Bolton

Bolton was a factory town near Arkham. [HPL Herbert (online text)]

Bolton was chiefly notable for the Bolton Worsted Mills. Aside from that, we know that Bolton had a surprisingly good police force for so small a town. Boxing was outlawed in Bolton, but furtive bouts were common among the mill-workers, and occasionally between low-grade professionals. [HPL Herbert (online text)]

The manager of a circus at Bolton was questioned after a mysterious killing in Arkham that appeared savage enough to have been committed by a beast. (It was actually one of Herbert West's escaped reanimation specimens.) [HPL Herbert (online text)]

Later, West established a medical practice in Bolton. He moved into a cottage near the end of Pond Street, close to the potter's field, and procured several specimens there for his reanimation experiments, including the boxer Buck Robinson and a visitor, Robert Leavitt of St. Louis. [HPL Herbert (online text)]

The wealthy businessman Delapore had a home in Bolton before he moved to Exham Priory in England. [HPL Rats (online text) 32]

A timid windmill salesman from Bolton, driving in the country west of Arkham, was the first to see and report the luminosity around Nahum Gardner's farm. [HPL Colour (online text) 64]

Lovecraft's Bolton shares a name with the town called Bolton in Worcester County, central Massachusetts [Bolton, Massachusetts, Wikipedia]. There are various reasons for doubting that Lovecraft intended his Bolton to be the same as the Bolton in Worcestor County. Lovecraft's Bolton is a major manufacturing area, but according to Robert D. Marten, the Bolton in Worcester County was "a tiny rural hamlet [which] numbered but a few hundred agriculturally bent souls in the 1920s. Its closest approach to manufacture might be the comb works, which employed as many as thirty people prior to its closure during the Civil War." And "The actual Bolton is among the smallest and quietest of the state's many towns. It would surprise me not at all to learn the Lovecraft never noticed that Massachusetts already had a 'Bolton' when he concocted his own." Marten also explains that Bolton is a common New England place name, appearing in four of six New England states, in tribute to Robert Arkwright, who was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England; the inventor of a milling process that became much adopted in New England.[1] However, S. T. Joshi mentions that "HPL mentioned passing through Bolton in October 1934, so he may have known of it earlier."[2] For what it's worth, the Lovecraft stories that mention Bolton were written prior to 1934.

1. Robert D. Marten, "Arkham Country: In Rescue of the Lost Searchers," in Dissecting Cthulhu, edited by S. T. Joshi; Lakeland, Florida, Miskatonic River Press, 2011; pp. 174-176.

2. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, New York: Hippocampus Press, 2001; pg. 23.

Incl: Delapore; Nigger-Man; Kid O'Brien; Buck Robinson; West, Herbert;

Bolton Worsted Mills; Pond Street; Potter's field;

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