How we lived and what we did in 1938

I am back with that slim book which celebrated 100 years of civic achievement here in Manchester.

Your City, Manchester 1838-1938 was written by "the Manchester Municipal Officer’s Guild in co-operation with its Group for Research in Administration and Sociology in celebration of the Centenary of the City’s Charter of Incorporation, with special dedication to the Children of Manchester.” 

Of course when it was published it was the story of what the council had achieved in the century we had had locally elected government.

So there were chapters on the improvements in sanitation, public health, education and housing, as well as leisure, and culture, town planning and the government of the city.

And it looked forward to the future, with clean and cheap electricity and gas, heating and lighting the homes across the city as well as fuelling the domestic appliances for cooking and washing.

All of which makes it a remarkable document, because you can read it as people back then did, marvelling at what one hundred years of municipal endeavour had achieved or treat it as a  bit of a historical record.  After all 75 years have passed since its publication and some of what it describes are themselves distant memories.

The uniforms of the police and their role in traffic management have changed, as has the way our household refuse is collected.  You have to be well into the middle years of your life to remember a dust cart like this or that rubbish was deposited in metal dustbins.

My particular favourite is the Sludge Steamship Mancunium which took the treated sewage waste out to sea where it was “emptied into the ocean 22 miles beyond Liverpool or [that] portion broadcast,was broadcast on to the  land and ploughed in helping to make the land good for agricultural purposes.”

Not so different then from the practice of our own farmers who bought night soil from the privies of Manchester to spread across the township fields.

As for household rubbish the book makes much of the slogan on the side of dust carts of the period to “Burn your own rubbish.”

Now given the number of open fire this was a practical solution and by extension the Corporation did much the same in its destructors, which “are really big furnaces ..... where cart loads of rubbish are burned down to clinkers, the useful parts of the rubbish – old tins, bottles, etc- being saved and sold to firms who melt them down and use them for making new tins and new bottles.”

Less attractive today but at the time lauded as the new and scientific way was “'controlled tipping'.  Here the rubbish is dumped on low lying land and is spread carefully out and ‘sealed’ by covering with a thick layer of soil. 

Then another layer of waste in put on top, ‘sealed’ and so the land is built up into what becomes in a year or two solid land.  

Just as the clinker obtained from the incineration method is put to good use in road making, the controlled tipping method is usefully applied to filling up waste land, and as you will find on the Mersey Bank at Wythenshawe that a large area of waste land previously liable to floods has been built up by this method into high solid land, grass-grown and suitable for all sorts of purposes, such as playing fields and parks...”

And that I suppose is where I part company with the civic achievements because that neat new scientific solution ruined the meadows between our village and the Mersey.  What had been an area of carefully cultivated meadow land became a dumping ground which raised the level of the land and destroyed for ever a unique way of farming.

And before anyone claims that this has prevented flooding close to Chorlton I would just remind them that this was our flood plain which generations had quite happily accepted as the price paid for living close to the river.

But that is not quite the end.  That refuse deposited here 70 or so years ago is still there and may not have gone away.  Just a few years ago my old botanist friend came across a newspaper from 1938 in perfect condition out on the Stretford side of the river.  It appears to have been unearthed by people digging for old bottles or some other ancient treasure.

What was remarkable was that it was in perfect condition which begs the question of what else sits below the surface?  A question which the more sober, dispassionate and scientific readers will be able to answer.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; from Your City, Manchester 1838-1938, the Manchester Municipal Officer’s Guild, 1938

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

A day in the shops ...

 Saturday December 30th waiting for the shopping to end.

Corridors of clothes, 2023

Retail shapes, 2023

Till time, Uniqlo, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Madeline Alberta Linford .... another story from Tony Goulding

A friend recently requested that I research the early life of this woman, who, she informed me, was a pioneering female journalist with a distinguished career at the Manchester Guardian.

Madeline

To my chagrin, although this illustrious lady lived in Chorlton-cum-Hardy for more than 50 years I had no prior knowledge of her, or so I thought. 

Worse, after spending some time researching her, some of the relevant records began to appear familiar. 

It was then that I realised I had mentioned her in a previous story on this Blog on 10th September 2021. 

It was a story about 1, St. Clement’s Road and its occupants before it became the presbytery of Our Lady and St. John’s Roman Catholic Church. Madeline was only briefly referred to as the daughter of the family who resided there between cc 1905-1909.  

In my defence, I would point to the final sentence of that story “There are further stories to tell concerning the four children, but these will have to wait for another time”. 

Perhaps I sensed there was an important story to tell about Madeline, but it has been overlooked. Time to put the record straight.

Other than to state that Madeline Alberta Linford was born on 16th January 1895 in Kilmalcom, Renfrewshire, Scotland I will say nothing about her family background as it is well-covered in the story written in 2021.

1, St. Clements Road

1, St. Clements Road, was Madeline’s first address in Chorlton-cum-Hardy which she described in her own words as “a large suburban house, with unused attics where my friends and I acted plays. There was a bad-tempered horse and an even worse-tempered coachman and above a splendid loft full of hay”.  

By her own account Madeline did not have a very happy childhood and found solace initially in reading and, from the age of 10, writing.

When she was 12 years old, Madeline was sent to a private boarding school, St. Catherine’s in Bramley, Surrey. 

She stayed there for five years despite her father, Albert Wallace Linford, having a mental breakdown and being committed to a private asylum Haydock Lodge, Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire from 1908 until his death on 9th June 1913.  

Her father’s illness imposed a substantial burden on the family with the loss of his income compounded by the expense of his care in the asylum. Her mother moved with her two oldest children to much smaller accommodation, 13, Oak Avenue, also in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. It was only with the aid of family that Madeline and her younger brother were able to remain at their respective boarding schools. Her brother, Vivian Haldane Bruce was at Aylwin College in Arnside, Westmorland. 

 Her father’s committal, she never saw him again, with its attendant financial distress, coupled with a couple of childhood illness, made Madeline’s first year at St. Catherine’s a miserable one. She later settled into the routine of life in the Church of England single-sex boarding school excelling, as would be expected, in English.

The family’s financial situation gradually improved after their move to a smaller property and the two older children started working; Elsie Dorothy as a music teacher in a private school at 3, York Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Arthur Forbes as a clerk in a fire insurance office. 

Matters further improved, monetarily, following her father’s death, on 9th June 1913, and after such a long-drawn out illness there may also have been a sense of closure if not relief. 

Of course, just over a year later the First World War began and with two young men of, or approaching, military age in the family fresh worries enveloped the Linford household. 

In the event both Madeline’s brothers emerged from the conflict relatively unscathed. Arthur Forbes did see some service in France, with the Durham Light Infantry, but due to recuring skin problems was invalided home and saw out the remainder of the war as a Corporal (and unpaid acting Lance Sergeant) in the Army Pay Corps in Nottingham.  

Vivian Haldane Bruce did not reach eighteen until March 1918 and was enlisted the following month on 26th April 1918. Initially he joined the Inns of Court Officer cadets but again due to frequent bouts of sickness (bronchitis) he was transferred to the London Regiment 14th (1st London Scottish) battalion. After being with the colours for 11 months to the day he was discharged with a (temporary) ill-health pension on 26th March 1919.

The family had another member involved in war work; Arthur Forbes married Miss Nellie Locke of 40, Reynard Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, at Christ Church, West Didsbury, Manchester on 15th June 1918. She had worked at the Red Cross Hospital in the Baptist School building on Wilbraham Road, from April 1917 until April 1918 engaged in kitchen and later nursing duties.

The inter-war period were good years for Madeline both professionally and domestically. Her relationship with her mother became much closer especially when the family moved from the house in Oak Avenue with all its associated sad memories to 95, Claude Road, Chorltonville a “gay little house in a garden suburb” as Madeline described it.

95, Claude Road 

Madeline’s journalistic career really took off with her assignment to travel and report on the relief efforts of the Friends missions in France, Austria, and Poland, her first trip, unaccompanied, was at the end of 1919. 

She returned in early 1921, this time with a chaperone! This is an example of the powerful reporting she sent back as copy: 

"Dateline: Vienna 6 December 1919

The child welfare work of the Mission naturally includes the expectant mothers.  They are perhaps the saddest people in Vienna. 

After long years of privation and hopelessness and the sight of the diseased and wretched children already in the world there is no joy or pride in motherhood here". Manchester Guardian, 12 December 1919

On the back of these successful trips, she was a natural choice to be the editor of the newly launched “Women’s page” of the paper. It was to be aimed at the “intelligent woman” and soon attracted contributions from all the prominent female writers of the day. Madeline remained at its helm until it was discontinued on the outbreak of war in 1939. 

In this period also, were published A biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and a series of five novels: “Broken Bridges”, “Roadside Fire”, “A Home and Children”, “Bread and Honey”, and “Out of the Window”. (2) 

The last of these novels was published in 1930 and although she did have several short stories published subsequently, she never returned to lengthier ones. This seems a pity as the review of her third novel in the Illustrated London News of 20th March 1926 closed with the lines, “Miss Linford has stepped into the sure ranks of novelists who count”.

Madeline hinted in her own writing at a reason for the lack of more novels, following the death of her mother in 1935 she lost the habit of “daydreaming”. She also moved out of the house on Claude Road to Flat 2 in this large house at 552, Wilbraham Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester. 

552, Wilbraham Road

The 1939 Register shows her younger brother living, with his new wife, Kathleen Mary (née Bedell) whom he married in Finchley Parish Church, North London on Saturday 30th July 1938, living close by at 532, Wilbraham Road. 

Less than a mile away, at 30, Cromwell Road, Stretford, lived Mr. & Mrs. George Frederick and Elsie Dorothy Holgate, Madeline’s sister and brother-in-law whose wedding took place at Manchester Cathedral on 2nd October 1926. 

Arthur Forbes Linford, her older brother, had moved on promotion to Wembley, North London in the 1920s. (3)

During the Second World War, Madeline continued her journalism as the Manchester Guardian’s picture editor and combined this with working for the Women’s Voluntary Service (W.V.S.) the note on her entry in the 1939 Register indicates that this involved A.R.P. reports in some way.

Post World War 2, Madeline continued as the paper’s picture editor for a time until she took early retirement in November 1953 and moved to Windermere in the Lake district from where she still occasionally submitted articles to the Manchester Guardian, the last in 1965. She found a house close to where her sister and brother-in-law had moved to: - Burnside Cottage, Kendal Road, Bowness-on-Windermere, Westmorland.

 Madeline died, the last of the four Linford siblings to do so, on 16th June 1975 at The Bay View Nursing Home, Windermere Road, Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria. Her estate was valued for probate purposes at £14,968. (Equivalent to £111,000 today). 

Her home address at the time of her death was Oak Hill, Lake Road, Windermere. 

 Pictures: - Portrait of Madeline is a small extract from the Guardian’s photograph of its 1921 editorial staff. Others from the collection of Tony Goulding.

Notes: -

1) Manchester’s poor rate books show this was Madeline’s address from 14th October 1921.

2)  “Out of the Window” first published in 1930 by Ernest Benn Limited, has just been reprinted and published in paperback by Persephone Books. 

3) Arthur Forbes Linford died on Monday 20th May 1963. He lived at “Arnellan”, 146, Slough Lane, Kingsbury, North-West London, a branch inspector for an insurance company and latterly the manager of its Hendon Branch, he was also for 37 years acted as secretary to the trustees of the Kingsbury Charities. (Wembley News 24th May and 7th June 1963.

Acknowledgements: -   First and foremost, I have made extensive use of Michael Herbert’s Blog about Madeline "M.A.L: the writing and journalism of Madeline Linford, 1916 to …at https//:madelinelinford.wordpress.com especially the extracts of her writings. Otherwise just the usual sources found on Find my Past most helpfully the Newspaper Archive and the Red Cross Archive at https://www.redcross.org.uk/about-us/our-history/museum-and-archives

Painting Peckham and South Kensington ….. 64 years ago

It was in 1959 when Howard Love recorded some of south east London while attending art college.

And knowing that I was born in Lambeth and spent my early years in Peckham he has begun sharing some of his pictures with me, which instantly transport me back.

The first I think is Rye Lane, which I last visited in 1963 when Joans and Higgins still dominated the shopping experience of many, and that model shop on Bleinham Grove under the railway station.

Wandering back down Rye Lane in the December of 2021 is to be confounded by long forgotten memories and a landscape I only barely recognise.

Still despite the departure of Joans and Higgins, I was pleased to see it features in one archive and has its own Facebook site.*

And in the same way Howard’s second picture offers much for some one born in the first half of the last century.

We are in South Kensington Station, circa 1959, with its wooden ticket office, and machines for tickets, when the price of an Underground trip was charged in pennies.

All of which comes with that distinctive smell that enveloped you and was a mix of warm dust, oil.

Leaving me just to thank Howard and Ann Love who happily pass over their art work for me to write about.

And reflect that it's so exciting to view these images of my youth and more importantly in the form of sketches and paintings.

Location; Peckham and South Kensington Station

Pictures; Peckham and South Kensington Station, circa 1959, from the collection of Howard Love

* A peek inside Jones and Higgins, Southwark Heritage Blog, https://southwarkheritage.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/a-peek-inside-jones-and-higgins/

Being Roman ...... with Mary Beard ... what an excellent series

I am a great fan of Mary Beard who has that ability to recreate the world of the Romans in all its complicated, messy and fascinating way.

Woman with wax tablets and stylus

Soover the last six weeks  I have be listening to her Radio 4 series on "Being A Roman" and the first of the six on Loving an Emperor.*

"Beneath starched Shakespearean togas and the pungent fug of gladiator sweat there are real Romans waiting to be discovered. To know what it was to be Roman you need to gather the scattered clues until they form a living, breathing human, witness to the highs and horrors of Europe’s greatest empire.

Mary Beard, Britain’s best-selling historian of the ancient world, rebuilds the lives of six citizens of the Roman Empire, from a slave to an emperor. Her investigations reveal the stressful reality of Roman childhood, the rights of women and rules of migration, but it’s the thoughts and feelings of individual Romans she’s really interested in.

In the bloody chaos of civil war, a young bride witnesses the savage murder of her parents, fights for her inheritance and funds her husband’s flight from the brutal gangsters carving up the empire. On Hadrian’s Wall a Hertfordshire slave girl marries a Syrian trader. Is it a cross-cultural love story or a brutal tale of trafficking and sexual abuse?

An eleven year old boy steps on stage to perform his poetry to a baying crowd of 7000 and the Emperor himself. The political and financial future of his entire family will be decided in the next few stanzas.

Replica statue of Emperor Augustus, Rome, 2007

Across six episodes Mary Beard travels the Empire and gathers first-hand testimony and expert comment, creating an extraordinarily vivid sense of Being Roman.

In the first episode we meet Marcus Aurelius, the very model of the ideal Roman Emperor. Strong and masculine, but a deep thinker with wise words for every occasion. Richard Harris played him in the film Gladiator as a great leader of men, determined that loyal Russell Crowe inherit the Empire rather than his treacherous son, Joaquin Phoenix.

Artemidorus, Hawara, Egypt, second century

As Mary discovers, Marcus proves much more complicated- and interesting- than his image in popular culture. Letters to his beloved tutor reveal a naïve, sweet and dangerously flirtatious nature, while his record of campaigning and persecution under his rule shows an Emperor as comfortable with brutal violence as stoic philosophy.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Expert Contributors: Amy Richlin, UCLA and Elizabeth Fentress

Cast: Marcus played by Josh Bryant-Jones and Fronto played by Tyler Cameron*

Pictures, Woman with wax tablets and stylus, Naples National Archaeological Museum, Accession number 9084 Naples National Archaeological Museum,  Replica statue of Emperor Augustus, Rome, 2007, portrait of Artemidorus, Hawara, Egypt, second century, British Museum, taken from cover image  of the Poems of Catullus, Penguin Classics, 1968

*Being Roman...Loving an Emperor, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001s5ck

Remembering our own Ship Canal ...... last month of the exhibition

 

"The exhibition showcases a range of original publicity material and print adverts created from the 1920s to the early 1950s as marketing for the Port of Manchester.

These decades saw a revolution in publicity with modern ideas on typefaces, much more dynamic imagery and bolder use of colour. Manchester Ship Canal Company started using imaginative visual designs to sell itself more effectively internationally and encourage industrial growth around the docks.

The exhibition highlights the work of nine commercial artists employed by the Ship Canal Company. The most innovative in their designs to promote the docks were born locally and trained at the Manchester School of Art.

The exhibition is on display in Manchester Central Library from 29th July 2023.

Curated by Martin Dodge, Department of Geography, University of Manchester.

Exhibition supported by Manchester Archives+,  The University of Manchester and Manchester Geographical Society"

The posters like this one by Norman Shacklock will be displayed in  lightboxes in the library. 

This follows on from the very successful exhibition last year on the Simon's of Wythenshawe.*

Location; Manchester Central Reference Library, St Peter's Square

Picture; Marketing the Manchester Ship Canal, 1919-1939, 2023 and En route to Manchester, undated, Norman Shacklock

*Wythenshawe Exhibition, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Wythenshawe%20ExhibitionLocation;