Birmingham
was a small town specializing in metal work during the Middle Ages.
The area was rich in coal and iron but a poor transport system undermined
the growth of this settlement in the very centre of England. For two
hundred years craftsmen had been attracted to the the area. Small
workshops produced a range of metal goods and with the development
of the canal system in the late 18th century, Birmingham became one
of the most important trade centres in Britain. The main industries
included the making of guns, jewellery, pins, buttons, screws, buckles
and toys and by 1790 the population had reached 90,000.
In the late 18th century three of the most important figures in the
industrial revolution, James Watt, Matthew
Boulton and Joseph Priestley, worked
in the town. Together with other leading scientists and industrialists,
they were members of the Lunar Society, which met regularly to discuss
scientific and philosophical questions.
By
1830, Birmingham was sending over one thousand tons of goods every
week by canal to London. In 1833 the London
& Birmingham Railway Company appointed Robert
Stephenson as chief engineer of the project that would dramatically
reduce the cost of transporting these goods.
The London to Birmingham line took
20,000 men nearly five years to build. The total cost of building
the railway was £5,500,000 (£50,000 a mile). The railway
was opened in stages and finally completed on 17 September 1838. The
line started at Birmingham's Curzon Street
Station and finished at Euston Station
in London. As the Grand
Junction Railway had been finished in July 1837, the four major
cities in England, London, Birmingham,
Manchester and Liverpool
were now linked together by rail.
The development of the railway system stimulated economic growth and
attracted more people to the area. In 1801 there were 71,000 inhabitants
but this figure had doubled by 1841. Twenty years later, the population
of Birmingham had reached 296,000.
Low standard working-class housing was built quickly to meet this
increase in demand. A report published in 1836 by local doctors stated
that the working population of Birmingham lived in 2,030 courts which
contained 12,254 tenements. Each court had a wash house, an ash pit,
a communal toilet and pig-sties. The report pointed out the health
dangers of this type of housing but the tradition of court development
was not ended until the passing of the Birmingham Improvement Act
in 1876. After the election of the pioneering mayor, Joseph
Chamberlian, Birmingham became the best run city in Britain.
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