Castlefield the story .............. Part Four surviving there

Housing and sanitary conditions in all our large cities were bad during the early part of the 19th century. In 1842 Chadwick had recorded the average age of death for working people in Manchester at 17 years and in Leeds at 19 compared to 38 in rural Rutland.

For many, Manchester was the shock city of the Industrial Revolution and was visited by those who wanted to see a new type of city. And many recorded how dire were the living conditions of working people.

Most of the houses in the area were occupied by more than one family, with some showing as many as three families living in one house. It is possible then that conditions were bad in Castlefield. In 1853 The Manchester & Salford Sanitary Association reported that so much rubbish had been dumped near Tonman Street, that St Matthews Church yard was in danger of being swamped by the stuff.

Dr Gautier who wrote a book on the Cholera epidemic of 1832 records that some of the first 200 cases of Cholera occurred in Castlefield, and while it is difficult to be precise because the map is unclear they could be on either Southern Street or Barton Street. In 1849 three people caught Cholera in Southern Street, 1 on Liverpool Road and three on Camp Street.

Living conditions in the Deansgate district, which bordered Castlefield, were awful in 1849 according to a history of the 1849 cholera epidemic. Earlier in the 1831 epidemic cholera deaths had been high in this area and resulted a hospital for cholera victims had been opened in Worthington’s factory on Commercial Street, Knott Mill, which is just behind Deans gate Station. It is possible then that being so close the conditions in Castlefield were similar.

Again is possible to read of equally bad conditions in parts of Chorlton-upon-Medlock in 1849 where it comes close to Castlefield and Deansgate. Here the courts at Gaythorn were particularly bad. A similar more detailed picture comes from a lecture given to the Sanitary Association by John Hatton in 1854. A survey of 17 streets in Chorlton-upon-Medlock showed that 61% of children died before their fifth birthday and 39% died at birth.

The national figure for children dying under the age of 1 year was 15%. Child mortality was equally high in neighbouring townships. Ashton-under-Lyne was a mill town about eight miles from Manchester and underwent similar changes to Manchester. One grave stone in the parish churchyard records that Charles Sharp buried his two wives and eigh children between 1836 and 1855. All but one of the children died before their second birthday.

Despite these grim facts, children did survive. In 1851 35% of the people in Southern Street are children under the age of 16, and the figure for those under the age of 6 is 13%. Figures, which bear comparison to John Street where 30%, are under the age of 16 and 12% under the age of 6. The age profile of Southern Street shows that over three quarters of the residents were under the age of 31.

Picture; Omega Place, on this carpark the 1853 Sanitary report recorded two hundred people living on this spot from the collection of Andrew Simpson