MANCHESTER REGION Volume 4 Autumn 2017
HISTORY REVIEW Your FREE regional history magazine
DAVE HASLAM MANCHESTER HISTORY HAÇIENDA Plus
Wood Street Mission • Memoirs of Samuel Hird • Harriet ‘Pablo’ Dawes
Dr Sam Edwards takes over as the new Head of the MCRH As highlighted in the last issue, this year is an exciting one for the new MCPHH, albeit tinged with sadness, because having steered the former MCRH for several years and supported its transition to becoming the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage, Professor Melanie Tebbutt has decided it’s time for her to step down as Head to focus on her own research projects in youth history. We won’t lose contact with her, as she’ll remain a keen supporter of the centre and is looking forward to seeing how its activities develop. ‘We have’, she says, ‘an excellent team in place, with Dr Craig Horner and Michala Hulme, and I’m looking forward to a dynamic era as the MCPHH flourishes under its new Head, Dr Sam Edwards, who has strong connections with the region and its heritage’. Sam is a Senior Lecturer in History at MMU. His research explores the memories and legacies of war, and he has published widely on the subject of commemoration and memorialisation. Originally from the Waveney Valley in Suffolk, Sam has lived in north Lancashire for almost twenty years. When not reading, writing and breathing all things ‘History’, he can often be found hiking the lakeland fells, running the occasional marathon, or cycling through the Forest of Bowland. Sam is excited to take up the post of Head of the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage and is looking forward to an exciting year of events and activities.
Upcoming MCRH Friends Talk Wednesday 13 December 2017 Making the Country House Comfortable: Consumption, Convenience and Consolation in Georgian England. Prof. Jon Stobart
Country houses are often seen as symbols of power and status, but making them comfortable places to live was by no means an easy task, even for the wealthy elite. In this talk, I look at some of the technologies and furnishings that helped to make houses comfortable, but also at the ways in which they were planned and organised for convenience, and the importance of friends and family in making a house into a comfortable home. The annual AGM will take place prior to the talk on Wednesday, 17 January 2018 at 5pm in Room 307 of the Geoffrey Manton building, Rosamond Street West, M15 6LL. ALL WELCOME. 2 Manchester Region History Review
EDITORIAL
Welcome
In this edition, I get to chat to the legendary Haçienda DJ Dave Haslam (p.5) about his love of Manchester’s musical heritage. Historian Brian Joyce delves into the murky world of Victorian prostitution in Wigan and Leigh (p.19). In discussing ‘The Great Social Evil’, he shares the story of Harriet ‘Pablo’ Dawes, an ‘attractive’ woman who was ‘allured to her destruction through the hollowness of men’s flattery and heartless treachery’. Dr Mark Crosher investigates the post-WWII history of Manchester’s Wood Street Mission (p.9). Historian Katrina Ingram examines how during WWI, music was used to pull people together during a time of crisis (p.13). Furthermore, she investigates if a nationwide ban on German music occurred in Manchester. Also in this issue, archivist James Peters treats us to a rare insight into the world of Manchester factory inspector Samuel Herd (p.16). Herd (1878-1956) kept an extensive memoir (over 1,000 pages), which lay undiscovered in a family attic until two years ago. When talking about the memoir Herd said it was written ‘as an attempt to record the life and times in which I lived’.
Michala
We are now online! The Manchester Region History Review will be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world. Read online or download for later. Simply type the link in your browser https://issuu.com/mcphh FOLLOW US @ MCPHH_MMU @ Manchester Centre for Public History & Heritage @ Manchester Centre for Public History & Heritage CONTACT US Manchester Centre for Regional History Room 313 Geoffrey Manton Building Manchester Metropolitan University 4 Rosamond Street West Manchester M15 6LL Tel: 0161 247 6793 Email: Michala.Hulme@mmu.ac.uk Website: www.mcphh.org
Editor Manchester Centre for Regional History
To celebrate the new Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage, we have organised some extra talks at Manchester’s Central Library. The next talk titled ‘In Search of the Wild: Northern Landscapes on Television’ is by Dr Nicola Bishop and takes place on Wednesday 29 November 2017, at 6.00pm. All Welcome. This talk looks at the growing popularity of landscape television, and the development of the flexible ‘docu-lite’ format that gives audiences a magazine-style blend of ecology, geography, literary, agricultural, local, and national history, memoir and anecdote. Seen most obviously in the BBC’s long-running, and ever-expanding flagship, Countryfile, the rise of this style of programme – produced across all of the major channels – marks an interesting moment in our relationship with rural landscapes. Nicola Bishop is a senior lecturer in English literature with film and television at Manchester Metropolitan University.
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WHATS ON: TV & RADIO Little Women BBC Drama
Following on from the success of Poldark and Call the Midwife, the BBC have comissioned a new drama adaptation of the classic novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). Loved by generations worldwide, Little Women is a truly universal coming-ofage story, as relevant and engaging today as it was when originally published in 1868. Set against the backdrop of a country divided, the story follows the four sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March on their journey from childhood to adulthood. With the help of their mother Marmee, while their father is away at war the girls navigate what it means to be a young woman - from gender roles to sibling rivalry, first love, loss and marriage. This three-part adaptation from the award-winning creator of Call The Midwife Heidi Thomas (Cranford, Upstairs Downstairs) will be directed by Vanessa Caswill and starts principal photography this month in Ireland. The series is a co-production with Masterpiece on PBS. Bafta award-winner Emily Watson (Apple Tree Yard, The Theory Of Everything, Genius) is set to play Marmee, the iconic matriarch of the March family. The March sisters will be played by an ensemble of four exciting young actresses: newcomer Maya Hawke takes the role of willful and adventurous Jo, Willa Fitzgerald will play the eldest daughter Meg, Annes Elwy will play Beth, and Kathryn Newton takes the role of the youngest sister Amy. Academy award-winner Dame Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote, The Manchurian Candidate) will play the girls’ wealthy relative - the cantankerous Aunt March. Bafta-winner Michael Gambon (Harry Potter, Churchill’s Secret) takes the role of their benevolent neighbour Mr. Laurence, and Jonah Hauer-King (Howards End, The Last Photograph) will play his grandson Laurie Laurence, the charming boy next door.
Vanity Fair ITV
ITV have commissioned a seven part adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, starring a local actress from Oldham Olivia Cooke as Becky Sharp. Written by Gwyneth Hughes (Dark Angel, The Girl, Miss Austen Regrets) and produced by leading production company Mammoth Screen, Vanity Fair is being made with Amazon Studios. Gwyneth Hughes’ adaptation of Thackeray’s literary classic is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, and follows Becky Sharp as she attempts to claw her way out of poverty and scale the heights of English society. Her story of “villainy, crime, merriment, lovemaking, jilting, laughing, cheating, fighting and dancing”, takes her all the way to the court of King George IV, via the Battle of Waterloo, breaking hearts and losing fortunes as she goes. ITV’s Head of Drama Polly Hill states: “Vanity Fair feels like the perfect classic to adapt for ITV, and Gwyneth Hughes’ stunning scripts bring the novel to life in a way that will really connect with a modern audience. The question was always who would be our perfect Becky Sharp and that is undoubtedly Olivia Cooke! So we are thrilled she has agreed to play Becky, in what promises to be a very exciting new drama for ITV next year.” Vanity Fair will be filmed on location in and around London, with additional shooting in Budapest, from September 2017.
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Contents
15 06
Features
Dave Haslam Interview Editor Michala Hulme chats to former Hacienda DJ, broadcaster and author Dave Haslam about his love of Manchester history
Wood Street Mission
Dr Mark Crosher investigates the post-WWII history of the Wood Street Mission, which is one of the ‘oldest and most repected’ charities in Manchester
Music During WWI
Katrina Ingram reveals the patriotism in Manchester’s orchestral music during World War One
Victorian Prostitution
Historian Brian Joyce uncovers the murky world of Victorian prostitution in Wigan and Leigh.
Regulars
What’s On
A guide to the latest historical programmes on the TV and radio
In the News
A round-up of what was happening in Greater Manchester from 1745 - 1900
A Factory Inspector Calls Book Reviews Manchester University archivist James Peters gives us an insight into the life of factory inspector Samuel Hird
Read reviews of the lastest history and heritage books
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INTERVIEW
Dave Haslam is probably best known in Manchester as the legendary DJ from the iconic Haçienda nightclub. However, since its closure in the 1990s, Haslam has forged a successful career as a writer and broadcaster. In this article, Editor Michala Hulme talks to him about his four bestselling books and his love of history.
B
orn in Birmingham in the 1960s, Dave Haslam moved to Manchester in 1980 to study English at university. After graduating, he set up his own fanzine and worked as a nightclub promoter, organising gigs for the likes of Primal Scream and the Stone Roses. In 1986, after making a name for himself on the nightclub scene, Haslam got a gig DJ’ing at a relatively new club called the Haçienda. The club was owned by Tony Wilson’s Factory Records and
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Manchester band New Order. When Haslam took over the Thursday nights on May 1st 1986, he described it as ‘not a massive deal at the time’. He said that was because ‘the whole thing hadn’t taken off ’ and apart from hosting a few great live concerts, the club ‘wasn’t exactly setting Manchester or the club-world ablaze’.
world, pioneering new music such as acid house and rave. By the end of the 1990s, the Haçienda was losing money and was no longer profitable. The club closed its doors on 28 June 1997, with Haslam DJ’ing on the final night. After remaining empty for a number of years, the building was later bought by a construction company and converted into flats.
Over the next eleven years, Haslam would play at the club over 450 times, and would see the venue grow into one of the most famous nightclubs in the
Although the club has gone, the legend that is the Haçienda has engraved itself into the cultural history of Manchester.
Dave Haslam INTERVIEW history was one of the key things that people appreciated. You speak about Engels and the Victorians, and if we go back to the 19th century, to the time of music halls and the public house, how important was a ‘nightlife’ in the industrial city?
Music lovers enjoying the Victorian music hall. ©Victorian Picture Library
I suppose the first question to ask is when did your love of Manchester history start? I’ve always loved history. Not so much kings and queens as specific history, of buildings, of families, of changing landscapes. My researches into Manchester’s history only got deep from the mid-1990s onwards when I was writing my book Manchester, England. At the time, I think the publishers and any prospective readers were expecting 100 percent of my focus to be on the music in the 1980s - my specialist subject I guess - but I
wanted to paint a much bigger picture, to explore much bigger trends. I linked the music with post-industrialisation of the city, which required me to go back several decades earlier, but also to the notion of Manchester as a trading city, which required me to go back several centuries. Before I knew where was I was I was reading books on Peterloo and immersing myself in letters Engels had sent from here in the 1840s. It was worth it though - enjoyable anyway - but also when the book (my book) came out, the fact I’d painted a bigger picture and followed various threads through
Very, but it’s overlooked. We know the story of people arriving in cities to work in the manufacturing industries and how the working conditions and the workers’ organisations formed as a result feeds into the history of politics, economics and so on, but those people arriving also created a new life after dark, a new nightlife in cities like Manchester. I wanted to know what and why and how and what happened next. This was one of the reasons I wrote Life After Dark. I’d learned a lot about Victorian nightlife; not least from Engels. He liked a drink, and him and his friends got in a few scrapes out at night in Manchester. I was intrigued by how uncontrolled music halls were in Manchester. The hedonism, the vice; it was funny because my Haçienda generation were supposedly living on the edge, but I realised we had antecedents in the city. They were partly uncontrolled because the population boom in the city when industry took off here caused all kinds of problems, and nothing, at least in the early period, was planned; the housing, the infrastructure of the history took a battering. The workers worked hard and wanted to play hard. There were pubs a walk away, and, in town, three or four giant music halls with capacity each of more than a thousand. Manchester Region History Review
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Dave Haslam INTERVIEW
EXPLORE INTERVIEW
Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Culture City, published by Fourth Estate (New edition, 2000)
Manchester has had some iconic music/cultural venues over the decades. If you had to pick your top three (any century), what would they be and why? Ban Lang’s Music Hall which I write about in Manchester, England, the Ritz - built in the 1920s and still around of course (but back then, when people lived pretty grey lives, back to backs, shared toilets etc. - it was a glitzy, palace of escape and wonderment) - and the Haçienda. We can question the mythologies (as all historians should) and even resist them, but it’s undeniable that the club changed music and night-life in Manchester, and Britain generally, and changed Manchester too. After reading your books, it really brought home to me how much the night-life scene 8 Manchester Region History Review
Life After Dark: A History of British Nightclubs & Music Venues, published by Simon & Schuster UK (2016)
has changed and evolved. What do you think influenced these changes?
demolished, though plenty also survived. But I love that sense of ongoing revolution.
It’s an attractive subject area for me for many reasons, one of them is that the changes are usually driven from the grassroots, from a new generation coming through and rebelling against the established music forms and established night-life scene. I like that within a few years, for example, the Mecca organisation controlled so many Ritz-type venues all round the country found itself without much of a crowd, after thirty years of success. I’m talking about the mid-1960s, when a new generation had discovered basement venues, live rock music, specialist soul venues. The established operators had no control over this. Many ballroom-type venues closed, got turned into bingo halls or
When it came to your book Life after Dark, what period of British history did you enjoy researching the most and why? The 1920s I enjoyed researching because one of the themes of the book is the sense of liberation engendered by life after dark. In the 1920s this sense of freedom, particularly for women out in dance halls, was overt, and documented, and also controversial. I also enjoyed writing about the 1950s because received wisdom has it that the decade was dull and grey and the good life - like so much else - was rationed. I found plenty of activity, lots of sparks; from bebop and modern jazz, through to the links between trad jazz and CND, and also the arrival of rock & roll.
A Snapshot of Charity in Post-War Manchester: The History of the Wood Street Mission
©Manchester Libraries M68049
FEATURE EXPLORE
Previous image: Children from the Wood Street Mission pictured before the outbreak of WWII. ©Manchester Libraries M68059
Children from the Wood Street Mission enjoying a holiday camp at Lytham St Annes.
Dr Mark Crosher investigates the post-WWII history of the Wood Street Mission, which is one of the ‘oldest and most respected’ charities in Manchester.
G
eorge Bernard Shaw famously wrote: ‘The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty’. Within a stone’s throw of the John Rylands Library on Deansgate, you will find a 148-year-old organisation committed to tackling the crime of poverty: the Wood Street Mission (WSM). Originally established as the Manchester and Salford Children’s Mission in 1869, the WSM is one of the oldest and most respected charities in the city. Founded by the Methodist preacher Alfred
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Alsop, the WSM’s early goals were ‘to seek and rescue the destitute and neglected children of our city from a life of poverty and vice’ and ‘to preach and teach the truths of the Bible to both the old and young of the very poor, criminal and depraved classes of the city’. Problems of unemployment and homelessness in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester supported great working-class demand for the WSM’s
poverty-relief work. For example, between November 1907 and October 1908, the WSM provided a night’s shelter for over 25,800 men, and distributed approximately 95,000 free meals, 2,600 food parcels, 19,000 articles of clothing and 730 pairs of boots and clogs. Although the Liberal welfare reforms of 1906-1914 led to an expansion of state intervention in health and social security, there remained considerable need for the WSM as a result of the inter-war depression. From
Wood St Mission Post WW2
November 1933 to October 1934, the organisation provided a free week-long holiday to Blackpool for over 3,200 children, including around 2,500 girls and 600 boys. Yet poverty relief charities such as the WSM had an uncertain future after the Second World War. Indeed, the creation of the post-war welfare state by the Labour governments of 1945-51 aimed to eliminate poverty and take care of all citizens from the cradle to the grave. This article summarises the post-war history of the WSM to illustrate how the organisation has adapted to not only the post-war welfare state, but also responded to economic and social problems within local communities in Manchester.
However, a policy of continuity, rather than change, led to a significant decline in the WSM’s importance. High employment, rising wages and the introduction of a comprehensive and universal social security system helped to reduce demand for the organisation’s traditional poverty relief work. Between 1945/46 and 1955/56, the number of clothing items annually distributed by the organisation decreased by over 85% from 7,047 to 834, while the number of boots and clogs issued to poor children and adults fell by roughly 90% from 1,600 to 159. In addition, between 1949/50 and 1960/61, the number of children annually provided a free holiday by the WSM fell by around 45% Continuity and decline: 1945- from 2,131 to 1,161. By the early 1961 1960s, the WSM management The mid-1940s and 1950s for committee was struggling to see the WSM were periods of a way forward for the continuity as opposed to change. organisation. At its annual At its annual general meeting general meeting for 1960/1961, for 1948/49, the Chairman of the Honorary Secretary, the WSM management Frederick Towns, committee, Harold Simpson, melancholically described that argued that the organisation year as needed to maintain its pre-war activities in the post-war world ‘testing and heart-searching, and ‘give the poor children of perhaps as any which the Wood the district the religious and Street Mission has had to face practical help of which so many since its early days’. of them are so much in need’. Mirroring its operational Youth-work and secularisation: philosophy in Victorian 1962-1976 Manchester, the WSM did not In 1962, the WSM moved in deviate from its long-standing a radically new direction by approach to poverty relief and focusing on youth-work under failed to launch new welfare the directorship of Arnold Yates, projects, a role of voluntary a former Chief Superintendent action strongly advocated by with Manchester City Police. Elizabeth Macadam and Over a two-year period between William Beveridge. 1962 and 1964 the WSM
launched three projects for young people: a youth club that hosted pop music nights; an adolescent advice centre that was one of the first in the North of England; an outdoor pursuit venture based in the Peak District that replaced the Blackpool free-holiday scheme. These three projects were driven by significant concerns in Manchester about juvenile crime and delinquency. In fact, by the mid-1960s, the city had acquired a reputation of being the ‘largest clearing house in Britain’ for Purple Heart pills (Drinamyl). Capitalising on the popularity of the beat music scene, the WSM youth club was a particularly successful initiative. Appealing to teenagers from working-class areas across Manchester and Salford, including Little Hulton, Ardwick and Miles Platting, the youth club had a total membership of 650 in 1965. In running these youth projects, the WSM presented itself as a modern charitable institution. Its 1963/64 annual report explicitly pointed out that the WSM had made a definitive break with the past by asserting that its work with young people addressed the issue of modernisation: ‘The world in the 1960s is a very different one from that which Alsop knew in the 1870s and the Mission has to respond to the challenges of today, not those of the past’. For the WSM, the undertaking of youth-work meant moving onto a secular path and abandoning its evangelical goals. By the mid-1970s, the WSM church was practically finished, with a small long-standing Manchester Region History Review
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RESEARCH FEATURE items of clothing. The WSM’s focus on its traditional poverty relief activities was at the expense of its youth-work. During this period, the organisation curtailed its projects for young people by closing the youth club and advice centre, as well as ending its provision of outdoor pursuits in the Peak District. By 1990, the WSM solely focused on distributing clothing, toys and basic household necessities.
© Mark Crosher
Today Despite the pledges of Conservative and Labour governments to tackle poverty, the WSM’s work has not fundamentally changed since 1990. In particular, the WSM Founded in 1869 by the Methodist preacher Alfred Alsop, the Manchester and has responded to continuing Salford Street Children’s Mission moved to its current location in Wood Street high levels of material in 1873 and it became known as the Wood Street Mission. In a similar vein to Thomas Barnardo in London, Alsop wrote and published semi-fictional accounts deprivation in Manchester by of slum life in Manchester for fundraising purposes, until his death in 1892. Until expanding its traditional the 1960s, the WSM ran an active church with a large congregation that held poverty relief activities. gospel services, a Sunday school, bible classes, a choir, and prayer meetings. Research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation congregation of just over 10 Side. Deindustrialisation, and the University of people. unemployment and social Manchester found that in 2015, security cuts implemented by around 40 percent of people in Unemployment and the Thatcher governments of the city live within economically poverty-relief: 1976-1990 1979-90 sustained a significant deprived neighbourhoods. At While the WSM focused on need for the WSM. present, the WSM runs projects undertaking youth work during based on the distribution of the 1960s and early 1970s, it Between 1976/77 and 1988/89, necessities, including clothing, concentrated on growing its the number of families visiting the school uniforms, Easter eggs clothing distribution across the WSM for clothing doubled from and Christmas food hampers late 1970s and 1980s to fulfil an approximately 500 to 1,000. and toys. unprecedented post-war demand To find out more about the Wood for poverty relief. Indeed, the Underpinning this operation Street Mission, visit the WSM recession of the early 1980s led was an extensive network of archive which is held at the John Rylands Library. The archive to an unemployment ‘crisis’ in donors, which included small contains a wealth of the WSM’s certain communities of towns such as Sale and Altrinwelfare, financial and promotional Manchester, with 59 percent of cham, and suburbs including material, including annual reports, adult males in Hulme Whalley Range, Withington and management committee minute unemployed, 46 percent in East Didsbury. In 1985/86, the books, newspaper cuttings volumes, clothing distribution registers and Miles Platting, and 44 percent in WSM received 1,186 donations, fundraising pamphlets. Cheetham Hill and Moss representing roughly 25,000
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EXPLORE
EXPLORE
Patriotism in Manchester’s Orchestral Music During World War One
The Manchester Regiment during WWI
In recent months we have seen how a city can pull together in a time of crisis, how people will help the needy and how music was at the centre of this unity. This patriotism was also prevalent during World War One with fundraising concerts put on to raise money for the wounded soldiers and a steady incline in the promotion of British music and British musicians performing in the orchestras around Manchester. There was also a call for a ban on German music nationwide, but how much did this take effect in Manchester? Historian Katrina Ingram investigates...
I
n Manchester, during World War One, orchestral music was used in many ways to benefit the wounded soldiers. An article printed in The Manchester Programme in April 1916, discussed how the Red Cross Society had been playing concerts up to three times a week for the wounded soldiers in hospital. In May 1915, the Gaiety
Theatre also put on a free concert and started fundraising for soldiers and nurses. By January 1916 they had raised enough to buy an ambulance for Ancoats Hospital with the promise to maintain it throughout the war. The Manchester Hippodrome hosted two charity matinees in 1916 with half of the proceeds of the first matinee going to the Disabled Soldiers’ Fund and the whole
proceeds of the second matinee going to the Wounded Soldiers’ Fund. Alongside these two matinees the Manchester Hippodrome hosted the Lena Ashwell Firing Line Concert in July 1916. These musicians had been entertaining troops on the firing line, sometimes even coming under fire themselves, and had returned home to play the concert. Manchester Region History Review
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EXPLORE country were struggling to fill their programmes after cutting out anything written in Germany, the orchestral concerts in Manchester portrayed a different story. Looking at the programmes from various concerts in 1914 and 1915, the time when the cry for the ban on German music was the loudest, Manchester continued to play German music in abundance. In the Promenade Concerts; the Tuesday Popular Concerts; the Stockport Vocal Choir Concerts; and the Brodsky Concerts, the likes of Brahms, Beethoven and Mendelssohn were still included. In Lord Kitchener in Manchester during WWI fact around 40 percent of the music played in these concerts was written This kind of positive patriotism It would seem that the public were by a German composer, with the within music was not just limited to calling for the ban out of patriotism rest being a mix of British and other Manchester, as fundraising but with German orchestral music European music. In the months concerts were happening in making up the majority of many leading up to the war there was a lot Llandudno, Blackpool and programmes, the conductors were of discussion in the programmes and Huddersfield among other concert struggling to offer varied perforpress around ‘French concerts’ and halls around the country. mances. Some had even sought the advice of Dr H Coward, a renowned one article in the Manchester Programme talked about a The patriotism within orchestral British conductor, asking if it would concert being ‘remarkably English’. music at this time was not always so be proper to perform Bach. In an It would seem that prior to the war positive and productive. In article he wrote for the Musical there was already a shift away from September 1914 a reporter from Standard in 1917, he suggested German music in the concerts with Llandudno had noticed that some concerts had been dropping ‘drawing a line at 1870 and playing the focus moving towards French German music from their repertoire German music written before that and English composers. as a show of patriotism. In date as those composers were far As well as British music being promoted over German music at this December 1914, the Moody removed in race and spirit from Manners Opera Company cut all the modern Germans with whom time, there was a push for British musicians to be given more of a German music from their Britain was at war.’ platform. Prior to the war, many programme saying Around this time, the Yorkshire Post English vocalists would adopt a foreign name or add Signor to sound “naturally none of the German was reporting that when the war Italian. This is because European operas will be done, it is a pity, broke out there had been a call for a musicians were more popular at that but we shall have the pleasure of ban on German music but sensibilitime. However, by May 1914 a seeing them on a more suitable ty prevailed and it was realised that columnist writing for the occasion”. this did nothing to harm the enemy Manchester Programme said that but deprived British people of good British vocalists were beginning to The following September, the music. be appreciated just as much as their conductor of the Llandudno continental counterparts. The concerts, Arthur Payne, said: While music halls around the 14 Manchester Region History Review
Patrionism in MusicduringWWI
breakout of war seemed to prompt the public to push this concept further. In September 1914 a letter printed in the Manchester Courier said that it was time for English musicians to shine as they had been overlooked for too long. He added that colleges had been employing German music teachers over high quality Englishmen based on Germany’s musical reputation. Another letter printed in the same edition was penned by a music student who had studied in Berlin. He agreed with these statements and said that music in Germany had become stagnant and that it was time to encourage English musicians. Conductors seemed to take heed of the public as the number of British musicians within the orchestras steadily rose throughout the war. Arthur Payne, the previously mentioned
and there were still no German musicians in the orchestra at this time. While the Hallé orchestra was increasing the number of British musicians during and after the war, the Royal College of Music in Manchester continued to promote musicians based on merit, rather than nationality. In July 1919, Manchester Evening News’s Cecil Bateman had attacked the college for living in the pre-War days. He was enraged that young foreign artists were still receiving scholarships when there were plenty of young English artists and conductors who were “in All the touch with the sources used in this modern spirit of article can be found in music” and should the Henry Watson be given a chance. Llandudno Music Library Archives, While Dr Brodsky conductor, declared Central Library, had refused to that his orchestra was Manchester. comment on behalf of entirely made up of the college it had British musicians. It was re-opened the debate around unclear from the rest of the the promotion of British musicians. article whether he was promoting Some people still felt that German British musicians or excluding all music in all its forms should be other nationalities due to the war. banned from our concert halls and The Hallé orchestra in Manchester colleges, with one saying: steadily increased the number of British musicians while completely excluding German musicians. Prior to the war the Hallé orchestra was constructed of 78 percent British musicians, 4 percent German musicians, 7 percent other European musicians and the final 11 percent were non-European members. During the war the number of British musicians rose to 81 percent, so only a slight rise however there was not a single German musician in the orchestra in the those four years. In the eighteen months after the war had ended the number of British musicians rose again to 88 percent
“Why should we tolerate music that comes from a nation of murderers?” However, many agreed with the college in that the best music should be promoted regardless of the nation as music transcends war and nationality. Karina Ingham is a Masters student from Manchester Metropolitan University. Whilst volunteering for the Manchester Histories Festival in 2016, she was invited to work on this project. The Research was conducted as part of the ‘Making Music in Manchester in World War One’ project, a collaboration between the RNCM, The Halle Orchestra and the Henry Watson Music Library. Manchester Region History Review
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T
here are numerous autobiographical accounts of working conditions and social relations in the Lancashire cotton industry, written from the different perspectives of owners and managers, trade union officials and workers. We now have an additional view from a Manchester factory inspector; the recently rediscovered memoirs of Samuel Hird (18781956) provide an invaluable account of life in industrial Lancashire in the first half of the twentieth century. The factory inspectorate was created by the 1833 Factory Act. Factory inspectors enforced regulations on working children’s schooling, working times, meal breaks, guarding of machinery, and ventilation and sanitation in the workplace. Inspectors could bring cases against offending employers before the magistrates. Samuel Hird worked as a factory inspector from 1905 until 1941, rising to become the superintending inspector for the Inspectorate’s East Lancashire division, which covered the Greater Manchester area. He was an acknowledged expert on working conditions in the Lancashire cotton industry. Towards the end of his life, Hird wrote an extensive memoir (it runs to over 1000 pages of typescript.) His memoir was never published, and it lay untouched in a family attic until his grand-daughters rediscovered it a couple of
Samuel Hird FactoryInspector years ago. Conceived “as an attempt to record the life and times in which I lived”, Hird’s memoir is an insightful and judicious view of life in the Lancashire mills and the communities which they sustained. The memoir is also a mine of information about how factory inspectors actually did their job. Hird reveals himself as deeply ambivalent about the cotton industry; as a loyal Lancastrian, he appreciated its global economic success, but he was critical of the human cost to the workforce. He had few illusions about the industry: “the cotton trade was the one trade in which there was a deliberate intention to cheat operatives and to evade the most important provisions of the Factory Acts.” Hird knew this from personal experience, having worked in his teens in an Oldham spinning mill. Here he witnessed indifference to workplace safety and habitual breaches of working time regulations, the result of an obsessive concern to keep machinery running at all times: “Everybody was driving or being driven, and the machinery set the pace for all”. As visits from ‘T’Finer’ (as factory inspectors were known locally from their former powers to impose fines directly) were rare, employers were ignoring the Factory Acts decades after their introduction. He was keen to emphasise the diversity of the cotton industry, for example, noting the very different workplace relations in the large spinning and weaving concerns compared with small
dyeing and bleaching works. There were also differences between localities, between paternalist family-run spinning firms in Bolton, and the antagonistic relations which prevailed on the mill floor in the “Oldham Limiteds”, about which Hird was very critical. Hird brought many cases to the magistrates, sometimes encountering overt proemployer attitudes from the bench in certain localities, which he contrasts with the more dispassionate approach of stipendiary magistrates sitting in Manchester. Hird considered himself to be a reformer. He had a long-standing interest in industrial diseases, and encouraged research in this area. He also promoted formal ‘self-inspection’ schemes by employers, recognising there could never be enough inspectors for all the region’s factories and workshops to do this work. This, Hird hoped, would stimulate good practice, without provoking the usual reactions against ‘officialdom’. This personal archive is an important addition to our understanding of workplace regulation. Hird himself was in no doubt about the value of the factory’s inspector’s perspective: “No other person gets a bird’s eye view … of the industrial life of a great city. Nor does any one person meet such varied people, from the principals of large firms down to the ordinary worker. It is a great opportunity for the study of humanity as well as that of machinery and process.” His memoir does justice to this observation. Manchester Region History Review
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PROSTITION
Victorians called prostitution ‘The Great Social Evil’, but estimates of its extent varied. In 1859, the government put the number of prostitutes known to the police at a precise 28,743 in England and Wales. However, in the same year, a preacher in Leigh claimed therewere 40,000 in Liverpool alone! In this article, historian Brian Joyce investigates prostitution in Victorian Wigan and Leigh.
I
t is impossible to accurately measure the extent of Victorian prostitution, but it is safe to say that contemporaries believed it was widespread and was the cause of immorality, disorder and disease. Governments were concerned about venereal disease in servicemen. Its spread was blamed on prostitutes rather than their customers. Between 1864 and 1882, the Contagious Diseases Acts regulated prostitution in naval and garrison towns in the South and in Ireland. 18 Manchester Region History Review
Suspected women were compulsorily examined for venereal disease. If infected they were detained in hospital until cured. Although some government ministers wanted to extend this nationally, organised opposition to the Acts was fierce. The recent Chartist disturbances and opposition to the New Poor Law made the government wary of extending the Acts northwards. More importantly, historians agree that prostitution was nowhere near as prevalent in the textile towns of the North as it was in naval, garrison and port towns. In the latter, respectable work for women was scarce. Many girls
may therefore have been tempted to go on the streets, particularly as demand was there from a large transient male population. However, in the Wigan and Leigh areas, the textile industry provided plentiful, respectable and relatively well paid jobs. There were also more opportunities for girls in domestic service – in the homes of successful mill owners and in those of their clerks, accountants and salesmen. Few such opportunities existed in places like Aldershot or Chatham because the main employer was the state and a sizeable local middle class did not exist.
PROSTITUTION IN WIGAN & LEIGH When I first started reading the local press at Wigan Archives, I was struck by the relatively few reports of prostitution. Of course, the police might have turned a blind eye to the problem, or the newspapers may have been too coy to report it. However, a likelier reason is that because there was plenty of respectable work for local women there was less prostitution to report. However, some prostitution did exist in Wigan and Leigh and examples follow. Note that prostitution was not illegal. When the women appeared in court it was for soliciting, drunkenness and indecent or disorderly behaviour rather than prostitution itself. Newspapers often commented on a woman’s supposed character. In 1856, the Leigh Chronicle observed that Margaret Cummins was ‘a woman not in very good repute for virtuous habits’. Elizabeth Ann Woods was labelled ‘a disgrace’. Margaret Rosbotton was ‘somewhat idiotic’ and Charlotte Blears, a former convict and transportee, was described as having ‘well-known vicious propensities’. In fact the latter featured in the Leigh Chronicle so frequently that it began calling her ‘Charlotte the Harlot’. With this kind of labelling, it must have been very difficult for a woman to obtain a respectable job, even if she wanted to. Some of the women, trapped in prostitution into their middle age and raddled by drink, became notorious. However, it would be misguided to assume that all these women were simply victims. In more than one court appearance, Mary Ellen McGuire told magistrates that she could serve her fourteen days ‘standing
on my head’. She often sang her way from the court, and on one occasion disrupted the rest of its business by singing and dancing with another prostitute in their cell. The most spirited and interesting woman I have encountered is Harriet ‘Pablo’ Dawes, a court regular in the 1850s. Harriet claimed she had been a star of Pablo Fanque’s travelling equestrian show. As an attractive woman, she resisted the advances of male admirers until succumbing to temptation, or as the Leigh Chronicle put it, ‘allured to her destruction through the hollowness of men’s flattery and heartless treachery’. Once she had ‘fallen’, she ‘abandoned herself to hollowness of men’s flattery and heartless treachery’ and once she had ‘fallen’, she ‘abandoned herself to an openly profligate life’. As a prostitute,
really will try to amend’. Magistrate: ‘I do not see how we can be lenient with a character like you. I can only say it is a shame the county should be put to the expense time after time of prosecuting you... But we will try to avoid the unnecessary expense by calling upon you to find sureties to keep the peace for six months...’ Harriet: ‘Excuse me, sir; you say I have been sent eight or ten times before, but I have only been sent four times and once was four years ago and once two years ago’. Police Superintendant Orton: ‘Now it’s no use telling stories...She has been sent four times from this court and once discharged, but ten times she has been committed from the neighbouring town of St Helens’. The magistrate and the policeman conferred privately and then ‘she now ranked with the lowest greatly increased her sureties to of the low’. two of £10 each and one of £20. If she was unable to find In January 1859, she was in court this kind of bail she would serve a yet again for being drunk and six month gaol sentence. I have disorderly in King Street, Leigh. not seen any references to Harriet The following exchange took place: after this. Harriet: ‘Allow me if you please. The reasons for Victorian I had partaken of very little drink, prostitution were diverse and but it is only three weeks since varied from woman to woman, I was confined [i.e. in gaol], and but I am struck by this comment a little drink took a great effect. made by a prostitute to the I had but two glasses of rum and journalist Henry Mayhew in 1851: I had only been confined three ‘Could I have earned enough to weeks’. have subsisted upon, to find me in Magistrate: ‘Do you belong to proper food and clothing such as Yorkshire somewhere?’ are necessary, I should not have Harriet: ‘Yes’. gone astray...To be poor and to be Magistrate: ‘So why not remain honest, especially as a young girl, there? You have promised is the hardest struggle of all’. repeatedly that you would go For more articles on Wigan and Leigh’s there and remain with your friends’. history check out Past Forward: The ‘people’s Harriet: ‘I have written to them, history’ magazine, produced by Wigan Archives & Museums. For more information but my step-father will not take take a look at the archive’s website www. me in... I pray, I hope you will deal wigan.gov.uk/resident/museums-archives leniently with me this time and I Manchester Region History Review
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NEWS IN THE NEWS... 22nd October 1889 – A tragic incident occurred on this day in the district of Didsbury, which resulted in one fatality and one person being seriously injured. The events began at ten o’clock in the morning at the Union Bank. Harold Cuppleditch, a junior clerk and Richard Allan, the Bank Manager, opened up the bank as usual at half-past nine in the morning. Some thirty minutes later, Joseph Dwyer, a former porter at the CarlA later image of Didsbury village. ton Club, walked into the bank claiming he wanted to deposit a large sum of money. Without warning, he then produced a gun and shot Richard Allen. With Allen down on the floor, Dwyer jumped over the counter and began to steal cash, totalling £78. By the time Allen and Cuppleditch were able to make their escape, Dwyer had already fled. Luckily, Allen and Cuppleditch managed to spot the robber walking up Wilmslow Road in the direction of the station. Allen tried to pursue Dwyer but lost him at the corner of North Street. The culprit was next spotted attempting to hide in the garden of Parkfield, a house owned by a Mr Hampson. By now word had spread that their had been a robbery at the Bank and a description of the man was being circulated by witnesses. Dwyer was just about ready to come out of hiding, when two gardeners, who were emptying manure onto the compost heap caught sight of him. Panicked, Dwyer threatened to shoot the pair, however, he couldn’t get his gun out of his pocket. He then made a run for it with the gardeners chasing him. He had only gone a short distance when he managed to free his gun and started to fire at the two men. He managed to get into the fields at the back of the house and then jumped a fence onto Parkfield Road. However, he was now surrounded. Knowing he had no escape, Dwyer pointed the gun to the back of his throat and fired a shot. He died almost instantly. The body was placed inside the Wellington Hotel, Didsbury awaiting the inquest. The motive of the robbery was unclear, as it appeared that the Dwyer was not short of money. He lived in a nice house and received 6d per day as a reserve in the army, and until recently he was also in employment. A former working colleague stated at the inquest that Dwyer liked to bet, running up bills of £130. The inquest also heard that the deceased had suffered with severe mental health problems since leaving the army, often threatening to kill himself. 4th November 1880 – An inquest was held on this day on the body of a 41‐year‐old carter called John Oldfield. Oldfield was employed at Watson & Wagstaffe brewers, Hulme. On the previous Tuesday he was crossing City Road, in between Alpha Street and Beta Street, when the dray in which he was travelling collided with a tramcar. Oldfield and his horse were knocked to the ground and one of the dray wheels rolled over his head, killing him instantly. The collision appeared to have been the result of race between the driver of the tramcar and a driver of an omnibus. The drivers of the two vehicles were brothers. The jury at the inquest ruled a verdict of accidental death and the coroner warned drivers to exercise more caution when using the city’s roads. 20 Manchester Region History Review
28th November 1745 - Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his army stopped off in Manchester on his way south. They resided in the house of a Mr Dickinson who lived on Market Street. While there, the Prince mustered a regiment and demanded £5,000 from the town’s leaders. To ensure they paid the sum, an elderly resident named James Bayley was taken hostage. 27th November 1854 - A cab driver named Peter Threlfall was brought into custody after he was found to be drunk whilst attempting to drive his cab. The police were summoned by a passenger that had been picked up by Threlfall at the Queen’s Hotel, Piccadilly. The passenger has instructed the cab driver to take him to London Road Station and from there he was taking the early train to London. Threlfall was so intoxicated that he drove down Market Street and kept circling the Royal Exchange, causing the passenger to miss his train. While in custody Threlfall admitted that he had drunk a bottle of wine. At a later trial he was found guilty of being drunk and incapable and was fined 20s. However, the driver refused to pay the fine and was sentenced to 21 days in prison.
9th December 1889 ‐ On this day, the Manchester Guardian reported on one of the worst train crashes in the city’s history. The incident occurred on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, about half a mile out of Victoria Station. Late on Saturday evening a freight train pulling seventeen trucks left Victoria station heading for Rochdale. Behind the freight train was a passenger train travelling to Bacup. Before the junction for Cheetham Hill, the freight train stopped to let a passenger train go over the junction. Passing over the junction, the passenger train drove straight into the back of a standing coal train. The wreck of accident spread across the entire track. Some carriages had tumbled off the line and there was coal covering the scene. Two of the carriages were crumpled, one of the carriages had travelled up a 20 ft. embankment and the coal carriages were spread in every direction. The scene was one of chaos, with people screaming for help, however disaster was about to strike again. Without warning in the dark of night, a passenger train travelling at approximately 30 mph came tearing around the corner and crashed into the wreckage. The injured were everywhere, and there were screams from people trapped inside the carnage. Surprisingly there was only one fatality. It was a fireman who was onboard one of the engines. 20th December 1899 - The inquest resumed into the poisoning of two male inmates at the Crumpsall Workhouse Hospital. The victims were 65-year-old William Wharton and 60-year‐ old John Smith. Sarah Gibson, a nurse stated that on the previous Thursday she had given Smith two tablespoons of medicine from a bottle that had his name on it. Shortly after taking the medicine, Smith began complaining that he felt unwell and was struggling to breathe. Wharton had also been given medicine that had been produced at the time as Smith’s. Both gentlemen later died as a result of taking the medicine. It was revealed at the inquest that the medicine was made at the hospital dispensary, and whoever had made the solution had mistakenly added the poison Strychnine. Half a grain of this poison could cause death. The mistake laid with the chief dispenser and his two assistants, but none of them admitted to making up the medicine. Summing up the judge ordered that all poisons needed to be kept under lock and key, and they should be kept in different shaped bottles to avoid this happening again in the future. Manchester Region History Review
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REVIEWS
The Early Railways of Manchester
Craig Horner recommends this excellent study into the history of Manchester’s railways. The Early Railways of Manchester
This is the kind of nugget I found myself delighting in. Here’s anBy Anthony Dawson other. The destruction of buildings Amberley Publishing (2017) at Miles Platting station by fire in 1873 spurred on development at Being brought Newton Heath, employing over up to believe that 1,000 men by 1879, a group of Dr Beeching was entirely responsible whom formed the Newton Heath Cricket and Football Club. Today for dismantling the this is a little better known as British rail network Manchester United Football Club. 50-odd years ago, I had several After a brief description of the surprises reading Anthony beginnings of the railway in Dawson’s book. Oldham Road Manchester – its first locomotive, station, for example – Manchester’s third railway station and the place of William Fairbairn and the company Sharp, Roberts – opened as early as 1837, yet was closed to passengers by 1844. and Co in building the first rolling It didn’t help that the Manchester stock – Dawson dedicates and Leeds Railway had a track of chapters to the key railway companies in Manchester in the gauge 4’ 9” while the Liverpool 1830s and 1840s before moving on and Manchester (the very first) to discuss the inevitable process was 4’ 8½” (pp. 51–4). 22 Manchester Region History Review
of amalgamation. Health and safety was clearly not uppermost. The Normanton to Hebden Bridge section was opened in 1840 to great fanfare, but reporting on its first journey, the Wakefield Journal reported how it had seldom witnessed ‘a more alarming scene’. Because there were not enough carriages, people were crammed on the roof, and had to stoop every time the train went under a bridge. Otherwise, at 20mph, their brains would have been ‘dashed out’, and many others thrown off ‘to their almost inevitable destruction’. And on the same page I learn that Bramwell Bronte (yes, brother of), the Assistant Clerk-in-Charge at Sowerby Station in 1840, was dismissed two years later with ‘serious discrepancies’ in his accounts (pp. 57–9). Times, of course, never change. There have been plans to link the Manchester terminal stations since the nineteenth century (pp. 60–1), and only now is it happening with the Ordsall Chord, linking Piccadilly and Victoria. Likewise, attempts to link Manchester to Birmingham began in 1836 with the Manchester and Cheshire Junction Railway. But this was opposed in the Lords by a Mr Wilbraham Egerton of Tatton Park. With the consultation for HS2 upon us, all this probably sounds familiar. A terrific book, then, and not just for the train spotters. Lots of colour photographs and drawings, most of which are provided by the author. Just in time then for the Christmas stocking. Dr. Craig Horner Manchester Metropolitan University
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