The invitation from the Northern Quarter ....... and a mystery

There are still a few of those odd little passages and open doors in the Northern Quarter which beckon you in with the promise of something different and a bit edgy.

Tib Street, 2023

And so, it is with the passage which leads off from Tib Street, down a narrow way opening out onto a small court.

With a degree of imagination and with the light fading fast you could conjure up one of those places beloved of Dickens where few ventured who were not local.

Once there were plenty of them and anyone who was a stranger might well regret letting their curiosity get to them and walk through.

In the 1870s the Manchester Guardian reported on heaps of these places, many of which were off Deansgate and whose reputation for criminality and low life was such that the Police seldom ventured there alone.*

I doubt that our passageway is that dangerous flanked as it is by a florist and a café .

Today it it leads to  the rear of the Freemount pub which fronts Oldham Street.

But what is interesting is that it shows up on Adshead’s map of Manchester dated 1851.

Tib Street, and The King Inn, 1850

And then as now it led to a pub which back then was the King Inn whose landlord was George Todman.

Now I have become interested in Mr. Todman, because he like me was from Eltham in what was then Kent.  

He was 69, married to Mary who was 55 and  was born in Nottingham.  

They shared the property with eight others, three of whom were their children along with a grandchild, a servant, a lodger and on the night of the census a visitor and a “child”

The visitor was Rebecca Stevens from Derby who gave her age as 22, while the child, George Smith was just 8 years old and was from Manchester.

Just how young George got to be living with the Todman’s is unclear but intrigues me, and of course provides that bit of mystery which deserves more research.

As for the pub it commanded an annual estimated rental value of £120 which marks it off as a going concern and was owned by a “Hobson”.

Thomas Street, 2023

And that just leaves that other “invitation to the Norther Quarter which is on Thomas Street and amounts to an entrance to a gym in the cellar of the building.

Location; the Northern Quarter

Pictures; that mysterious passageway, 58 Tib Street, 2023 and total sports, Thomas Street, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

*Walking the streets of Manchester in 1870, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Walking%20Manchester%20in%201870

** 75 Oldham Street, 1851 census, Enu 1r 19 Market Street and 75, Oldham Street Manchester Rate Books, 1852