In
AD 79 the Romans built a fort on the east bank of the River Irwell
called Mancunium. In the 14th century the textile
trade was enhanced when Flemish weavers
settled in the area.
The transformation from a market town to a major city began in 1761
when the Duke of Bridgewater canal began to bring cheap coal to Manchester.
By the end of the 18th century Manchester had established itself as
the centre of the cotton industry in Lancashire.
The merchants brought the raw cotton from Liverpool,
sold it to small-time masters in Manchester who then passed it to
the spinners working in the cottages. In the 1770s the invention of
machines such as the Spinning Jenny and
the Water Frame completely changed the
way that cotton goods were produced.
The machines in the first textile factories
were driven by water-power and were therefore built in villages besides
fast-flowing streams. By 1790 there were about a hundred and fifty
water-powered cotton spinning factories in Britain.
Richard Arkwright was quick to see the significance of the Rotary
Steam-Engine invented by James Watt and in
1783 he began using the machine in his Cromford factory. Others followed
his lead and by 1800 there were over 500 of Watt's machines in Britain's
mines and factories. With the invention of Watt's steam-engine, factories
no longer had to be built close to fast-flowing rivers and streams.
Entrepreneurs now tended to build factories where there was a good
supply of labour and coal.
Manchester in 1750
Manchester
became the obvious place to build textile factories. Large warehouses
were also built to store and display the spun yarn and finished cloth.
The town's population grew rapidly. With neighbouring Salford, Manchester
had about 25,000 inhabitants in 1772. By 1800 the population had grown
to 95,000. The rich manufacturers built large houses around the Mosley
Street area. At first the cheap housing for the factory workers were
confined to New Cross and Newtown. However, as the population grew,
close-packed houses were built next to factories all over Manchester.
The Stockton & Darlington line opened
in 1825 successfully reduced the cost of transporting coal from 18s.
to 8s. 6d. a ton. It soon became clear that large profits could be
made by building railways. A group of businessmen in Manchester and
Liverpool led by William
James recruited George Stephenson
to build them a railway.
The Liverpool & Manchester railway
was opened on 15th September, 1830. The prime minister, the Duke
of Wellington, and a large number of important people attended
the opening ceremony that included a procession of eight locomotives.
Large crowds assembled along the line and when the train entered Manchester
the passenger carriages were pelted with stones by weavers,
who remembered the Duke of Wellington's involvement in the Peterloo
Massacre and his strong opposition to the the proposed 1832
Reform Act.
The Liverpool & Manchester railway
was a great success. In 1831 the company transported 445,047 passengers.
Receipts were £155,702 with profits of £71,098. By 1844
receipts had reached £258,892 with profits of £136,688.
During this period shareholders were regularly paid out an annual
dividend of £10 for every £100 invested.
The railway rapidly increased the population of Manchester. By 1851
over 455,000 people were living in the city. Housing conditions were
appalling. It was reported that in some parts of the city the number
of toilets averaged only two to two hundred and fifty people. Only
forty per cent of the children living in this area reached their fifth
year.
Manchester is famous for its libraries. The library founded by Humphrey
Chetham (1580-1653) was the first free public library in Britain.
Joseph Brotherton, a local MP, played
an important role in 1849 in helping Salford become the first municipal
authority in Britain to establish a library, museum and art gallery.
The following year Brotherton joined William
Ewart in persuading Parliament to pass the Public
Libraries Act.
In 1846 John Owens, a successful Manchester
cotton merchant, died and left most of his wealth to help establish
a further education college for men that would not have: "to
submit to any test whatsoever of, their religious opinions".
His Unitarian friends, John
Fielden and Thomas Ashton, also raised
money for the venture and arranged to purchase the former home of
Richard Cobden, in Quay Street, Deansgate.
This became the first premises of Owens College
when it was opened in 1851.
The Nonconformist business community
in Manchester continued to raise money
for the project and supported by Charles Prestwich
Scott, the editor of the Manchester
Guardian, the trustees were able to arrange the building of
new premises at Oxford Street. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the
new Owens College was opened in 1873. Seven
years later, the college, along with those in Liverpool
and Leeds, became Victoria University (Manchester
University after 1902).
(1)
Eric Thomas Svedenstierna, Tour of Great Britain (1802)
I travelled in the company of Mr. Bourne from Liverpool to Manchester.
This town has extended extraordinarily, especially in the last fifteen
years, through its cotton manufactures. Several circumstances have
united to favour the growth of the cotton industry, among which the
general use of the fine, white and light cotton fabric, which has
almost supplanted silk throughout Europe, may deserve first place.
Next to this comes the invention of the spinning machines. In almost
all these machines are driven by steam engines. With such a large
demand for coal, it is no small advantage that at even the present
high prices, Manchester can have coal at about 50 per cent cheaper
than the coal cost a little over 40 years ago, before the Duke of
Bridgewater's Canal was finished, from whose coal mines practically
the whole of Manchester is supplied.
(2) Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat
who visited Manchester in 1835.
A sort of black smoke covers the city. Under this half-daylight 300,000
human beings are ceaselessly at work. The homes of the poor are scattered
haphazard around the factories. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows.
In Manchester civilised man is turned back almost into a savage.
(3) James Kay-Shuttleworth, wrote an account
of Manchester in 1832.
Frequently, the inspectors found two or more families crowded into
one small house and often one family lived in a damp cellar where
twelve or sixteen persons were crowded. Children are ill-fed, dirty,
ill-clothed, exposed to cold and neglect; and in consequence, more
than one-half of the off-spring die before they have completed their
fifth year.
(4)
Archibald Prentice, Historical Sketches
and Personal Recollections of Manchester (1851)
In
this year, 1817, the history of which we are now passing, there occurred
an astounding instance of the indifference of the inhabitants of Manchester
to an important public right. There had long been a wooden bridge,
free to all foot passengers, connecting Manchester with Salford, of
very great convenience to crowds of working people, who had to pass
to their meals or their work several times a day, from the one township
to the other. A number of gentlemen met and resolved, that instead
of the old wooden bridge there should be a handsome stone one thrown
over the Irwell; and very great was the laudation poured out upon
them for their public spirit. A joint-stock company was formed, and
an act of parliament was obtained, giving powers to take down the
old bridge; but instead of a clause retaining the long established
public right, there was one empowering the collection of the toll
of a halfpenny from. every foot passenger!
(5)
Edwin Chadwick, The Sanitary Conditions
of the Labouring Population (1842)
It is an appalling fact that, of all who are born of the labouring
classes in Manchester, more than 57& die before they attain five
years of age; that is, before they can be engaged in factory labour,
or in any other labour whatsoever.
(6) Dr. Roberton, a Manchester surgeon, wrote
a letter to the Parliamentary Committee on the Health of Towns in
1840.
Manchester is a huge overgrown village, built according to no definite
plan. The factories have sprung up along the rivers Irk, Irwell and
Medlock, and the Rochdale Canal. The homes of the work-people have
been built in the factory districts. The interests and convenience
of the manufacturers have determined the growth of the town and the
manner of that growth, while the comfort, health and happiness have
not been considered. Manchester has no public park or other ground
where the population can walk and breathe the fresh air. Every advantage
has been sacrificed to the getting of money.
(7)
Archibald Prentice, Manchester Times
(20th July, 1844)
The houses
of the operatives are cluttered together with more regard for the
saving of ground-rent than for the comfort and health of their inhabitants.
In many districts the crowding of houses into narrow, dark, ill-drained
and ill-ventilated alleys and lanes; and the cramming of persons into
these miserable dwellings is frightful to contemplate.
(8)
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton:
A Tale of Manchester Life (1848)
Berry Street was unpaved; and down the middle a gutter forced its
way, every now and then forming pools in the holes with which the
street abounded. Never was the old Edinburgh cry of "Gardez l'eau!'
more necessary than in the street. As they passed, women from their
doors tossed household slops of every description into the gutter;
they ran into the next pool, which over-flowed and stagnated.
You went down one step from this foul area into the cellar in which
a family of human beings lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes
many of them were broken and stuffed with rags, which was reason enough
for the dusky light that pervaded the place at mid-day. After the
account I have given of the state of the street, no one can be surprised
that on going into the cellar inhabited by Davenport, the smell was
so foetid as almost to knock the two men down. Quickly recovering
themselves, as those inured to such things do, they began to penetrate
the thick darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children
rolling on the damp, nay wet brick floor, through which the stagnant,
filthy moisture of the street oozed up; the fireplace was empty and
black; the wife sat on the husband's lair, and cried in the dark loneliness.
(9)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
The traveller by railway is made aware of his approach to
the great northern seats of industry by the dull leaden-coloured sky,
tainted by thousands of ever smoking chimneys, which broods over the
distance. The stations along the line are more closely planted, showing
that the country is more and more thickly peopled. Then, small manufacturing
villages begin to appear, each consisting of two or three irregular
streets clustered around the mill, as in former times cottages were
clustered round the castle.
You shoot by town after town - the outlying satellites of the great
cotton metropolis. They have all similar features - they are all little
Manchesters. Huge, shapeless, unsightly mills, with their countless
rows of windows, their towering shafts, their jets of waste steam
continually puffing in panting gushes from the brown grimy wall. Some
dozen or so of miles so characterised, you enter the Queen of the
cotton cities - and then amid smoke and noise, and the hum of never
ceasing toil, you are borne over the roofs to the terminus platform.
You stand in Manchester.
There is a smoky brown sky over head - smoky brown streets all round
long piles of warehouses, many of them with pillared and stately fronts
- great grimy mills, the leviathans of ugly architecture, with their
smoke-pouring shafts. There are streets of all kinds - some with glittering
shops and vast hotels, others grim and little frequented - formed
of rows and stacks of warehouses; many mean and distressingly monotonous
visas of uniform brick houses.
There are swarms of mechanics and artisans in their distinguishing
fustian - of factory operatives, in general undersized, sallow-looking
men - and of factory girls somewhat stunted and paled, but smart and
active-looking with dingy dresses and dark shawls, speckled with flakes
of cotton wool, wreathed round their heads.
(10)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
Abel Heywood, of Oldham Street, is one of the most active
and enterprising citizens of Manchester, who supplies not only the
smaller booksellers of the town, but those throughout the country,
with the cheap works most favoured by the poorer reading classes.
The contents of Mr. Heywood's shop are significant. Masses of penny
novels and comic song and recitation books are jumbled with a sectarian
pamphlets and democratic essays. Educational books abound in every
variety.
The sale of Punch is 1,200. The Family Friend sells
1,500 monthly at twopence; the Family Economist 5,000 monthly at 1d.
Abel Heywood informed me that the sale of cheap books has decidedly
increased in consequence of the Ten Hours Bill. The same assertion
was made by another extensive but much smaller bookseller in the vicinity
of Garrett Street.
(11)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
The lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy,
and most wicked locality in Manchester is called Angel Meadow. It
lies off the Oldham Road, is full of cellars and is inhabited by prostitutes,
their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants, tramps, and, in the very
worst sites of filth, and darkness. My guide was sub-inspector of
police - an excellent conductor in one respect, but disadvantageous
in another, seeing that his presence spread panic wherever he went.
Many of the people that night visited had, doubtless, ample cause
to be nervous touching the presence of one of the guardians of the
law.
There were no Irish in the houses we visited. They live in more wretched
places still - the cellars. We descended to one. The place was dark,
except for the glare of the small fire. You could not stand without
stooping in the room, which might be about twelve feet by eight. There
were at least a dozen men, women, and children, on stools or squatted
on the stone floor round the fire, and the heat and smells were oppressive.
This not being a lodging cellar, the police had no control over the
number of its inmates, who slept huddled on the stones, or on masses
of rags, shavings and straw, which were littered about.
Half the people who lived in the den, had not yet returned, being
still out hawking lucifers, matches and besoms. They were all Irish
from Westport, in the county of Mayo. After leaving, a woman followed
me into the street to know if I had come from Westport and was greatly
disappointed at being answered in the negative.
(12)
Archibald Prentice, Historical Sketches
and Personal Recollections of Manchester (1851)
The
volumes of smoke which, in spite of
legislation to the contrary, continually issue from factory chimneys,
and form a complete cloud over Manchester, certainly make it less
desirable- as a place of residence than it is as a place of business;
and the enjoyment of the inhabitants would be greatly increased, could
they breathe a purer atmosphere, and have a brighter and more frequent
sight of the sun. But, to counterbalance the disadvantage, they have
the privilege of walking unrestrainedly through the fine fields of
the vicinity; and thousands and tens of thousands, whose avocations
render fresh air and exercise - an absolute necessity of life, avail
themselves of the right of footway through the meadows, and corn-fields,
and parks in the
immediate neighbourhood. There are so many pleasant footpaths, that
a pedestrian might walk completely round the town in a circle, which
would seldom exceed a radius of two miles from the Exchange, and in
which he would scarcely ever have occasion to encounter the noise,
bustle, and dust of a public cart road or paved street. The beautifully
undulating country between the valley of the Irk and Cheetham Hill;
the fine valley of the Irwell, with its verdant meadows; the slope
from Pendleton to the plain,
(13)
As a young girl in the 1890s Sylvia Pankhurst
went with her father Richard Pankhurst,
when he was campaigning for the Independent Labour
Party in Manchester.
Often I went on Sunday mornings with my father to the dingy streets
of Ancoats, Gorton, Hulme, and other working-class districts. Standing
on a chair or soap-box, pleading the cause of the people with passionate
earnestness, he stirred me, as perhaps he stirred no other auditor,
though I saw tears in the faces of the people about him. Those endless
rows of smoke-begrimed little houses, with never a tree or a flower
in sight, how bitterly their ugliness smote me! Many a time in spring,
as I gazed upon them, those two red may trees in our garden at home
would rise up in my mind, almost menacing in their beauty; and I would
ask myself whether it could be just that I should live in Victoria
Park, and go well fed and warmly clad, whilst the children of these
grey slums were lacking the very necessities of life. The misery of
the poor, as I heard my father plead for it, and saw it revealed in
the pinched faces of his audiences, awoke in me a maddening sense
of impotence; and there were moments when I had an impulse to dash
my head against the dreary walls of those squalid streets. which,
commencing between the extremities of Hulme and
Chorlton-upon-Medlock,
extends south and west over the greater part of Cheshire; all this
scenery, which in any country would be admired, but which has a hundred
additional charms to him who is condemned, day after day, month after
month, and year after year, to toil in the dirt and smoke of a great
town - all this delightful scenery lies open to the pedestrian; and
while he strays along through the open field, or wooded park, or the
narrow and retired lane, and breathes the pure air of heaven, he feels
that all these fields, and parks, and lanes, are as open to him, and
to those who hang on his arm, or play by his side, as if they were
his own, to have and to hold, as long as trees grow or water runs.
(14)
Ida
Wells visited Manchester in 1894. She wrote about the experience
in her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928)
Liverpool has few manufacturing interests. Her importance is derived
from her situation as a seaport; her life is purely commercial, and
her wealth is derived from handling the produce of other towns and
countries.
Manchester on the other hand is an enormous manufacturing centre.
There are nearly five hundred cotton spinning firms in and about the
city, and these own over eighteen million spindles, more than one-third
of all those in Great Britain. There are chemical works and great
engineering factories, and the export and import trade of these industries
is of great magnitude. Liverpool and the railroads made these burdens
too grievous to be borne, besides diverting this trade from Manchester,
and the ship canal is the result.
The largest ships bringing produce, cotton and iron to the markets
and mills, need not now wait in vexatious delay outside Liverpool
to be docked but steaming up the canal, reach Manchester as quickly
as they can be unloaded from vessels and on the railroads in Liverpool.
In return manufacturers can ship machinery and cotton goods to all
parts of the world, direct from Manchester factories at far less cost
and delay. Where there was formerly a small stream of water winding
in and out toward the sea, there is now a broad, deep canal, twice
the width of the Suez Canal, and any two of the largest vessels can
sail together abreast along its water.
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