John moved to Lancashire from Cornwall in 1870s. Was this common?

[Maiden Stone]

Hi,

My G.Grandfather and brothers also moved from Cornwall to Burnley in the late 1870`s.  Apparently the Burnley miners were on strike so the Bosses advertised for miners to work in Burnley.  They never mentioned that they wanted them to "break" a strike!!  I really don`t know the full details, although the Cornish Tin/Copper mines were in decline so they needed the work. There were loads of miners from Cornwall and Devon in Burnley on the 1881 census. 

Regards,
Mo

Factory owners in Preston took similar action during The Great Preston Strike & Lockout 1853-4. They took people from workhouses in Manchester and Belfast and possibly other places. The recruits "signed"  contracts, the content of which, being mainly illiterate, they had no knowledge. They were then told the contracts were binding. In order to counteract this, the strike organisers  arranged reception committees to intercept the groups of new labourers, known as "knobsticks, at ports and Preston station . Members of reception committees invited strike-breakers to inns for meals, explained the justice of their cause and offered to buy their tickets home. A dozen strike organisers were put on trial for conspiring to interfere with the masters' rights. It became a test case in trades union law.

[hurworth]

We have a collier in the family who was born in the Forest of Dean in the 1850s who is in Yorkshire in 1871. 

And a couple of brothers from another of our Forest of Dean families who were born in the 1830s emigrated to Maryland.  On the US census quite a few of the neighbours are also miners and were born in England or Wales.

[Gillg]

In the 1880s my great-grandmother and her mostly teenage children also moved to Burnley, though from Huntingdonshire, where the family members were mainly ag labs and cobblers.  We assume this was to find work, as all of them did, though in various jobs - railway workers, shop assistants (Grandfather, who had just left school, became a draper's apprentice), factory workers, etc.  Why Burnley?  Well, they already had cousins who had made the same move some years earlier, so my widowed gt-grandmother took her tribe to join them after hearing of job prospects up there.

[zetlander]

I noticed quite a few Cornish people in Burnley in 19thC. It was in connection with a query on here a few months ago.
A current query is about a man b. 1830s Lancashire who spent time working in a Scottish coal mine, c1860, then returned to Lancs. An 1842 report on working & living conditions in SW Scotland's heavy industries stated that the majority of workers in an iron-works were from other parts of Britain, mostly English. The author complained about the moral laxity of the non-natives.
Some Welsh miners went to Cumberland slate mines. Some went to Argentina. There was a BBC programme recently about the Welsh Argentinians. My Welsh ancestors arrived in Wigan sometime pre 1800. Possible mining connection? Although my known ancestors weren't miners.
NB. Until late 18thC Scottish miners were bonded labour. Only after the law on bonded labour was abolished was there free movement of labour for Scottish miners.
Before railways there were canals.

The Welsh folk who went to Patagonia - Argentina went to escape the industrialisation that was occurring in Wales, particularly in the South. (Why they didn't just re-settle in the Brecon Beacons I'm not sure.)
The Welsh language still flourishes there along side Spanish and Patagonians attend the Welsh national Eisteddfod - I think the Patagonian leader one year was one Myfanwy Gonzales!