Ramsbottom Grant Arms Hotel in Market Place was the home of William and Daniel Grant, 19th century industrialists closely associated with the rise of the town and reputed to be the inspiration for the Cheeryble brothers in "Nicholas Nickleby" by Charles Dickens. The Grants' employees were paid in tokens that had to be redeemed at a public house owned by the company. The landlord converted the tokens into cash, but only after deducting threepence per person, which had to be spent on beer, a variation on the truck system. A network of roads and railways routed through Ramsbottom allowed for a
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens that while Dickens later in life became far more sensitive to unethical aspects of British colonialism and came to plead mitigation of cruelties to natives, he never lost his distaste for those whose life style he regarded as "primitive". Many scholars have noted the paradox between Dickens' support for various liberal causes and his racism, nationalist chauvinism and imperialist mentality. Biographer Peter Ackroyd in his 1990 biography of Dickens (the 2nd of four books on Dickens) duly notes Dickens' sympathy for the poor, opposition to child labour, campaigns for sanitation reform, and opposition to capital punishment. He also asserts that