3-011-507 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cotton Famine: meeting of the central relief committee in the mayor's parlour at the Manchester townhall - Earl Derby in the chair, 1862. The Lancashire Cotton Famine (1861-65), was a depression in the textile industry of North West England, brought about by overproduction in a time of contracting world markets. It coincided with the interruption of baled cotton imports caused by the American Civil War and speculators buying up new stock for storage in warehouses. Cotton prices rose in China following the Second Opium War and during the ongoing Taiping Rebellion. The increase in cotton prices caused the textile trade to rapidly lose two-thirds of its previous value of exports to China from 1861-1862. The worldwide cotton famine also produced a boom in cotton production in Egypt and Russian Turkestan. In large parts of Lancashire and the surrounding areas, workers became unemployed and went from being the most prosperous workers in Britain to the most impoverished. They relied on charity donations of food, clothes and fuel. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.