Stories of young people ............. the Children's Act 1908 ....... more from the Together Trust

I have just read the latest blog from the Together Trust on the Children’s Act of 1908 and the charity’s involvement in helping young one person.*

The Children’s Act "made it legal for children to be removed from parents if they were being mistreated or neglected and placed into the responsibility of a ‘fit person.’"*

The rest as they say is there in the story, which just leave me to direct you to the link and the article, and the equally excellent stories by the archivist of the Trust which was the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges.

The charity began in 1870 when it set up a refuge for destitute boys and almost 150 years afterwards still works to help young people and their families.**

Location; Manchester & Salford










Pictures; from Getting Down and Dusty, courtesy of the Together Trust

*The Children's Act, 1908, Getting Down and Dusty, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-childrens-act-1908.html

**The Together Trust, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-together-trust.html

“I wonder if he will ever come back” ............. thoughts from 1916

Now in the course of the last few years I have come across a lot of picture postcards from the Great War.

And as you would expect they range from gentle comedy to the  risqué and suggestive with a fair dollop of sentimental and patriotic messages mixed with simple landscapes and those beautiful embroidered cards.

But I can’t make my mind up about this one.

It was sent in 1916 and while I can see the hint of humour it is a much darker and bitter comment.

The trouble is I have nothing to compare it with so I don’t know if it was part of a series or just a one off.

Given the date it was posted it might be easy to conclude that two years in to the war a degree of weariness and cynicism might have been tapped into by the image of what my Nana would have called a floozie.

And the message on the back expresses the wish that “it was all over and peace again but we must with patience till the sun shines and the daises bloom again.”

It was sent to the Iron Duke which in 1916 was the flagship of the Grand Fleet and the lead ship at the Battle of Jutland.

It had been commissioned in March 1914 and was one the dreadnought battleships serving through out the Great War.

All of which adds to the card which  comes from David Harrop's collection which includes memorabilia from both world wars and the history of the postal service, some of which is on permanent display in the Remembrance Lodge at Southern Cemetery.

I will ask David if he has any other such cards and until then await the experts to pile in and offer chapter and verse but in the meantime it remains an interesting card with a theme I shall return to.

Pictures; “I wonder if he will ever come back” circa 1916 from the collection of David Harrop

That hole in the ground on the High Street

Now anyone who remembers the RACS store on the High Street will no doubt be following the new development.

Over the months it has featured quite a few times.*

And now Ryan has added another picture to the collection ....... which he has entitled, “foundations for crane at the former Co-op store on the High Street” which pretty much says it all.

If like me you left Eltham a long time ago here is one of those little updates that bring you closer to home.

So a thank you to Ryan who regularly sends me fine photographs of Eltham.

Location; Eltham

Tomorrow, Ryan's ghost sign in Lewisham.




Picture; foundations for crane at the former Co-op store on the High Street

*Pictures from an Eltham Bus,  Larissa Hamment, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Pictures%20from%20an%20Eltham%20Bus

Crossing Continents ............ one picture, two people, three countries

Now I like the way the blog occasionally wanders off across time and space.

Last summer I met Sandra in the Italian seaside resort of Alba Adriatica and later we swapped facebook friendships.

Yesterday she posted a series of pictures of what she said "was my lake.”

I assumed they were of Italy but it turns out that they are of Lake Constance which is in the south-west corner of Germany, bordering Switzerland.

And that made me wonder if my dad had visited the place when he was taking coach tours across Europe from the late 1930's through to the 1970's.

The coach tours were all inclusive lasted for seven to fifteen days and took in everything from lakes to cathedrals, and mountain  to cities.

It is easy to be a tad sniffy and suggest if the passengers looked away from the window they might miss a country.

But that is to be unfair on what for many was their first opportunity to see continental Europe before cheap holiday packages became the norm.

Which of course just reinforces that idea that the world is really pretty small, and without thinking it we touch so many places

Location; Germany







Pictures; Lake Constance 2016, from the collection of Sandra  Muscella

Everything you ever wanted to know about Chorlton but never knew who to ask

Now many will be familiar with Alan who dresses well and who in his time has been mistaken for a University professor and a leading member of a 70’s rock group.

Alan

Neither of which is true, but for the real story you will have to wait for the publication of our new book on Chorlton which will be out for Christmas.

Following on the success of the other Chorlton books which we have produced individually and collectively we have now finished the “very interesting but little known bits of Chorlton’s past” which features everything from Kemp’s Corner to the story of a library and the Titanic and more than a few people who were either born here, lived here or passed through.

The title is the Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy but for now I shall just fall back on Woody Allen, and say that the theme is simply “everything you ever wanted to know about Chorlton but never knew who to ask.”

So that is it.

The book will be on the shelves of Chorlton Bookshop in mid November and  in someone’s stocking on Christmas Day.

Picture; Painting; Alan © Peter Topping, 2017, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk 




*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, The Story of Hough End Hall, 2014, Peter Topping and Andrew Simpson, 2014, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2017.



Along with Manchester Remembering 1914-18, Andrew Simpson, 2017, Didsbury Through Time, Peter Topping and Andrew Simpson, 2013 & Manchester Pubs - The Stories Behind the Doors, City Centre, Peter Topping and Andrew Simpson, 2016.

Chorltonville from the air

Chorltonville is is tucked away south of the Brook and was opened in 1911. 

This aerial picture dates from the 1920s when there were still fields close by.

 To the north are the farm buildings of Oak Bank Farm while at the bottom of the picture is the land stretching out to the Mersey.

Picture: from the Lloyd collection

The Kenora Great War Project ........ Susan Hillman Brazeau

The Kenora Great War Project ............. Susan Hillman Brazeau

It started out in the late days of 2012 with three local organizations and, in particular, three women - Judy, Becky and Gloria - who were interested in both research and Great War history.

Lake of the Woods Milling Company

Over a cup of coffee, they discussed ideas about how best to commemorate those fateful years between August 4, 1914 and November 11, 1918.

One suggestion was to research the names of those local servicemen and women who died serving Canada.  This thought gradually led to the inclusion of all who had some connection to the Kenora area and who had served in World War 1. Thus began a project, the enormity of which none of them could have imagined.

Kenora sits on the western edge of the vast province of Ontario in Canada. Only a 40- minute drive from the Manitoba border. Its nearest neighbours are the villages of Keewatin, just across the bridge; Redditt, located on the Canadian National Railway line about 40 miles to the north; and the summer village of Minaki only a few miles west of Redditt.

The overall population of this area when war broke out was no more than 10,000.  Yet, these communities, in this remote area of north-western Ontario, saw an enlistment of almost 1800 individuals, mostly young men.  Despite this sizeable number and resulting sizeable undertaking, the group, which now called themselves, The Kenora Great War Project, decided to learn all their names, research each person, and write individual tributes. These tributes would then be placed on the group’s own site and that of a larger, national website called The Canadian Great War Project.  

It was not an easy task, but it was one full of enthusiasm and required dedication and commitment.  It was demanding, time consuming, frustrating and challenging. It required careful research to ensure factual detail.
Others who had an interest in researching and writing tributes were invited to participate, but, as time passed, the original three have completed the bulk of the work.

The Keewatin Honour Roll

The project required scrutiny of the Personnel Data Base, War Diaries and other relevant databases on the Library and Archives Canada. Contacts were made with Royal Canadian Legion branches; local cemeteries; families, when they could be located; the Lake of the Woods Museum; and, local historians or people who might be able to share stories or information.

Each cross and headstone in the military section of the Lake of the Woods Cemetery was photographed and cemetery records gone through. The names on memorial plaques and the cenotaphs were recorded and also photographed.  Local newspaper archives were read page by page to find every war related article from this period.  Almost immediately, the research extended beyond the Kenora area, right across Canada and to other countries.

It is now the end of year five, since the project first began to take shape. Over 1400 individuals have their tributes placed on the two websites.  The goal is to have most of the tributes, onsite by November 11, 2018, even if only partially completed.

For my part, I will have contributed about 60 tributes, upon completion of the project. Each person’s story is of value and deserved to be written and remembered.  Yet, there were those who were a bit more interesting or exciting than others, such as my great uncles and friends of my family.
 A particular challenge was the American who enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and changed his name three times.

The Ice Candles, Lake of the Woods Cemetery

An emotional search was for the veteran who died alone, in a cabin in the woods many years after the war and who was buried under a military cross with the wrong name. I eventually uncovered his history, his name and found his family, who had always wondered what happened to him.
Then, there was the young soldier, who later became a prominent figure in Kenora, and whose very first medical entry in his file, before he even left for England, was his treatment for gonorrhea.

Telling details of the individual, yet collective experiences of the war are found in almost every personnel record: death; hospitalization; shell shock; lifelong respiratory conditions from mustard gas. Shrapnel and gun shot wounds; being covered with mud for days in collapsed trenches; the loss of limbs; or, the loss of the use of one or more limbs, are all found, somewhere, amongst the tributes to the men and women whose names are being etched in the Kenora Great War Project.

I came to the project in August of 2014 and began to learn so much more about the Great War and Canada’s role than I thought I would. Overall, my participation has been one of the most satisfying and meaningful experiences in 30 years of research.

In honour of those who served…

Susan Hillman Brazeau BA, MA-IS
August 27, 2017

kenoragreatwarproject.ca
canadiangreatwarproject.com

Photos courtesy of the Kenora Miner & News; and, the author’s own collection.

Hidden and forgotten .......... bits of our not so distant past ............. road signs I like nu 3

Now actually there is nothing hidden or forgotten about the road sign announcing Dunvegan Road.

It is there where I remember it and was recorded by Ryan yesterday.  But it is showing its age a little but it remains a fine example and enters the Hall of Fame of road signs and street furniture.

Thanks Ryan.  There are plenty more I know, Karen from Peckham found one, “just off Camberwell New Road, not too far from Camberwell Green. The same side as the Greek church” and Adam also in Peckham has wandered over to New Cross to find some.

And Neil and Bill ferreted out ones from Warrington and Macclesfield.

And in the interests of recording more for the series Road Signs and Street Furniture lost and found, ......... bring them on down.

Location, Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; Dunvegan Road, 2016, from the collection of Ryan Ginn

The picture of Rusholme that washed up in London and came back to Chorlton

Now I grant you it’s not the zippiest of titles but it does the business.

Wilmslow Road, date unknown

We are on Wilmslow Road although I don’t exactly have a date.

But I know that in 1911 the Clarence Pub was run by Mr James Oldham and his neighbour at number 83 which is just visible in the picture belonged to George C. Pinchien, tobacconist and more about both gentlemen at a later date.

The has gone but more recently has been a restaurant.

Mr Oldham of the Clarence Inn and his neighbours, 1911

The picture was sent up to me by my friend Tricia who still lives close to where I grew up in Eltham in South East London, which pretty much explains the title.

Tricia saw a picture I have in the collection of London Transport Tram 1622, on route 40 to the Embankment via the Old Kent Road and Westminster and prompted her to share this one of a Manchester Corporation tram on Wilmslow Road.

The Clarence Inn, date unknown

And as you do I went looking for a date, which I have yet to find, but in the process I did discover that along with the Clarence Inn and Mr Pinchien there was Mr Albert Barber, the butcher, Herbert Mee, the saddler, and Mrs Ann Maria Willcocks, shopkeeper all of whom were neighbours of the Maypole Diary Company and John Armstead, milliner.

Which just leaves me to wonder whether anyone will be able to come up with a date.

And in answer to that question my old mate Andy Robertson has gone one better and sent over a picture of the Clarence Inn from 2015.

It was back then the Pharaoh  but I am not quite sure if it was a night club or a place to eat.

But someone will come back with chapter and verse, adding their own stories of nights in the place and perhaps even of nights when it was the Clarence Inn.

We shall just have to see.




Location; Wilmlsow Road

Picture; Wilmslow Road, date unknown from the collection of Tricia Lesley and the Clarence Inn in 2015 courtesy of Andy Robertson.

Revisiting the Great War nu 4 ............ "there shall be NO STRIKE OR LOCKOUT"

Munitions workers, Openshaw, 1918

The right of ordinary men and women to go on strike during a war came in for a lot of comment in the newspapers during 1915.

And a century or so later there might still be those who think it was wrong, unpatriotic and more than a little cynical given the sacrifice being played out on the Western Front.

Of course then and now the reasons for that industrial conflict have for some been neatly swept to the corners, and words like greed, unprincipled and even cowardly could be used to explain what went on.

Certainly at the time the papers were quick to print letters from men at the Front questioning the strikes while the Government forced through compulsory arbitration for wage disputes and suspended trade union rights in munitions factories making strikes in factories engaged in war work illegal.*

Bullet Factory, Woolwich Arsenal, 1918

“One of the most emphatic provisions of the Act is that, during the war, whatever differences may arise there shall be NO STRIKE OR LOCKOUT ........ Under the Act the meaning of the terms “strike” and “lockout” are broader than their generally accepted meaning in normal times.  

Workmen need not necessarily walk out, to be on strike, nor need the doors be closed against the men to constitute a lock out.  

Any concerted action by workmen, which involves any stoppage of work, with the purpose of compelling an employer, to accept, or to aid workmen to compel an employer, to accept any “terms or conditions of or affecting employment” is, in the sense of the Act, a strike**

For which the penalty for any workmen involved in a strike was £5 a day or part of a day

Added to which in factories engaged in the manufacture of armaments workers were forbidden to leave their current job for another without obtaining the consent of the employer were prevented from refusing to take on a new job regardless of the rate of pay and could not refuse to do overtime whether this was paid or not.

And while the act made it clear that these provisions only covered demands for pay or conditions of work sitting behind this piece of legislation was the far more draconian Defence of the Realm Act*** which could be used against “any person who, inter alia, “attempts to impede, delay, or restrict the production, repair, or transport of war material or any other work necessary for the successful prosecution of the war.”**

Cost of living demonstration, 1915

The year had seen large numbers of strikes, some over issues directly related to the regulations prohibiting workers leaving without the consent of the employer.

In Openshaw in August this had led to confrontation between the firm Armstrong, Whitworth and the workforce over the dismissal of 121 men from the armour plate department without the relevant certificates allowing them to get work elsewhere.

Elsewhere the issue was simply the rising cost of living which was not being matched by a similar rise in pay in some industries.

As early as February 1915 the Manchester Guardian had reported that wages were “much as they were before the war.”****

At a time when the cost of food, fuel and rents were on the increase.

Speaking in Manchester at a large public meeting in February Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”*****

At the Front, 1916

That said not all industrial disputes centred around pay, in Oldham the employees of the Co-op were in dispute over the Society’s refusal to pay women the same rate as men, while at Sandbach the issue was over the refusal of Foden’s the truck builders  to recognise a trade union.

All of which brings us back to that simple observation that here there is much more to find out, including trawling the full records of strikes in 1915 and bringing to the fore the words of those involved.

Pictures;courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/ Women Munitions workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 m08093, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass the Bullet Factory, Arsenal, Woolwich, 1918,  from the collection of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm Daily Mail War Postcards, 1916, courtesy of David Harrop

*Munitions of War Act 1915

**1915 Act, s.2(1), p61, 1915 Act s. 19(b), p81 from Employers and Workmen Under the Muntions of War Act 1915 & 1916, 2nd edition 1917, page 31-31

***Defence of the Real Act, August 1914, It gave the government wide-ranging powers during the war period, such as the power to requisition buildings or land needed for the war effort, or to make regulations
creating criminal offences.

****War Effects on Wages and Conditions, Manchester Guardian February 20 1915

*******LABOUR AND FOOD PRICES. A FREE TRADE HALL PROTEST, Manchester Guardian Feb 15 1915

Reach Out to the Community ...........

Now the history of the charity shop in Chorlton has yet to be written.

And before someone passes a sniffy comment about such a project I would just remind them of how important such shops are, from the work they do, and the people they help to that simple observation that without them a lot of Chorlton’s retail units would be empty.

The trouble is we tend to take them for granted and I doubt many of us could say which charity opened up first and how each of their stories have panned out.

So that is the challenge should anyone care to take up the project.

Peter has made a start with this painting  for Reach Out to the Community which supports “people struggling with the most basic of needs: food and shelter.”

It focuses on two groups: rough sleepers in and around the Chorlton area of Greater Manchester, and local individuals and families who are in food poverty, especially those who are particularly vulnerable, for example the elderly.”*

He will be donating the painting to the charity and for those who want to know just what the charity does and what you can do for the charity just follow the link at the bottom.*

Location;Chorlton

Painting; Reach out to the Community,© Peter Topping 2017.

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures, https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

* Reach Out to the Community, A new website is on its way. In the meantime please connect with the initiative through social media:
 Facebook:      https://www.facebook.com/OutReachtotheCommunity/
 Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReachOut_Com

The Missing 1953 Coronation photograph ............. can anyone help?

Now I recently made friends with Frank Tomlin who lived on Dagnall Avenue in the 1950s and who has kindly shared some of his photographs from the period featuring his family and his friends.

The pictures perfectly recreate that time when the summer holidays stretched on forever and everyday was an adventure.

Leaving all of us just to decide whether to head out onto the meadows or catch the Corporation bus and ask to be put off at the end of the line, just to see what was there.

And Frank has now asked if anyone can track a missing photograph.

He writes, "Andrew one of my mates who passed away a few years ago, had a photograph of a Dagnall Ave 1953 street party for the Coronation.  The photograph has since been lost and I wonder if anybody on your site still has a copy?"

Well let’s hope so.  You can leave a message on the blog or via the facebook and twitter sites

Location; Dagnall Avenue, 1953

Picture; Frank and family in the garden of number 2 Dagnal Avenue, circa 1953, from the collection of Frank Tomlin

Some of the men who went to fight from Oldham .......... pictures of the Great War

Now I am at the limits of what I know about this picture.

It is a group of soldiers outside the Oldham Colloseum and comes from the collection of David Harrop.

I don’t have a date and am not sure what they were doing there.

If you look closely some of the men are wearing spurs, one is holding what looks like a harness and most are wearing those leather belts which I always associate with the cavalry.

The posters behind them advertise the Oldham Colloseum but the name of the big star of the week is obscured so it is difficult to get a date from the billing and likewise the announcement of BOXING gives up no other clues.

So there you have it, but I am confident there will be someone who has far more military knowledge than me and will be able to tell us more.

And I would like that if only to provide us with a little more on these men.

Some smile back at the camera, one strikes a defiant pose and a few and they are the older men in the picture look back with sombre expressions which I guess pretty much sums up the range of feelings of men swept up by that conflict.



Picture; from the collection of David Harrop

1916 ......... leaving behind the migration of children

Now I may be wrong but I think the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges were the first children’s charity to stop migrating children to Canada.

The Children's Garden Village, date unknown

They had started a little later than most and never sent as many as some of the migrating societies.

And in 1916 as part of the cut backs forced on the charity by the war it closed the emigration department indefinitely, having decided that, “for years to come the young men of the nation will all be needed at home.”*

Even more significant was the decision three years later to leave the city and relocate to the countryside.

“An estate of 22 acre has been bought at Cheadle in Cheshire, and it is proposed to adapt the buildings already on the estate to the needs of the children.  Part of the estate will be put under cultivation and give employment to some of the elder boys.  

The development in Cheadle

The scheme also entails the erection of cottage homes for the use of young children at present compelled to live at orphan homes of the city, and would allow for the establishment of central offices and a central receiving home.”**

This marked a huge shift from an organisation which started as a response to the desperate plight of destitute and needy children into something which sought to integrate young people into the community by sending them to local schools and fostering the links with the area.

But more than this it was a recognition that “the day of great buildings had gone, and collectivism had given place to individualism.  

The method now in practice in the Children’s Garden Village was to divide the mass into small families.  

In pursuance of this plan two more homes would be ready for occupation in a few months, one giving accommodation for 20 boys and the other for 20 girls.”***

This was to be the Children’s Garden Village and it anticipated both the Curtis Report of 1946, and the Children’s Act  of 1948 which put great emphasis on the idea of homes not institutions.

The charity retained a presence in the twin cities of Manchester and Salford but in time it would move completely into what was then still countryside, and underwent a series of name changes culminating with its present title of the Together Trust.

For anyone interested in the history of child care the story of the Trust pretty much charts the changes in how we have cared for young people over the last century and a bit.

The move to Cheadle forms part two of the history of the charity which I am writing with their archivist.****

Now I know this is not strictly British Home Children but it will I suspect prove interesting.

Location; the twin cities and Cheadle.

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-together-trust.html

*Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges and Homes Special Christmas Appeal, Manchester Guardian, December 20 1916

** The Children’s Refuge, A Fifty Years’ Record in Manchester, An Appeal for the Future, Manchester Guardian, March 10, 1920

*** The Children’s Refuges A Manchester Charity’s Year, Manchester Guardian, April 9, 1925

**** A new book on the Together Trust https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust

Collier Street Baths Salford

Now I went looking for the old baths on Collier Street recently prompted by a series of pictures taken by Andy Robertson.

And I have to say it wasn’t the actual building I was searching for.

Andy has done a fine job of recording them as they stand today, so I went off to search for the history of the baths.

I know that they were built on the site of the Salford Workhouse by the Manchester and Salford Baths & Laundries Company which built similar baths in Manchester.*

And that they were designed by Thomas Worthington who was also responsible for the Infirmary at the Chorlton Workhouse.

Some of the building has been demolished and what is left is a Grade 11 listed building.

But as Andy’s pictures’ show it is in a sorry state, and the level of dereliction appears to be advancing.

Looking at photographs from two years ago and comparing those with some from February along with Andy’s it is hard to see what future it can have.

Now I am sure I may have missed a detailed piece of research on the place and likewise overlooked a plan to save it, all of which I hope will be pointed out to me, but in the meantime I would get down there before it has gone.

And once that has been done there is always the Eagle Inn which according to one source is a “hidden gem of a traditional back street boozer and commonly known to the locals as the Lamp Oil. 

There are three small rooms off a central corridor with a central bar serving Holt Bitter. 

It is a Grade II listed building dating from 1902. 

There is a fine terracotta plaque of an eagle with the name above the door and for years this was the only pub sign.”**


Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson July 2014

*Greengate Baths, Collier Street, http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/leisure-sites/87442-greengate-baths-collier-street-salford-14-02-14-a.html

**What Pub?,  http://whatpub.com/pubs/MAN/9899/eagle-inn-salford

On Beech Road ....... when your memory plays you false

Now I have lived on Beech Road since 1976 and there will be plenty who can remember it from long before then.

Beech Road, 2017

But most of us will find it difficult to remember just what was there forty, thirty or even twenty years ago and even more so when the current plethora of bars, cafes and restaurants change so quickly.

Back around 2008 my colleague Peter Topping began painting the changing landscape of Chorlton, and I spent time with my old friend Marjorie who had been born just off Beech Road in the 1920s and compiled a list of the shops she remembered from the 1930s and 40s.

Beech Road, 1969

And in the course of the books and blog stories I have written about the area I have delved deep into who lived and worked on Beech Road stretching back into the early 19th century.

And now Roger Shelley and Marion Jackson have set me off again.

Roger posted a series of pictures of Beech Road today with the comment “I was trying to remember what the same shops used to sell” and Marion followed it up with . “My children reckoned I couldn't live without my lovely Beech Road shopkeepers. All my shopping done there when we lived in South Drive."

So here is a list of the shop keepers on the even side of Beech Road, from Wilton Road down to the Beech in 1969.

It is taken from the street directory for that year which lists all the householders, and businesses in Manchester and Salford.

This extract was from the directory owned by Andy Robertson.

And with that I shall leave you to wander down the list.

Location; Beech Road

Tomorrow; the other side

Pictures; part of Beech Road, 2017 courtesy of Roger Shelley and extract from Slater’s Directory of Manchester and Salford, 1969 courtesy of Andy Robertson

A little bit of humour from the Great War ........ Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland

The card speaks for itself.

Location; The Great War

Picture; undated from the collection of David Harrop

Of locks, and underground chambers, travelling the Rochdale Canal

Travelling along the Rochdale Canal by boat from Castlefied to Piccadilly is as you would expect totally different from walking the stretch along the towpath.

Now I have walked its length loads of times from the years when it was an overgrown neglected place to the popular walk of today.

Back then it seemed a bit of adventure.  Chances were you would be the only one on the canal and the loneliness was added to by the state of the buildings along the way.  Most were tall some derelict and all seemed to have turned their back on the canal, so that apart from a timber yard the rest had their entrances on the street side.  No one you thought wanted to know about this relic from the past.

And on a grey wet morning those same buildings made the place just that bit more desolate and not somewhere where even the adventurer in me choose to be as dusk came on.

The boat offered a totally different experience.  First you were with people all of whom knew  what they were doing which I suppose my contribution to the journey was limited to helping push the lock gates open and then close them.

And then there are the locks themselves which are a pretty neat way of getting a boat to go up and down hill.
We were going up from Castlefield to Dale Street and that meant I think eight sets of lock doors to open and close.

Once in the lock at the lowest level it is impressive how the water cascading into the chamber does its business and fairly quickly you reach the height of the towpath and you are on your way again.

More than anything it is the power of water that gets you.  It comes into the lock at some speed.

But it is also that even when the locks are closed there is a constant transference of water.  Some of it from side gullies from the lock above to the next one below, and in other cases just back falling over the lock behind..

I can’t remember how long the journey took but much longer than if I walked it.  But then that is the attraction of hiring a boat and doing the canals.  You can stop if you wish after the lock manoeuvre and wait the next one out for a while moored to the side of the towpath and reflecting on the amount of effort and the degree of progress on a lazy boating holiday.

But all of this would have been much romantic tosh to the people that worked the canals.  They carried everything from coal to fine bone china and lived on the water, often with large families.  And they endured those journeys come sun or snow, or heavy rain when the surface of the water seemed to boil to those bitter frozen moments when nothing on the canal could move.

I was reminded of this by the picture of the two boats entering the last stretch of the way along the Rochdale before entering the Dale Street Basin.  At the rear are two women busy themselves with what I take to be domestic chores and in one is a young girl, probably born on the barge and destined to grow up on it.  What is all the more remarkable is the date.  For it is 1955, and most of the Rochdale has been closed but these two families are still making a living, travelling the one bit of the canal still open and prosperous.

Their journey like ours would have taken them through the heart of the city, past timber yards, the rebuilt railway viaduct at Deansgate, under Oxford Road and on taking in a power station the park by the old school and via London Road into the Dale Street Basin.

What I am not sure of is the last part of the journey which today takes you underneath the modern office block now known as 111 on the corner of London Road and Ducie Street.

It is built over the canal and the massive concrete pillars which the building rests on are all around you.  It is an odd and a little disconcerting experience and reminds me of that part in The Third Man where the amoral criminal Harry Lime is pursued by the authorities through the sewers of Vienna.

It is another of those places that where once I would have boldly gone in my 30s armed only with an old Pentax K 100 camera today I judge it to be a place left well alone.

So that’s the end of the journey which began as a wish to share some of the photographs of the canal by Eileen Blake from 1974 and turned into an  extended ramble.

Pictures; from the collection of Eileen Blake and Andrew Simpson, “narrow boats passing under Aytoun Street,” L Kaye, 1955, m54251, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council 
and under 111 Piccadilly by courtesy of Pennine waterways, www.pennincewaterways.co.uk/
And the other stories on the canal at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Rochdale%20Canal

85 years a part ...... Beech Road then and now

What I really like about posting stories is the way friends help take a story that next step.

So I was pleased when my friend Adge sent me this picture of Beech Road.

It is still recognisable as the same place, although the old offi on the corner of Chequers Road has lost its chimney.

But the real change has been in the row of shops which now march to a different retailing theme.
Gone is the grocer, the butcher, and iron monger and in their place that mix of quirky traders which make the road so fun to live on.

And as Adge points out some things don’t change, so just as in 1932, there is someone sweeping the space in front of their shop and another business awaiting a new use.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; from the Lloyd collection and the collection of Adge Lane

A little bit of humour from the Great War ........ on getting tipsy

The card speaks for itself.

Location; The Great War

Picture; undated from the collection of David Harrop

Revealing the stories of British Home Children ........ to publish or leave in the shadows?

Now one of the fascinating developments of social media is the way people want to share their lives.

Alghero on a hot evening, 2013

It ranges from photographs of their children to memorable holidays or the very mundane events of a busy and perhaps factious day.

And I have to wonder whether it was always so.

Certainly before the advent of facebook, Twitter and Instagram there were far fewer opportunities to tell family, friends and the world about the ups and downs of your daily life.

Or perhaps back before now we were more circumspect about what we let other people know about us.

After all knowledge is power and when identity theft is a serious threat the less someone knows about me the better.

Family stories, 1913

I doubt my great granfather Montague would have welcomed the new age.

He was born in 1868, and a part from census returns and his army records he pretty much successfully avoided a paper trail making it easy for him to fall through the cracks at the beginning of the 20th century.

All of which is a roundabout way of approaching the question of anonymity and the degree to which someone’s life should be paraded for all to read.

The hundred year rule adopted for census records seems sensible, but then increasingly so much is out there on line that restricting what can be published seems to be less relevant.

I may not know the details of who lived at our old house in the 1950s, but I can track members of my family through the shipping records, discover something of their wartime careers and even if they had a telephone in 1924.

So how should we treat the records of our children’s charities in particular those young people who were migrated?

Emma in the care of the Together Trust, undated

And this is not an academic exercise as I continue to work on the new book on the history of the Together Trust which has a proud record of caring for children in the twin cities since 1870.*

Throughout the late 19th an early 20th centuries it was known as the Manchester and Salford Boys' and Girls. Refuge.

And it is a real privilege to be able to look at the reports and letters of those who went through the charity, but it does pose a responsibility because even a young person born in say 1860, who was found destitute on the streets and is now long dead still has a right to a degree of anonymity.

The policy of the Trust is to identify these young people by just their first name and that I think is a good working approach.

If contacted by a relative the charity will do a search of their archives, which is a service they do for free and I know from conversations I have had, that that service is much appreciated by descendants who have been helped.

Some may argue that given the efforts to compile a full database of all British Home Children, restricting publication to just a first name undermines that initiative.

To which there is no easy answer, especially given that there are other avenues that can be perused as a means to find names, ranging from shipping records to newspaper accounts.

Working in the Print Room of the Refuge, date unknown

But there is that simple question of how far we have the right to delve into the lives of others?

At which point I have to concede I do it all the time in the course of writing books and the blog, but even I was stopped in my tracks when I discovered how one of my family died after I received his death certificate which in turn  made me ponder on if I was intruding on a very private moment.

I have always justified it by “bringing them out of the shadows” and in the case of the book on Manchester and The Great War, using their lives as examples of the heroism and sacrifice made during that conflict by people on the Home Front.**

Of course if the information is already in the public domain then in one sense it is permissible but when those records are held in trust even if they were created a century and a bit ago I suspect we have to be more careful.

And such considerations are nothing when compared with what we have lost.  For while I can trawl the meticulous records of the Together Trust, the records of my family’s time in the Derby Workhouse were thrown away a long time ago and much else will never be released.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust and from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/stories-behind-book-nu-2-digging-deep.html

**A new book on Manchester and the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/reflecting-on-anniversaries.html