Angus
Reach, the son of a solicitor, was born in Inverness in 1821. He received
a good education at Inverness Royal Academy and the University
of Edinburgh. While at university Reach began to contribute articles
for the Inverness Courier, a newspaper
owned by his father.
In 1841
Reach moved to London where
he was appointed as parliamentary reporter for the Morning
Chronicle, a post previously held by Charles
Dickens. Reach developed a unique style of "picturesque reporting"
that helped influence a generation of journalists. One critic wrote
that: "He had the power to bring a vivid picture before the reader,
a practice which was then associated with the novelist rather than
the journalist. Under his influence the public saw what he saw, heard
what he heard, and shared all the emotion and excitement of a spectator
at the scene."
In 1849 Henry Mayhew suggested
to the editor of the Morning
Chronicle, John Douglas Cook, that the newspaper should carry
out an investigation into the condition of the labouring classes in
England and Wales. Cook agreed and recruited a team that included
Reach, Mayhew, Shirley Brooks
and Charles Mackay. Reach was
given the task of investigating the Manufacturing Districts. He told
his readers that he intended to investigate the question: "What
was the impact of the social and economic development of the age on
the life of the working man and working woman". Angus Reach went
into the homes of working people and encouraged them to speak about
their lives. Reach visited most of the important industrial towns
and cities including Manchester,
Oldham, Leeds,
Halifax, Bradford,
Nottingham, Derby,
Leicester and Sheffield.
The publication of Reach's investigations in the Morning
Chronicle, increased his reputation as one of Britain's leading
journalists. His work was in great demand and he contributed to various
newspapers and journals. Reach was also a talented humourous writer
and wrote Town Talk and Table Talk
for Punch Magazine. He
was also joint editor of the journal The
Man in the Moon.
Reach's health began to deteriorate during his late twenties. His
friends warned him that he was suffering from overwork but he refused
to take it easy. Other book produced in his final years included The
Natural History of Bores (1847), Natural
History of Humbugs (1848), A Romance
of a Mince-Pie (1848), Clement
Lorimer (1849), and Leonard
Lindsay: The Story of a Buccaneer (1850).
In the final months of his life, Reach was supported by his great
friend Shirley Brooks. The date of his death
is not known but his fellow writer at Punch
Magazine, M. H. Spielmann, says he died before he was thirty.
(1)
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.
(2)
Angus Reach, The Morning
Chronicle (1849)
The piecers, either girls or boys, walk along the mule as
it advances or recedes, catching up the broken threads and skilfully
reuniting them. The scavenger, a little boy or girl, crawls occasionally
beneath the mule when it is at rest, and cleans the mechanism from
superfluous oil, dust and dirt.
The opinions of two medical gentleman of Manchester, with whom I have
conversed upon the subject of factories and health, some to this:
that the insalubrity of Manchester and of the Manchester operatives
is occasioned not by the labour of the mills, but by the defective
domestic arrangements for cleanliness and ventilation.
(3)
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.
(4)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
The visitor to Oldham will find it essentially a mean-looking straggling
town, built upon both sides and crowning the ridge of one of the outlying
spurs which branch from Manchester, the neighbouring "backbone
of England". The whole place has a shabby underdone look. The
general appearance of the operatives' houses is filthy and smouldering.
Airless little back streets and close nasty courts are common; pieces
of dismal waste ground - all covered with wreaths of mud and piles
of blackened brick and rubbish - separate the mills, which are often
of small dimensions and confined and crowded appearance. The shops
cannot be complimented, the few hotels are no better than taverns,
and altogether the place, to borrow a musical simile, seems far under
concert pitch.
I observed as I walked up from the railway station, melancholy clusters
of gaunt, dirty, unshorn men lounging on the pavement. These I heard
were principally hatters, a vast number of whom are out of employment.
Another feature of the place was the quantity of dogs of all kinds
which abounded - dog races and dog fights being both common among
the lowest orders of the inhabitants.
(5)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
Mr. Smith of Deanston, in a sanitary report made about 1837, describes
Bradford as being the dirtiest town in England. Mills abound in great
plenty, and their number is daily increasing, while the town itself
extends in like proportion. Bradford is essentially a new town. Half
a century ago it was a mere cluster of huts: now the district of which
it is the heart contains upwards of 132,000 inhabitants. The value
of life is about 1 in 40. Fortunes have been made in Bradford with
a rapidity almost unequalled even in the manufacturing districts.
The houses of the work people are very inferior. They are one and
all constructed back to back, or rather built double, with a partition
running down the ridge of the roof. This is the case even in rows
and streets at present building. "The plan," said my informant,
"is adopted because of its cheapness, and because it saves ground
rent."
Bradford is well suited for drainage. There is ample fall, and the
"Bradford Beck," a rapid stream which flows through the
town, would, if arched over, make a capital main sewer. The brook
at present runs the colour of ink. The relieving officer with whom
I inspected the town, showed me a spot where the foul water washed
the grimy walls of half a dozen steaming mills. "There,"
he said, "when I was a boy. I used to catch trout in as bright
a stream as any in Yorkshire."
(6)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
The streets of Halifax are disgracefully neglected. This applies especially
to the courts and cul-de-sacs inhabited by the very poor - including
of course the Irish. I inspected several very closely and found them
reeking with stench and the worst sort of abomination. The ash-pits
were disgustingly choked, ordure and filthy stagnant slops lay freely
and deeply scattered around, often at the very thresholds of swarming
dwellings; and among all this muck, uncared for children sprawled
by the score, and idle slatternly women lounged by the half dozen.
I talked to several in their cellars. One old woman who had been more
than thirty years in England, talked dolefully of the decline of the
hawking trade. She had frequently in her youth, she said, made 20s
out of one house. But the poor people now seldom earned more than
a shilling at the very most for a hard day's work.
Two strapping fellows sat smoking by the smouldering fire. The beds
were greasy mattresses, partially covered with foul rags, and rolled
up in corners. In another cellar which was almost totally dark, for
which its occupant paid 9d per week, a grey-haired negro - an old
man-of-war's man - had lived for seventeen years. He seldom or never
stirred out - vegetating there in a world of dirt and darkness.
(7)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
The corporation of Leeds is, I understand, about to spend a very large
sum (about £30,000 or £40,000) in the formation of an extensive
system of paving, drainage, etc., in hitherto neglected portions of
the borough. Never were sanitary reforms more imperatively called
for. The condition of vast districts of the opulent and important
town of Leeds is such that the very strongest language cannot overstate.
Virulent and fatal as was the recent attack of cholera here, my wonder
is that cholera, or some disease almost equally as fatal, is ever
absent. From one house, for instance, situated in a large irregular
court or yard - a small house containing two rooms - four corpses
were recently carried. I looked about and did not marvel. The floor
was two or three inches deep in filth. This seemed to be the normal
state even of the passable parts of the place. In the centre of the
open place was a cluster of pigsties, privies and cesspools, bursting
with pent-up abominations; and a half a dozen places from this delectable
nucleus was a pit about five feet square filled to the very brim with
semi-liquid manure gathered from the stables and houses around.
The east and north-east districts of Leeds are perhaps the worst.
A short walk from the Briggate, in the direction in which Deansgate
branches off from the main entry, will conduct the visitor into a
perfect wilderness of foulness. I have plodded by the half hour through
the streets in which the undisturbed mud lay in wreaths from wall
to wall; and across open spaces, overlooked by houses all round, in
which the pigs, wandering from the central oasis, seemed to be roaming
through what was only a large sty. Indeed, pigs seem to be natural
inhabitants of such places. I think that they are more common in some
parts of Leeds than dogs and cats are in others.
(8)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
In Sheffield there are many old, crowded, and filthy localities, and
a very considerable proportion of the operatives' dwellings are constructed
back to back. Generally speaking, the cottage houses contain a small
cellar, a living room about twelve feet square, a chamber of the same
size above, and, in perhaps one-half of the entire number, an attic
about seven feet high over the chamber. Cases are rare in which more
than one artisan's family inhabit the same house, and cellar dwellings
are totally unknown.
Diseases of the lungs and air passages are, it is well-known, the
most fatal and characteristic complaints of Sheffield. Amongst the
diseases of the air passages are reckoned cases of bronchitis, pleuritis,
asthma, catarrh, and phthisis.
Several of the grinding processes, by the quantities of excessively
fine steel-dust flung into the atmosphere, are frequently and rapidly
fatal to those engaged in them; while the bending and stooping postures
necessary in all grinding, wet as well as dry, have necessarily their
more gradually prejudicial effect. The average age of death of the
gentry and professional person in Sheffield is 45.90, that of saw-makers
is only 13.94, and that of various grinders, 18.15.
(9)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
About three-fourths of the housing in Nottingham are constructed for
and occupied by the working-classes, and as a rule they are built
in courts and back-to-back. The general plan of construction divides
them into three clear stories, of one room each - singularly inconvenient
and defective arrangement. The staircases are very steep, dark and
narrow.
The lower room is in general the living apartment. It is almost floored
with brick, or, if boarded, as it may be in rare cases, sand supplies
the place of carpeting. The street door is invariably the room door.
In point of furniture, I should say that that the living apartments
of the Nottingham operatives, particularly those of the framework
knitters, are decidedly inferior to the dwellings of the mass of the
work people in the cotton, woollen, and northern coal districts. I
have been frequently struck with the bare appearance of the rooms,
and this even in the houses of middlemen in the hosiery trade, who
had perhaps a dozen or score of knitting frames at work. An inferior
sort of sofa, however, and a clock are common. The lace-workers' houses
are somewhat better furnished. A few of the latter belonging to operatives
earning the higher class of wages. The apartment on the first floor
is invariably a bedroom; that above it either a bedroom or a workshop,
in which the knitting machines and occasionally warp-lace frames are
set.
In the late cholera visitation Nottingham got off almost scot-free.
There occurred but eight cases of which six resulted in death. One
of the causes of this comparative immunity may no doubt be found in
the sanitary improvements effected since 1832. The water supply subsequent
to that year has been, and is, most abundant; and the work of sewer-making
and pavement-making has been steadily progressive. A sanitary committee
was appointed and thirty-four dwellings erected over the privies and
ash-pits have been removed, the change in many instances throwing
open hitherto unventilated courts and noisome alleys. A great number
of foul nuisances of a similar class, including 21 pig-sties and 24
cess-pools containing "dangerous collections of manure",
have been got rid of, and many courts and small streets paved and
drained.
(10)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
There are about 35 silk manufactories engaged in the various branches
of the trade in Derby, and in the different factories it is estimated
that about 5,000 people find employment. The town possesses minor
resources in its iron-founding establishments. The population of the
town in 1841 was 35,019. The total number of marriages in 1840 was
450. Of these, 382 were celebrated according to the rites of the Church
and 74 in other modes. Of the 456 couples married, 103 men and 189
women signed with their marks. The number of illegitimate births during
1846 was 111.
The sewers and drains are very defective; refuse accumulates in house
drains to a great extent; there are no local regulations for systematic
drainage, but there is a regular service of scavengers. The town is
supplied with water, principally from pumps and wells. The sanitary
and structural state of matters are not particularly favourable. Nevertheless,
in point of building arrangements the working population of Derby
are very decidedly better off than their neighbours at Nottingham.
Derby, in fact, has always had more elbow room. Its suburbs spread
freely forth, and the town exhibits none of that structural piling
and huddling, characteristic of Nottingham.
(11)
Angus Reach, The
Morning Chronicle (1849)
The town of Leicester lies in a gentle hollow, sheltered, except towards
the east, by the undulations of the Dane and Spinney hills. The sluggish
stream of the Soar winds through the town; and in wet weather the
adjacent meadows are swampy and often overflowed. The consequence
is, the frequent prevalence of fever in the lowest-lying portions
of the town. The mean duration of life in England is 29.11 years.
In Leicester it is 25 years.
The drainage is miserably defective. Out of 242 streets and 3,417
courts, alleys and yards, only 112 are entirely culverted, and about
130 partially so. There are nine outfalls of sewers, all situated
in the town, and all pouring their contents into the most stagnant
waters of the Soar. The surface drainage is equally defective. This
is seldom sufficient fall to carry away the dirty water.
At the back of each block of the more ordinary class of houses is
a common yard, with privies, cesspools, and ash-pits, for the use
of the occupants. From these places there is seldom or never any sub-soil
drainage. Slops and liquid refuse are left to evaporate, and send
up their noisome effluvia.
Of the 13,991 houses in Leicester only 120 are supplied with water
closets - the average cost of each being £31 10s, a sum equal
to half the amount necessary for building a four-roomed house. Many
of the cesspools are of great depth; some of them not less than 25
feet; and the consequence is that, in numerous instances, the water
which is found still nearer the surface is poisoned by noxious percolations.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
