Be careful of the past you wish for .......

Now, I do feel a bit old when posters I knew have become museum pieces.

I don’t have a date for this one but it was typical of a period of political propaganda dating from the 1930s through to the 1980s.

As a student I had similar ones which decorated the walls of flats I and friends lived in, which I picked up cheaply from left wing book shops.

Back then I believed the propaganda, or if I am honest, wanted to believe it, but it is a view of the world which even then distorted the reality and has all but gone.

This one comes from the museum situated in the old Stasi headquarters in Berlin.

The poster’s slogan runs, “Von den Sowjetmenschen lernen heibt siegen lernen!” which translates as “Learning from the Soviet people means learning to win!”

Peter went round the place yesterday and this is one of the posters he sent back, commenting that “the back story to the poster is that son James’s apartment is in the district where the Stasi headquarters were. His flat is in In the building in front of the Stasi communications building.  All these buildings are still standing. It’s like living in a museum!”

And that last comment got me thinking about what I still had from that period of Soviet propaganda.

The cheap Marxist/Leninist tracts printed in Moscow and Peking vanished a long time ago, as did a fascinating little book of Soviet short stories, but I did come across a book of poetry, and a collection of stories by Soviet Science Fiction writers.

Fifty Soviet Poets, included some like Yevgeni Yevtushenko who were well known in the West, and many who weren’t, and ranged over a variety of different themes, but given that this is a Russian book there is more than a few that are patriotic.

Yevtushenko’s poem, Do the Russians want a War? opens with the lines, “Say do the Russians want a war?- Go ask our land, then ask no more That silence lingering in the air Above the birch and poplar there Beneath those trees lie soldier lads Whose sons will answer for their Dads.  To add to what you have learned before, Say- Do the Russians want a war?”

From the stand point of 1969 when the collection was published, just twenty four years after the end of the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, when the USSR lost 20 million dead, and every community had its own war memorial, it was easy to see the honesty in that poem.

But now, with the Russian Federation flexing its muscles in many different ways, it seems an anachronism, and echoes the comments about Yevtushenko whose poetry is described as “imbued with a sense of civic responsibility” who was “an ardent champion of revolutionary ideas and principles”. *

And looking again at the small collection of Soviet Science Fiction which was published in the early 1970s, is to be reminded that unlike some Western Science Fiction, these stories are all optimistic, focusing on how human beings working together and applying science will create a better world.

Of course we know that that vision of progress as applied across the old Communist bloc was flawed.  It was shot through with technological short cuts which were environmentally disastrous and was achieved at great human cost.

That said, our own Industrial Revolution, driven by the newly emerging capitalistic mode of production which was based on the exploitation of the workforce, assisted by the Slave Trade and conducted a time when only a handful of men had the vote.

At which point someone will mutter ....... and the point is?

To which I can say, there is no point, no lasting message other than that history is messy and sometimes what you thought would be a better way to order the world doesn't quite hack it.

Although the idea of a planet where people are treated equally, are respected and have the material means to live a life of their choice, free from war, tyranny, disease and hunger seems a good one to me.

Location; Stasi Museum, Berlin,

Pictures; from Stasi Museum, Berlin courtesy  of Peter Topping

* Fifty Soviet Poets, 1969, Progress Press, Moscow, page 176

A faded sign, a racecourse and a thank you to Trev

Now I like the way I pretty much learn something new about Salford everyday.

And today I had Trev Ryan to thank, who picked up on the story of the Pendleton Co-op which I posted and sent this picture with the comment, “Love this old place... and facing it covered up by a road sign is an old Castle Irwell racetrack sign.”

There will be plenty who know the story of the Manchester Racecourse and in particular its time at Castle Irwell which dated back to the middle of the 19th century and again from 1896 down to 1963 and for those who don’t someone has done a good job of covering it which just leaves me to make an appeal for people to come forward with memories and their own pictures.**

Location; Salford

Picture; faded sign for Manchester Racecourse, 2017, courtesy of Trev Ryan

*Celebrating some more of Salford’s finest buildings ........ the Pendleton Co-operative and Industrial Society, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/celebrating-some-more-of-salfords.html

**Manchester Racecourse, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Racecourse

Views from around Victoria Bridge ........ that other place

We will all have our own special bridge across the river that takes you from Salford into Manchester.

I will stand on the fence and just say I like them all, from the old Victorian ones to those exciting swirling footbridges which seem to keep popping up.

That said I do like Victoria Bridge, because it affords pretty impressive views of the new developments on both sides of the water.

Now whatever you think of those new developments they are going up a pace, and while I miss the earlier Victorian and Edwardian ones, some of these had pretty much had their day.

And it is also worth noting that the Victorians showed scant regard for what had been there before.

So here is the first of Andy Robertson’s new series on Views from Victoria Bridge,

Location; Salford

Picture; looking out of Salford 2017 from the collection of Andy Robertson

“A thick fog hung over our city as we wended our way to the Refuge”* ....... more on the work of the charity

Anyone who grew up in one of our cities in the first half of the last century will remember those thick fogs which muffled all sounds and pretty much obscured everything.

Albert Square, 1910

They would appear without warning, blanket the city and leave a reminder of their passing in that dirty smear of particles that could be found on your clothes, in your homes and above all on your lungs.

But as deadly as these fogs were I have to say as a child I found them fascinating offering as they did an opportunity for adventure and that promise in term time they might lead to an early school closure.

They were the subject of numerous novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries allowing Mr Hyde, and a variety of real and imagined villains to stalk the streets unleashing all manner of violence on anyone out and about.

And briefly they made it just that bit more difficult for those wanting to locate the army of destitute children.

But that didn’t deter the work of the Refuge which was engaged finding these children, offering a bed for the night and in the long term giving them life changing alternatives to an existence on the streets which might in time  lead to crime and much worse.

One such search was recorded by Leonard K Shaw on November 28 1872.*

York Street looking towards Charles Street

He was the secretary of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges which had started in 1870 with the mission of giving homeless boys a bed for the night and breakfast before turning them back out onto the streets.

It soon became apparent that the scale of destitute children was much bigger and led to an expansion of the charity’s work into a range of activities including permanent homes, vocational training and seaside holidays.

It also worked  through the courts to prosecute neglectful and abusive parents, campaigned for rated some measures to protect young people trading on the streets and briefly migrated children to Canada.

But during that expansion the Refuge remained a place where destitute boys and girls could be given that bed with no questions asked.

Their plight and the work done by the Charity were publicised in a number of ways of which the short pamphlets are one of the most interesting.

They were a mix of stories, religious comments, adverts for collecting boxes and collecting cards.   The pamplet’s sold for one half penny or 4d per dozen.

The stories revolved around case studies which might describe the awful conditions some of the children were in with the success stories which were the happy outcome of the charity’s intervention.

India House

So on that November night the team had found three lads awaiting admission for the remaining   2 beds.

One boy was admitted straight away.

The other two were brothers, whose father was dead and their mother was serving her prison 5th prison sentence and boys had been sleeping in a yard at the back of one of the worst houses in the Charter Street neighbourhood.

Even now, nearly 150 years after Mr Shaw described the plight of the two boys, what they had experienced shocks you.

And of course that in part was the purpose of the pamphlets which carried titles like Tim and Joe, The Living Dead, Night and Morning and the Cry of Children.

But these were not chocolate box accounts where the stories always turned out well.  Some of the children died and others were beyond help.

In a telling passage in Night and Morning Mr Shaw observed that “groups of idle vagrant boys and girls from about 15 to 18 years of age on  Angel Street, and Charter Street, few of them can read and write, many have been in prison all of them are growing up idle, vagrant, godless too late for them to be saved”

Now from the research I have already done on the charity, who were fully committed to helping young people that was almost a cry of despair.

Oxford Road, 1910

But the work continued as did the fund raising from letters and appeals through the media, to those pamphlets and of course the “before and after” pictures of young people who passed through the charity.

It is easy to be cynical about the pictures and question the degree to which some at least were manipulated images, but the weight of evidence from newspaper accounts, the charity’s annual reports and the letters from the young people support the idea that children were lifted from awful conditions.

Sadly today even in the developed world, poverty its power to stunt the lives of young people is still all too apparent, even if the pea soupers of the past have vanished.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Albert Square, 1910 and York Street looking towards Charles Street, India House, and Oxford Road, 1910 Pierre Adolphe Valette

* Night and Morning, Leonard K Shaw 1872

A wartime photograph

There is something about this photograph that draws you in.

This is John, Annie and Nora Garvey and we must be sometime near the end of the Great War.

Nora was born in 1915 so I think this must be 1917 or perhaps even 1918.

John by then will have been 30 and Annie 28.  They had been married at St Thomas’s in Pendleton and Annie had worked at one of the local cotton mills.

The photograph is one of those standard posed pictures that professional photographers went in for with studio props and often a backdrop.

But what makes this one all the more interesting are the poses and expressions on the faces of Annie and John.

He stares directly into the camera while she looks off to the left.

It may just be that Annie’s attention has been caught at the moment the picture was taken.  Perhaps the assistant dropped something.

Or this picture was one of a series and this was the one which was never meant to be released.

But photographs cost money and I doubt John and Annie wanted an also run in the collection.

So this picture was the one they chose and I can’t help feeling that while she looks a little distant he has an air of melancholy about him.

Of course we will never really know.  Nor at this stage can I say for certain when our picture was taken.

In time I hope we will know more about his military record, including where he served and which regiment that in turn might bring us closer to a date for the picture.

Pictures; Mr & Mrs Garvey and their daughter Nora, courtesy of Alan

Stories behind the book ....... nu 3 beginning to challenge assumptions

Being homeless, with nowhere to sleep but the streets, and risking all sorts of danger has become commonplace again in Britain.

Newly admitted to the Refuge, date unknown

It is something I thought had vanished but it is back and that of course makes me think of those young people who endured the same experiences on the streets of the twin cities just a century and half ago.

Of course it would be easy to categorise them and look for simple explanations, but history is rarely simple.

It is instead messy and  the explanations for why so many children were destitute and equally the value of what was done to help them is wide open to interpretation.

For those with an interest in British Home Children there are the conflicting arguments about the practice of migration and the miss match between those young people who went on to have happy and successful lives and those who had been mistreated and abused, and were permanently scarred as a result.

In the case of my own great uncle who was migrated by the Derby Guardians in the care of Middlemore  in 1914 he was I suspect already “damaged goods” having spent most of his childhood and early teenage years in care.

From admission book of the Derby Union, 1913

Along with grandfather who was a year younger he was deemed “out of control” and was assigned to a training ship which was really a naval boot camp, but for reasons we have yet to discover he was offered Canada instead.

He was sixteen when he made the journey, making him older than most.

So I am not surprised that he failed to settle on any of the three farms he was placed, finally running away from the last, changing his name, lying about his age, and enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915.

Nor did he settle to army life and on several occasions was disciplined and underwent a series of courts martial.

Not perhaps what we think of as a typical BHC or for that matter the most sympathetic, which points to that simple observation that we should always be wary of generalizations when writing history.

Emma before admission, 1913

And as I dig deeper in to the work of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges the more questions I want to ask, some which challenge my own preconceived ideas about the role of charities in general and the work of children’s charities in the late 19th century.

The most obvious question is just how these young people ended up on the street.

In 1881 Mr Shaw of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges commented that during the course of the charity’s work, on just  “one night 250 children were found on the streets between the hours of nine and twelve.  

Out of that number 50 cases were investigated, and it was found that 33 were between the ages of 5 and 10, and 17 between 10 and 13.  Thirty-four had both parents living, 16 had lost both father and mother and the number of deserving parents was only 9.”

The figures are appalling but the question that leaps off the page is what was deemed a "deserving parent" and what therefore constituted an “undeserving parent.”

Emma after admission, 1913

Now I think we can all be quite confident about what is meant but it is important to uncover the exact  criteria, because that will help inform the search for the causes of child destitution and the growing role of the State in intervening on behalf of the child.

And in the same way those who did surrender their children into the arms of the charities were not all feckless nor in taking them was the Manchester charity t driven by its own lofty opinion of what constituted the needs of child.

More over it was  sensitive to changing events, and so at the outbreak of the Great War it moved quickly “to receive motherless children whose fathers had been called to the front and already quite a number of such children had been received into one of the homes.”**

And three years later noting “the increase in juvenile crime in the city, ........ urged that extension of the system of probation [which] would be productive of good results.”***

It was a policy which reflected its enlightened attitude to juvenile crime stretching back four decades.

The print room, training for a life of self sufficiency, 1913

So as the research continues I have gained a greater awareness of the issues surrounding child care in the last quarter of the 19th century and come to understand the humanity of those working in the field.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust

* Juvenile Offenders, Deputation to the Home Secretary, Manchester Guardian, January 14, 1881,

** The Strangeways Refuge Activity in 16 Branches, Manchester Guardian, October 30, 1914

*** Work for Boys and Girls The Strangeways Refuge and Homes, Manchester Guardian, May 11, 1917

One year in story of the Manchester and Salford Children’s Charity

Now it is very easy to overlook that for some of the children’s charities, the migration of young people was a small part of their work.

Outside the Refuge HQ, 1900

The Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge was responsible for helping thousands of young people during its first fifty years and of these only a comparatively small number crossed the Atlantic and in some years none were sent.

So in 1886 at the annual meeting of the Refuge, the secretary reported that in the previous year 41 children had been migrated to Canada.

But he added that a large home beside the Orphan House had been given “unasked for” at  Cheetham Hill  “where they proposed establishing a training home, which they expected would enable them to rescue from misery here and place in bright Canadian houses some sixty more children each year than they had ever been able to do before.”*

Set against this work were the other activities which included the Central Refuge which was a receiving point and had 115 bed, a home for little orphan children George Street Cheetham Hill which accommodated 145 children, centres providing vocational training to  31 boys and 42 girls.

The newly opened opened Boys’ Rest and Lodging House in Angel Meadow which was one of the worst areas in the city had been very successful.  The “total number of times the beds were occupied  was 4,554, or an average of 13 boys for every night in the year.  175 children have enjoyed the advantage of the Sea-side at Lytham.  The training ship Indefatigable  continues a very useful adjunct to the work of the Refuge as an out let for such of the boys who have been sent there during the past year makes a total of 148.”

The Caxton Brigade, date unknown

And the Refuge continued to have great success with the “The three brigades  - the Caxton, the News, and the Messenger which had given employment to 297 boys during the year.”

And at the core was the Shelter for Wandering Children on Major Street which could take 210 young people.  It was “open day and night and 4984 meals been supplied and the beds occupied by 1,648 times during the year.”

The charity also ran Christmas parties, campaigned for better regulations of children selling goods in the streets and intervened in the courts on behalf of young people who were subject to parental neglect or abuse, and even offered refuge and help to prisoner newly released.

It was an extensive range of activities which continued to expand during the rest of the century.

The yard outside the old Refuge, circa 1870s

The charity suspended the migration of young people with the outbreak of the Great War and never resumed taking the decision that peace time reconstruction might be assisted if the young remained in Briton.

The reports are a fascinating insight not only into the work but also the growing interest in increased intervention on behalf of young people, ranging from calls to better control “street hawking” to a greater emphasis on good practical vocational training.

Along the way there are the bigger debates like that around migration with the Refuge participating in the 1910 conference held to explore ways of “introducing order and uniformity into the work of emigrating people from this country to the colonies.” Nearly 50 agencies were represented the discussions ranged over the validity of the policy to the practicalities.

Earlier in 1905 the charity had become very concerned at accusations concerning the treatment of children in Canada, but that is for another time.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/

* Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges, Manchester Guardian, February 17 1886

In Piccadilly Gardens on a warm sunny day in the 1950s

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing.

Now I say that because all too often it leads you down a rosy sweet scented view of the past which can be misleading and cheapens people’s experiences.

My son’s are forever telling me with a hint of regret that they envy the fact that I grew up in the 1960s.

They point to the music, the clothes, the films and even the poetry and suggest that it was a decade where all was possible.

Well yes some of it is just about right, but for every great group and powerful song there was also plenty forgettable attempts at the Top Ten, and much the same might be said of the fashions, the movies and a lot of the poetry.

But with all that said I do sometimes slip into that rosy sweet scented smell of the past, and no more so than when I have been thinking about Piccadilly Gardens, as it was, say in the September of 1969* when I first came across the place.

I can still remember sitting with a girlfriend scanning the mid day edition of the Evening News for flats before rushing off to the telephone boxes which surrounded the gardens to make that all important call to the landlord.  Or just meeting up for something to eat in the sunshine and watching the pigeons, well aware that we only had a short time to swap romantic banter.

Now you have to be of a certain age to remember the old Piccadilly Gardens at their best, which of course means that I do.

There were few places in the city centre back in the late 60s and early 70s where you could go and spend the dinner hour on a warm and sometimes hot midday.

From just after twelve till about two in the afternoon, the park benches in the sunken gardens would be full of people.  Here could be found office workers on their dinner break, exhausted shoppers and during the school holidays a fair number of children with or without a parent.

And despite the traffic and the bus station the place was a pleasant haven of relative peace which from spring into autumn was a mass of flowers in those formal displays so loved by municipal gardeners.

I was reminded again of what it had been like when I came across a delightful picture posted on facebook by Paul Ohagan of his mum and some friends.

It is one of those wonderful family snaps which perfectly capture a carefree day out in the city sometime in the late 1950s.

We all have them tucked away in an album or hidden away in a draw and they vividly bring it all back.

In this case I think we are on the bus station side of the gardens, looking up towards Portland Street.  The hedges surrounding the park have yet to grow to the point where they acted as an effective screen against the noise and intrusion of the busy streets.  Judging by the number of people already sitting on the benches we must be sometime in the middle of the day.

And I wonder what the rest of the day holds for our four.  But then such speculation runs the risk of being as fruitless as a bout of nostalgia.

So I think I will leave it at that.  Four young women smiling happily at the camera on a day when the sun was shining, and the grass green

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Piccadilly%20Gardens

Picture; Piccadilly Gardens from Leisure and Pleasure in the Open Air, Parks Committee, Manchester Corporation 1963, courtesy of Linda Rigby and in the park on a sunny day in 1955 from the collection of Paul Ohagan

So just what could you buy at 103 Beech Road in 1969?

Now for all those who will wander down Beech Road this Sunday here is a list of the shops you could have visited almost half a century ago.

Beech Road, 2017

Of course back then it would have been pretty much just window shopping given that Sunday trading was very different from today.

In fact go back to the 1950s and buying a packet of butter, and some eggs was much more difficult.

It involved the shop keeper carefully wrapping the produce up with a warning not to tell anyone that she had sold you the food, it being a Sunday.

So one Sunday morning having bought the butter on Queens Road I left the shop feeling very guilty to walk the few hundred yards to our house on Lausanne Road.

It was the walk of fear and I spent it clutching hard the brown wrapper containing my act of illegality while all the time looking out for the local policeman to apprehend me.

Such were the joys and perils of shopping on a Sunday in 1958.

A bit more of Beech Road in 1969

And with that over and out of the way I doubt that I will be alone in saying that a full seven years after our list of 1969 shops and businesses I remember buying cakes in Richardson's, looking into the window of the draper's shop next door, calling in at Joy Seal's, and passing the time with Mr Henderson.

And a bit of Beech Road in 2017

All of which just leaves the regular trips to the Trevor and the odd fish supper from Mr Chan's.

And that's it ...... if you want more take your own trip of nostalgia.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Beech Road, 2017, from the collection of Roger Shelley and in 1969 from Slater’s Directory of Manchester & Salford, 1969 courtesy of Andy Robertson

By the Cenotaph watching the buses go by sometime in the 1960s

Now as we move towards the official re dedication of the Cenotaph in its new position outside the Town Hall I think it is appropriate to look back on the site as it was in the 1960s.

It is a scene many of us will remember.

The Ref has yet to be cleaned, the buses still display their Corporation red livery and the tram line and stop are yet to be built.

In fact look closely and behind the Midland Hotel the shape of Central Station can just be made out and for those who like train stories, there was a service that took you direct to Chorlton and onto Didsbury.

And for those with an even keener sense of history, the so called cafe society had yet to happen.

So if you wanted a glass of wine or pint of beer you had to wait till the pubs opened at 11, and remember that last orders was at 3, added to which I doubt that there was much of a choice in wine.

And as for sitting outside and slowly watching the city pass as you sipped your drink that like the metro was not yet how we did things.

What we did do was something which was called coffee, had the colour of coffee,and was a pale imitation of the real thing.

Of course  if you were really unlucky there was Camp Coffee which I have to say I briefly had a flirtation with but would never today share with the Italian side of the family.

Picture; courtesy of Sally Dervan

Who remembers this Beech Road?

One of the things I like about collections of street photographs is how you can sometimes follow the photographer down the road.

 In the digital collection of Manchester Libraries there are some fine examples from the 1950s and 60s where the person behind the camera has meticulously recorded collections of houses and shops, property by property.

 They are today a wonderful snap shot of Chorlton fifty years ago.

So here is another of Beech Road from my old friend Tony Walker taken around 1980. One early Sunday morning Tony went out on to Beech Road and took a series of pictures. This is the second of the ones he took that day and judging from the angle of the picture was taken on the corner of Beech and Chequers.

It is a remarkable picture in that so much of what you can see has now gone.

There has been an off license of sorts on the corner since the beginning of the last century and while the shop is now a deli it does still sell wines.

Beyond was the grocery, a hairdresser and jutting out from the alley another grocers shop, Muriel and Richard’s green grocers and the piano shop.

At the bottom was the Oven Door Bakery in what are now numbers 68 and 70 Beech Road while the old Coop building was yet to become the home of the gift shop, Thai restaurant and Whole Food shop and instead much of it was given over to Strippo who stripped doors for under a tenner

Now I remember Joy Seal who ran the chemist. Her husband told me how when they took the shop over in the 1950s they first had to demolish the huge ovens at the back which had been used to bake bread.

It is still the chemists but the butcher to the right, and the Post Office to the left have gone as have the second hand furniture place and J. Johnny’s hard ware shop. J.Johnny's was a wonderful place where you could buy everything from a scredriver to a plank of wood.

What I particularly liked was that with some items you never paid the same price. On three different occassions I paid three different prices for having some knives sharpened, but in the end I came out evens.

I suppose the only concession to the advance of the new Beech Road was the brief appearance of an amusement arcade next to the post office and the gift shop which had been the grocers beside Thresher’s off license. Neither lasted very long but was a hint of what was to come.

In some ways this period was an unhappy time. More and more of the old conventional retail out lets were closing and it was unclear what would take their place.

These traditional shops could not compete with either the supermarket or the growing trend for home freezers.

So while Safeway’s planned to move to bigger premises by Albany Road and the shop in the precinct selling frozen food prospered our shops went through a lean time and the parade began to take on the appearance of a ghost town.

So the arrival of the Lead Station and the restaurant Primavera heralded a change and a renaissance which at times might now be irksome if you want basic things but has at least returned Beech Road to a thriving and buzzing place.

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker

Raising the money ....... lifting the lives of Manchester and Salford’s less fortunate children

Now the deeper I burrow into the story of the Together Trust for the new book the more impressed I am with the history of this charity.*

Savings box, circa 1900

It started in 1870 offering beds and breakfasts to destitute boys who were found on the streets of Manchester and Salford.

Within a decade it had expanded to include residential accommodation for both boys and girls, vocational training centres, and holidays by the sea.

 It also  campaigned to regulate the employment of young people as street traders and intervened in the courts to protect children from neglectful and abusive parents.

By 1905 the charity was responsible for 192 young people in its Central Refuge and Home, 47 at the Working Youths Home & Institute, 126 in the Boys’ Emigration Training Home and 112 at the Streets Boys’ Training Home.

In addition there were 64 girls at the Elder Girls’ Training Home and Laundry, 112 young people at the Orphan Homes for Little Children, another 59 at the Home for Crippled & Incurable Children and 26 in the Home for Motherless Little Girls.

The Open Day Shelter had received 391 youngsters, 2,583 had had a week’s holiday in Southport and another 231 had spent time at the Lytham Seaside Home.

Summer Camp Appeal, early 20th century

The charity also provided work through its Messenger and Shoe Black Brigades for 225 lads, emigrated 66 to Ontario and along with its work at the Police Court Mission held a daily drop in centre for prisoners released from prison.**

It is an impressive list and of course cost a lot of money.

Some of that funding came from donations and bequests.  Mrs Rylands left £2000 in her will to the Refuge in 1908, Mrs Hyland £30 and Frederick Rothwell £500.

And then there were the appeals to the public which came in many different guises and were as imaginative as any that charities today come up with.

These included the savings boxes which came with a picture on the side of a group of “ragged children” and the request to “Help the Poor Manchester Kiddies.” 

Emma before Admission to the Refuge, 1913

My own favourite is the slot machine which was fastened to the wall and dispensed pencils which carried name of the charity and were marketed as “a cabinet to help a child.”

Foremost as now were the appeals through the media which included letters requesting donations and adverts.

And just like today the charity was aware that what worked was a clear explanation of what your money could buy.

So in 1911 the treasurer, Mr Peers wrote to the Manchester Guardian that it would cost £2000 to run the annual “Summer Camp for Poor City Boys’” which amounted to £60 a week, or six shillings for each boy “covering railway fare and maintenance...... [providing each boy with] four good meals a day and time filled with games of all kinds, rambles on the shores and sand hills, and bathing in the sea.”***

Later in the year there were appeals for the Christmas parties which were later followed up by reports on how successful the parties had been.

These were supplemented by regular appeals in the charity’s own newspaper and by pamphlets which carried harrowing stories of children found destitute on the streets along with success stories. They were sold for one half penny or 4d per dozen and carried adverts for collecting boxes and collecting cards.

The stories could be both painful to read and uplifting.  So in the case of Tim and Joe The Living Dead, when first encountered the boys  “fought , used bad language told more falsehoods than truth, were dishonest, dirty, and almost naked” but when shown kindness were transformed.

Emma after admission to the Refuge, 1913

And in Night and Morning published in 1872 the full horror of life on the streets was described with ”groups of idle vagrant boys and girls from about 15 to 18 years of age [of which]  few can read and write, many have been in prison and all of them are growing up idle, vagrant, and godless.”

But the overriding message was that with financial support the charity could turn around the lives of young people who through no fault of their own were on the streets or at the mercy of neglectful and abusive parents.

And to this end like other children’s organizations, the Refuge made much of the before and after image of a child admitted into their care, along with the success stories.

Some may be cynical of such advertising methods but they were based on reality and the message did work bringing in money which changed lives.


Location; Manchester

As ever, a special thanks to Liz Sykes the archivist of the Together Trust

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/

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

** Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges, Manchester Guardian April 5 1905

*** Poor Lads at the seaside Mr. J. Peers Ellison, Manchester Guardian, May 27, 1911

A bit of history about to be revealed ........... the day Andy Robertson wandered into Eccles nu 1 two years ago

Now like Andy Robertson who took the picture I am intrigued by this row of shops which are clearly late additions.

I first visited them back in April and decided on a revisit.

And here I confess I am being lazy.  I should go looking in the directories for a clue to when they were built but instead I shall wait and see if anyone can up with the answer.

It is a sort of competition but there are no prizes other than that you have added to what Andy and I know about
Liverpool Road.

And with in a couple of hours of posting the story Steve added "looking at old maps, they were still residences with front gardens in 1893 but extended buildings with no front yards in 1908."

So now I guess it will be a trawl of the local rate books to check out who owned the properties between 1893 and 1908 and track down the name of the enterprising owner or developer.

Nor was this the end because a little after 2 this afternoon Alan Owen posted these two images of Liverpool Road the first of which clearly shows the shops in the background.

I am guessing the first will be from the early decades of the 20th century and the other perhaps a bit later.

Like all old pictures the fun and the lessons are in the detail.

For all of us too young to remember the old Corporation trams there in the middle of the road are the tracks, the stone sets and much more.

Which just leaves me to thank Steve and Alan Owen and offer them star billing in the Hall of Fame.

Location; Liverpool Road, Eccles

Picture; row of shops, 2016, from the collection of Andy Robertson amd Liverpool Road a long time ago courtesy of Alan Owen

Stories behind the book ....... nu 2 digging deep and working together

Now all books are a collaboration and that is particularly true of this one which is being written to mark the 150th anniversary of the Together Trust.

Central Refuge, Francis Street

It began in 1870 as an organisation simply to rescue destitute boys from the streets of Manchester and Salford, give them a bed for the night and a warm meal.

But within two decades and a bit it had expanded to offer permanent homes for both boys and girls, set up vocational schools, provided holidays by the sea and intervened in the courts to protect children from abusive and neglectful parents and begun to campaign to improve the working conditions of young people.

Charles Gibson

It was as the Lord Mayor of Manchester said a mission which “took people from the lowest portions of the city, educated them, and improved their surroundings without in any way pauperising them.  They gave them a home life, and enabled them to make men and women of themselves.”*

Nor were the children stigmatized by having to wear a uniform and although the charity was founded on Christian principles these were not a requisite for admission.

These broad outlines I knew, but as ever it is the detail which makes for the stories.

And here starts the collaboration because from the outset it was to be a joint venture with Liz Sykes who is the archivist for the Trust.

Liz has a very successful blog which focuses on the history of the charity and one that I have raided for ideas, information and stories. **

And as Canadian colleagues have testified she has also been very willing to help them trace family members who passed through the care of the organization.

Caxton Brigade

Liz has provided a timetable of events, along with suggestions for archive material to look at and together we have worked out how the book will be divided up to cover those 150 years.

All of which leaves me to continue trawling the actual media coverage of the first fifty years of the Trust’s work.

Each year it presented an annual report at a meeting usually held in the Town Hall and attended by supporters.

Those reports make interesting reading not only because they describe in some detail the work of the Trust but also they allow me to explore the motives and attitudes of those engaged in the day to day administration as well as those who supported the charity.

And here comes the first challenge to my preconceived views of Victorian charities.  A bit of me was dismissive of wealthy “do-gooders” and a little outraged that more wasn’t being done by the authorities, which in turn led to a general criticism of a system which allowed so many children to live on the streets.

Musical Party, 1895

But that is to be unhistorical about a period of history and to ignore the prevailing ideology which was only just beginning to move away from “the night watchman’s state” where government was limited in what it should do.

There were those that criticised the exiting way of doing things and some of these were also amongst those who were associated with the charity and it is their views that are coming through from the research.

Like Mrs Archibald Mackirdy who while acknowledging the policy of migrating some children to Canada was “sorry that so many had to be sent away” commenting it “would be better if they could have homes and parents in England.”

All of which is making me review my own attitudes to the work of charities, which is always a good thing, and of course along the way adding to the book.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust

* Saving the Children, Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges Work, Manchester Guardian, December 7, 1907

**Getting Down and Dusty, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

*** Saving the Children, Work of the Boys ‘and Girls’ Refuges, Manchester Guardian, April 12 1912

Walking the canal

Now every so often I like a canal story. 

Over the years I have wanders along the tow paths of quite a few armed with Bradshaw’s canal guide which predated his railway one.

So here because Andy got there first are a couple of his.

And as you do I will leave you to work out exactly where he was.

Location, somewhere in Salford

Pictures; Canal photographs I wish I had taken, 2016 from the collection of Andy Robertson

Pictures that capture the moment........

A short series from the camera of Andrew Robertson, which record the surge of new developments across the city.

Of course similar projects are altering the skyline of cities from Salford to Leeds, and on to Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast, but these two  are our city.

Location; Manchester



Picture; the Owen Street development, 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson

Growing up in Chorlton part one, the Rec, Acres Crack and the Bone Man

Bob on Beech Road in the 1950s

I am back with a friend yesterday from whom has come a whole raft of new stories about Chorlton in the 1940s and 50.

Bob Jones was born in 1944 and grew up on Kingshill Road, attended Oswald Road School and has vivid memories of playing in the Rec, and the local farms and shops.

We joked that a test of someone born here or with long memories of the place is that at some point the Rec and Acres Crack feature in the conversation along with the Queen and Paisley Laundry, the Palais de Luxe and the distinction between old and new Chorlton.

Now I am not going to steal Bob’s thunder, but I shall just leave you with these tantalising glimpses of growing up in Chorlton in the 1950s.

Back then at the age of six Bob did a part time job which involvedthe collection the milk from Higginbotham’s farm on the green and later for Mr Neil the butcher at the bottom of Beech Road close to the Trevor.

His father ran a pet shop in that first little shop next to the Beech and each week one of his jobs was to hand over any animals that had been put down to the Bone Man.

All of which is enough for now.

Picture; Bob outside Mr Neil’s shop sometime in the 1950s, from the collection of Bob Jone.

Pictures that capture the moment........

A short series from the camera of Andrew Robertson, which record the surge of new developments across the city.

Of course similar projects are altering the skyline of cities from Salford,  Leeds, and Cardiff, along with Glasgow and Belfast, but this is one from our city.

Location; Manchester

Picture; the Excelsior development, down by the Duke’s Canal, 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson

With the army in Grove Park near Eltham in 1916

Now at first glance there is little to connect these two pictures other than that the date for both are 1916 and the place is given as Grove Park.

So to the detective bit. 

The A.C.S refers to the Army Service Corps which supplied everything the army in the field needed from food and equipment to ammunition.

“Using horsed and motor vehicles, railways and waterways, the ASC performed prodigious feats of logistics and were one of the great strengths of organisation by which the war was won.

At the height of the war the A.C.S., numbered 10,547 officers and 315,334 men."*

So here are a collection of A.C.S lorries at what is described as Lewisham Grove  A.C.S., Workshop.

Now that may well put it at the A.C.S army base at Grove Park. 

This had been a workhouse built by the Board of Guardians of the Greenwich Union between 1899-1902 after they had been refused permission to expand the site at Vanburgh Hill.**

It had accommodation for 815 inmates but because of changes to the system of relief which provided for out-relief the new workhouse remained empty until 1904

At the beginning of the Great War it was requisitioned by the Army Service Corps and used as a mobilization training camp, and in 1918 became a TB hospital.

And so back to  the postcards which are a reminder that the postcards companies were up to printing any image that they thought would sell, and given the time such military pictures were a good bet.

Pictures; from Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm

* The Long, Long Trail, The British Army in the Great War of 1914-1918 http://www.1914-1918.net/

**The The Lost Hospitals of London, http://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/grovepark.html

The Victorians & the Reinvention of The Italian Renaissance ..... the talk

Now here is one to do.

Thursday 27 September 2018   6:30pm - 8:30pm

The Portico Library, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester

The Victorians & the Reinvention of The Italian Renaissance

Speaker: Emma Marigliano

From Giotto to Michelangelo, Dante to Petrarca, Florence to Rome, Italy's Renaissance left an indelible mark on the Victorians. Former special collections librarian, Emma Marigliano, explores how British artists and poets reinterpreted and mythologised Italian culture for the British public.

Italian nibbles and wine provided after the talk.

£5 members of Portico and Dante
£6 non-members / £4 students and unemployed

Booking required: dante@newfuture.org

OR with the Portico Library tel. 0161 2366785  events@theportico.org.uk      


Booking also possible with Eventbrite:
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-victorians-the-reinvention-of-the-italian-renaissance-tickets-47419604313

And that is about it.

SOCIETA' DANTE ALIGHIERI – MANCHESTER
Il mondo in italiano – Promoting Italian Culture in the world since 1889
Email: dante@newfuture.org    
Website: www.dantemanchester.org.uk
https://twitter.com/LaDanteMCR/

 Picture; painting and detail, The Birth of Venus, 1484 until 1485 Sandro Botticelli  (1445–1510), ource/Photographer Adjusted levels from File:Sandro Botticelli - La nascita di Venere - Google Art Project.jpg, originally from Google Art Project. Compression Photoshop level 9.