"Sellers of Sleep" .............

Angel Street, 1901

Sometimes a phrase captures your imagination, and so it is with "Sellers of Sleep", which is a French, term for the owners of those properties which offer up a bed and little else.

I came across the description on a Radio 4 programme about Marseilles, and it perfectly describes those places where the poor and destitute might pay for the chance to sleep under a roof for the night.

They are of course a part of history , and can be found in Ancient Rome, Medieval London and pretty much everywhere.

And it took me back to a story I had written earlier about 44 Angel Street as I wandered down the street in the company of Samuel L Coulthurst who took a series of pictures of the people and their homes including one rare shot of the inside of number 44.

And today I am back having spent my time crawling over the census return for the same street in 1901.

The pictures reveal a row of late 18th and early 19th century houses similar to those which were going up across the city in the boom years as Manchester quickly became “the shock city of the Industrial Revolution”*

Angel Street, May 1898

The south eastern side from what is now Rochdale Road up to St Michaels’s Fields had been built in 1794 and those we can see in the pictures were there by 1819**

What makes Coulthurst’s pictures all the remarkable is that having identified the houses it is possible to discover who was living in them just a few years later.


On Angel Street in 1898
Now I would love to be able to record who exactly was living at number 44 when in the May of 1897 Samuel took his pictures, but I can’t.

The best I can do is identify who was there on the night of March 31st 1901 when the census was taken.

There were thirty two of them all male ranging from William Paxton aged 22 from Wigan who described himself as a street hawker to Thomas Reed from Ireland who at 74 was still working as a labourer.

All  them earned their living from manual work or the slightly more precarious occupation of selling on the streets.

Outside 44 Angel Street, May, 1897

Most were single although a few were widowers and while the largest single group had been born here there were those from the rest of Lancashire, as well as Ireland Scotland and even London.

I try not to be sentimental but you cannot help feeling a degree of sadness that so many of these men well past middle age were living crammed together in a common lodging house with nothing but a few possessions and the knowledge that with old age, sickness or just bad luck the future might be the Workhouse.

History of course has been unkind to them and most will have few records to stand as witness to their lives and so during the course of the next few weeks I want to track some of them and discover what their lives had been like.

In the process I think we will uncover something of that shifting population at the bottom of the income pile and the extent to which they went from one overcrowded property to another.

Sadly the identities of those staring back at us are lost and so who they were and what happened to them cannot be revealed.

Patrick Corner

But that is not completely the case, because I think standing outside number 44 with his flat cap and parcel under his arm might just be Patrick Comer whose name appears above the door and who fourteen years later is still registered at the address on the street directory.

If this is him he seems to have had a varied life.  Born in Manchester sometime around 1850 he was variously a dyer, a joiner and in 1911 was both listed a step ladder maker and a clothes agent.

He never strayed far from Angel Street and can be found on Mount Street which runs into Angel Street and on Rochdale Road close by.

As for the others they are unknown and I doubt would still have been living at number 44 by 1901.

The very nature of these lodging houses meant that the residents were short term stay but we shall see.

Most of Angel Street also consisted of lodging houses and as I trawl the census return they reveal a rich cross section of those at the margins of late 19th century Manchester life.

Inside no. 44 Angel Street, 1897

And they point to number 44 being a tad unusual in that it was entirely male orientated.  The other lodging houses had more of a mix of men and women, married as well as single and some unmarried women with young children who defiantly refused to describe themselves as either married or widowed.

It will indeed be a fascinating exploration of this part of the city.

Now that should be the end but there is just one last discovery, for I have tracked Mr Samuel L Coulhurst.***

He was a book buyer from Salford, born in 1868 and living at number 4 Tootal Road Pendelton and in the fullness of time I think he also deserves a closer look.

Location, Angel Meadow, Manchester

Pictures; Angel Street, 1900, m85543 44 Angel Street, 1897, m08360, 44 Angel Street 1898, m00195, and Angel Street common lodging house, 1897, m08365, S.L.Coulthurst, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, 1963

**The south east side of Angel Street are missing from Laurent’s map of Manchester in 1793 but are there the following year on Green’s map while the side photographed by Coulthurst show up on Johnson’s map of 1819.

 ***Angel Street, Manchester artist and photographers, Manchester housing conditions, Manchester in the 1900s, Rochdale Road, Samuel L Coulthurst

Polling day and a heap of election stories ………..

It’s that day again when you either eagerly embrace the walk to the polling station or like Brenda of Bristol exclaim, "You're joking - not another one!".*

Polling Day, 2022

Now I have always liked elections.

For four decades I actively took part in election campaigning starting in 1966 at the age of 16, and now having slowed down a tad, I still follow them.

And over the years I have written extensively on the political fortunes of the major political parties here in Chorlton.

In the early 20th century, it was a straight contest between the Conservatives and Liberals, with each alternating election victories between 1920 to 1928.

But the Liberals were on the slide. They won their last seat in 1932, saw their sitting councillor Lady Sheena Simon loose to the Conservatives the following year and after 1935 did not contest another election until after the war by which time Labour were asserting themselves as the real alternative.

St John's Polling Station, 2022

Throughout the years after the last world war Chorlton returned Tory councillors until Labour won for the first time in 1986.

And despite losing the following year, there after It was Labour the electorate returned with just a short hiccup in the early 21st century when the Lib Dems made a brief successful electoral run.

That electoral run ended in 2011 and despite their much repeated and tired slogan “only the Lib Dems can win here”, their share of the vote has fallen and in many years they have been pushed in to third place.

Voting for All Three Chorlton Ward, 1904

The weather forecast looks good and for any one who has run or participated in a campaign that it is important. 

The received knowledge was always that good weather brought out the voters, especially at teatime when families took the decision to stroll down together after work.

The counts for the Manchester lections take place on Friday morning with the results posted live as they happen on the Manchester Evening site and from the Council at Election results for Manchester City Council, 2024, https://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/500329/elections/4981/the_next_election

Leaving me just to hope for good weather and reflect that in the last few years the electoral contest in  Chorlton has gone quiet.

Once posters for all the main contenders would adorn windows, loud speaker vans would patrol the streets, and a bevy of election workers would be everywhere.

Not so this time.

And more disappointing only the Labour Party has seen fit  to treat me seriously and deliver their message and a bit about their candidates in leaflets  through the door.  

An election before now, 1980

The others haven't bothered, perhaps because they haven't the resources, or the will to seek my vote or just because they don't think I am worthy.

Even now it is not to late to get a message from them.

We shall see.

Pictures; Polling day,2022,  an appeal to vote, 1904, and a selection of election material, 1980,  from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Brenda of Bristol,2017, BBC News, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6-IQAdFU3w

*Chorlton Elections, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Elections

When is a building old?

Historical research is fun, or why else do it?  And that pretty much sums up what I did yesterday.  It started with a picture posted by one of my new chums on his facebook site.

Adge Lane takes and shares some remarkable pictures of the city and a few days ago he shared this one with us.  It is the building on the corner of Gartside Street and Quay Street and it provoked some interest and a debate about its age.

Now this is an area of the city I love and often wander back to.  Just a few minute’s walk away is the station and warehouse complex of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830, the site of St John’s church and basin of the Bridgewater Canal.

So a place full of history which brings me back to the buildings in Adge’s photo.  They look old but I had a vague memory of them being built in the 1980s and so the quest began.  The essential requirements are some maps, street directories, census returns, and if possible pictures which between us Adge and I could summon up.

I have to confess that for once I didn’t go looking in the census records but stuck to the maps and the directories.  A street or trade directory is a little like the telephone directory, it listed the streets and their residents along with the trades and businesses across the city.  In many cases the added bonus is that the occupations of people living in a house are also included and unlike the census they were published every year.

The drawback is that you only get the name of the householder, and the poor and those living in unfashionable streets are often missed off until late in the 19th century.  But they are a start and can be used alongside the maps of the city.

Now these go back well into the 18th century but the most useful are those made by Laurent in 1793 and Green in the following year and both show something at the corner of Gartside and Quay Street, as does the OS of Manchester and Salford for 1844-9.  This mid 19th century map was part of a series of “5 ft. town plans produced by the Ordnance Survey for the towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire with a population greater than 4000. They were produced between 1844 and 1849 during the time that these counties were being surveyed for the 6 inch maps. The 5 ft. Plans were important because of the need to improve urban sanitation to combat cholera and other diseases.


Only a few other towns outside this area were surveyed at 5 ft. usually when the town paid for the survey or as a training exercise as in the case of Southampton. After the publication of the Lancashire and Yorkshire maps, the county surveys were carried out at 25 inches to a mile and the town plans were produced at a 10 ft. scale. Although a smaller scale than the 10 ft. plans the 5 ft. plans contained, in many respects, more detail than did the 10 ft. plans. They show all street drains, street lamps and water pumps even the garden layout of large houses. Public buildings show internal layout and churches show the seating layout. The walls of public buildings are not drawn as a single line as on most maps but as a double line showing the thickness of the walls.”*

So this was a must to use, but the buildings listed here in 1849 don’t have the same footprint as those in Adge’s picture.  This detail from the OS shows the lower end of the row of buildings where Quay Street is joined by Young Street.





And this is where the two of us came together.  I had the OS for 1888-93 and Adge had the 1915 version and that same old footprint just kept repeating itself which was pretty much confirmed by the  satellite photo of the present buildings which are different in layout to those on the maps. But the photographic evidence was inconclusive and it was left to Adge to dig out the answer.


“I've found 70 Quay Street (the extreme left on my colour photograph) listed on Rightmove......it's described as "Mock Georgian building of traditional brick construction"...but nothing of any historical description, you may be right ...1980's sympathetic build.”

So there you have it, a nice piece of detective work by the two of us.

Pictures; of the buildings and 1915 map from the collection of Adge Lane, detail from the 1844-49 OS courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Digital Archives

The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.19 the Golden Grill

A short series on the pictures of Eltham and Woolwich in 1979.

For four decades the pictures I took of Eltham and Woolwich in the mid ‘70’s sat undisturbed in our cellar.

But all good things eventually come to light.

They were colour slides which have been transferred electronically.

The quality of the original lighting and the sharpness is sometimes iffy, but they are a record of a lost Eltham and Woolwich.

Location; Woolwich

Picture; Woolwich circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

“... the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live" The Putney Debates ....... visions of a future England in the October of 1647

There is something exciting in the idea that in the middle of a bitter Civil War in which one in four died the army of Parliament sat down to discuss the future of England after the war with the King.

Reading the discussions there is something very modern about the position of Colonel Rainsborough who argued that “... the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under...”

And this in turn reminded me of the Forces Parliaments which took place in the British Army in India and Egypt during the Second World War.  The Cairo Forces Parliament met in February 1944 and voted for the nationalization of the banks, land, mines and transport.

In their way it replicated those debates three hundred years earlier where the men who were fighting debated the future they wanted.

Now the Putney Debates and much more of the visions of the men who fought for Parliament was never taught to me.  What we got was pretty much what was produced in The Pictorial History Book*

It is an interpretation which is replicated in other children’s history book.

Part of the reason may well have been that the records of the discussions were lost until the beginning of the 20th century but I suspect the absence of this story may also be down to content.

In an age when history was still taught from top down the idea that there should be an alternative history where ordinary people wanted a share in how their country was run and believed that they had as much a right to that say as the rich and powerful was indeed a challenging one.



Pictures; An Agreement of the People, 1647, and from The Pictorial History Book

* The Pictorial History Book, & Co, Ltd Sampson Low, Marston, 1955

Outside Beech Road Police Station ........ revealing a little of the life of PC Frederick George Ross

This is Police Constable Frederick George Ross standing with his colleagues outside the police station on Beech Road.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when the picture was taken but one source has suggested 1925.*

And that would have made PC Ross forty-seven years old.

He had joined the city force in 1904 and by  1910 was living on Priory Avenue before moving to Whalley Avenue.

Of the named officers he is the one we know most about and that is as much a bit of luck as it is research.

After all if he had not been recognised and his name added to the picture we would not have been able to discover his story.

But with a name a search of the police employment records and the census returns not only located him but provided me with the name of his wife and daughter and his own place of birth.

PC Ross had married Rebecca Jane Lawson in 1909 in Bolton and their daughter Nora was born the following year.

Like all such stories the detail is even more fascinating for while Nora had been born in Bolton she was registered at the Chorlton office and baptised at St Clements in the May of 1910 which is how we know the family were living at Priory Avenue.

Almost a year later they were on Whalley Avenue and a search of the directories will reveal when they moved from that address.

But that is not quite the end of the story because in the course of doing the research I came across a relative who had posted a series of pictures, one of Frederick and Rebecca and two showing PC Ross during police inspections one of which is dated to 1921.

And according to this source Mrs Ross was in Ireland by 1925 where she died in 1949 followed by her husband fifteen years later.

In time there will be more but for now that is all but it is a lesson in how it is possible to discover a family story.

Nor is that all, because looking at the police records what is interesting is the number of officers who were born in Ireland and Scotland, a trend which goes back beyond 1904 when Chorlton voted to join the city.

Before that date we had been policed by the Lancashire Constabulary who were responsible for building the station in 1885.

Just six years later the officer in charge was a Sergeant Milne from Ireland assisted by two PCs from Scotland and a decade on with  Sergeant Milne there were officers from Ireland and Gloucestershire as well as Lancashire.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; PC Ross, 1875-1963 from Police officers outside Beech Road Police Station circa 1925 from the Lloyd Collection

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 45 ......... Southern Street ....... all gone

Looking down Southern Street, 2003

This is Southern Street as it looked at the beginning of this century.

Back then some of the old late 18th century buildings were still standing and while one had become a garage
and another a printing works they were all still recognisable as houses with stories.

I remember talking to some of the men who worked in Andrew’s Garage in the centre of Southern Street along with the owners of the printing business at one end of the street and the motor bike shop at the other.

Nu 12 & 14 Southern Street, 2003

Collectively their memories spanned back into the 1950s and they formed an important part of a study I did at the time on how the area was changing.
And now that Southern Street has been transformed here is part of that piece.

“Southern Street in 1851 shows the same pattern of housing occupation as other working class parts of the city.

In many of the houses there is evidence of overcrowding and cellar occupation.

So at 3 Southern Street, 15 people are recorded there in 1851, with 5 living in the cellar, 2 in one room, 4 in another and 4 in the garret.  

Number 5 has 11 people.  Across the street number 12 &14 are now a garage.

In 1851, 7 people are listed as living in number 14.

Nu 3 & 5 Southern Street, 2003

It is easy to appreciate the degree of squeeze when you measure the size of these properties.

Put more simply when you look down Southern Street, remember that the 1851 census recorded 81 people living in this small street, which was a drop from the 200 living there a decade before.

Numbers 3 & 5 Southern Street is worth looking at in detail, as they may not be there for much longer.

The block has been bought recently and while there is some doubt about the future plans I can’t see them staying in their present state.

They were surveyed in 1993.  The houses consisted of three floors and a cellar.  

The second floor dimensions of number 3 are 22 feet 6 inches back from the front and 16 feet 4 inches from side to side. 

Number 5 varies slightly at 22 feet 2 inches by 17 feet.

Evidence for the cellar windows can still be seen but much else has undergone changes.

Looking up towards Liverpool Road, 2003

Ground and first floor windows are not original and the door to number 5 has been enlarged.

All the evidence suggests that they were built sometime around 1794.

Houses on Southern Street, Barton Street and Worsley Street are shown on a map of that year, when Liverpool Road was still called Priestner Street and terminated at Collier Street.

Street Directories record people living in them from 1795.  This fits in with what we know of the surrounding streets.

Tthe title deeds of the White Lion Inn and the Oxnoble Inn show that that six plots of land were sold in 1782 and  in 1804 the Oxnoble plot was sold again on condition that it was built upon within two years.”*

Location; Manchester

Pictures, Southern Street and Liverpool Road from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Castlefield, Andrew Simpson, 2003

Mile By Mile, travelling our railways in 1947

“The object of this book is to encourage the passenger to anticipate his progress, and to enable him to know to a nicety, what he next will see from the window at any and every stage of the journey.  

It is such a pity to sacrifice this experience to idle slumber, or to concentration on a magazine that would be better enjoyed at home.”*

Now this seems a pretty neat idea to me, and I have to say it is one that I try to practice, whether I am on a train, tram or the bus.

But I rather think it is an ambitious project that few would undertake, especially when what is being described is nothing less than the routes of the main railway companies in 1947.

But this is what Mr Pike set out to do in a series of little books just as the railways became nationalized.

The publications covered the L.N.E.R, the LMS, and Southern Railways but for reasons which have never been established he failed to keep his promise of one on the G.W.R. **

Nevertheless for the other three here were details of “the gradients of the lines, speed tests and mileages,  viaducts, bridges and embankments, along with tunnels, cuttings, crossovers and streams, rivers and roads.  

For good measure there were also lists of towns, villages, churches and mines, factories and works and an account of features of interest and beauty to be seen from the trains.”

It was all of the information which made a train journey worthwhile.

And of course with the passage of time and the end of both steam locomotives as well as many of the branch lines his guides have become a piece of history.

As you would expect I looked for Chorlton-cum-Hardy and there it was in the L.M.S on a map which included Didsbury, Withington and Central Station, along with the gradients of the line, miles from London and rivers roads and much else.

The London Midland Scottish was a family favourite, with its maroon coloured locos, and maroon and cream painted coaches.

This I suspect had something to do with my dad and uncle’s Scottish roots and for me because LMS Duchess of Montrose was my chosen Hornby Dublo loco on the model railway my father built for me and lovingly maintained.

But I also had a real interest in the Southern Railway which became the Southern Region of British Railways.  It was the one I used from being a child till I left London.

And however unfashionable it is today I remain fascinated by our nationalised railway company which was making its first bold steps soon after Mr Pile began publishing.

All of which brings me back to those railway books and the fact that they are once again available in a single volume, MILE BY MILE ON BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS, S.N.PIKE, published by Aurum Press Ltd, 2011.

It is a book I regularly go back to and one that brings alive that lost age.

Pictures; from the cover of MILE BY MILE ON BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS, S.N.PIKE, published by Aurum Press Ltd, and original Mile by Mile on the L.M.S. 1947

Mrs Nellie Davison at Well Hall .......... stories behind the book nu 27 making the connection

An occasional series on the stories behind the book on Manchester and the Great War*

Places Nellie would have visited, the parish church, 1915

By now I shouldn’t be surprised at how what seem random bits of history have a habit of becoming entangled and by degree draw me into the story.

Of course I know that theory that you are only seven handshakes away from  the great and the famous but I was not prepared for just how close I came to a couple who lived in Manchester during the Great War.

They were George and Nellie Davison who were married in 1908 and settled in Romiley after living here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy and in Hulme.

George Davison enlisted in 1914, spent time in Woolwich and Ireland and died on the Western Front in 1918.

Duncan and Nellie Davison circa 1916

Over the last three years I have slowly worked my way through the letters he sent and a collection of his photographs, papers and medals.

Nellie spent time with him both in Woolwich and in Ireland which I thought must have been unusual but perhaps not.

And then yesterday I came across a comment from George that a Mrs Drinkal missed Nellie commenting that “she was lost" without the presence of his wife.  Now that letter was sent from Woolwich which offered up a tantalizing clue as to where Mrs Davison stayed and perhaps where George was billited.

Well Hall Road, 1915

And with the help of my friend Tricia from Bexleyheath we think we know where that house was.

Having found one link to a Mr Drinkal I passed the task over to Tricia who came up with the goods

He was she told me “living at 7a Elmbrook Street which appears to be hutments on the site of where the Well Hall Odeon later stood.

William Henry Drinkal and Hilda May Garrod were married in 1916 at Dunmow in Essex and had their first child in 1917.”

All of which fits because a W H Drinkhall witnessed George’s will in March 1918.

Now I know the spelling is different but the coincidences are too close and so I can now place our Nellie in Eltham in 1916 on Well Hall Road.

And the real prize for me is that the Drinkal home was just minutes from 294 Well Hall where our family lived from 1964.

294 Well Hall Road, 2015

So there you have it.......  half a century may separate me from George and Nellie but there is the link.

It would be easy get a bit silly about the connection but for someone who has spent the last few years getting to know Mr and Mrs Davison, sharing their ups and downs and his final fate there is something powerful in knowing that we share the same place.

All of which just leaves me to thank Tricia, and remind  those who live in Manchester that the George Davison collection will be part of the exhibition in July to commemorate the Battle of the Somme in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.

Research by Tricia Leslie

Location, Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from the collections of David Harrop and Andrew Simpson

Painting; 294 Well Hall Road, © 2015 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

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

*A new book on Manchester and the Great War http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

Looking to our future ……. in 1954

Now I am back with that favourite observation of the future, written by Thomas Hobbs in 1650, who wrote “No man can have in his mind a conception of the future for the future is not yet.  But of conceptions of the past, we make a future.”*

And when you look at these pictures from Adventures of the World, Mr. Hobbs is spot on.

In one sense projecting the present and past into the future is obvious, more so because we ask science to extend our knowledge and technology into the realm of what might be, on the assumption that we will just make better what we already have.

So, in 1954, James Fisher drew on atomic power stations helicopters high rise apartments and transport in the sky to offer up  a vision of what would be.

And because he wasn’t stepping too far ahead, much of what he presented is now part of how we live.

The book is part history, and part science fiction and aims to show that “Man learns to work hand in hand with Nature, respecting and husbanding her resources to ensure his own welfare and happiness”.

In retrospect, we might retreat from the optimism  underpinning that confident assertion in the face of Global warming, our continued inability to feed large sections of the world’s population or lift them from grinding poverty, poor medical facilities and basic schooling.

Added to which pursuit of a “fast buck” has done no favours to “Nature”.

But that said the book does offer up a fascinating glimpse of how we thought the world would be, along with the assumptions upon which that confident futuristic view was based.

Pictures; Adventure of the World, 1954


*Hobbs, Thomas, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politics, 1650
**Fisher, James, Adventure of the World, 1954

Ninety - nine stops ….. heaps of stories …. and a favourite tram destination

The publication of our first book in the new series on The History of Great Manchester By Tram has stirred the pot with plenty of people commenting that it’s a novel way to record the past. *

Arriving at Deansgate Castlefield, 2023

After all there are ninety-nine tram stops across the network and each one will have its own history.

Shudehill after the trams have gone, 2023

And so, Peter and I have decided to explore the entire Metro system, travelling the routes looking for interesting pictures and bits of history.

Peter will paint a picture of the stop and surrounding buildings, and I will find stories about each stop, which will build into a mosaic of tales about Greater Manchester’s past.

And it occurred to me that along the way it would be fun to find out which metro stop comes out as a favourite of those who use them.

I must confess to having several. 

Cornbrook is one because it affords fine views of two canals and the changing landscape as each year more new apartment blocks replace the old industrial brown field sites.

But then Deansgate Castlefield, also has a canal, the old Knott Mill Railway Station and is just a few minutes’ walk away from the city’s own Heritage Park, along with some fine bars and historic pubs.

Sneaking up on Mr's Pankhurst in St Peter's Square, 2022

And both of these stops vie with St Peter’s Square, which has a popular open space from which to take in Central Ref, the Town Hall Extension, the Midland Hotel and Mrs Pankhurst addressing an audience.

In addition, we are close to the Cenotaph, the site of the Peterloo Massacre and that other square which boasts a collection of statues.

Peter is attractedto several but it would be presumptuous of me to reflect on just why Shudehill and New Islington are on his list.

So, that is it.

You can nominate your own selected stop, including a picture and a  few sentences which can be sent to us as a comment via, the blog, social media or an old fashioned postcard.

Busy tram day, Deansgate Castlefield, 2023

Missing the tram from Cornbrook, 2024

Location; Ninety- nine spots in Greater Manchester

Pictures; my tram stops, 2018- 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Trafford Bar to East Didsbury, The History of Greater Manchester By Tram, The Stories At The Stops, Andrew Simpson & Peter Topping, 2024.  

The tourists at St Peter's Square, 2018

It is available from Chorlton Bookshop, and from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk, price £4.99

Looking to a bright new future ............ history books from the 1950s

Now I have never lost my love of the children’s history books I read back in the 1950s.*

The cooling earth

And so I have returned with another old favourite, and lest anyone thinks this is just a bit of nostalgia I have to say that these books offer up a fascinating glimpse into how history was being written for children and how some writers had embraced the idea that the past is not just about Kings and Queens along with a few of the good and the powerful.

R.J. Unstead and Edward Osmond wrote social history which explored everyday lives and broke new ground by explaining how geography and nature played a part in shaping the history of our country.

The Fotress Home

Added to which there were an abundance of fine illustrations by some of the leading artists of the day.

Of these the pictures of Alan Sorrell and Ron Embleton stand out as excellent examples of historical accuracy matched by a realism which then and even now I find most compelling.

And so to The Pictorial History Book which was published in 1955.  It is a wonderful book covering the history of Britain from the very beginning of the Universe, through to the 1950s lavishly illustrated and offering a mix of short paragraphs with longer explanations of events and detailed fact summaries covering everything from timelines to biographies and data.

My copy I think must date from Christmas 1955 or soon after.  It is now very battered and in danger of falling apart, having lost its protective cover a long time ago, and yet it is still magic to read, and often is a first port of call for information long before those adult reference books or a trawl of Wikipedia.

The New Model Army

So yes, a tad nostalgic indulgence perhaps, but also an exploration of how history was being presented to young people in the 1950s.

And of course it has become history itself for the book drips with the optimism of the 1950s.

The last two pages FROM TODAY INTO TOMORROW, are full of pictures accompanied with comments about “cheap air travel will make distance of no importance, [with] Holidays in the tropics taken all year round, ........ the drudgery will be taken out of housework by many labour saving machines” and “students from the Commonwealth will come to Britain to be taught in our technical colleges and universities.”

All of which was introduced by “In recent years the idea has been accepted in Britain that no citizen should be left unhelped if he is sick or if there is no work for him to do.”

Now, that then, and now is a pretty sound way to sign off on a history book.

Pictures; from The Pictorial History Book, & Co, Ltd Sampson Low, Marston & Co, Ltd, 1955

*Books Children, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Books%20Children

Voting in the General Election at Eltham in the November of 1837

In the November of 1837 the electorate of Eltham went to the polls.  

Well Hall in 1844 with Well Hall House a

All 67 of them, which if my sums are correct represented just over 13% of the adult male population and 6% of the entire adults in Eltham.

This did not compare well with some other places.  In the smaller rural township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy just 4 miles from Manchester the figures were 16% and 9% respectively which was better than the national average which in 1833 stood at just 7% of the adult population.

Worse still only 35 of the 67 lived in Eltham and those who didn’t passed most of the year in places like Chorley in Lancashire, Corbridge in Northumberland and Swinthrop in Yorkshire and even where their residences were in the south they were across the Thames on the other side of London.

And stating these figures is important given that only men had the vote and the qualification to vote was tied to property.  Some of our Eltham electors were tenants and this compounded potential inequality.

In an age when voting was still conducted in the open there was always the possibility of intimidation.  A tenant would cast his vote under the watchful eye of his landlord and the tradesmen would share his political choice with all his customers.

In General Elections the powerful made it known who their favoured candidates were and it took great courage for electors to ignore that stated preference.

Eltham Street now the High Street, 1844, Samuel Jeffyres lived near 309

The 1832 Reform Act may have been greeted by some as an attack on privilege and out moded electoral practices and it did abolish some of the more indefensible ways of electing MPs, widen the electorate to some of the middle class and give the great northern towns of manufacture a representation in Parliament.

But is also deprived some working people of the vote, continued to ignore women  and “if there was less rioting and less bribery at an election, there was still much bribery and more intimidation and election day was still a carnival which usually ended in a fight.” *

So just two years earlier in 1835 in South Lancashire the Tories claimed the Whigs owed a “very great proportion of their votes to the direct interference of the [Whig] Earls of Derby, Sefton and Sheffield “and “200 votes were given to Lord Molyenux and Mr Wood at Ormskirk because Lord Derby had expressed his sincere good wishes in their favour” **

This may well have been the case but pales in comparison with the actions of the Tory landowners to their tenants.  According to the Manchester Times & Gazette, *** Thomas Joseph Trafford of Trafford Park instructed his tenants to vote for Lord Frank Egerton & Wilbraham while Lord Wilton followed the same practice, instructing his tenants to vote for Lord Egerton and use their second vote for the candidate of their choice.

 In Stretford all but one of Trafford’s tenants voted the Tory party line. The level of potential intimidation was all too clear from the one tenant who refused to follow the line.  He expected “in the spirit of the olden times, to hear of Tory vengeance.” 

Now much research has to be done on the Eltham result of 1837 because our 67 electors did not march with the general swing of things in the great big constituency of West Kent.

Election result for West Kent, 1835

Five years earlier the Whigs had swept to power on the back of the Reform Act but a combination of Tory fight back and a slowdown of the pace of reform made the Whigs look tired and over confident.

And so the Tory Party made gains in both the 1835 and ’37 General Elections.

In West Kent the two seat constituency elected a Whig and a Tory, but in Eltham the vote went overwhelmingly to the Tory candidates.

Election result for the Eltham Division of West Knet, 1837

Now this we know because the choices the 67 made were recorded in the poll books.

Our old friend Samuel Jeffryes used both his votes for the Tories as he did again in 1847.

So matching the electorate to their landlords and charting the political preferences of these great landowners will be revealing.

But one should be careful. Intimidation is more likely to work on the small tenant farmer or shop keeper and men like Samuel Jeffryes who styled himself “gentleman” and eventually retired to Westminster to live may just have voted as his conscience dictated.

We shall see.

Location,; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall and Eltham Street in 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

*Young G.M., Portrait of an Age Oxford University Press 1953 Page 28
** The Hull Packet January 30 1835
*** Manchester Times & Gazette January 3 1835
****Thomas Joseph Trafford 1778-1852, owned Trafford Hall and land in Trafford and Stretford

The unremarkable reveals its secrets ...... at Chorlton station in 1911

This is one of those pictures which don’t get included in the collections of Chorlton.

And you can see why of course.  There is nothing here at first glance which anyone would recognise so there is no point in trying to match it with the present.

Nor do we know who any of the four are and given that the photograph is over a hundred years old I doubt that we ever will.

So most of us would pass over the image and if pressed would label it “four men outside a brick hut, possibly industrial, date unknown.”

For me that is pretty much the attraction.  The date is given as circa 1909 and we are down at the Goods Office by Chorlton Station.

And with that small piece of detail the photograph begins to make sense and I think  starts being interesting.

Look closely and to the left there is a carriage no doubt waiting for someone off the train, while directly in front of the hut is the Public Weighing Machine and to the right the offices of the coal merchants.

In 1911 there were five of them working from the yard by the railway line along with J. Duckett & Sons, building merchants, and J. A. Bruce Alexander, nurseryman.

We may even be able to date more accurately when the picture was taken because according to the 1911 directory one of the firms working in the yard was a Frank Tinker and it is his name which appears above and on the office to our immediate right.

And so to the four. I still don’t know who they are, but one  is wearing a railwayman’s cap with the letters CLC, for the Cheshire Lines Committee which will take me down the route of searching out their staffing records.

The two in the doorway judging by their clothes may be clerical staff which I is confirmed by the sheaf of papers held by one of them.

So the brick hut will be connected to the Public Weighing machine, these are employees of the railway and we are down by the station in what is now the car park of the supermarket.

And looking back at the directories for the years before 1911 there is evidence that the number of coal merchants has grown reflecting I suspect how populous Chorlton was becoming and how successful had been the railway in the 20 or so years since it was opened.

And not long after this was posted I got one of those helpful comments from John Anthony Hewitt "Not really a public weighing machine Andrew Simpson, although it could have been used for that purpose as well as railway duties. 

It was most likely used for sale of coal and other materials, by weight, to local merchants. 

They would weigh-in empty wagons, weigh-out the same wagons laden with coal, etc., and calculate the bill. 

The person holding the papers could be one of the merchants judging by the non-railway style of hat being worn. 

He is also looking slightly bemused [at the bill], whereas the railway clerk has a broad smile on his face."

Location; Chorlton

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, 1911

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 29 ............... the one with two names

Now I have never walked the entire length of West Mosley Street which starts at Princess Street, and ends at Marble Street.

If I did I would cross first Nicholas Street, then Charlotte Street and lastly York Street.

It was there by the 1790s but twenty years earlier the area was just open land.

It is one of the twisty little streets which originally began at Dickinson Street which ran along the north side of St Peter’s Church

Today both of church and most of Dickinson Street have now gone, although a short stretch of  the street does still exist from Portland Street into St Peter’s Square.

Sometime in the 20th century West Mosley Street acquired its present name, which before that was simply

Back Mosley Street.

Location; Manchester

Picture; West Mosley Street, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson