Now it is odd how you can be drawn to someone from the past who less than a decade ago I wouldn’t have wasted any time on.
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| Mr. Frank's property empire, 1836 from the Poll Book |
And so it is with William Frank, who was a small-time property developer whose empire seems to have begun with two streets in Little Ireland in the 1830s.
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| Frank Street and William Street, 1849 |
For those who don’t know, Little Ireland was that notorious slum, much written about by Dr. Kay, Frederick Engels and a heap of social observers and historians.
I first came across the two streets over 30 years ago, by which time they had been swallowed up by a factory and were relegated to access points into the building.
But once they were part of a complex of streets off Great Marlborough Street bounded on two sides by the River Medlock and dominated by Frank Street Mill, a gasometer, an iron foundry and boiler houses.
In the 1980s when I first came across these two ghost streets, I was mildly interested in how they became known as Frank Street and William Street, but never took it any further. Much later I speculated that perhaps they were named after a builder or speculator, but again left it at that.
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| Great Marlborough Street, with our two streets to the left, 2019 |
But more recently I went looking for a Mr. Frank and Mr. William and discovered they were the same person. Added to which his portfolio of 10 properties which he added to, conferred on him a Parliamentary vote in the newly reformed House of Commons.
At which point I still maintained he was like Mr. Gradgrind a hard-faced man of property, profiting on the backs of the workers.
Now he may well have been, but speculators and slum landlords are also worthy of research if only to give a rounded picture of the time.
So, Mr. Frank was born in Guisborough in 1788, died and was buried in 1868 in the old Manchester General Cemetery, and shares his resting place with two others who were mostly likely not related.
And that is about it. He was married but his wife was dead by 1851, and there are only two references to where he lived. So in 1836 I can track him to Baxter Street in Hulme, where he lived for at least four years and in 1851 to 99 Duke Street which was just around the corner.
By then he was a lodger in the home of John Hope who was a warehouseman.
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| Baxter Street and Duke Street, 1849 |
All of which is hardly a story of unparalleled wealth, because despite adding to his portfolio he appears not to have had a vast number of houses. And calculating from the rents we know he charged I suspect his total income from all the houses was about £60 a year.
But that fits with what we know was going on in the first decades of the 19th century where small time businessmen built a few houses and rarely ended up with anymore.
Certainly, on both Frank Street and William Street, there were a number of property owners who may have built their own houses on the two streets or bought from William Frank.
The Rate Books do not record anything more on his empire, and as yet don’t even have a reference to Baxter Street.
Nor have the other usual official documents been kind to him, so apart from his record of baptism there is nothing.
And to add to the yawning gap, there are no photographs of Baxter Street and none of Duke Street that I can confidently date to the 1850s. Alas anyone who goes looking for them will be disappointed, for while Leaf Street still exists, Baxter and Duke Streets vanished long ago.
All of which just leaves a certain Samuel Frank who was living on Plymouth Grove in 1861, who may have been the son of William Frank, but as yet the trial is confusing.
So all still to look for.
Location; Chorlton Upon Medlock and Hulme,
Pictures; William and Frank Street, 1849, and Baxter Street, and Duke Streetfrom the OS of Manchester & Salford, 1849, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ extract from the Poll Book for South Lancashire, 1836, and Great Marlborough Street, 2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson
*”Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children". Mr. Gradgrind, School Inspector,Hard Times, Charles Dickens, 1854
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