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 these would be the meetings he had with American literary figures of the day. He met Longfellow in Cambridge, Washington Irving in New York and Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia. Part Six - Washington DC and Richmond Dickens traveled south by steamboat to Washington. Miriam travels along the Potomac in a pleasure boat. The two things that Dickens detested the most about America were slavery and tobacco spitting, which he saw more and more of, as he traveled further south. Dickens praised his first view of Washington and the capitol. (The capitol today is a much expanded building with a