parliamentary borough in 1871 was 113,100, and in 1881 it was 152,513. The name Oldham is of Saxon origin. A Roman road, of which some traces are still left, passes through the township, but it does not appear to have been a Roman station. It is not mentioned in Domesday ; but in the reign of Henry III. Alwardus de Aldholme is referred to as holding &quot;two bovats of land in Vernet (Werneth).&quot; A daughter and co-heiress of this Alwardus conveyed Werneth Hall and its manor to the Cudworths, a branch of the Yorkshire family, with whom it remained till the early part of last century. From the Oldhams was descended Hugh Oldham, who died bishop of Exeter in 1519. In 1826 the town was placed under the care of a board of commissioners, and in 1849 it received municipal govern ment. Since 1832 it has returned two members to parliament. OLDHAM, JOHN (1653-1683), a satirist of the Restora tion period, achieved notoriety by his Satires on the Jesuits, published during the heat of the excitement caused by the revelations of Titus Gates and the murder of Godfrey in 1678. In such a time of national panic and hatred &quot;who peppered the highest was surest to please,&quot; and Oldham s satires could hardly be surpassed for energy of invective and copiousness of coarse extravagant irony. They were extravagant enough to pass in a more sober age for bur lesques of anti-Popish frenzy. Oldham was at the time a tutor in a judge s family. He was the son of a Non conformist minister, born at Shipton, near Tedbury in Gloucestershire, in 1653, was a B.A. of Oxford (Edmund Hall), and had been for some three years an usher in a school at Croydon. Before he appeared as a satirist, and while he was still an usher, his verses, circulated in MS., had attracted the attention of Will s Coffee-house, and Rochester with some of his boon companions had sallied down to Croydon to see what the new poet was like. It was prob ably an extravagantly humorous dithyrambic drunkard s soliloquy that roused their curiosity, and when they found him a tall, thin, consumptive, harsh -featured cynic they apparently left him to his drudgery. After the success of his Satires on the Jesuits, Oldham wrote more satires, imitations of Horace and Juvenal, and one of them, a satire on poets, setting forth bitterly their degradation, their poverty, their humiliating adulation of patrons, is often quoted as an index to the condition of men of letters in those days. He died prematurely(1683) at the age of thirty, and was eloquently lamented by Dryden as the &quot;Marcellus of our tongue.&quot; Farewell, too little and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own ; For sure our souls were near allied, and thine Cast in the same poetic mould as mine.&quot; Oldham s verse was rugged, and his rage, as Pope said, &quot;too like Billingsgate&quot;; but &quot;maturing time,&quot; as Dryden hoped, might have softened these faults. Donne and Cowley were his literary models, and he poured into their forms great warmth of feeling, wealth of incident, and commanding force of language. OLDYS, WILLIAM (1696-1761), a useful bibliographer, was the natural son of Dr Oldys, chancellor of Lincoln, and was born in 1696. He was a good scholar, but of in temperate habits, and never succeeded in freeing himself from the thraldom of Grub Street, unless, indeed, when he was employed for some years by Harley, earl of Oxford, as librarian, He is best known by his British Librarian, an esteemed but unfinished work, which began to appear in 1737 (see BIBLIOGRAPHY, vol. iii. p. 652). He was ap pointed Norroy king-at-arms by the duke of Norfolk. His death took place on 15th April 1761. A MS. collection of notes by Oldys on various bibliographical subjects and a copy of Langbaine s Lives copiously annotated by him are preserved in the British Museum. OLEANDER is the common name for the shrub known to botanists as Nerium Oleander. It is a native of the Mediterranean and Levant, and is characterized by its tall shrubby habit and its thick lance-shaped opposite leaves, which exude a milky juice when punctured. The flowers are borne in terminal clusters, and are like those of the common periwinkle ( Vinca}, but are of a rose colour, rarely white, and the throat or upper edge of the tube of the corolla is occupied by outgrowths in the form of lobed