Of great wealth and destitute children ...... Manchester in 1870

In the middle years of the 19th century the contrast between the great wealth of our city and the abject poverty endured by so many turned on a street corner.  

Visitors to the magnificent warehouse of S & J Watts on Portland Street might marvel at its sheer size and above all its five storeys each decorated in a different style of architecture topped by the huge Gothic wheel windows and barely give a thought to the warren of narrow streets and dark courts with their dismal houses just a few minute’s walk away.

And across the city the wealthy occupants of St John’s Street off Deansgate lived sandwiched between the more humble homes of artisans, labourers and street traders.

Nor were theses people of substance blind to that chasm which separated those who toiled and those who lived comfortable lives.  For some it was just another example of the natural order of things but others were stirred, some by fear of social disruption and others by a genuine concern for the hardships endured by the poor.

One letter writer to the Manchester Guardian in the May of 1872 commented on “the attention” shown by“the public in your columns to the conditions of the fatherless and destitute children of Manchester.”

It was of course all too obvious on the streets of all our cities and towns.  The same correspondent remarked that “I have sometimes to carry some rather heavy packages of samples [and] so perseveringly beset by pushing little old men of business, often with bare feet and as often as not wrapped or not wrapped in rags that may have done duty in better days for their grandfathers and I have occasionally given one of them a ‘job’

On these occasions I hear tales which have a ring of bitter melancholy and truthful misery.  Take one example.  ‘How old are you?’ was the first question I asked a stunted child who was carrying my parcels.  ‘

'Seventeen’ was his almost incredible reply, but the suffering old face on his child’s body told me that the lad was right.  ‘My father went to live with another woman and my mother went to live with another man and I’ve had to get my own living since I was seven.

Repeat this with slight variations by the thousand fold and you have an aggregate of suffering.”*

Some estimates put the number of destitute children on the streets of London at 100,000 while across Manchester and Salford there were “upwards of 10,000 destitute and fatherless children.”**

Many of these received help from the Destitute Children’s Dinner Society which during 1870 had provided “60263 dinners to the destitute children in the poorest districts of Manchester & Salford.”***

These were distributed to children under 12 and were available twice a week. But it may well be that this does not give the extent of the numbers out on the streets for the meals were only provided to children who attended the Ragged schools and had been selected by the staff as most deserving, although there was provision for non attenders to be assisted.

The same year saw the first refuge for boys established in Quay Street by the Manchester & Salford Boys Refuges, and others in the following years.

And during this period the plight of these homeless children featured in a series of fictional accounts which as you would expect reflect the religion and politics of the authors and are very much of the time, and so here are themes of redemption, temporary falls from grace, and the ultimate triumph of the individual through hard work.

On the way there are the polemics by some on the role of demon drink and above all an attack on the feckless parents who at best neglected their children and at worse were abusive.

Of all these accounts the northern novels by Silas K Hocking do exhibit both an understanding of the issues and were rattling good reads which resulted in Her Benny published in 1879 becoming the first novel to sell a million copies.  It was based in Liverpool where he worked as a Methodist minister while his later book Dick’s Fairy was set in Manchester where he preached in the 1880s.

Her Benny is available on Kindle, and I only wish Dick’s Fairy was in print.  For Hocking in Her Benny the alternative was the escape to the countryside and a rural haven.

This back to the land solution for the homeless and abused children was part of that bigger vision which sought to contrast the simple attraction of country life with the increasing unpleasantness of and existence in new industrial towns and cities.

But Hocking moved away from the land solution and in Dick’s Fairy published in 1883 the way to eventual success out of the streets is through a combination of help and hard work, which is not so different from what our socialist Guardians were advocating just two decades later as a counter to the popular idea of sending destitute children of Canada.

Pictures; Flatiron market Salford, Samuel Coulthurst, 1894, m59570 & m59569, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, & Boys and Girls Refuge and Emma courtesy of the Together Trust http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/happy-birthday-to-us.html

*Manchester Guardian May 21 1872
**Manchester Guardian May 15 1872
***Manchester Guardian December 22nd 1870