A drunken jolly out from Manchester and stone throwing at Stretford........ petty crime in a rural community

Drunkenness violence at the Royal Oak, October 1855

Alcohol related crimes posed a real problem, from both our own and the Sunday visitors who made their way from Hulme and Manchester to drink here.

More than anything it is the sheer numbers that might surprise us.  These appear to have been organised outings and away from their own homes and filled with beer they can only be described as a mob.  

Eye witnesses on one occasion talked of a group of six men playing pitch and toss in the road, vandalising the property of locals and turning to intimidation when they were asked to stop.

Thomas Johnson who lived close by was beaten up and perhaps only saved from worst treatment by the intervention of another group.  To make matters worse the same gang reinforced by another twenty reappeared the following week and attacked property and threatened the inhabitants before fleeing when the police and a group of locals arrived.

The Royal Oak much the same 50 years after the outrage

The beer house was the Royal Oak which was the first on the route in from Hulme and Manchester.  The cottages can be traced to a collection of cottages beyond William Knight’s farm.*

The level of drunkenness in Manchester was a regularly commented on by writers in the 1840s   and there is no reason to believe the same was not true in rural communities.

There were plenty of pubs and beer shops  in the township  all of which stayed open all day and late into the night.

During 1846 and 1848 the farmer Higginbotham recorded many instances where his carters were too drunk to carry on working.  Between April 6th and April 27th George Badcock was drunk on six occasions.  On one of these he had been drinking all afternoon, and on another all day.

His replacement was Thomas Davis who fared little better, having been sent to town to collect dung he spent the day drinking and left the cart in Manchester.  A decision which with hindsight may have been a wise decision, for only a few years previously and on the same road that Davis would have used a carter was killed in a road accident caused by the drunkenness of another driver.


There were similar problems with pubs and beer house in the township. The license of the Black Horse at Lane End was finally withdrawn for breaking the drinking laws as was William Brownhill’s.  Nor should we forget the part played by alcohol in the death of Francis Deakin who had been drinking all day in a local beer shop.

Drunken gang at Stretford in the September of 1832

Finally just over the border the Trustees of the Bridgewater Canal experienced their own drink problem when a drunken group of men threw stones and potatoes at one of the packet boats passing through Stretford on a Sunday evening in the year of 1832 seriously injuring a young child.

Pictures; The Manchester Guardian, October 29, 1855, the Royal Oak circa 1900 from the collection of Tony Walker, and Manchester Times & Gazette September 29 1832

You can read more about the crime in the township in The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

Next; Burglaries, robberies and poaching in Chorlton and beyond

*Manchester Guardian October 29 1855

**Engels and others described the level of drunkenness amongst sections of the working classes in Manchester

Memories of the Duke's Canal at Stretford

The Duke's Canal from Stretford, 1830

Now if you don’t live near a river I reckon a busy canal is the next best thing.

And of course Stretford has both.

Not that that this will be one of those trips back to a rosy view of the past.  Working waterways like the Thames where I grew up were noisy dangerous and often smelly places, but they were also busy, exciting and held out the promise of adventures.

Now in the case of the Duke’s Canal that pretty much meant Manchester which for a young lad who knew only the lanes and farms of Chorlton or Stretford would have been a beacon of opportunity and mystery.

And if that lad travelled along the canal to the Duke’s Quay there is no doubt that he would have been as impressed as one unknown tourist from Worcestershire who recorded in his diary in 1792 that

“There’s such Quantities of Slate, Timber, Stone & Merchandize of all sorts.  The warehouses are very Extensive, but they are Pretty will filled with one thing or other.  There’s not less than 30 or 40 Thousand Bushels of Corn in them at this time and large Quantities of flour &c.*

Paying for the journey in 1841

Fast forward just forty years and if you could have afforded it the canal was still the quickest and most comfortable way of travelling into Manchester.

So if I could have afforded it I would have chosen one of the twice daily package boats from Stretford along the canal which transported passengers in comfort and speed.

A ticket for the front room cost 6d [2½p] and the back room 4d [1½p].*

This was travelling in style.   These packet boats were fitted with large deck cabins surrounded by windows which allowed the passengers to sit “under cover and see the country” glide by at the rate of six miles an hour, made possible by  two or sometimes three horses which pulled the packet.  And if that was not style enough the lead horse was guided by a horseman in full company livery.**

It was a pleasant enough journey for most of the route was still across open farm land and it was not till Cornbrook that the landscape became more industrial.

Along the Duke's Canal in 1850

From here on there was no mistaking that the final destination was that busy, smoky and energetic city.

The chemical and dye works of Cornbrook gave way to saw mills, a textile factory, paper mill and all manner of wharves and ware houses before the packet arrived in the heart of Castlefield.

But we all know that I wouldn’t have been in the money and so there would have been no fast packet boat for me and no walk out of the village along the old road to Stretford, instead it would have been a longer and slower tramp, north through Martledge.

But that is another story for another time.

Instead for tomorrow more memories of the canal and boat building.

Pictures; Packet boat charges from Pigot and Slater’s Directory of Manchester and Salford 1841, and extract from Bradshaw's The Inland Navigation of England and Wales, 1830 and  detail of the Cornbrook stretch of the Duke’s canal from the OS map of Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Lancashire in 1792, A Tourist’s Diary, To Liverpool by Canal, Ships in the Streets, Manchester Guardian July 17, 1936