St Ann's Square, Manchester 1910

This is one of a series of photographs from the collection of Rita Bishop and is of St Ann’s Square in Manchester in 1910.

We are standing with our back to the church looking towards the Exchange in the distance on the right.

Picture; from the collection of Rita Bishop, courtesy of David Bishop

Looking beyond the obvious, a photograph and the story of a strike and the North West Labour History Journal

I have decided to re run an older story.

It first appeared in February and I decided to use it again partly as a way of advertising the current edition of North West Labour History, which also includes on its cover one of my photographs.*

Not for the first time am I showing off.

This edition of the journal has the theme “That sense of solidarity” and includes articles on Anni Marland who was a “popular organiser for the Women’s Trade Union League" on the Postman’s Federation 1854-1927, and the Nelson Clarion House.

And for me it is the reviews which are particularly useful and in this edition they range from a book on the English Civil War in Lancashire, to Tales of Daring and Adventures in Victorian Bolton and  a Guide tor Local Historians.

And of course my own piece “Looking back at the obvious.” which this blog piece is a shortened version.

Photographs are not always what they seem. We can stare at an image and on the face of it draw all sorts of conclusions. Conclusions about when it was taken, who the people were and what purpose it served.

I had seen this photograph countless times and never really studied it. There was a suggestion that the date was 1880 and clearly the presence of the police hinted at trouble.

But study the picture and it tells its own story. A line of policeman are walking beside the horse and cart and alongside flanking them is a crowd, many of whom are keeping pace with the procession. Usually at least one person would be caught smiling at the camera perhaps even fooling around but not today. Look more closely and their faces suggest a collective sense of seriousness perhaps even anxiety. To our right a young woman is running and the purposeful expression on her face hints that all is not well.

There are questions that need to be asked of the image. Why are the police escorting a cart? Perhaps it was stolen but would this bring so many people out on to the streets? And why is the young woman running to get ahead of the police?

The caption in the police archives reveals that the cart is heading from Piccadilly Gardens along Newton Street. Now there was a police station on Newton Street, but it is also the direction you might take to get to the wholesale food market.

The clothes of the crowd are much later than the 1880s and put the photograph at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was a time of major industrial confrontation and the years around 1911 saw some of the bitterest clashes between employers and the Government on one side and organised labour on the other.

There were strikes in the south Wales coal fields, and trouble in Liverpool which began with a sailors strike and spread across the city involving other industries. And while the miners lost the workers in Liverpool were mostly successful and pointed the way forward for other workers in other industries around the country. There was a growing feeling that industrial action would deliver a better life for working people. And the agitation even spread to the schools. In over sixty cities and towns children came out as well. The number of working days lost because of strikes climbed as did the number of trade union members, and In Parliament Churchill, the Home Secretary was often preoccupied with questions on the industrial unrest.

All of this was against a backdrop of wage cuts, poor working conditions, and rapid inflation. Between 1889 and 1910 the cost of food rose by 10 per cent and the cost of coal by 18 per cent. The life expectancy for working men was just 50 years of age and 54 for women, five per cent of children aged between 10 and 14 were already at work and the richest one percent held 70 percent of the wealth.

Tensions mounted and the army was sent into the striking areas with fatal consequences. A miner was killed in south Wales and two workers in Liverpool.

Here in the city the same awful poverty, dreadful housing conditions and bleak prospects were evident to anyone who cared to walk just a few minutes from the tall impressive headquarters of commerce.
Just a little east of the scene in our photograph were the crowded streets and courts of Ancoats and Ardwick, while in the direction the procession was taking could be found New Cross , Redbank and Strangeways, all of which commentators agreed should be raised to the ground.

The photograph also provides a clue to the time of year. Our young woman is in shirt sleeves and the men in the crowd are dressed in suits. The summer of 1911 was particularly warm. June had been a mix of sun and showers but July was fine and hot and gave rise to fears of a prolonged drought and it is in early July that our picture was taken. It may have been Tuesday July 4th but certainly during that week.

I can be fairly certain because it was during this week that the carters went on strike here in the city. Twelve thousand men were on strike and in pursuance of their claim were picketing the docks to prevent the movement of food to the wholesale market.

* North West Labour History, No 37, 2012-13 £7.95 www.workershistory.org

Picture; Greater Manchester Police Archive, July 1911 by kind permission of Greater Manchester Police Archive, July 1911

Getting a context ...... useful websites

Now I am always on the lookout for more ways to understand the period during which the British Home Children policy operated and in particular the background to what was happening to the less fortunate young people.

So I was pleased when the December edition of WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? magazine, ran a feature on useful websites which provide information about both destitute children and those who slipped into crime.

So here are the sites. Hidden lives Revealed, www.hiddenlives.org.uk  The Children’s Society helped about 22,500 children between its foundation in 1881 and the end of the First World War, and this is a virtual archive of the treatment of poor and disadvantaged children during the period.

Old Baily Online, www.oldbaileyonline.org this free and comprehensive source has transcribed material from 197,745 criminal cases.

Dictionary of Victorian London, www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm which is an illustrated encyclopaedia of sources covering the social history of Victorian England.

And of course  Getting down and dusty http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/ which features regular stories from the archives of the Manchester & Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges, now the Together Trust.

Picture; courtesy of the Together Trust

A new resource for finding British Home Children

The story of British Home Children is one that has begun to fascinate me as anyone who has looked at the blog over the last year will know.

British Home Children were those who were sent first to Canada and later Australia as well other parts of the British Empire on the assumption that they were being offered a better life.

The story is a mixed one and one that I have explored at length. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/British%20Home%20Children

And I have to say that in comparison with Canada we are slow at telling the story and so I welcomed the news from my friend Lori that there is now a site for people to explore the links and resources which might help them discover more.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/documents/digitalasset/dh_4090030.pdf

Picture; from the collection of Lori Oschefski, http://canadianbritishhomechildren.weebly.com/lori-oschefski.html

THE STORY OF LORD SIMON OF WYTHENSHAWE'S FAMILY tonight in Didsbury

I first came across the Simon family soon after I started teaching in Wythenshawe.

It was 1973 when  I came found a speech Lady Simon had given at Oldwood Secondary school sometime in the 1958

Oldwood had opened its doors in the 1950s and became the lower school of Poundswick High School in 1967.

In that pre National Curriculum age I often wandered off the history syllabus to introduce my students to Ernest and Shena Simon, their gift of Wythenshawe Hall to the city and their unswerving work to improve the provision of social housing and education in Manchester.

More recently I discovered that Shena Simon had been a councillor here in Chorlton.

All of which means I will be a little disappointed to miss the talk by Diana Leitch on the story of Lord Simon of Wythenshawe at the Emanuel Church on Barlow Moor Road, tonight at 7 tonight.

Following the story of a valley

Now I have been sharing my love of a wonderful children’s book which was published in the 1950s, and told the story of an imaginary valley over thousands of years.

I say an imaginary valley but it draws on the history of many such valleys, from before the first Palaeolithic hunter gathers wandered into it and finished in the 1950s.

I continue to hope that the O.U.P., will get round to republishing it.

But in the meantime here are two more of the wonderful colour illustrations showing the valley around 1250 and again in 1475.

During the two years that separate the two scenes, the castle defences have been developed and the town has grown.  Soon it will spread outside town walls.

Pictures; from A Valley Grows Up Edward Osmond O.U.P.

* Other posts on the book at
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20Valley%20Grows%20Up

Trams magic and two tram museums

What is it about the old fashioned tram that continues to excite so much interest?

They  came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, some pulled by horses and others powered by ugly cables which disfigured street scenes. By all accounts they were uncomfortable to travel in.

And yet they remain some of the most popular stories on the blog.

I suppose it is that they are so different from any form of public transport today.  Few will remember the trolley bus which was a cross between the old tram and a bus and always made me feel ill.  Nor do they have much in common with the modern Metro tram which for great chunks of the journey is like sitting in a train.

But looking at the tram opposite I think I can see some of the attraction.  They look old and are a link with a different time when they did things differently, and they have a style and a grace which mark them out.  This one is tall, narrow and to my mind quite elegant.  It is a tram I have shown before and I guess is what we think when the word tram is mentioned.

So instead here is a single deck “California” ready to depart for Belle Vue from West Point about 1905.

We are on Seymour Grove, and our trams is about to head down Upper Chorlton Road to Brooks Bar and on to  Hyde Road.

But I am at the limit of of my tram route knowledge, and there will be someone out there  who will correct me.

But back to the tram and the moment.  It looks to be a warm summer’s day with at least one person comfortable enough to be walking out with just a blouse on.  And like so many photographs of the period the presence of a photographer has drawn the curious and the passers by.  The tram driver and conductor pose for the picture, a man with a fashionable straw hat looks on and away in the distance a policeman and group of pedestrians stare back.  Only the young woman and the boy are oblivious to the event unfolding.  She is too busy with the child in her arms and the lad seems to be captivated by the tram.

Which is just about where we came in.

All there is left to say is that we do have our own transport museum http://www.gmts.co.uk/ on Boyle Street off Cheetham Hill Road.  And as a fitting close to the story we also have  The Manchester Transport Museum Society which has a collection of trams at Heaton Park http://www.heatonparktramway.org.uk/ It came into existence in the 1960s when a group of enthusiasts met to restore  a Manchester California tram car, number 765, which had been discovered on the moors above Huddersfield.

Pictures; from the Lloyd Collection