During the course of research, we discovered that the mill workers subscribed to a type of Friendly Society which appeared to entitle them and their family members (including infants) to certain benefits including burial with a grave marker. During the disruption of Covid with archives closed, we were unable to explore and make sense of records in the archives and piece together the benefits of membership.

Not all the records survive and there may have been more than one Friendly Society in the village. Derbyshire Record Office contains records relating to D2829 – Darley Abbey Benevolent Burial Society – 1848-1976.

We discovered a useful article in The Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal which reported on the 12 June 1868 that it was the 71st anniversary of the Darley Abbey Friendly & Sick Society. This meant that the Society had formed in June 1797.

If this date is correct, there is evidence of payments by Evans from at least 1795 to a Henry Hadley of Derby, Surgeon, for a number of ‘sundry cures’ administered to employees. This included treatments to wrists, arms, elbow and a thumb, which could imply that injuries had been received from machinery.

Henry Hadley, a surgeon residing and consulting at 5, Queen Street, Derby, also carried out another task for Evans.

On 31 October 1793, The Derby Mercury reported:

The mill ledger, contains the entry:

1797 April – ‘By inoculating 79 children at Darley & Allestry’  £9 17 6. A further ’88 children’ inoculated in 1800. We assume that the children work at the mill and the innoculations were to stop the spread of the small pox.

Another entry in the account book, refers to the ‘Club Society at Darley‘ from 1797, which fits the foundation date given by the newspaper. Further analysis of the accounts is needed.

From these early accounts we can see the subscription in 1797 was paid for ten apprentices. A club dinner on the 9th January 1797 was given and may have marked the formal foundation of the Sick Society. At this dinner, money was paid out for candles and for making ’68 wands’, out of deal. This refers to the processional rods or staves that the club members would have held aloft and perhaps paraded with before the dinner, to give an air of ceremony and ritual. These same wands were probably in use every year that the club had its annual dinner and participated in other events.

On 6 October 1798, 9 shillings and 2 pence was spent, so that ‘members’ could drink ’13 gallons of ale’ to celebrate Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile. Although the battle had taken place between 1-3 August 1798 off Alexandria, news of the victory was not confirmed in Britain until early October. By the River Derwent, the mill workers of Darley Abbey celebrated the British victory against the French.

At the 71st anniversary of the club in 1868, the newspaper reported how, after a church service, ‘headed by the Darley Brass Band, the procession perambulated the village, after which an excellent dinner was provided in the school-room for members of the club’. Perhaps they also paraded with the original 68 wands? One of the speeches by a Mr A. Cowley of Breadsall, who had been a member for 46 years, noted that the ‘club had paid its tens of thousands to the sick, aged and infirm and had put many of the fathers of those present into their last resting place, and never allowed any of its members to be buried in a pauper’s grave’.

Further research is required to find out more about the sick and burial clubs and their benefits.