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
Dickens in America see a prairie and a day was arranged for him to do so. Miriam and a companion take a picnic basket, similar to Dickens’s and visit the Looking Glass Prairie. Although Dickens found the scenery somewhat disappointing, he enjoyed the company and devoted a whole chapter of "American Notes" to the trip. Part Nine - Canada Originally Dickens was not going to write much about Canada, but he liked it so much that he gave it the full treatment. He spent five weeks in Canada. Maybe he liked it because it was still very British in the 1840s. There were