Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/24

 This Boniface of an industrial suburb was John Cassell's father, and it was at the Ring o' Bells that John Cassell was born. The family enjoyed fair comfort during the first ten years of the boy's life; but Mark Cassell, disabled by a fall, became a helpless invalid, lingered so for three years, then died. Mrs. Cassell courageously faced the heavy burden of maintaining the family. She was a capable and resourceful woman, who had somehow acquired skill in upholstery, and at that craft she contrived to earn a living. But so laborious a life left her little time for the care of her son, who went to factory work. His "education" had been meagre. It is thought that before his father's death he had attended one of the schools of the British and Foreign Society, then largely used by the children of Nonconformist parents. The little knowledge thus acquired was eked out at a Sunday school conducted by the Rev. Dr. McAll. And this was the sum of his schooling.

The lot of the unlettered poor in the Lancashire of the early nineteenth century was vividly described by Thomas Whittaker, a friend of Cassell in his youth:

"The food had to come through the fingers of the family—as soon as a shilling or two could be earned by any of us we had to help. My term of toil began when just over six years old, and from that moment continued, either in print shops or cotton mills. The hours were long and the work hard, so that often, when in the midst of my work, I fell fast asleep, standing bolt upright, and was not infrequently awakened by the man whose help I was knocking me down like a dead fish on the floor. I had to rise not later than five, walk a mile to the mill, where I was kept going with very little intermission for meals. I did not get home until 8, when I would drop asleep from sheer exhaustion and weariness."

Cassell entered on this Calvary probably at a little earlier age than Whittaker, and soon revolted from it. He first tried working for Mr. Phythian, who made tape