From Naples, to Cologne, and Manchester

Rosa in Naples 1961

This is one of my favourite pictures of Rosa.

It was taken in Naples when she was just 21 during the summer of 1961 just after she had collected her passport.

Later that year she left Italy with Simone her husband and moved to Cambridge.

They were two of those economic migrants much derided by some who sought a new life in a new country.

In the same way and just sixty years earlier my father’s parents crossed the border from Scotland and settled in Gateshead while just a little later my maternal grandfather  came home to Derby with his German war bride.

And it carried on.  Dad and mum finally made their way to London where I was born and over the course of twenty years moved around south east London, and just under a decade later I left for Manchester.

All of which reinforces that simple idea that people move around, make new homes in new places and along the way add to the communities they have joined.

Nor is it all one way.  My great uncle left for Canada in 1914 followed by his sister eleven years later. One of my uncles carved out a career in India and east Africa before settling down in South Africa and to close the Italian connection Rosa and Simone finally left Cambridge for Italy returning not to Naples but Varese in the north.  Only for one of their daughters to return to Cambridge, relocate to Manchester and in the fullness of time to set up home with me.

13-15 Blossom Street, 1903

All of which is an introduction to the many who found a home here in Manchester in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ours was the shock city of the Industrial Revolution and the mills, engineering plants, chemical works and collieries drew in the rural poor from the surrounding countryside, which were added to by those fleeing the famine in Ireland and later still those escaping the persecution in eastern Europe and the grinding poverty of southern Europe.

For some this was the eventual destination while for others it was the half way stage before crossing the Atlantic.

And their presence can still be found in the synagogues and Torah School of the Jewish community of Strangeways and Redbank and in names like Little Ireland and Little Italy.

Most have had their historians who have recorded their presence, * which is all to the good because these communities have by and large vanished.  Little Ireland which had become one of our worst slums fell victim not to the sweep of town planners but to the railway, which cut through the area.

Not for the first time did a  railway company act as a means for slum clearance.  Much the same happened to sections of Angel Meadow in the north of the city and to parts of London’s slums.

In the case of the Jewish communities of Strangways and Redbank it was that other familiar social development which saw the better off moving out along Cheetham Hill Road to leafy more pleasant places.

Jersey Street, 2011

And so finally to Little Italy in Ancoats which became home to those from Italy who were seeking a better life.

They came from the great cities of the north like Milan, Turin and Genoa from the rural hinterland as well Naples, Sorrento, and Palermo.

It was a small close knit community inhabiting the area behind Great Ancoats Street and primarily located around Jersey Street, Blossom Street, and Henry Street.

Jersey Street, 1908, with No 2 Jackson Court to the left

Now as I often maintain if someone has done the research I have no intention of stealing their thunder, so for those who want to know more about Little Italy there is not only Anthony Rea’s book Little Italy, which was first published in 1988 but his equally fine site where you can find a wealth of information, stories and pictures.**

Added to this there are links to a whole range of other sites which give a comprehensive picture of he life they left and the contribution they made to their adopted city.

Pictures; Rosa in Naples, 1961 from the collection of the Balzano family, 13-15 Blossom Street,  A, Bradburn, 1903, m11033, and Jersey Street, 1908 m10153, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Blossom Street from Great Ancoats Street with Gun Street and Henry Street beyond, 2010 from the collection of Andrew Simpson


* Bill Williams, The Making of Manchester Jewry, Manchester University Press 1976, Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History, DB Publishing, 2008, and a new book on Manchester’s Pre Black History 1750-1926, Anthony Rea, Little Italy, Neil Richardson, 1988, and of course Little Ireland in Conditions of the Working Classes in England , Friedrich Engels, 1844

**Manchester's Ancoats, Little Italy, http://www.ancoatslittleitaly.com/index.html

Bloggers Beware, a story and a very real concern

Mr Higginbotham ploughing Row Acre circa 1894

Now I am fully aware that once you post on the net all you say, all you have researched including original source material,  photographs and ideas are up for grabs.

You always hope that if the story is good, the material interesting and stimulating it will chime in with people’s own experiences and lead them to take the study further.

But and it is a big but you are also at the mercy of anyone who wants to claim the material as their own, reproduce bits of it often out of context or in using the content mangle the message.

When I began writing for the net I took the simple decision that if I could not  gain permission to reproduce something in support of a story it would lie on the table untouched and unused.

And if permission is granted the author gets the full credit, with a link and always the text is submitted to them for approval, even if all I used is a picture.

So I was interested in a post on a site I have just discovered* which highlights what can happen when an article is picked up and reproduced by a daily newspaper.

Now given that my other golden rule is never to reproduce what someone has done before and done better I shall just direct you to Ms William’s post on Bloggers Beware at http://waywardwomen.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/bloggers-beware/

The article highlights what can happen to your work and I hope rises the issue for wider debate.

Picture;

*Wayward Women, Victorian England’s Female Offenders, http://waywardwomen.wordpress.com/

Messy history .......... Part One Migration

I remember being taught that we were a static society and that it was not till quite recently that people moved much beyond the comfort of their birth place.

It was vision that conjured up generations who rarely travelled more than a few miles and whose distant horizons were limited by the nearby market town.

Wars, rumours of wars and tales of distant places were by and large fitted in at the edges of daily lives. America, Australia and the doings of peoples in Russia and other places were secondary to worrying about the weather, getting the harvest in and ensuring there was fuel for the fire, food for the table and enough work for the year ahead.

But bit by bit this has been challenged. Here in Chorlton in the opening decades of the 19th century the lanes and roads would have been full of the accents of people born in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland as well as from most of the regions of England.

My friend Lois has likewise discovered that some of her family were regularly making the long sea journey to and from Australia and New Zealand on business during the same period.

And my father’s family slowly moved from the west of Scotland in the 1800s ever southward first across Scotland then into the northern reaches of England before finally washing up in the late 1920s in London.

This was no stay at home society and as ever it was driven by economic need. The same need was the motive for my partner’s parents to move from Naples to Cambridge before returning to Italy and settling just north of Milan.

These migrations were not the conventionally described moves from rural backwaters to the cities, whether it was to feed the new industrial centres of 19th century Britain or the economic miracle of Italy in the 1950s.

In their search for work people were moving from one rural area to another and again in the case of Chorlton moving out of Manchester to work here in the township.


Some at least of these migrants were not the wealthy looking for a retirement home in the leafy lanes south of the big city, but tradesmen with an eye to an opportunity, and domestic servants recruited because they were strangers and less likely to pass on the secret doings of their employers to family in the district. Finally there were the agricultural labourers who had been born when Chorlton on Medlock and Hulme were still rural but were now uncomfortable with places which were rapidly being transformed by factories, mills, and houses.

So the simple neat school history of my youth is increasingly no more. This I like, after all history is messy and the past does not always do what you want or expect.
Picture; Naples 1961, the day Rosa collected her passport from the Balzano collection