"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

On Blackfriars Street in 1894

We are on Blackfriars Street sometime at the beginning of April 1894.

Now I can be pretty certain of that because our old friend Samuel L Coulthurst wrote the location on the picture and the dates on the adverts place it just before April 7.

It is that classic image most of us have of a northern city.

One of the women wears a shawl; another is in one of those long dresses with a white apron while the men all wear the distinctive hats of the period or the equally characteristic flat cap.

It is a period when the young still dressed like their elders and so in the centre is a youngster who looks just like a cut down version of the men around him.

And it is all in the detail, from the enamel jug held by one woman to the slightly dirty hands of one the men.

I would love to know what is going on, for while the woman in the shawl looks directly at Mr Coulthurst, the attention of the rest has been caught by something we cannot see.

The clue may be the half obscured man facing us who at pinch might be singing or addressing the crowd.

It may be a fancy on my part but there is just a hint that the woman with the shawl and jug looks a tad apprehensive, but I might be wrong.

The original notes accompanying the photograph may help but sadly I don’t have access to them.

They appear to have been quite detailed including a description, catalogue number and the photographer’s name.

And the image formed part of a wider collection which had been commissioned by the Manchester Amateur Photographic Society which under took the first photographic survey of Manchester and Salford between 1892-1901.

So our Blackfriars picture is one of these.

But even given the absence of those notes there is much that the photograph offers up.

On the wall there are countless adverts which take us back into Manchester and Salford of the 1890s.

Alderman Dickins who features on the Sale of Works ad for April 6 & 7 was a prominent Conservative politician on the city council who in 1894 was in his mid 50s and described himself as a cotton merchant.

Croxton Park Races was an annual event which drew large crowds.

They were held near the village of Waltham of the Wolds which is in Leicestershire and is another example of the degree to which Victorian past times had long since extended beyond local boundaries.

It appears to have begun in 1821 and lasted till 1914.*

That said I doubt that any of our crowd would have made that journey.
And for now I will leave them watching the event captured by Mr Coulthurst.

There is more here, like the location of the grand house at OLD TRAFFORD,   SOLD FOR AUCTION and what looks to be the announcement of an election.

But they will wait for another time.









Picture; Blackfriars Street, 1894, Samuel L Coulthurst, m 80496, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Croxton Races: pre 1881, Waltham on the Wold, http://local-history.org.uk/waltham/croxton-races-pre-1881/

The Manchester Amateur Photographic Society, Mr Morris and the mystery of that postcard from Chorlton-cum-Hardy

The request from Mr Morris, 1907

The Manchester Amateur Photographic Society is one of those societies, that continues to interest me and today I have been drawn back by Mr George Morris of Chandos Road.

He was the Honourable Secretary of the Photographic Society and in 1907 requested 72 copies of the prospectus for Art of the Camera which “appears to be one well worth the consideration of all serious photographers” adding that “my society is one of the largest in the Kingdom (nearly 400 members)” and intended distributing them “at our next monthly meeting on September 10.”

He was also keen to request that they should not be sent until “August 10; as I shall be away until that date.”

Now I like that little bit of detail more so because it fits with the fact that he was a head teacher and so I guess was on holiday.

I would like to know where he taught and perhaps his staff records will be in the Archives and Local History Library at Central Ref.  In 1911 he was working for the Manchester Education Committee and details of other Corporation employees are available.

There will be those who mutter that this is bordering on being too intrusive, but not so because it will throw a little more light on the Photographic Society which did some fine work recording the twin cities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Blackfriars Street, 1894

One of the foremost of its members engaged in this work was Samuel L Coulthurst many of whose pictures are in the digital collection of Manchester Libraries.*

So I am intrigued as to who else turned up at those monthly meetings to share their pictures and learn more about the art of photography.

And I come with no preconceptions that this will be the preserve of the wealthy or the middling people.

It may be that the Society itself can help and I shall be seeking their co-operation in getting an idea of the membership and in particular Mr Morris.

He was born in 1867 in Jersey, married Constance Blanche Goodwin in 1898 in Hackney and in 1901 they were living in Northern Grove in West Didsbury before settling down at Chandos Road by 1907.

His father was a tailor and at one point George Morris was teaching in Byker in Northumberland which was a long way from where he  grew up in Berkshire.

So I suspect here is an interesting life and I would like to know more about his contribution to the Society.
What also intrigues me is the way his postcard sent to London to the offices of George Bell & Sons,  York House Portugal Street, London has survived.

George Bell & Sons, 1907

"The firm began  as an educational bookseller, with the intention of selling the output of London university presses; but became best known as an independent publisher of classics and children's books.

One of Bell's first investments in publishing was a series of Railway Companions; that is, booklets of timetables and tourist guides. 

Within a year Bell's publishing business had outstripped his retail business, and he elected to move from his original offices into Fleet Street.

There G. Bell & Sons branched into the publication of books on art, architecture, and archaeology, in addition to the classics for which the company was already known. Bell's reputation was only improved by his association with Henry Cole.**

It closed in the 1980s and just how our postcard was saved from being destroyed would make a fascinating story.

Suffice to say it did and was bought by David Harrop.***

As for the Art of the Camera, by Anthony Guess, well it is still available and copies range in cost from £38 upwards.

A far cry I guess from when it was published in 1907.

Pictures; the postcard from Mr Morris, from the collection of David Harrop, and Blackfriars Street, 1894, Samuel L Coulthurst, m 80496, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Samuel L Coulson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Samuel%20L%20Coulthurst

**George Bell & Sons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bell_%26_Sons

***David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop

A little bit about Samuel L Coulthurst and those amazing pictures of Manchester street life

Rochdale Road and Swan Street 1900

This is another of those images of Manchester street life by Samuel Lawrence Coulthurst.

It was taken in 1900 at the corner of Rochdale Road and Swan Street.

Now at this point I would normally go off and look for a story behind the image but today I am more
interested in Mr Coulthurst.

There are 171 of his photographs in the digital collection of Manchester Libraries, covering everything from those street scenes to buildings and portraits and taken between 1890 and 1920.*

There is also a book of his pictures which sadly is out of print. **

For a long time Mr Coulthurst was just a name I saw in the credit to the photograph I was studying but as more of his images turned up I became interested in him.

He was born in Blackley, described himself variously as a “book buyer” and “stationary buyer" and lived in various parts of Manchester and Salford.   He married Annie Higson in June 1900 and he died in Helsby in 1939.

Samuel Lawrence Coulthurst, 1890

And despite a series of wonderful photographs of the twin cities, I have only been able to turn up a poor quality photograph of the man himself.

But I have high hopes that something better will turn up.

After all he appears to have been well known during the late 19th century, exhibiting at the Royal Photographic Society in 1897 and was a member of the Manchester Amateur Photographic Society which under took the first photographic survey of Manchester and Salford between 1892-1901.

In 1901 232 platinotype prints were handed to the Manchester and Salford Reference Libraries.

A third copy was retained by the Society but over the years a number have gone missing. The photographs are mounted on sheets of card, either singly or groups of 2 or 4 photographs per sheet. Manuscript details are written in ink beneath each image giving a brief description, a number and the photographer’s name. ***

Now there is a lot more I want to know about Mr Coulthurst and I have contacted both Manchester Amateur Photographic Society and the Friends of Salford Museum’s Association.

In the meantime I will leave you with this small piece of his personal life.

In the March of 1922 Samuel and Annie took a cruise to Lisbon, Madeira and the Canary Islands.  I would just love to see any photographs of that trip, but I fear they have been lost forever, which brings me back to those of the digital archive which I will be going back to over the next few months.

Pictures; Rochdale Road and Swan Street, Samuel L Coulthurst, 1900, m41073 and Samuel L Coulthurst, 1890,  m72750, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php

**The Samuel L Coulthurst Photographs: Victorian Salford and Manchester, 1995, Friends of Salford Museum’s Association

***National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=124-2373&cid=0#0

In search of the sellers of sleep on Angel Street …..

Now yesterday I was on Angel Street exploring the stories behind the doors of the lodging houses, of which there were many in the surrounding area.

44 Angel Street, 1897, 

Number 44 Angel Street was typical.  It was run by Mr. Patrick Comer.  On the night of March 31st 1901 when the census was taken it was home to thirty two men 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 of them earned their living from manual work or the slightly more precarious occupation of selling on the streets.

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 doubt their stories will ever be told, and even after combing all the official records for the 32 the results will be fragmentary and much of their lives will remain in the shadows.

And so following up on comments from John Anthony Hewitt and Geoff Ashworth, who were both interested in the owners and managers of these places who were what the French called “sellers of sleep".

Inside 44 Angel Street, 1897

Not that the owner would have been over bothered at the use put to his properties.  In the case of number 44 this was someone listed as Allanson.  He or she first appears in the Rate Books owning numbers 44, 42, and 38, but by 1898 the empire had shrunk to just 44.

On Angel Street, 1900

A search of the records has so far not thrown up any candidates that I can be confident as being the owner.

That said I was a little more successful with the man I take to be the manager.  This was Patrick Comer who may be one of the men staring out at us from the photograph dated 1898.  He seems an interesting character as he is also listed as occupying both numbers 44 and 40.

And yet the census returns for 1901 offer no reference to Mr. Comer.  Of course he had moved on between 1891 when he appears in the Rate Books and 1901 when is absent from the census.

Or perhaps he was still officially the occupier doffing up 7/6d a week for the rent on 44 and 5/- for number 40, and then collecting  a sub rent from those actually living in the two houses.

So more searching and more speculation.

Location; Angel Street

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

*Angel Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Angel%20Street

On Angel Street with Matilda Walker and her two children

Anyone who has grown up in a terraced street in the older parts of our towns and cities will recognise the wicket that has been chalked on the side of this brick wall.

In the absence of parks, playing fields and any green spaces the street was where you played.  In the winter you kicked a football and in summer you played cricket.

So I guess Mr J Jackson might well have pitched up with his camera sometime between May and September judging by the chalk marks on the wall.

Now the date was 1909 but I am curious as to where all the people were.  This after all was still a time when the arrival of a photographer drew the crowds.

They came and stood staring at the camera with a mixture of curiosity, bravado and  more than a little vanity.

Some posed, most just looked on in bewilderment and a few steadfastly refused to acknowledge the presence of this man and his camera.

Within a few decades so commonplace would the camera be that people ignored its presence and just got on with life.

But here in 1909 I would have expected more, especially on Angel Street that narrow and crowded street which connected Rochdale Road with St Michael’s Fields.

This was a densely populated area dominated by the “common lodging house” and so you do wonder where they are.

Mr Jackson’s picture is from  the St Michael’s Field end and our property is up for sale.

Now with a bit more research I should be able to tell you more about it.

In the meantime I shall just share a little of the work I have done so far on Angel Street.

It is a slow laborious task because I am transferring the 1901 census returns on to a spreadsheet but when it is completed I will have a full record of who lived here including their occupations, age, and place of birth and marital status, all of which will provide a background to the area.

And in time I shall be able to track some of residents back across the decades around the city and determine to what extent many of those who ended up in these cheap over crowded lodging houses were the flotsam and jetsam of Manchester, destined to move from one crummy set of rooms to another.

The advantage of the spread sheet is that it allows you to sort the data in any way you want, looking for patterns in age range, occupations and places of birth.

So far I have searched just a handful of these lodging houses but they reveal a remarkable number of young women with children who described themselves as single, running counter to that commonly held belief that they would describe themselves as married or widowed.

Women like Matilda Walker who at the age of 23 was bringing up two children aged four and three months at number 17 Angel Street.

She gave her occupation as charwoman and I wonder how she balanced working with looking after her daughter Sarah and the baby John.

She would have been just 19 when she gave birth to the first and there will be a story here.

Of course the research area is limited to just one street but I suspect there will be enough here to keep me busy for a while.

Picture; Angel Street, 1909, J Jackson, m00198, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Trying to find the lives of the people behind the doors on Angel Street

Now tracking down the residents of some common lodging houses in the seedier part of Manchester in the late 19th century was never going to be easy.

But as part of the story of the people behind the doors of Angel Street it was something I wanted to do, if only to give these long lost people some substance.

After all living in a common lodging house and sharing a room if not a bed with a group of strangers marks you out as at the bottom of the pile and the chances are you will leave little of anything behind.

So in I wanted to piece together their lives before they arrived in Angel Street in 1901.

Some had been married and will have run a family home, others might have always been on the move from one temporary accommodation to another, but the census returns would at least anchor them somewhere every ten years before 1901.

And it would throw light on their occupations helping determine whether they had always been in jobs which were low paid, casual and uncertain.

There were 112 to choose from and not being a statistician I went for ten to begin with.  These included the young Matilda Walker aged 23, a single mother of two who gave her occupation as charwoman, a number of middle aged men and women from Manchester and two elderly men born in Ireland.

To make it easier to track the women I went for those who said they were single and pretty much split the men between those who were married and those who were unmarried.

Now any one who has searched for family relatives will know that crawling over the official records can lead to countless alternatives and a lot of dead ends.

And so it has been with my ten.  In some cases a census return would yield up a clue only to be marginalised when three other likely candidates offered themselves up.

Worse still many just didn’t appear at all.  They seem to have evaded the enumerator on census day, were not baptised and passed away leaving not even a death certificate.

Of course they will be somewhere but as yet not where I can find them.

I rather think some will have gone under different names, perhaps others left the country or were just never at the right place to be caught on an official document.

Matilda who was born in Salford may be the daughter of John and Matilda who were living at 33 Back Hampson Street in Greengate in 1891.

She is the only one roughly of the right age to show up on a census return, but I can’t find her for a decade before and likewise I lose her after 1901.

Nor have her children fared any better.  Sarah had been born in 1897 and John in 1901.  Of John there is not even a birth record and for his sister a choice of two 14 year olds who in 1911 were working as domestic servants, one in Surrey and the other around the corner from Angel Street.

Of the other nine there were a few false dawns and more dead ends.

Not that I shall stop.  The exercise remains a valid one and so I travel in hope.

Picture; Angel Street, 1900, Samuel L Coulthurst, m08978, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Behind the door of 44 Angel Street revealing stories of the "common lodging houses"

Angel Street in 1901

I am back on Angel Street between 1897 and 1901.

Recently  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”*

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.

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.

Outside 44 Angel Street in  May of 1897

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.

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.

Patrick Comer

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.

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.

Inside number 44 Angel Street, 1897

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.

On Angel Street with the "common lodging houses" in 1900

On Angel Street in 1900

We are on Angel Street in 1900.

Now I can’t be exactly sure where along Angel Street we are  but I think it will be around the middle and it is just possible we are looking down from St Michael’s Fields  towards Rochdale Road.

The Street still exists today and there is still a pub at what would have been number 6, on the corner with Dyche Street.

Back then it was the Weavers Arms although now it goes under the name of The Angel Pub which  I guess will have been an inspired piece of thinking by someone attempting to re brand the place.

In time I will go looking for how long there has been a pub on this site and when it may have changed its name.

I suspect it may have had some lean years given that until recently there was little in the way of anything on any of the surrounding streets.

But now new build has gone up off Angel Street and a little further down are the new Co-op offices.

That said Angel Street is just a shadow of its former self.

But back in 1900 it was alive with houses, businesses and a cotton mill.

Now I knew I would never be able to identify the woman in the picture sitting on the steps, but I am became curious about her and where she lived.

So as you do I hunted down the street directories and census returns.
I was expecting the usual mix of small terraced properties sandwiched between factories timber yards and engineering works.

What I found were lodging houses, not one but lots of them.

I counted nine on a street which listed only eleven properties but these numbers hid a more interesting discovery that many of these lodging houses were collections of individual house which had become larger units.

So number 9 Angel Street also included numbers 11 and 13, and this was replicated all along.

Here then was one of those places given over to cheap accommodation where the residents were crammed in.

In nu 44 Angel Street, a "common lodging house"

And there was a uniformity here, men and women of all ages mostly at the lower end of the income range and from across the country and over the sea.

At number 44 there were 32 people staying and by one of those odd strokes of luck just four years earlier a Mr Coulthurst had wandered down Angel Street with his camera capturing our woman on the steps and even more remarkably taking a picture of an upstairs room at number 44.

Now four years is a long time in the life of a rundown lodging house just off Angel Meadow but it could just be that some of the 32 men  sleeping there on the night of the census in 1901 might have been in 1897.

Most were either single or widowed but there were some married couples.

Theirs were the jobs that paid little, and were as uncertain as any.  So amongst the 32 were Thomas Reed, 74 from Ireland who gave his occupation as "hawker" and Frederick Mason a labourer from Scotland aged 34.

And there are plenty more which leads me to think that here there is a real opportunity to wander across the census returns and try to track some of these people across the city and across occupations.

Now that should be a fascinating journey.

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

Lost and forgotten streets of Salford .............. nu 43 Gravel Lane the car park

Now whatever you might have thought of Gavel Lane I doubt that it deserved to become just one big car park.

But that is pretty much all it offers from the moment you reappear from under the railway viaduct and head north past King Street, Norton Street and Queen Street to Greengate.

In all I counted five big cark parks where once there were houses, shops two pubs a beer shop, a chapel and even a school.

Today, while there are some tall flats on the corner with Viaduct Street and that glass office bock that straddles Gravel Lane and Greengate the rest of the street is an open landscape which is a home for cars.

All of which presents me with a puzzle, because sometime in 1900 that veteran photographer Samuel L Coulthurst took the picture of the Jolly Carter on Gravel Lane.

Of course I cannot believe he got the pubs name wrong but according to the directories for the period from 1895 through to 1903 there is no Jolly Carter on Gravel Lane.

There is instead the British Queen on the corner of Queen Street, a beer shop at nu 63 and finally the Legs of Man at 67 Gravel Lane.

So it does seem he mistook the name, which I think was the Legs of Man which stood on the corner of  Gravel Lane and Greengate and is now under that glass office box.

Of course there will be someone who knows and I hope will come up with a solution to the problem.

As it was judging by the closed shutters and empty streets Mr Coulthurst had no one to ask.

In the meantime it just leaves me to point out that the wall to wall advertising of household products is not new and nor is the amount of litter that was strewn across the street.

And that is not all because before I made the second coffee of the morning Alan had written in with, "yes this is the Jolly Carter, it stood on the corner of Cable Street and Gravel Lane, it was used as a beer house for 60 years or so prior to its demolition in 1893 for 'Railway use.'"  

So a thank you to Alan, apologies to Mr Coulthurst and a reminder to dig deeper into the directories.

Location; Salford

Additional research Alan Jennings

Picture;  the Jolly Carter, Gravel Lane, 1900, Samuel L Coulhurst, m08787, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Back on Angel Street that place of "common lodging houses and unfilled dreams"

Angel Street, March 2014

This will be the last story on Angel Street for a while.

Today it is a pretty nondescript place of empty spaces waiting development, new residential build and a pub.

It runs from Rochdale Road down to Style Street and St Michael’s Fields more popularly known as Angel Meadow.

I have passed it countless times and not given it much of a second look which is a shame because back in the late 19th century it had become almost entirely a street full of common lodging houses.*

For most people interested in the history of the area I doubt that it features prominently.  After all by Style Street is Angel Meadow a notorious burial ground packed in its time with the dead of the surrounding streets many of whom were buried unnamed and unrecorded in common graves marked only by a small cross.

Angel Street, May 1897

Close by is the Ragged School which in turn gets a fair number of visitors but Angel Street is just an alternative route from Cheetham Hill across to Oldham Road and Great Ancoats Street.

Those that drive along it may just clock the new and very impressive Co-op building at the corner with Style Street but will probably be unaware of the archaeological dig two years ago which revealed the lives of the people who lived in the mean houses and grim cellar dwellings on the present site.**

Now I am deep into the research of Angel Street trying to tease out the lives of those that lived in the common lodging houses but it is a slow job made difficult because the people who washed up here were already at the bottom of the pile and history has been unkind to them.

Angel Street March 2014

Still something of their lives is beginning to emerge.

And in the meantime Angel Street and the surrounding area is set to change.

Already much of the land has been cleared of the last of its industrial buildings and like so much of the city is fast becoming residential again.

All of which means that these pictures of Angel Street will soon be as much a piece of history as that in Samuel Coulthurst’s photograph of 1900.









Pictures; Angel Street Today from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1897 by Samuel Coulthurst, m85543, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Angel Street, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Angel%20Street

**A planned archaeological dig in Hulme and two retired teachers, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/planned-archaeological-dig-in-hulme-and.html