Who could think that a gift of £5,000 in 1914 to help finance a library here in Chorlton could cause a stir and still have people debating the issue years later? Now the gift came from the steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, and was only one of 660 which he funded in Britain, 1,689 in the United States, 125 in Canada and more elsewhere between 1883 and 1929.
From humble beginnings he had built up a huge steel business before selling out for an estimated $500 million in 1901 and devoting himself to philanthropist projects. Even before he retired he had been spending money on all sorts of projects of which the establishment of public libraries was just one.
But there are those who would argue the money was not his to give away having been made by the men who toiled in the steel plants and who were increasingly denied the right to organise collectively in his work places. But that is another story.
Here in Chorlton the charge against the Carnegie gift was led by Councillor Jane Redford, who “was not infatuated with the Carnegie gift” expressing “a feeling of disappointment that the Chorlton ratepayers were not to get a library through the ordinary means of municipal enterprise.”*
The issue of a free library for Chorlton had been bubbling below the surface since we had voted to be incorporated into the City of Manchester in 1904. In January 1908 the Ratepayers Association had written to the Town Clerk asking for the Corporation to honour the agreement which they did in November of the same year.
It was something of a temporary measure as the library was in a rented house on Oswald Road. But it began with the provision of a thousand books a reading room and a meetings room and was a runaway success. During the first two months the membership climbed to 1,100 and the number of books was doubled with a promise of another 1,000.
More than anything it proved the need for a library on a more permanent footing and by 1911 the negotiations with Carnegie were underway. These gifts from the steel magnate were hedged with conditions, and in our case that the site “should be made over free of cost to the Corporation” ** and the cost of the building shouldn’t exceed £5000.
There is a story that the original plans for the library crossed the Atlantic with the Titanic and were lost, but whether true or not the building was finished just a little later than scheduled and was opened on November 4th 1914. The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which]if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”
In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”***
There was already a cinema of sorts just around the corner on Wilbraham Road, just over the bridge before the junction with Buckingham Road. It had been opened in the early years of the 20th century and would later be part of a chain of picture houses across the city. Alas no such venture was to enter the library.
And now the debate over the future of the library and the question of the degree to which the council should go into partnership with private enterprise is again a live issue. But like the story of the bioscope, and the Chorlton Pavilion on Wilbraham Road it is a topic for another day.
Picture; Chorlton Library from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of Mrs Jane Redford from her election address by kind permission of Lawrence Beadle
* New Library for Chorlton, Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
**ibid Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
*** A New Library, Manchester Guardian November 5th 1914
From humble beginnings he had built up a huge steel business before selling out for an estimated $500 million in 1901 and devoting himself to philanthropist projects. Even before he retired he had been spending money on all sorts of projects of which the establishment of public libraries was just one.
But there are those who would argue the money was not his to give away having been made by the men who toiled in the steel plants and who were increasingly denied the right to organise collectively in his work places. But that is another story.
Here in Chorlton the charge against the Carnegie gift was led by Councillor Jane Redford, who “was not infatuated with the Carnegie gift” expressing “a feeling of disappointment that the Chorlton ratepayers were not to get a library through the ordinary means of municipal enterprise.”*
The issue of a free library for Chorlton had been bubbling below the surface since we had voted to be incorporated into the City of Manchester in 1904. In January 1908 the Ratepayers Association had written to the Town Clerk asking for the Corporation to honour the agreement which they did in November of the same year.
More than anything it proved the need for a library on a more permanent footing and by 1911 the negotiations with Carnegie were underway. These gifts from the steel magnate were hedged with conditions, and in our case that the site “should be made over free of cost to the Corporation” ** and the cost of the building shouldn’t exceed £5000.
There is a story that the original plans for the library crossed the Atlantic with the Titanic and were lost, but whether true or not the building was finished just a little later than scheduled and was opened on November 4th 1914. The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which]if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”
In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”***
There was already a cinema of sorts just around the corner on Wilbraham Road, just over the bridge before the junction with Buckingham Road. It had been opened in the early years of the 20th century and would later be part of a chain of picture houses across the city. Alas no such venture was to enter the library.
And now the debate over the future of the library and the question of the degree to which the council should go into partnership with private enterprise is again a live issue. But like the story of the bioscope, and the Chorlton Pavilion on Wilbraham Road it is a topic for another day.
Picture; Chorlton Library from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of Mrs Jane Redford from her election address by kind permission of Lawrence Beadle
* New Library for Chorlton, Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
**ibid Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
*** A New Library, Manchester Guardian November 5th 1914
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