the Willenhall
Bench is Samuel Mills Slater, in succession to his father, the late James
Slater, of Bescot Hall.

A memorial tablet to the local men who fell in the Boer War has been
erected at the gateway to the Old Cemetery.

[Picture: Decorative design]

XXXII.--Manners and Customs.

The Manners and Customs of the people of Willenhall have been those held
in common with the populace of the surrounding parishes, and which have
been dealt with too fully in the published writings of Mr. G. T. Lawley
to need more than a brief review here.

The seasonal custom of Well Dressing has been alluded to in Chapter
XVII., and of Beating the Bounds in Chapter V. Other ancient customs of
minor import existed, but space cannot be found to treat them in a
general history.

The social calibre of the people a century or so ago may be gauged by a
local illustration of the custom of Wife Selling.

This practice was once common enough everywhere, and amongst the ignorant
and illiterate in some parts it is still held to be a perfectly
legitimate transaction. From the "Annual Register" this local instance
has been clipped:--

"Three men and three women went to the Bell Inn, Edgbaston Street,
Birmingham, and made the following singular entry in the toll book
which is kept there: August 31, 1773, Samuel Whitehouse, of the
Parish of Willenhall, in the county of Stafford, this day sold his
wife, Mary Whitehouse, in open market, to Thomas Griffiths, of
Birmingham, value one shilling. To take her with all her faults.

(Signed) Samuel Whitehouse.
Mary Whitehouse.

Voucher, Thomas Buckley, of Birmingham."

The parties were all exceedingly well pleased, and the money paid down
for the toll as for a regular purchase.

So much for the moral status of the people; now to consider them from the
industrial side.

The older generation of Willenhall men were accustomed, ere factory Acts
and kindred forms of parental legislation had regulated working hours and
otherwise ameliorated the conditions of labour, to slave for many weary
hours in little domiciliary workshops. Boys were then apprenticed at a
tender age, and soon became humpbacked in consequence of throwing in the
weight of their little bodies in the endeavour to eke out the strength of
the feeble thews and bones in the