On discovering Ainsworth Court …… a bit of that very ….. very old Manchester

Today I found Ainsworth Court which was off Long Millgate in the heart of the older part of Manchester.

Ainsworth Court, 1851

I can’t claim it is an earth-shattering discovery, but it was part of that twisty turny area of the city which was almost closed off to the rest of the world.

It was one of those closed courts where a collection of buildings looked out on an open space.  To its rear was the River Irk and it was accessed through a narrow entry.

I suppose its only real claim to fame was that for a few short years it was a Jewish place of worship, from around 1810 till the Halliwell Synagogue was opened fifteen years later.

Other than that, I have so far located a only few people who lived there in the 1850s and 60s.

In 1863 the rate books list four resident who variously described themselves as a bookkeeper, cabinet maker, machine broker and householder, and census returns suggest that most of the properties were occupied by just two or three people.  

Which is all to the good given that the same rate books record modest rents which I suspect means that the properties were small.

The Court was built sometime around 1794 and had vanished by 1894.

No pictures exist and the best I can offer are the houses on Long Millgate directly in front of the court.

The date is 1875 and it appears to show the entry from Long Millgate into the court.

Long Millgate, 1875

That same picture nicely locates the court to a spot beside what was then Cheetham’s Hospital School and the gate house is clearly visible.

Just exactly when the Court vanished is unclear but successive maps show different buildings of which the most recent is and extension to the Music School built in 2012.

It isn’t the stuff of great events but it is a bit little history, that record of the past which is all about vanished places and forgotten people.

So, I shall close with Francis Brewer who was the bookkeeper, John Whittaker the cabinet maker, George Schofield the machine broker and John Brewer the householder.

Two years earlier most of them were in the court with families and George Schofield was in residence from the 1860s through to 1871.

More to follow.

Location, Long Millgate

Pictures, Long Millgate, 1875, m79431, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Ainsworth Court, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

Standing in Tommy Ducks ……. the legend and its history ….... part 1

Now, Tommy Ducks remains a legendary place in the history of the city.

There will be those who remember the underwear pined on the ceiling, along with the coffin that once took pride of place in the bar, and of course the ongoing debates about its name, and just how it came to be demolished on a night in February 1993.

I don’t remember the coffin, because by the time I was roaming the city centre pubs it had been removed by its owner to the Nag’s Head on Jackson’s Row, although to be accurate the coffin resided in the room to the left of the Lloyd Street entrance.

My friend Elaine who worked at Tommy’s, offered up the story of what happened to the coffin along with a press clipping from the Manchester Evening News and the story of how Mr. Ken Riggs who had run the pub through the 1970s took it with him when he left for the Nags’ Head leaving the new landlord, Mr. Ormod to substitute a headstone in its memory because “customers missed the coffin”.

All of which means that Tommy Ducks on East Street  had always been more than just a place to visit for a quiet drink.

Looking through the wealth of material on the pubs including the speculation on its name and its origins I decided to go back to basics, and trawl the historic records.

Once, numbers 8 and 10 East Street were part of a long row of terraced houses, which were there by 1848 and were built sometime between then and 1819.

From the 1840s through to 1864 what became Tommy Ducks was just a residential  property, consisting of just four rooms, with a cellar.

The 1860s Rate Books show that both the house and cellar were rented out s dwelling places.*

But during 1864 a James Robinson moved in and opened up a beer house, at which point both the rent and the rates doubled, from a rent of £9 to £18 and a new rate of £15 from just £8.

The Robinson’s tenure was short and mid way through 1867 the place was taken over by Thomas and Charlotte Duckworth, who were granted a license for selling beer under the title of the Princess Tavern.

They had already run beer shops across the city.  In 1861 they were on St James Street, off Charlotte Street, dispensing cheer and beer, and four years later were doing the same on Hancock Street which was off Rochdale Road.

And while I haven’t yet made a link, there was an Ellen Duckworth running a beer house at 20-22 Hancock Street in 1863.

The Duckworth’s remained at East Street into the early 1880s, although the business is listed in the name of Charlotte in 1878.

And that pretty much is it,  for the rest of the 19th century and through the next it continued to operate as a beer house rather than a pub and is listed as such as late as 1950, and there are images of it with the old Princess Tavern name alongside that of Tommy Ducks.**

During those two centuries, it was surrounded by industrial units, saw most of the rest of the terrace disappear, including the intriguing court, called Faulkner’s Square.

Leaving me just to invite anyone with memories of the pub to participate in a “SHORT LOCAL FILM OPPORTUNITY”, the organiser of which have written, 

“We are looking for interviewees on a project about the legacy of the Tommy Ducks pub, which used to stand opposite of the Midlands Hotel on what is now lower Mosley St. 

This legendary pub is remembered in countless stories, including those of its peculiar decor and unfortunate demolition. 

We are hoping to explore the mythology and memory of the pub through personal testimony/interview. 

If you have stories and memories to share, either via Zoom or face to face (in the outdoors) in a COVID risk-assessed and friendly environment, please email tilliequattrone@gmail.com.”

Location; Manchester

Picture; Elaine at Tommy Duck's courtesy of Elaine Archer, the pub in 1978/9, from the collection of Andy Robertson and East Street circa 1903 from Gould's Fire Insurance Maps, 1880-1903, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/   EasStreet in 1950, from the OS map of Manchester & Salord 1950

Painting; Tommy Ducks © 2011 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Next; more on the Duckworth family

Manchester Rate Books, 1860-1900, Census records, 1841-1911 and Directories, 1841-1911

**Tommy Ducks, 1972, m50660, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The Great Bank Note Robbery ........ a pub on Hilton Street and a mystery ......... the story we left out

Now I am pretty sure that the Great Bank Note Robbery took place in the Crown and Anchor on the corner of Hilton and Port Street on June 13 1868.

The Crown & Anchor, 2016

I can’t be sure because the press reports only referred to a “beer house in Hilton Street, Port Street.”*

But a trawl of the directories throws up just two beer shops on Hilton Street of which only the Crown and Anchor occupied the corner plot with Port Street and so  it must have been there that a Mr John Rhodes of 5 Stevenson Square was robbed of £1,500.

This was a lot of money but the story seems to have remained unreported for six days, which is all the more remarkable given that June 11th seems to have been a pretty slow news day.

In Parliament the Married Women’s Property Bill which would allow married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and to inherit property went to its Second Reading, there was an explosion at sea on a yacht off Pontefract causing the death of two sailors and away on the Continent the Federal Council of North German States asked Chancellor Bismarck of Prussia to negotiate on their behalf “for the exemption of private property captured at sea in times of war.” 

The Crown & Anchor, 1851

And here in Manchester the Corporation debated how much space to give the Gas Committee in the new Town Hall to be built in Albert Square and what measures could be taken to prevent the Irwell flooding.

That said I rather think there may have been a scandal in the making given that there was a move to “appoint a committee to inquire and report to the Council as to the truthfulness or otherwise of certain reports which reflect very much to the discredit of the Council and Parks Committee in particular.”*

All of which pushed “the Great Bank Note Robbery” off the front page and when it finally did hit the paper it was confined to page six and as given just twenty lines.

The second newspaper story, Manchester Guardian June 1868

The City Police had arrested Joseph Garner and his wife Harriet who lived in a court off Bury Street in Salford along with Hartley Tillotson and Paul Hampson.

A search of the property turned up two £5 notes while “on Tillotson £17. 15s,2d was found and on Hampson £2.2s 6½d [and] Mr Rhodes identified Harriet Garner as having been, in company with another woman, in the beer house where he was robbed.  When he (Mr Rhodes) left the house he saw Tillotson pass him.”*

Having been arrested they came up in the City Court on the 22nd but as no further evidence was forth coming the four were discharged.

And with that Mr Rhodes seems to vanish.  He is not listed in Stevenson Square in 1876 and there are no more references to the bank notes.  And he does appear an elusive chap I can’t find him on the census returns for either 1861 or ’71 and he was not in Stevenson Square much before the alleged crime too place.

When I told Peter the story we pondered on where in the Crown and Anchor the unfortunate Mr Rhodes would have sat and just how well he may have known Harriet Garner.

Of course we will never know, which is why sadly we chose not to include the story  in the book, but when you have read the entry on the Crown and Anchor you may well want to visit the pub and let your imagination flow.

And that just leave me to say that Manchester Pubs – The Stories Behind The Doors – City Centre is available  from www.pubbooks.co.uk  and the stories about how the book was written can be read by following the link A new book on Manchester Pubs,

Pictures; the Crown and Anchor and Anchor, 2016, and in 1851 from Adshead map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and an extract from the Manchester Guardian, June 16 1868, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester Guardian June 11 1868

The lost cottages of Mayfield ........ reveal themselves

 History hasn’t been kind to Mayfield Cottages.

Mayfield Cottages, 1849

There are no pictures of the properties, no reference to them in the street directories, and so far I haven’t even been able to locate them on the 1851 census.

Not that I should be over surprised at these omissions for they were in one of the unfashionable parts of the city, located just a little east of London Road, and sandwiched between the Medlock to the south and a railway viaduct to the north.

And while they looked out on to a school, they backed onto other houses, and were within earshot of a mill, two print works, a couple of dye works and a collection of bleaching houses, engine sheds and a tannery.

So, not the sort of place to attract a 19th century version of House and Home, intent on extolling the attractions of inner city living.

Nor can I be exactly sure when they were built.  They appear on the 1841 OS map of Manchester, but look to be absent from Johnson’s map of 1819.  

The earliest reference to them in the Rate Books is 1846 when they were owned by the Trustees of an A. Binyon, and commanded rents which were a tad lower than houses in the surrounding streets, ranging from 2/3d  up to 3/6d.

Those same rent books do offer up the names of the tenant who paid the rent, but so far the first individuals I can locate on the census records come from the 1861 census.

By which time the original ten cottages had increased to 12, and together they were occupied by 51 people, the eldest of whom was 72 and the youngest just 2 months.

The majority were from Manchester but the street would have echoed with accents drawn from as far away as Ireland, Cumberland and Middlesex.

And given the location of the cottages, most of those who lived there were engaged in manual work, probably in the nearby factories.  These included several textile workers, a warehouse porter, and a  calico machine printer.

But there were also a number engaged in skilled trades, including dressmaking, as well as a blacksmith and a wheelwright.  And these last two occupations are a reminder of the continued reliance on the horse and horse drawn vehicles.

Buxton Street, 1900

To these can be added Ann Smith who described herself as a “Charwoman”,  Alice Gregory who took in laundry and James Green who was a fishmonger and his next door neighbour who was a “Fruit salesmen”

Some of the cottages were back to back properties and some had cellars which in 1861 were occupied by families, ranging from a family of three and another of five.

The cottages were still there in 1894, but vanished under Mayfield Railway Station which opened in 1906.

So the search is now on to track the properties back and forward from the first known date of 1841, and look to see how many of the inhabitants can be brought out of the shadows, and perhaps add to our knowledge of this bit of the city. 

And because no images remain of the cottages I have fallen back on this one of no 6. Buxton Street which was just a few minute's walk away.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Mayfield Cottages, 1849, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://digitalarchives.co.uk/and no 6 Buxton Street, 1895, H Entwhistle, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Looking for the lost parents ............. and the work of a children's charity

Now as an idea the project to search out the parents of children admitted to a children’s charity in 1870 seemed a good one.

Poverty caused by the Cotton famine, 1862

After all if you want to get a better understanding why young people went into care looking at their parents seemed to have merit.

These parents would have been born in the 1840’s and 50’s when Manchester was still a city being transformed into what one historian has called the “shock city of the Industrial Revolution.”

So it followed that just possibly by tracking the lives of the parents we might get an insight into how those changes affected them and what if any was the impact on how they brought up their children.

The impact of the Cotton famine, in 1862

It was of course always a project on the edge and on reflection I should have been prepared for the fact that there would be many dead ends.

But the first few case studies proved encouraging.

In one case I was able to track one set of parents back to Ireland in the 1820s, follow them to Liverpool and then onto Manchester.

In another case the search led to number 8 Back Richard Street which was a closed court and entered through a narrow passage from Richard Street which was off Cupid's Alley.

Back Richard Street just east of Richard Street, 1849

Here in 1861 the family of four shared the house with the Lindsay family which consisted of Mr and Mrs Lindsay and their four children and another four boarders, making in total fourteen people in the one house.

Next door was almost as equally crowded with ten people, while the surrounding properties ranged from four down to one occupant.

I can’t yet ascertain the size of number 8 which may have been larger than its neighbours but this was still overcrowding.

And the area was densely packed with over 100 properties and 11 courts in a small area bounded by Cupid’s Alley to the north and part of Little Quay Street to the south.

Added to which on the opposite side of Cupid’s Alley stood a Soda Works, Hat factory and Silk Finishing Works.

Not I think an environment which offered much hope for its inhabitants, and in the case of our family at number 8 things were only going to get worse.

In 1870 when our boy was admitted to the charity his mother had deserted the family leaving her disabled husband to look after the two children.

McConnel and Co Mill, 1820

By which time they were living in Wrighton Street which it would appear was so mean that it didn’t warrant an inclusion on the street directory.

But the trail which I hoped would take me back in time to learn more about the mother and father went nowhere.

And not for the first time I had that feeling that the poor do not willingly share their secrets.

Of course the reality is that it is seldom a deliberate decision and more that history has stubbornly ignored not only their secrets put pretty much everything else about them.

Some never made it on to the census records and for those living as sub tenants or boarders they would never be included in the rate books.  Some never married and others may not even have been registered at birth, making the search very difficult.

At home during the Cotton Famine, 1862

A search for the parents of the first twenty to be admitted to the charity in 1870 was pretty much a failure, and where there was an evidence trail it petered out in most cases somewhere between 1861 and the 1850s.

That said there were a few which proved fruitful and at least two boys who we can track into the early years of the twentieth century.

And with patience and by widening the number of boys I look at I think we will get somewhere, and that will help the book which is the story of that charity which began in 1870, was known as the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge and is now the together Trust.

The book covers the full 150 years of its existence and was published in 2020

Location; Manchester

Pictures; suffering amongst cotton workers in 1862, from the Illustrated London News, m10038, McConnel-And-Co's-Mill, 1820, Ancoats, m52533, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
  and Back Richard Street, Richard Street, 1849, from the Manchester & Salford OS, 1849, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust

Angel Meadow ........... reading the book by Dean Kirby

Now Angel Meadow is one of those places which draws you in and offers up a slice of the darker side of life in Manchester.

The book

For many it has become a byword for life lived on the margin standing beside Little Ireland on the other side of the city and equally notorious slums like Seven Dials in London.

Over the last four decades I have dipped into it through the writings of Engels and others explored the site as it went from empty wasteland, through landscaped park followed by more neglect and regeneration and a couple of years ago watched as the archaeologists uncovered something of its past.

To some of my Canadian friends the mismatch between the name and the reality is not easy to understand.

But there you are, it was in the words of Robert Roberts “a place where poverty busied itself” and those entering might well have echoed Dante’s warning “All hope abandon ye who enter here.”

Hope there may not have been much of but the area was home to thousands who lived out their lives in the cellars and overcrowded dwellings which were past their best long before the old queen came to the throne.

Uncovering the past, 2009

All of which is an introduction a new book on the area written by Dean Kirby who can trace some of his family to  those mean streets in the 1860s.

The book “takes readers on a hair-raising journey through the alleyways, gin palaces and underground vaults of this nineteenth century Manchester slum, which was considered so diabolical it was re-christened 'hell upon earth' by Friedrich Engels.”

For those wanting an introduction to Angel Meadow there is an excellent article in WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? which gives the context to the book and a little of the reasons why Mr Kirby wrote it.**

Angel Meadow, 1849

And having read that piece I am off to buy my copy.

Location; Angel Meadow Manchester

Picture; cover of Angel Meadow, 2016, cellar dwellings at the Miller Street dig October 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Angel Meadow in 1849 from the OS Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital archives Solution, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain’s Most Savage Slum, Dean Kirby £14.99

**Archaeologists unearthed my ancestor’s slum home, Gail Dixon WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Issue 112, May 2016

A life rediscovered and the campaign to get women the vote part two

Miss Maxwell, possibly 1867

This is Lily Maxwell and until last year ago I knew nothing of her but she has caught my imagination.

She was born in Scotland in 1801 and died here in Manchester 75 years later.

Her early life is still a mystery but in 1867 she was caught in history because in that year she presented herself at Chorlton Town Hall and voted in a Parliamentary election.

Now given that it would be another half century before some women were given a Parliamentary vote and another decade after that before all women over the age of 21 could vote in a General Election Miss Maxwell’s vote is a significant moment.

Well it would have been if her vote had been allowed but it was over turned by a Court of Appeal on the grounds that she had been wrongly registered and so was not entitled to take part in the by election.

The story was covered by newspaper across the country and Punch even published a poem on the event.

Most of the press led with the story that she had been wrongly registered but that the Returning Officer had little alternative but to let her proceed. It was “it appears that, when a name is on the register, the presiding officer has no alternative but to receive the vote of the person who bears the name when it is tendered...........the name ‘Lily Maxwell’ is registered (No. 12,326) as that of a person entitled to vote for the Parliamentary borough of Manchester.  Possibly the registrar may have supposed it to be a masculine name.”*

Lydia Becker, 1879

And that was pretty much how I read the story until I dug deeper and discovered that the Manchester Society for Women’s Suffrage had been working during 1867 to put women with the requisite property qualification on the electoral register.

The Society had been founded in January of that year and one of its driving forces was Lydia Becker who was made Secretary the following month.

Miss Becker along with another woman had accompanied Miss Maxwell to Chorlton Town Hall in the November when Lily Maxwell exercised her right to vote.

So not a mistake but a carefully calculated part of a campaign to publicise the right of women to the vote, and while Lily was ultimately unsuccessful as were other women the event did gain national coverage.

The Edinburgh Evening Courant reported that “Miss Lily Maxwell and 1100 other women householders in the township of Chorlton –upon-Medlock have sent in claims to be placed on the list of voters for the city of Manchester.”**

And while most were struck off by the Court of Appeal thirteen who had been over looked by the Revising Barrister were still on the Manchester register at the time of the General Election in November 1868, and nine actually cast their votes.

The society remained an important force having joined in a loose federation with societies in London and Edinburgh in November 1867.

It was then known as the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage until 1897, when along with about 500 other suffrage societies, it joined the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and became the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage.

In 1911 it changed its name to the Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage, part of the Manchester District Federation of the N.U.W.S.S.”***

Miss Maxwell

Their records are in the Archive and Local History Library so will be available from March 22 when Central Ref reopens.

And all of that brings us back to Miss Maxwell who herself seems no accident of history.

She was quite clearly a “progressive” voting for the Liberal candidate in the 1867 by election and continuing to put herself forward again for inclusion on the electoral register.

We first come across here in 1841 living in a shared house on Broughton Street in Cheetham.  She described herself as a farm servant and while she is lost for 1851 she reappears in Ardwick in 1861 and four years later in Chorlton upon Medlock.

And here we can track her through the Rate Books as the occupier at 25 Ludlow Street and then at 71 Cowcill Street.

Sadly both properties have long since vanished along with the streets themselves.
As for Miss Maxwell she entered the Work house in April 1876 and died in the October and was buried at Bradford Cemetery.

Record of Miss Maxwell's death, October 1876

Bradford Cemetery is now Philips Park Cemetery but I can find no record of her burial.

Of course she may have been buried a pauper and the records long since lost, but I shall continue to search.

After all until recently she was just a name beside a photograph with the slightest of mentions.
I think she deserves more.

Pictures; Lily Maxwell, date unknown but possibly 1867, m08249, and the death entry from the Chorlton Union Workhouse records, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, Lydia Becker, 1879, Wikipedia Common,

*Daily News, November 1867

** The Edinburgh Evening Courant, August 14, 1868

***The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=127-m501&cid=0#0

Looking for Lily Maxwell, who voted in a municipal election in 1867

Now I blame Graham, who posted this picture of Lily Maxwell and the accompanying notes

“First woman to record a vote in a municipal election, November 1867

Lily Maxwell was the first woman to vote in Britain in 1867 after the Great Reform Act of 1832. 

The act had explicitly excluded all women from the voting in national elections by using the term ‘male’ rather than ‘person’ in its wording. 

Maxwell, a shop owner, met the property qualifications that otherwise would have made her eligible to vote had she been male. Her name had been added to the election register and on that basis she succeeded in voting (escorted by Lydia Becker) in a by-election – her vote however was later declared illegal.”

And followed it up with an extract from the Daily News dated November 28 1867 which reported on the "record and acceptance of a vote by a lady, at the Chorlton Town Hall [continuing] it appears that, when a name is on the register, the presiding officer has no alternative but to receive the vote of the person who bears the name when it is tendered...........the name ‘Lily Maxwell is registered (No. 12,326) as that of a person entitled to vote for the Parliamentary borough of Manchester.  Possibly the registrar may have supposed it to be a  masculine name.”

And so I was drawn in.

This may have been a mistake but those early campaigners for widening the franchise were quick to seize the opportunity and Lily Maxwell was accompanied by “Miss Becker, the secretary of the Women’s Suffrage Society of Manchester [and Miss Maxwell] voted for Jacob Bright."

Likewise the establishment moved equally quickly and her vote was later declared illegal by the Court of Common Pleas.

All of which made me want to explore the history of Women’s Suffrage Society of Manchester and also to find out more about Miss Maxwell.

Now there is only one Lily Maxwell listed in the official records for Manchester during the period.

She was born in Scotland in 1801 appears on the 1861 and ’71 census and died in the last quarter of 1876.

And that  is almost it.

We can track her to Ardwick in 1861 when she described herself as House Keeper.

Four years later she had moved to 25 Ludlow Street in Chorlton on Medlock and in 1867 was at  71 Cowcill Street.

And it was while she was occupying this property that she was included on the electoral register.

Here she stayed till her death nine years later.

Of her earlier years before 1861 I can as yet find nothing but I travel in hope.

So she remains an intriguing figure not only for what she did but for who she might have been.

Picture; Lily Maxwell, date unknown but possibly 1867, m08249, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass