The Art of New Year ……..

So, given that New Year’s Eve only happens once a year you only get one stab of featuring the art that said goodbye to the old year.

Now I think you are either a Christmas or New Year person, and I and my family are definitely Christmas.

There were a few years when the attractions of alcoholic excess seemed attractive but they were accompanied with a hangover and a wasted following day.

Nor did I ever feel the need to party away with a heap of strangers in in a hotel eating food that was overpriced and pretentious.

But lots of people did and still do and I wouldn’t knock them for that.

So instead, here are two pieces of New Year art, courtesy of Suzanne Morehead whose parents danced the night away having had the full menu.

Back in the day, we saw it in with the kids, and in the absence of that insane bout of fireworks would hear the ships sirens from the docks welcoming in another year. 

Location any one of a shedload of New Year’s Eves

Pictures; from various hotels, 1947-1969, from the collection of Suzanne Morehead

Celebrating New Year ….. with turnips ….. a carrot …..Mr. Wilding ….. and a bit of humour

After 89 years I doubt I will turn up much on The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Amateur Gardeners’.

The invitation to New Year fun, 1936

But then until Gill Curtis posted this delightful programme advertising their New Year’s Eve Gathering, I didn’t even know they existed, but exist they did.

As Gill wrote “I thought your members might be interested in a flyer I’ve found from 1936 proving that Chorlton cum Hardy was the place to be on New Year’s Eve. My grandfather obviously thought so as he was the piano player!”

Parker's, circa 1930s

Now, I am not surprised that there was a gardening group.  

There were plenty of other such groups in Chorlton which had developed as the township grew from a small agricultural community into a suburb of Manchester.

The transformation had begun in the mid-1860s with urban creep up from Stretford Railway Station along Edge Lane and then the newly cut Wilbraham Road.

But the real pace of change started in the 1880s around what was once the Four Banks and stretched along Barlow Moor and Manchester Roads and out towards Longford Park in one direction and Chorlton-cum-Hardy Railway Station in the other.

The area attracted the “middling people” many of whom worked in the city but wanted to live in an area which still had a rural feel.  They included those who described themselves “professionals" and "clerks" along with businessmen.

And as they did, they set up “societies” from theatre and operatic groups to public speaking, gardening and a whole range of sporting activities.

In 1909 the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Show included in its event the best Chorlton garden.  The show continued well into the 1930s and featured agricultural as well as gardening events.*

Five and bit hours of fun, 1936

So, in 1936 The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Amateur Gardeners’ staged their New Years event which was at 357 Barlow Moor Road, near to the junction with Hardy lane and Mauldeth Road West.  The parade of shops still exists.

Back then it was owned by Parker’s Bakery of Needham Avenue and was one of a number of outlets across Chorlton.

To modern eyes it may seem a tame affair, but the programme is not without a sense of humour and begs the question of whether there are other bits of memorabilia out there connected to the group.

We shall see.

Leaving me just to thank Gill.

Location, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Amateur Gardeners’, New Year’s Eve Gathering, 1936, from the collection of Gill Curtis 

*Winning the best kept garden on Nicolas Road in 1909, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2018/08/winning-best-kept-garden-on-nicholas.html

The grimy ones ........ our River

Now here is another of those short series taken from the family archive.

All were taken around 1979 and offer up scenes of the River which we knew but most tourists seldom saw.

Location; the River


Pictures; the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A Manchester first ……… John Edward Sutton .... first Labour Councillor and Manchester MP

John Edward Sutton deserves to be remembered.

John Edward Sutton, MP

He was the first Labour candidate to be elected to the Manchester City Council, went on to become the first Labour MP for Manchester East in 1910, and later represented Manchester Clayton for a short period in 1922, and again between 1923 and 1931.

All the more remarkable given that he started work in a cotton mill at seven years of age in 1871, and at 14 began work at Bradford Colliery rising to the post of checkweighman.

His obituary in the Manchester Guardian records that he was first elected to the Bradford Ward as a City Councillor in 1894, continuing as such for nearly 20 years, and was “secretary and then agent for the Bradford lodge of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miner’s Federation”.*

Today when many defeated politicians go on to utilize their Parliamentary experience and contact to carve out jobs in the media and as lobbyist, it might surprise many that  Mr. Sutton returned after his election defeats to work at the coal mine.

He was according to the newspaper “of that school of Socialists that grew out of Liberal Nonconformity through the I.L.P.  He was never a revolutionary but a strong co-operator and temperance advocate.

Labour Party Poster, 1910

Physically a somewhat frail man he had the vigour of mind and expression that belied his quiet manner and a courage that put him among the pioneers in the workers’ cause at the end of the last century.  

He was not merely Manchester’s first Labour councillor but a firm advocate of municipal ownership of essential local services and one who did much to advance the municipalizing of the transport service”.

But this does little to highlight his progressive position on a raft of issues, from support for the extension of the franchaise to women,to the need for a minimum wage and his opposition to the position of Aldermen on the City Council.

And having opposed the practice of Aldermen, rightly he turned down the offer to become one in 1909.

In time I will find out more about this remarkable man.  I know his father was a cotton spinner and one of John Edward Sutton’s first homes was on London Road, that he married Hannah in 1880 when they were both just 19 years old.

Solidarity, Walter Crane, 1887

In 1911 the family were living in a five roomed house in Clayton a year after he was elected an MP and by 1939 he and his two children were living in Chorlton on Egerton Road.

Labour Party Poster, 1945

And that is it at present.  

There is one photograph of Mr. Sutton, but it is unclear if it can be used and so I have fallen back on a very poor copy from his obituary.

The next step will be visits to the Labour History Museum and Central Ref to trawl their records for more on his time as a councillor, MP and trade unionist, and if I am lucky there may be election material, correspondence and more pictures.

But I am pleased that he lived long enough to see the Labour Party returned to office in the July of 1945 with 393 MPs on a promise to carry out many of the policies he himself argued for.**

Reflecting on his his time as an elected representative he said "he had fought many municipal elections and nine Parliamentary elections and met with his first defeat in 23 years of public life".***

The occasion was a presentation at the Beswick Co-operative Society's Hall in Manchester to mark his retirement.  

Labour Poster, 1931

The hall was packed and amongst the speakers and well wishers there were many colleagues from the early days of the I.L.P.*** 

But consistent with his character, in 1939, eight years after his defeat in the 1931 General Election when Labour recorded one of its worst defeats, he listed his occupation as not former MP, but "Coal Miners Agent, Retired" 

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Solidarity, Walter Crane, 1887, Labour Party posters, 1910, 1931 & 1945, Mr. J.E. Sutton, date unknown

*Mr. J.E. Sutton, Manchester Guardian, November 30th, 1945

**The 1945 General Election was held in July 1945, and Mr. Sutton died in November of that year.

***Presentation to Mr. J.E.Sutton, 38 years of Public Service, Manchester Guardian, July 15th, 1932

Mr. Roger Hall …. last known in British Columbia has been found ….

It is the sort of discovery which would gladden the heart of anyone engaged in family history.

The Griffth farmhouse, New Brunswick, 2008

More so because Roger Hall had disappeared almost a full century ago and despite the efforts of me in the UK and my Canadian cousins, he remained the “lost relative”.

He had been born in 1898 in Birmingham to Montague and Eliza who were our great grandparents.  Theirs was a tempestuous relationship and after moving from Derby via Birmingham and London, they settled in Gravesend only to split in 1902.  He remained in Gravesend, and she returned to Derby with her three sons and it was there in the Derby Workhouse that she gave birth to her last child.

Her return was not an easy one and for most of their childhood the children were in care before being placed in occupations.  Roger and my grandfather proved more troublesome, and both were sentenced to a naval boot camp.  Granddad went but great uncle Roger opted to go to Canada, migrated as a British Home Child in 1914.*

His Attestation Papers, 1915

In a few short months he worked on three Canadian farms, being sent back twice and absconding from the third to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  In the process he changed his name, lied about his age and gave his aunt as next of kin rather than his mother.

His unwillingness to conform on the farms was replicated in the army and he court martialled four times, once for hitting an officer and three times for absence without leave.

But he survived, returned to Canada, and persuaded his sister to follow him out on an Empire Assisted Scheme in 1925, and then sometime after that we lost him.

Until our Marisa found him on the census return for the Municipality of Coquitlam in British Columbia.

One of his letters, 1916

He was lodging with a family, gave his occupation as a labourer on a farm and was single.

There is much more to find out which I know our Marisa will uncover. But its is the first real reference we have after 1925 and confirms his sister’s belief that he had headed out to the west of Canada, a place still in the making and as rough and ready with promise of new things as the western states of its neighbour.

I suspect it was somewhere that would allow a young restless man an opportunity to reinvent himself.

As it was, he had reverted to his given names of Roger and Hall, which had been dropped in favour of James Rogers when he ran away and enlisted.  That reversion seems to have muddied the search but now we have him, living in a community dominated by single men from China and Japan who were labourers.

His landlord was a James William Williams who was also from the UK and was a barber aged 42 and perhaps a search may reveal something more of his Canadian life.  I know he was married to Mary and that their daughter, Elizabeth Mary was born in BC in 1917.

There are several James William Williams who fit the date of birth in various bits of Britain which in turn may offer up more.

But essentially that is it.

To which some will mutter so what?  And follow it up with, “apart from the family what interest can there be in a man who disappeared a century ago?”

Well, whenever research brings anyone out of the shadows that is a good result and even more so when he is a member of that group of children who were migrated to Canada and later other parts of the former British Empire. 

Places he knew, St John River, NB, 2008

They were sent from 1870 and a century later some British organizations were still engaged in settling young people in Australia.

Until recently they were a virtually forgotten group and while they are still a neglected part of our history at least in Canada the study of British Home Children has become a serious area of historic study.*

That study has occasioned a serious debate about the motives of those engaged in the migration, the effects on the young people both at the time and subsequently, and the contribution they made to the countries they settled in.

And our great uncle was one of them.

Special thanks to our cousin Marisa Cooper who continued the search for Roger Hall when I had all but given up.

Location; Canada,

Pictures; One of the farms he stayed at in New Brunswick, 2008, his Attestation papers, 1915, letter from Roger James Hall/James Rogers, February 2, 1916, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of the Griffith's farmhouse, N.B., Angela Faubert, 2008

*British Home Children, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/British%20Home%20Children

Waiting for that fast service to Central ................ standing on the platform at Chorlton-cum-Hardy railway station

Now I am part of that generation that grew up with steam locomotives.

And I don’t mean those special heritage steam trains I mean the full on thing, when everything from the intercity express down to sedate suburban commuter links and the humble unromantic goods locos were all steam powered.

All of which makes this picture postcard of our station one to cherish particularly because there are very few of the inside of the station.

I don’t have a date for this one but it will be before 1926 when an aerial picture shows the station without the footbridge which the historian John Lloyd says was removed “to save the expense of maintaining it and the public had to use the road bridge.”**

So we have just 40 or so years to play with because the station was opened in 1880 and judging by  the quality of the picture postcard I am guessing we will be sometime in the early years of the last century.

And that quality allows you to focus in on the detail from the iron work under the bridge to the signs advising passengers to use the foot bridge to cross the tracks which proved particularly relevant after the death of Mary Jane Cockrill of Oswald Road in 1909 who was run down by "a fast train approaching the station."***

I don’t think you have to have an over vivid imagination to put yourself on that platform just over a century ago.

The place is empty save for the staff and the chap in the bowler hat who I suspect runs the kiosk, so we must be in one of those in between moments and given that there are no passenger either a train has just gone through or this is that long wait between the morning commuter rush and the evening return.

And for anyone who has ever been alone on a warm summer’s day waiting for a train the scene will be all too familiar.

There will be that silence punctuated by the odd noise from the road in the distance the clunck of a shunting engine and the sound of the platform clock.

And if you have timed it wrongly there could still be a hint of steam left from the departing train and the last solitary commuter making their way out up the approach path to Wilbraham Road.

Which means that you are left to idle the time away looking at the headlines from the newspaper posters, ponder on the promises being made by the adverts and perhaps spend a penny on that weighing machine.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, date unknown

Picture; Chorlton-cum-Hardy Railway Station, date unknown, courtesy of Mark Fynn***

*Looking Back At Chorlton-cum-Hardy, John Lloyd, 1985

**Woman Killed at Chorlton In front of a railway train, Manchester Guardian, January 11, 1909 although to be accurate her death was a suicide

***Manchester Postcards, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html, 

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 45 or so years ago …… walking the Rochdale in 1979

A short series bringing together for the first time pictures I took walking the Rochdale Canal from Princess Street to the Castlefield Basin.

Most have appeared before but not together in the order in which I walked the Canal back in 1979.

But given my memory and my total failure to make notes of each shot at the time I took them some may well be out of sync.

This is the end of the journey, and features pictures I don’t think I have used before.

The Rochdale Canal runs out into the Castlefield Basin under the Castle Street Bridge, at Lock 92.

In the 1970s and into the next decade this was still a shabby, slightly edgy, but wonderful place, which was, and is, at the centre of much of our industrial past. 

It was a major switching hub, where the river, the new railways and the canal network  met, supplying the diverse industries of the city.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal …18 pictures ,walking the Rochdale Canal in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures