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

Another bit of the story of Chorlton's first cinema and a performance of Dorothy in the April of 1914

Now I would like to think that one day I could identify these members of the Chorlton Operatic Society.

In 1910 their secretary was  Herbert Bayfield of 61 Claude Road, and their conductor a T M Ferneley, but of course three years later when they gave this performance at the Pavilion Theatre in the April of 1914 these two may have passed on to greater things.

But the picture remains a wonderful find and has set me off again thinking about just how much there was to do in Chorlton back in the early decades of the last century.

According to Kemp’s Almanack and Handbook for 1910, there was everything from an amateur gardening society, a drama club and Literary Association along with our operatic society and an orchestral society.

So plenty to do, and if instead if you fancied sport there were cricket, football, tennis, golf and hockey clubs which vied with lacrosse, cycling and bowling to draw the more athletic resident out to play.

Which brings me back to the operatic society and the Pavilion Theatre.

The society was active by 1910 and still going strong fifteen years later when the Manchester Guardian reported that the "Chorlton Operatic and Dramatic Society has given three successful performances of ‘Peg o’ My Heart” this week at the Chorlton Public Hall, in aid of the Widows and Orphans Fund of the National Union of Journalists.  A fourth and final performance of the play will take place tonight.”*

Back in 1914 they had been performing in aid of the Chorlton and District Nursing Association which was also listed in the Alamanck and run by Mrs Worlidge of 12 Edge Lane who would soon be running the Red Cross Voluntary Hospital in the Sunday School of the Baptist Church.

And so the picture does begin to tie many little things together.  The influx of new people into the township was sufficiently large and diverse to support many cultural activities and the Operatic Society were performing in the relatively new Pavilion on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads.

It had been opened around 1904, soon changed its name to the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens and from 1909 was our first cinema.

It remains a place that fascinates me and continues to offer up new stories ever since I came across a photograph of the place in the June of 1910.

And finally there was Mr Herbert Bayfield of 61 Claude Road whose address is listed in 1911 but is missing from the census record just a few month later, which is odd given that he had been living there by 1904.

But maybe he had moved on, which of course will perhaps mean he is not one of those on our picture.

Pictures; the Chorlton Operatic Society April 1914 from the Manchester Courier, courtesy of Sally Dervan, and the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, June 1910 from the Lloyd Collection

*Chorlton Dramatic Society’s Effort for Charity, Manchester Guardian November 21 1915.

On Liverpool Road in 1896 .............. ladders, hair restorer and Mr Barrett with a nod to a road repair

I wonder if this is Mr James Barrett standing staring back at us.  

I am fairly confident it might be him, given that in 1895 he occupied numbers 7-9  Liverpool Road in the year before this picture was taken.

He is listed as “clothes dealer” and his neighbours at number 11 were the Johnson Brothers who were ladder makers and for confirmation there in the picture are sets of ladders.

And both Mr Barrett and the Johnson Brothers are listed in the Rates Book for 1895.

But the only problem might be the shop at number 5 shown in the right of our picture, because this looks to be a chemist, which the poster for Hair Restorer and the lettering on the window would indicate.

And yet in 1895 it is a confectioners run by a Mrs Ruth Allsop who may have vacated the premises sometime in the year when it appears Mr William Smith extended his clothes business from nu 1 into number 3.

I suppose on one level it is really a bit of detail too far, but I am fascinated.

By 1901 Mr & Mrs Barrett still occupied the two shops but William Smith and Mrs Allsop had long gone although the place was still dealing in clothes sold by Ambrose and Sarah Lord.

For now I shall leave you with the caption to the picture which just refers to “road works.”

I am old enough to remember when work like this was accompanied be a nightwatchman who sat through the night beside his brazier protected from the elements in his hut.

It will have been a solitary job, punctuated by the visit of a passing police constable doing his rounds and the occasional late night reveller.

That said we are on Liverpool Road and I doubt there were many late night revellers down here, just a few railwaymen working the late shift at the goods depot further down the street.

Now whether any of them or Mr Barrett was into hair restorer I cannot say, but there will be a few who might well have been drawn in by the promise of a full set of restored hair.

It was being advertised on the wall of number 5 at 9d a bottle.

As someone who long ago lost enough to make a visit to the barber's a waste of time I do feel for those who driven by pride or the taunts of others might have succumbed.

There were plenty of "treatments" on the market many still made of dubious substances thrown together in the back yard of the shop and all which will have made no difference.


Location; Manchester





Picture; Liverpool Road, 1896, m02618, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, 
Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Standing up for Radical politics …………. in Didsbury, Chorlton, and Manchester

Now, we will never know just what most people in Didsbury thought of the moment when the Establishment flexed its muscles back in 1793 and burned an effigy of Thomas Paine.

Thomas Paine, 1792

It happened on the village green in front of the Old Cock and what is now the Didsbury Hotel and was the work of the Huntsman social club.  Thomas Paine had supported both the American and French Revolutions and written a series of books and pamphlets proposing a written constitution with a national assembly similar to that of the USA, the elimination of aristocratic titles and a wide-ranging set of social policies benefiting the poor and under privileged.

This made him unpopular with the Establishment and like other radicals he faced persecution for his ideas.

We know very little about the event which is referred to by one local historian who records that on January 28th members of the Hunt Club “entertained the populace with the burning of the effigy of Thomas Paine”. *

And even vaguer reference in that excellent compendium of all things to do with Manchester’s past which was published in 1885, by William Axton and merely records that, “The effigy of Paine was burnt by the populace, January”.

Didsbury village, 1853

The Manchester Guardian doesn’t cover the event, but there will be something somewhere on the event.

Of course, the period was supercharged with those who supported Tom Paine and saw in the French Revolution, the dawn of something new, exciting and mould breaking. ***

One of those was Thomas Walker, who lived at Barlow Hall and had a town house on South Parade which faces what is now Parsonage Gardens.

Despite having held the lofty office of Borough Reeve in Manchester, he was a radical, and had campaigned for the abolition of the Slave Trade, and with others organised the petition against the Trade.

All of which made him a target for those opposed to radical ideas and in particular the French Revolution.

And it was while he was staying at South Parade, in the December of 1792 that a mob attacked the house and Walker was forced to drive them off by discharging a pistol.

Thomas Walker, 1794

This was at the height of political debate over the issues of press freedom and the French Revolution. Writing later of the event he commented,
“Emboldened by drink and fired on by agitators, groups hostile to the radicals began to gather around the city.  Walker was in no doubt that this was pre-planned.  

 ‘Parties were collected in different public houses, and from thence paraded in the streets with a fiddler before them, and carrying board on which was painted with CHURCH and KING in large letters’ 

On four separate occasions a mob gathered outside South Parade, broke the windows and attempted to force their way in.  Supported by friends Thomas Walker was forced to fire into the air to disperse the crowds. 

The magistrates did nothing to prevent the events and while a “regiment of dragoons was in town, booted and under arms” and ready to disperse the rioters no order was given. 

As if to add insult to injury the main concern of the magistrates when they finally met Walker was that he should not fire at the crowd again if the mob returned!  These attacks had been matched by similar ones on the home of Priestly in Birmingham and in Nottingham.” ****

Walker survived both the attacks and was acquitted of treason, after which he retired to the new family home at Longford House off Edge Lane, where he died in February 1817 and was buried in the parish church on the green.

Leaving me just to reflect that for the "populace" of Didsbury, things got a little worse, because sometime between 1845 and 53, a Samuel Bethell, stole the village green upon which the effigy of Tom Paine had been burnt almost a half century before.

I don't yet know Mr. Bethell's politics, but I know he was the owner of the Gibraltar Iron Works on Poland Street in town, lived in a large house in Didsbury and also also owned a more modest beer shop which he called the Prince Albert.

But all of that and a remarkable map from 1821 of the Ring'oBells is for another time.

Location; Didsbury Chorlton, Manchester

Pictures; Thomas Paine, 1792, Thomas Walker. 1794, Didsbury showing the Church Inn and Old Cock, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Million, Ivor. R. A History of Didsbury, 1969, p100

**Axton, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885, p120

*** “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
         But to be young was very heaven.”  Wordsworth, William

****Walker, Thomas, A Review of some of the events of the last five years, London 1794 page 23, Google edition page 194

Outside the Rising Sun with a bit of old Eltham circa 1890

The old Rising Sun Inn circa 1890

Now I am drawn to this picture of the old Rising Sun.

I have fond memories of spending evenings in the place when I was much younger and it was also a favourite of my late brother in law.

But of course this was the old Rising Sun which stood on the site of the present library and is the start of that little series which aims to reflect on what Eltham was like at the beginning of the 20th century just before the great changes transformed it from rural outpost to a suburb.

It dated back something like two hundred years and went with the development of the area by the Borough Council shortly after the turn of the last century.

The Smithy with the Rising Sun and Sun Yard, 1858-73

Along with the pub went Sun Yard, a coach building workshop, the smithy and “a number of quaint wooden buildings, including the coffee shop at the corner.”*

Of all of these I have become intrigued by Sun Yard which housed a collection of wooden cottages which were situated behind the inn and were approached by an archway formed by part of the inn buildings.

There were twenty of them in 1841 and perhaps another five a decade later.  We know who lived there what they did and the degree to which they were overcrowded and by the turn of the last century they were judged unfit and were demolished I guess at the same time as the Rising Sun.

And like the occupants of Sun Yard we can track the publicans from John Davison in 1841 to the widow Elizabeth Robinson ten years later and through the rest of that century.

Outside the Rising Sun

All of which will make a fascinating study in revealing just how often the occupants of Sun Yard like that of the inn keepers moved on or stayed put.  But that is for another time.

So we shall return briefly to our picture with the landlord standing outside, along with assorted carts whose drivers may well have been inside and the two boys drawn no doubt by the camera.

I don’t know the name of the landlord but I shall endeavour to find out, but I do know that the last blacksmith was a Mr Metcalfe and the smithy was in a dilapidated condition.

*Gregory, R.R.C., The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909

Picture; from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm and detail from the OS map of Kent 1858-73

Chorlton Operatic Society ...... three programmes and a story

Now, sometimes what you know about a bit of our history just increases tenfold.

Dorothy, 1920

Yesterday I knew a little about the Chorlton Operatic Society, but not much.

I had the name of its secretary in 1910, who was a Mr Herbert Bayfield of 61 Claude Road, and the name of the conductor, added to which I had two small newspaper clippings of the society’s production of
“Dorothy" which was staged at the Pavilion Theatre in April 1914 and “Peg o’ My Heart” at the Chorlton Public Hall, eleven years later.

Included in the first revue was a photograph of the cast and in the second a fulsome account of “three successful performances”.*

But today thanks to an anonymous donor, I have three programmes, and the musical score and script for “Be Careful Bill” which may have been performed in 1936 or 1937.

The Rebel Maid, 1927

All of which means, that the story of the Society can now be traced from 1907 through to the mid 1930s.

This includes the names of the actors and musicians along with the subscribers and a full list of performances from 1908 till 1927.

According to the programme notes from La Fille De Madame Angot, “Two Operas are performed by the Society each Season, and throughout the winter months a series of Whist Drives, Concerts and Social evenings are held, when Subscribers and Acting Members have the opportunity of becoming acquainted.

The subscription is 10/- per annum, which entitles each Subscriber to two Specially Reserved Seats for each of the two Opera, which they have the privilege of booking before the general public.

Proportionate profits derived from the Season’s working are devoted to local charities, each Subscriber having a vote as to this distribution, also in the choosing of the Operas for the following season”.**

An earlier Dorothy, 1914

In 1914 one of the charities had been the Chorlton and District Nursing Association, and later ones included the Widows and Orphans Fund of the National Union of Journalists, and the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.

The influx of new people into the township was sufficiently large and diverse to support many cultural activities and the Operatic Society were performing in the relatively new Pavilion on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads.

La Fille de Madame Angot, 1913

It had been opened around 1904, soon changed its name to the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens and from 1909 was our first cinema.

Kemp’s Almanack and Handbook for 1910, listed everything from an amateur gardening society, a drama club and Literary Association along with our operatic society and an orchestral society.

And for those who fancied sport, there was cricket, football, tennis, golf and hockey clubs which vied with lacrosse, cycling and bowling to draw the more athletic resident out to play.

As yet many of these clubs are still sitting in the shadows, but the donation of the programmes not only offers up some fascinating detail about the Operatic Society but also on Chorlton during the first two decades of its existence.

The programmes contain adverts for local businesses, two of which made it into the 21st century and add to what we know about the public halls which were open for hire.  In 1913 the society performed at the Public Hall in West Didsbury and later at St Edmund’s Hall on Alexandra Road and in 1927 at the Public Hall in Chorlton which was attached to the Conservative Club.

Adverts, 1927

But what caught my eye was that at one stage they were based at the Davenport Hall on Stamford Road, which is that part of Brantingham which runs from Manchester Road to Albany Road. During 1912-13 this was their headquarters and it has long been a place with a history waiting to be uncovered.

“The Hall measuring 45 ft long and 16 ft wide with Ladies’ and Gentleman’s Clock Rooms, Kitchen, etc may be hired for Parties, Socials, Whist Drives, Meetings etc, on very moderate terms.  Crockery, Chairs, etc., may also be hired separately”. ***

And like the Operatic Society, which has now come out of the shadows, that small advert has added to our knowledge of long lost public hall.

Leaving me just to reflect on one last advertisement from one of the the programmes, and my favourite.

It  was for Charles Shaw & Sons Ltd., at 98 Barlow Moor Road who as well as having opened the first petrol pump available to the public, proudly declared that having been "established in Chorlton for 29 years we offer the finest service it is possible to give in motoring [with]  for hire a splendid fleet of landaulettes, with men in livery to take you anywhere. No hackney carriage plates on the back but a car that nobody can tell is not your own".****

List of  subscribers, 1912-13

Now if I had the imagination and the skill that could be the start of an opera with and impossible plot, and full of pompous people.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the Chorlton Operatic Society April 1914 from the Manchester Courier, courtesy of Sally Dervan, and programs of Chorlton Operatic Society, 1912-13, 1919-1920,and 1927, donated anonymously.

*Chorlton Dramatic Society’s Effort for Charity, Manchester Guardian November 21 1915.

** La Fille De Madame Angot programme. La Fille De Madame Angot was performed between May 1st and May 3rd 1913, at the Public Hall West Didsbury

*** La Fille De Madame Angot programme

****The Rebel Maid Programme 1927

Choosing your history book …….. the last of the tributes to Neil & Sue Richardson

I have been reflecting on the impact of those fascinating but inexpensive history books produced by Neil Richardson.

Andy's choice

And to finish the short series I thought I would post some of the choices of my friends. 

Bill's choice

Tony, Andy and Bill in their different ways have advanced our historical knowledge of Greater Manchester, and both sent in some of their collection bought from Neil Richardson.

Modesty prevents me from adding mine, ……….. that and the simple fact that many of those I have bought over the last 40 years have ended up being given or lent to friends.

Pictures; Choices, Tony Flynn, Andy Robertson and Bill Sumner