The lost stories of Hatter’s Court ……..

You won’t find Hatter’s Court.

Hatter's Court, 1850

It went a long time ago and with it the stories of the people who called it home for a chunk of the middle decades of the 19th century.

It consisted of eleven houses facing into a court which was enclosed on three sides, with just an entrance on Addington Street and a dark and narrow passage which led out onto Marshall Street.

It was there by 1819 but just when an enterprising speculative builder chose to build some, or all of the houses is lost.

Five of the eleven were back-to-back and a search of the Directories has revealed the place didn’t warrant a listing.

Not that I am surprised, because Hatter’s Court and countless others were homes to the poor and as such didn’t get a mention.

Eight of the occupants are listed in the rate books for 1851, but despite having those eight names none have so far turned up on the census records for that year.

And it maybe they belong to those census records which were damaged and are now unreadable.

So, while I have the names of John Weston and Patrick Dowling both of whom were shoemakers it has been impossible find out anymore about either man or the families.

Growing old in Hatter's Court, 1841

But there are ways of delving deeper, and by a laborious process of working through the 1841 census applying a bit of imaginative searching and a heap of patience our court turned up.

There were 42 people recorded as living in ten of the properties, with some examples of overcrowding.  

Most of the households consisted of three or four people, but in one there were seven and in another eight occupants.  Added to which there is evidence of some subletting. In houses which at best consisted of 4 rooms and in the case of the back to backs just two rooms.

That said the 1841 census lacks the detail which comes on later census records.  

So, it is impossible from these entries to determine the relationship of the head of the household and the other residents. And while in some cases it is possible to infer a couple are married with young children, in other cases the names are not ranked by age making it difficult to know who was who.

Added to which the census is silent on exactly where people were born, preferring to list them as either from or not from Lancashire and providing a supplementary column to be ticked if they were born in “Scotland, Ireland or Foreign Parts”.

Of these “supplementaries” there were 15, which when combined with nine who were not from Lancashire means that in the June of 1841 our court rang out with accents which were not Mancunian and were the majority of the residents.

The census also offers up a snapshot of the jobs they did.

Working for a living, Hatter's Court, 1841

There were two weavers, five hat makers, a butcher, bookkeeper, two servants, three hawkers, along with a joiner, a porter and one seamstress.  

Of the remaining adult women, only one described herself as a “housekeeper”, although it is possible to infer that another seven might have been engaged in similar responsibilities.

What is certain is that almost half of the 42 were under the age of twenty and the eldest were  Patrick and Margaret Lannigan who were both 60.

In time I will go looking for all of our 42, tracking them as best we can back from 1841, and forward through the 19th century.

All that's left the line of the entry into the court, 2023

I doubt their stay in our court lasted long, looking at the tenure of stay in other courts I can be confident most moved on within a few years.

Nor did Hatter’s Court survive long after the 1890s, because while it is still there on the 1894 OS it looks to have disappeared sometime in the early 20th century, although even that bold statement may yet be qualified.

Location; Addington and Marshall Street, Manchester

Pictures; Pictures; the street with no name and little history, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1850 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

The lost story of Hatter's Court …………….

I don’t suppose many people bother with this narrow thoroughfare that connects Marshall Street with Addington Street.

It belongs in that island between Rochdale Road and Oldham Road and is full of open spaces, tired looking warehouses and a few new developments.

It has for decades been a place waiting for something to happen, and while the developers nibble at the edges most of it still looks as it did thirty years ago.

So apart from the odd car that parks up our tiny  street is just a place that accumulates discarded bottles, cans and other rubbish.

But it has a story which if you go back far enough marks it out as the narrow back entry into Hatter's Court, which consisted of eleven properties facing onto the court.  Five of the twelve houses were back-to-back and a search of the Directories has revealed the place didn’t warrant an entry.

Not that I am surprised, because Hatter’s Court and countless others were homes to the poor and as such didn’t get a mention.

Eight of the occupants are listed in the rate books, but despite having those eight names none have so far turned up on the census records.

And only two of them, a John Weston and a Patrick Dowling do we have an occupation for.  Both were a shoemakers, but as the census records are silent there is as yet no way of knowing their age, place of birth or any details of a possible family.

I know that all of the eight listed in the rate books were owned by the same landlord who charged a rent of3 shillings a week which appears to be the going rate for houses in the nearby streets.

The court was still there in 1894 but by then one of houses had been incorporated into its neighbour and four of the original back to backs were enlarged to form bigger houses facing Addington Street.

Sometime after that the court vanished under a new warehouse and there the story ends.

Breaking News, but just eight hours after the story went live, as I continued to search for John Weston and Patrick Dowling in 1851, I turned up the census record for the decade before ...... with the 42 men, women and children who lived in Hatter's Court, revealing their occupations, places of birth, ages and occupations ..... now that's a new story for Sunday.

Location Marshall Street

Pictures; the street with no name and little history, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1850 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/