Will the real William Frank please step forward ……..

Now for a decade and more I have been hunting for Mr. William Frank who gave his name to two small streets off Great Marlborough Street in Chorlton on Medlock.

Great Marlborough Street, 2019

Once upon a time they consisted of 14 back to back houses but long ago were subsumed in to a finishing works leaving the streets as access points into the building, although at ground level it was still possible to make out the brick arches over the cellar windows and doors.

It was common practice and vanity that builders and property speculators would leave their name for ever in the names of the streets they built.

But for a long time, I couldn’t find William Frank, reposting a story about the area in which they were located.

This was the notorious Little Ireland, which Dr. Kay, Frederick Engels and a heap of other social commentators write about during the first half of the 19th century.

And in response to that story Geoff Ashworth left a comment that “Mr. William Frank, who owned these properties, lived in luxury in Plymouth Grove”, adding that “you also find how much was charged to live in these hovels, and how much they were valued at. Prior to 1860 they also had rented cellars. 1869 rents.”  

Geoff wrote that wonderful book on the rivers of Manchester which is still much sought after.*

Frank Street and William Street, 1844

So armed with this new bit of information and Geoff’s suggestion that I look at the Rate Books, I found Frank Street and William Street. 

In 1836 Mr. Frank owned ten properties, spread out across Frank Street, and William Street.  Those on Frank Street commanded rents of between 2s 5d and 3s 3d.  Now assuming the other properties brought in roughly the same sort of rents he was making well over £60 a year. 

The Rate Books indicate that there were other owners of houses on these streets, and the earliest entry appears to be 1834 which might give us a date for their construction.

As for William Frank his ten properties conferred on him the right to a vote in Parliamentary elections and his name crops up in three Poll Books, from 1836, 1837 and 1840.  

The same books give his address as Baxter Street in Hulme, but also suggest a relative who was a Thomas Frank.  He too had a vote by virtue of owning houses on the same two streets, as well as Spear Street and Oxford Road.  By 1840 Thomas disappears from the Poll Book and Frank appears yo have inherited his properties on Spear Street.

Poll Book for South Lancashire, 1836

Now in my defence a decade ago the Rate Books were not online and a trip to Central Ref to view them on microfilm was a full day’s work. 

So William Frank has come out of the shadows.

But only just.  I have yet to track down Baxter Street, and the one reference I can find lists him in 1851 living as a lodger at 99 Duke Street in Hulme.  He described himself as an “Estate Agent, and a widower who was born in Guisborough in Yorkshire.

Leaving me just to record that it may have been his son Samuel who occupied Plymouth Grove.

Pictures; Little Ireland, 1844, from the OS of Manchester & Salford, 1844, 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

*Ashworth, Geoffrey, The Lost River of Manchester, Willow Publishing, 1987

Little Ireland …….. where once “poverty busied itself” …… and now swish bars mingle with smart apartments

Now, if you are at all interested in the social history of Manchester in the 19th century, sooner or later you will dive into the history of Little Ireland, Angel Meadow, and other bits of the twin cities where “poverty busied itself”.*

Little Ireland, 1844

In the case of Little Ireland that “abomination of desolation” nothing is left, save the street pattern and even that has all but vanished.**

It was in that dip of land, bordered by Oxford Road, and the river, and appears in the writings of Frederick Engels, Dr. Kay and other observers from the 1830s, and 40s.

The authorities tried dealing with the slum, but in the end, it was the march of the railway which swept away a chunk of it.

Until recently it was still possible to trace two of the streets which ran off Great Marlborough Street and which had been absorbed into later industrial buildings.  These were Frank Street and William Street, and like many before me I often wondered down there and tried imperfectly to reconstruct the scene.

Great Marlborough Street, 1971

Both were narrow streets, with nine one up one down back to backs on Frank Street and seven more on William Street which in turn gave off along what was no more than a yard and contained another eight back to backs.

Like other such developments across the city it didn’t even warrant a place name and instead was marked on the map as Johnson’s Buildings.

But at least it was dignified with some sort of description, because the street running parallel, and which contained four more back to backs had no name.

The received knowledge about theses things is that usually streets were named after the builder, or speculative landowner who built the properties.  In the case of our two, this was possibly Mr. William Frank who owned the four properties on William Street and four of the seven on Frank Street which were registered in the Rate Books for 1844.

Poll Book, 1836

From these properties he was deriving a weekly rent of between 2 and 3 shillings a week, which given that he owned ten properties back in 1836 qualified him for a Parliamentary vote.***

And while I know he was at Baxter Street in Hulme in 1836 he as yet doesn’t show up on the census records.  Nor can I track any of his tenants on the 1841 census.  But as always there will be a time lag between the compilation of the Rate Books and the census returns, with that strong possibility that people had moved on.

Great Marlborough Street, 2019

All of which is annoying, given that once we find one tenant, we will find the lot, offering an insight into their occupations, ages, places of birth and their families, which in tun will provide answers to the degree of overcrowding and population density.

Until then we are stuck with those well-known accounts, and a few photographs most of which were taken long after Little Ireland ceased to exist.

So, I will keep plugging away, not least because with every passing year the area is changing, and the Little Ireland I knew back in the 1970s has been transformed again, as Andy Robertson’s picture shows.

Location; Little Ireland

Pictures; Little Ireland, 1844, from the OS of Manchester & Salford, 1844, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ extract from the Poll Book for South Lancashire, 1836, Great Marlborough Street, 1971, H. Milligan, no2174,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Great Marlborough Street, 2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson

* Roberts Robert, The Classic Slum, Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century, 1971, Pelican edition 1973


**Little Ireland; https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Little%20Ireland

***Poll Book, 1836, Rates Book, 1844

Two streets …… one builder ….. and the incomplete story of William Frank

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.

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.

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.

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.

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