Brownback’s were classed as the lowest of the low, people didn’t want to know them or discuss them in conversation. In 1878 a letter appeared in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph which the Bacup Times reprinted.
The “factory hands” are an entirely different class. They are as insignificant physically as the “brownbacks” (quarrymen) are prodigious. Cadaverous faces, sunken eyes, leaden looks and general ricketiness – such and their clogs are the distinguishing peculiarities of the mill workers. They are strangely ignorant. They have not enough character to make them interesting as a study, but are just a dull stolid, depressed class, about whom no one would care to concern himself. Of the outside world they know little and care less -being wholly wrapped up in themselves. Their life reflected by their newspapers is one of beer-drinking and tea-drinking, both in extremes. The “brownback” is a picturesque, if not romantic being, He swears with perhaps more real grace, vigour and effectiveness than any other person whatever. Everything about him is massive but his understanding. His dress is primitive, consisting of a “slop” (or overall) a red handkerchief and a hairy cap. If he wants to be particular, he adds trousers, but these when first introduced were considered luxuries, and avoided by the steady conservative ones. The “brownback” is engaged in the delphs or quarries and partakes of the roughness of the material among which he works. When not blasting on his employer’s behalf, he is “blasting” on his own private account. He might be put forward to out-swear, out-drink and out-eat any competition. He is indifferent to his lodgings and will sleep anywhere. A saint existed in the old time in Cyprus who allowed the dirt to accumulate on his body till he was encased in it as in a suit of armour. The “brownback” imitates the saint largely not from love of sanctity but love of ease. The hours away from the delph he considers time for drinking beer, or if he has no money, to stand on street corners, envying those who have. He fights policemen and maltreats his wife, if he owns a slave of that description.