MANCHESTER OLD AND MEW ILLUSTRATES ''I give the/e Bioks ^J»JIMM«>^.-kr?!i Bought with the income of the Matthew C. D. Borden Fund MANCHESTER OLD AND NEW ST. JAMES S C AMONGST THE WAREHOUSES. 13 -X MANCHESTER OLD AND NEW BY WILLIAM ARTHUR SHAW M.A. FELLOW OF OWENS COLLEGE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AFTER ORIGINAL DBAWINGS BY H. E. TIDMARSH THE AEMS OP MANCHESTER VOLUME II CASSELL and COMPANY Limited LONDON PARIS 8f MELBOURNE ALL EIGHTS EESERVED V* 7/ tf Hyz^m 030 CHAPTER IV. THE TRADE OF THE CITY. The Staple Industry of Manchester — Inside a Cotton Mill — Spinning and Weaving — Yarn Agents : Dilworth's, Munn's — A Home Trade House : Bannerman's — Shipping Houses : Graham's, Schuster's, Grant's, Birley's — Macintosh and Co. — Calico Printing and Dyeing — Hoyle and Sons — Velveteen Cutting, Dyeing, and Dressing : Worrall's — Bleaching c Bealey's — " Hookers-in '' — The Royal Exchange — The Post Office — Some Historic Manchester Trading Hou.ses — The Co-operative Wholesale Society — Lewis's — Richard Cobden — The Free Trade Movement — The Hat Trade — The Engineering Industry — Richard Roberts — Sharp Stewart and Co. — The Railways — Beyer Peacock and Co., Nasmyth, Sir William Fairbairn's, Sir Joseph Whitworth's, Galloway's, Mather and Piatt's, Sir W. H. Bailey's — The Banking Interest : Jones, Loyd and Co.'s, Hey wood's, and Brooks' - — The Joint Stock Banks CHAPTER V. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. The Pioneer County — Beginnings of National Education — Joseph Lancaster — The British and National Schools — Edwin Waugh and the Lancashire Public School Association — The Education Act of 1870 The Board Schools — Miss Lydia Becker — Birley, the Educational Monarch — The Board School Night Classes and the Technical School — Excessive Overlapping and Waste of Effort — The Whitworth Institute — The School of Art — John Zephaniah Bell — In a Poor Way for Art — St. Bede's College — The Lancashire Independent, independent indeed — Owens College — Its Essence John Owens, the Founder — "I've Made My WiU" — Principals Scott, Greenwood, and Ward — Sir Henry Roscoe— Popular Lectures and the Night Classes — The Extension of 1870 and the Women's College — Professors Wilkins and Boyd Dawkins — The Medical School — Professor Milnes Marshall — The Victoria University — Mr. Neild and Mr. Thompson — Charles Beyer and the Whitworth Legatees — Strong-handed Builders. 73 vi MANCHESTER OLD AND NEW. CHAPTER VI. CHURCH AND CHAPEL. PAGE The Old Parish and Its Earliest Chapels — Trinity Chapel, Salford, and Its Pious Founder — St. Ann's Church and Militant Whiggism — The Last of St. Mary's — St. Thomas's, Pendleton — St. Paul's and the Bennett Street Schools — St. John's, Deansgate, and the Byroms — St. Peter's, Mosley Street — St. Clement's, St. Mark's, St. George's — The Four Canonry Churches — A Remarkable Diocesan Agitation — The Hulme Churches — " There's No Place Like Hulme " — All Saints', St. Mary's, St. Luke's, St. Jude's— The Catholics in Manchester—" Out of Much Tribulation "—The Vaughans, a Notable Family — Wesleyanism in Manchester — Wesley and Clayton — The First Society and Their Chapel — Three Manchester Men and the " Plan of Pacification " — Jabez Bunting, the Pontiff of Wesleyanism — Oldham Street and Old Napier — Methodist Organisation — The New Connexion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 112 IlI§S 0FliajUS5Igi5GldH8. Winding and Weaving in the Old Days Weighing the Bale Milldom — Ancoats : Dinner Time Scutching Room Card Room Frame Room (Drawing-Frame in Foreground) Spinning Room, with Mules Packing for Exportation In Warehouse-Land (Schuster, Fulda, and Co.) View from London Road Station, with Hoyle's Works Interior of a Calico-Printing House The Irwell at Ordsall : Worrall's Works Velveteen-Catting by hand : Piatt's Works, Warrington ... Dye House in Messrs. Worrall's Works First Exchange, 1729 Exchange, with St. Ann's Square, 1808 The Queen's Visit to the Exchange, 1851 " On the Boards" ¦ Interior of the Royal Exchange Post Office from Market Street Road-Making: Church Street with Philips' Warehouse ... The Infirmary Corner, Top of Market Street Oxford Road and Longford Mills Sam Mendel John Ry lands Newall's Buildings Peter Street : The Free Trade Hall \ Statue of John Bright in Albert Square Statue of Sir Robert Peel in Peel Park Statue of Richard Cobden in St. Ann's Square Richard Roberts The Old Railway Bridge, Water Street Exchange Station and Cromwell Statue In Victoria Station London Road Station Sir Joseph Whitworth and Co.'s Works, from the Rail way Sir Joseph Whitworth The Manchester and Liverpool District Bank, Spring Gardens The Manchester and Salford Bank, Mosley Street Brooks's Bank, Chancery Lane Sir William C. Brooks, Bart., M.P PAGE 1 1 345 7 89 111213 1617 2021 232425 2829 31 32 33363740 41 444548495253 565760 616465 67 The Bank of England, King Street The National and Provincial Bank : Interior Edwin Waugh Herbert Birley ... Miss Lydia Becker Central Board School, Deansgate Girls' High School and Holy Name Hall, Dover Street ... Hyde Road and Nicholls Hospital Before the Days of Board Schools St. Bede's College Technical School, Princess Street Manchester Warehousemen's and Clerks' Orphan Schools, Cheadle Hulme Memorial Hall, Albert Square Lancashire Independent College, Whalley Range The Art School : In the Designing Room Principal A. J. Scott, M.A Principal Greenwood Principal A. W. Ward, Litt. D. , LL. D Sir Henry Roscoe, M.P Professor A. Milnes Marshall, M.D., F.R.S Thomas Ash ton Entrance Corridor, Owens College County Court, Old Owens College, Quay Street Biological Laboratory, Owens College A Bay in the Museum, Owens College Chemical Laboratory, Owens College The Chemical Theatre and Laboratories St. Ann's Passage St. Ann's Church, from the Alley Old St. Mary's Church, Deansgate Saturday in Ard wick Green, St. Thomas's Church Interior of St. John's, Deansgate In Angel Meadow and St. Chad's, Cheetham Hill To the Charitable ... St. Peter's Church, Mosley Street Canon Kelly, M.A Holy Trinity Church, Stretf ord Road Canon E. L. Hicks, M.A. St. Philip's Church, Salford Canon Crane, M.A. St. George's, Hulme TAGE 68 69 737575 7677808184 8889 91 92 93 9393 96969697 101 104 10510S109112113 116117 120121123 124 125 125 127127 128 123 Weaving Shed, Haworth's Mills, Ordsall 9 The Royal Exchange, Cross Street ... 33 Portland Steeet : Waeehouses op Messrs. Watts and Co. and Messrs. Heney 38 The Feee Teade Hall : Oratorio Night 50 The Central Station 59 Bay in Sir Joseph Whitworth and Co.'s Fitting Shop 63 The Junction, Hulme : A Call to Fire (Uppee Jackson Street School in the Background) 73 The School op Aet and Cavendish Street Chapel, All Saints' Square 87 Owens College and the Manchester Museum 103 Church op the Sacred Trinity, Salfoed ... 114 New Cross and St. Paul's Church 118 All Saints', Choelton-on-Medlock 123 Saturday Night at the Central Hall 145 ¦Mniniiiwin! nun i n mil ¦ in nn i iirnifT'iffrir c'i ,'l.ffH winding and weaving in the old days. CHAPTER IY. THE TRADE OF THE CITY. "Hail, Portland Street, the tradesmen's greatest pride." — Gimcrackiana (adapted). "Yam is an income." — Ilerrick. The Staple Industry of Manchester — Inside a Cotton Mill — Spinning and Weaving — Yarn Agents : Dilworth's, Munn's — A Home Trade House : Bannerman's — Shipping Houses : Graham's, Schuster's, Grant's, Birley's — Macintosh and Co. — Calico Printing and Dyeing — Hoyle and Sons — Velveteen Cutting, Dyeing, and Dressing : Worrall's — Bleaching : Bealey's — "Hookers-in" — The Royal Exchange— The Post Office — Some Historic Manchester Trading Houses — The Co-operative Wholesale Society— Lewis's — Richard Cobden — The Free Trade Movement — The Hat Trade — The Engineering Industry — Richard Roberts— Sharp Stewart and Co.— The Railways — Beyer Peacock and Co., Nasmyth, Sir William Fairbairn's, Sir Joseph Whitworth's, Galloway's, Mather and Piatt's, Sir W. H. Bailey's — The Banking Interest : Jones, Loyd and Co.'s. Heywood's, and Brooks' — The Joint Stock Banks. j \ T the outset it is not a little surprising to the historical student accustomed to drawing on a bank whereon centuries of wild time grow to find how recent a thing in reality the commercial supremacy of Manchester and Lancashire is. As people understand it nowadays, its commercial greatness is really only a creation of this century. For hundreds of years previously Man chester had been celebrated for its trade and activity, but we have already seen in what sense that information is to be taken. The place was a little, active town, with old-fashioned industries that were literaJly handicrafts. Cotton was spun by hand and woven in the hand-loom • 20 weighing the bale. 2 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. in the manufacture of hats the wool was " bowed " by the large old-fashioned hatters' bow, and so on. There was no iron industry ; the chief manufactures of the place were fustians, smallwares, and hats, and the list of industries would be complete with the addition of fulling, dyeing, and bleaching, or whitstering, as Shakespeare called it. Eor centuries the town's trade ran on these lines, and, except for the spirit of its inhabitants, it did not materially differ from any other busy little English town of the time, nor did it promise anything materially different in its future until there burst on this old order one of the most astonishing series of mechanical inventions the world has ever witnessed. Something like one single generation saw the invention of the steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the "water-frame," the mule, the card, the loom; and before the breath of this new influence the town's old order vanished like the baseless fabric of a vision. Farm-labourers came pouring in to find strange freedom and high wages in the new occupation. Enterprising yeomen from far and near — from Yorkshire, from Scotland — threw up agriculture, migrated to Manchester, opened warehouses, and founded some of the most princely fortunes of to-day. Following the adoption of machinery came the development of the factory system, and the household spinning and weaving disappeared. Here and there on the hills that separate Yorkshire and Lancashire, and in the half-country places in the south-east of the county, there still remain many of the old large-roomed houses in which these displaced industries were practised, standing to us as skeleton witnesses of the unwritten side of the history of the great industrial revolution, the blight and decay of household and village craftsmanship. Now all this — the ruthless treading out and abandonment of the old ; the feverish, astonishing development of the new — is a matter of our own times almost. With the exception of the Hoyles and the Bealeys, and perhaps one or two houses more, the great representative firms of Manchester — Bannerman, Philips, Kershaw, Sidebottom, Schuster, Bhiey, Callender, Armitage, Watts, Bylands, not to speak of the extinct Potter, Westhead, Carlton, and others — all these have not yet reached their hundredth year, and many of the most flourishing houses are younger still. In most of the cases named, the firms were established during the first decade of the present century, a time when the new state of things was rapidly de veloping itself, and when the progress of Lancashire was being watched by quick BANNERMAN' S. eyes from far and near. From Frankfort, Meyer Anselm sent his son Nathan Meyer Eothschild, the future world- financier, to open a warehouse in Brown Street; the Potters came from Tadcaster, the Bannermans from Perthshire, and so on. In the first decade of the present century the founder of the last-named firm — Mr. Henry Bannerman, a Perthshire farmer— sent his eldest son, David, to Manchester to see what prospects tho cotton trade offered. He took a small ware house in Marsden Square, and prospered so well as to induce his father to throw up the farm and bring the whole family south. They came by boat from Glasgow to Liver pool, and we are told that the voyage occupied fourteen days, and when they were twenty miles from Liverpool they had to leave the vessel and row the rest of the dis tance in an open boat. The new firm was styled Henry Bannerman and Sons, four out of the five sons having joined — namely, David, Alexander, John, and Henry — and it was first located in Market Street Lane, in some rooms between Cleve land Buildings and Spring Gardens. The goods dealt in were fustians, cotton- ticks, grey and white calicoes, nankeens, muslins, and plain fabrics generally, the house becoming famous more especially for Scots, Blackburn, and Bolton muslins. Its customers were spread over Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the North, there being, it appears, little trade with the Midlands or South of England. The firm's growth was rapid. From Market Street Lane they moved to Cannon Street, at that time the merchant quarter of the town par excellence. There they occupied a warehouse at the corner of Marsden Square, afterwards tenanted by Messrs. Thomas Barnes and Co. Afterwards a removal was made to a warehouse adjoining the Eoyal Hotel in Market Street ; and, after a time, more space being required, a MILLDOM — ancoats : DINNER time. 4 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. communication was made by means of a covered bridge (still existing) with a new warehouse on the other side of West Mosley Street. In 1842 they built what was then considered a most impressive pile of warehouses in York Street, and there a further extension took place, the Canadian trade becoming an important feature. SCUTCHING ROOM. In 1864 the firm bought the North End and Eiver Meadow Mills, Staleybriclge, thus becoming spinners and manufacturers as well as merchants. They afterwards acquired the Brunswick Mill, Ancoats, and the Old Hall Mill, Dukinfield. In 1889 the whole of the manufacturing business was made into a private limited company, under the name of the Bannerman Mills Company, and a similar course was adopted in the following year with the merchant branch. Of the old members of the firm, Henry Bannerman had died June 6, 1823, at the age of 69. David Banner- man died in 1829, and Alexander in 1846. Some years later John withdrew from close association with the business, and went to live at Wyastone-Leys, on the Wye near Monmouth, where he died in 1870. The remaining brother, Henry, who had likewise withdrawn from active participation in the business, and retired to Hunton Court, Kent, died there in 1871. He was succeeded, in his landed estates, by his nephew, Mr. Henry Campbell, now the Eight Honourable H. Campbell- Bannerman, M.P. At the time of the conversion, therefore, the partners remaining were Mr. William Young, a grandson of the founder ; Mr. James Alexander Banner- man and Mr. David Bannerman, two sons of David Bannerman; Charles Wright Macara, afterwards the managing director; and Mr. William Henry Young. All these names were included in the new directorate. BANNERMAN'S. In its organisation this house may be taken as very typical of a Manchester home- trade house — one, i.e., dealing entirely with Manchester goods. For a time there was a tendency in some warehouses to try to compass every article by the depart mental system. But the idea savours less of Manchester than of London, with its huge stores or overgrown shops. This is, of course, quite a different thing from a departmental organisation of various kinds of one distinct class of goods — Manchester goods, let us say. For instance, in the firm we are noticing there is only one species of goods dealt in. Formerly the house traded in silks, ribbons, smallwares, and all the thousand articles that go under the general term "Fancies." These have now been entirely abandoned, and only the heavy trade retained — cloth in several forms. In this case it affords variety for no less than twelve departments, and might do so for more. There is a department devoted to grey calicoes, including twills and sheetings, a second to linen, a third to flannel and blankets, and so on successively for dyed linings, white calico, woollen cloth, velveteen and fustian, sundries, prints and Oxfords in cluding cretonnes, ginghams, zephyrs, stuffs and fancy, winseys, skirtings, muslins and cur tains, and, finally, quilts. As the firm we are dealing with combines both the manufacturing and merchant sides of the cotton business, it will admirably serve our purpose as a complete illustration of the various aspects of the great Lancashire industry. Their Brunswick Mill is situated in Ancoats, a densely populated part of Man chester and from the first associated with all forms of the cotton manufacture. The actual process of cotton working as shown there begins in the mixing-room, where the process of opening is performed. The cotton as it arrives is packed in CARD room. 6 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. hydraulic -pressed bales, and, when the iron hoops are broken and the bales opened, is found lying matted in closely-adhering strata. It is the work of the opener not only to open or loosen this material, but also to clean it from the dirt and refuse, stones or whatever foreign material still adheres — often pieces of wood and even cartridges, we are told. The cotton is placed on a creeper, and carried into the opener, in which is a beater working at the rate of eleven hundred xevolutions a minute, and assisted by a fan producing a strong draught. The heavier impurities drop into receivers, while the fibres of the cotton are disentangled and in this case are carried by the draught to the level of the ceiling of the adjoining blowing- and scutching-room, and there drop on the floor beneath. The succeeding work of the scutching-room is a further process of cleansing by blowing and beating, but regard must now be paid to quantities in order to ensure the regularity and evenness that are the main requisites in cotton-spinning. These are secured by an arrange ment in the scutcher by which the amount of cotton allowed to pass at a time is regulated by rollers with compensating movements. From the scutcher the cotton is finally delivered in the form of a smooth, felted web, like a sheet of wadding, and known as a " lap." Before these laps are ready for the card they are again subjected to a further cleaning in the finishing scutcher. Five of the laps are placed on the creeper of this finishing machine, beaten and blown as before, and finally delivered as one large lap ready for the card. The object of the succeeding operation — carding (p. 5) is the further cleaning of the material, and also the separation of the fibres of the cotton, by combing. In the lap the fibres lie any way, but in the fine film, or " sliver," which issues from the card something has been done towards rendering them parallel. These slivers thus delivered from the card are then taken to the "drawing-frame" (p. 7), by means of which a number of them are united into one. This interesting machine comprises three parts or "heads." Each head deals with six slivers as they are brought from the card in cans, and acting as with a finger- and-thumb movement, unites them into one continuous sliver, draws them out to the required length, and delivers the re sultant sliver again into a can. Six of these united slivers are then treated in the second head, and identically in the third, so that the resulting sliver contains two hundred and sixteen of the original slivers that issued from the carding machine. To such automatic perfection has the machine been brought, says Mr. Mortimer, our COTTON SPINNING. authority, that if one of these light, filmy slivers should happen to break, the machine is instantly stopped. Up to this point the cotton has been simply cleaned, combed, and drawn out. The process of imparting a twist commences in the slubbing-frame, in which, as they issue from the rollers, the slivers are reduced in bulk and get their first twist. The last of these preparatory processes consists in repeated doubling, first in the intermediate and then in the Jack frame. Thus before the material passes into the spinning-room to be made into yarn these various preparatory pro cesses have given us a film or thread, contain- FEAME BOOM (DEjVWING-FBAME in foreground). ing, through repeated doublings, eight hundred and sixty-four of the original slivers which issued from the carding machine. The actual work of the spinning-room (p. 8) will probably be fully known to most of our readers. To the uninitiated it may be briefly described as a double process of drawing out to render fine, and of twisting to render strong. The drawing out is done by sets of rollers, the front set moving at a quicker speed than their fellows, and by the travelling-carriage, while the twist is imparted by the spindles, which make about 10,000 revolutions per minute. In travelling out the carriage moves slowly, as if it found the task of pulling out its 1,000 threads or so (sometimes there are 1,296 spindles to a mule) a herculean task; then it reaches its limit, there is a pause, the spindles stop, and the rollers cease to give out rovings ; for a moment the spindles perform a reverse movement, a "backing off," and then with a bound the carriage rushes back to the frame, and the yarn that had been drawn out is wound around the spindle in the shape of a cop. The headstock of the self-acting mule which controls this motion is a wonderful piece of mechanism, and of further interest to us as the offspring of the 8 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. brain of the most remarkable mechanical genius whom Manchester can claim. It is, in fact, the only contribution of note Manchester has herself, or through her sons, made to the great series of mechanical inventions that has inaugurated the reign of cotton. Eor, as we shall see, none of the first eighteenth-century inventors were Manchester men. When the cops have been cleared from the spindles they are taken to the weighing-in room, and afterwards warehoused, remaining until they are conditioned — spinning room, with mules. i.e., until any brittleness caused by the high temperature in which they have been spun has passed away, when they are fit for use. Such of the yarns as are required for home use remain in the cop, those that are intended for export are either shipped in the cop or made into hanks, and afterwards pressed into bundles (p. 9). The Brunswick Mill, from which this description has been mainly taken contains nearly 80,000 spindles, being about one-half the quantity contained in the combined mills ; and this is by no means an excessive quantity. In the large " Limiteds," which are making for the south-east of the county a new heaven and a new earth — blackening both sky and soil — it is possible to find 100,000 or more spindles to a mill, arranged differently as a mill finds its market. The yarn spun by the mules consists either of twist or weft ; the former serving for warp-threads, is stronger and has a harder twist given to it than the weft. Accordingly, in one large typical concern we find 96,000 spindles WEAVING SHED, HAWORTH'S MILLS, ORDSALL. JAMES DILWORTH AND SON. devoted to twist, and 54,000 to weft. But the proportion depends entirely upon a company's trade. As a rule in the Lancashire trade spinning is separated from weaving, and from the nature of the case — seeing that one loom can work up the yarn produce of we know not how many spindles — is the larger industry. But there are numerous cases, as in the one we are now taking as typical, in which a firm both spins and weaves. When this is not so, the yarn is sold to the " manufacturer " through the yarn agent, thus giving rise to one of the great middleman figures of the cotton industry. Far and away first and most representative in .this branch of Manchester trade is the firm of James Dilworth and Son — the yarn agents par excell ence, as one might say in mixed phrase. The reputation of this house is untouched alike for long standing, for extent of business, and sustained tradition of commercial honour. And, although the firm has long since changed hands, it still in this last respect reflects the personality of its originator. The founder of the business was James Dilworth, who was born about 1790. While still a lad of about seventeen he entered the employ of Messrs. Birley and Hornby, cotton manufacturers of Preston, and rose by his ability and character to an important position under them. He subsequently, in 1820, began business as a yarn commission agent in Water Street, Preston, visiting Manchester on the two market-days in each week, and on the intervening days attending the markets at Blackburn and Chorley. His business proved so successful that in 1837 he opened a warehouse in Manchester, in Winter's Buildings, St. Ann's Street, continuing at the same time the business in Preston. A year later Mr. Dilworth took his son into partnership, and in 1842 the business was concentrated in Manchester and the Preston place closed. Since those early days the Manchester 21 PACKING FOR EXPORTATION. 10 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. address has itself changed several times, to Back Square, to New Market Hall, and finally to Pall Mall and Strutt Street, where it still remains. At present these premises are occupied only by the ranges of offices, the warehouses having been removed from the centre of the city in 1876. The personality, too, of the firm has changed, although there has been no change in the title or honourable business methods. James Dilworth, the founder, died in 1854, and his son John in 1860. Five years previously, on January 1st, 1855, Mr. Abraham Haworth, who had been with the firm for the preceding ten years, was received into partnership, and he was afterwards joined by two brothers, Mr. Jesse Haworth in 1865, and Mr. Walter Haworth in 1873. At the latter date Mr. George Massey was also admitted into partnership, and at the beginning of 1890 Mr. Arthur A. Haworth, eldest son of Mr. Abraham Haworth. These names represent the constitution of the firm at the actual moment, with the exception of Mr. Walter Haworth, who died in 1890. The principle on which this house has from the first conducted its business has been that of acting purely and simply as spinners' agents. They work entirely on behalf of the spinner, receiving only a commission, and neither buying nor selling on their own account. In this matter the trade custom differs somewhat. Some yarn agents act as merchants, buying and warehousing on their own account, as well as selling on com mission : and as, of course, there is a large yarn export trade, the position of such a middleman is more easily comprehended. A very representative house of this kind is that of J. Munn and Company, yarn agents and commission merchants of Fountain Street. It is, too, amongst the oldest in the trade, having been established in the second decade of the century by John Munn, who in 1819 was located in Bank Buildings and resided in Prestwich. He at first acted only as agent, but subsequently embarked in manufacturing, having works at Bacup and afterwards at Newchurch, but for the last ten years or so the firm has restricted itself to the agency and merchanting part of the business. With the ordinary process of manufacturing and weaving, many people in Lancashire are perfectly familiar. The yarn or threads intended for warp are wound upon bobbins, and then upon the large roller called the warper's beam. After being sized, in order to give them the requisite stiffening, they are dried over steam- THE SHIPPING TRADE. 11 heated cylinders, and then arranged in the loom. The warp forms the longitudinal threads of the cloth to be manufactured, and the process of weaving consists of lifting half the threads of the warp to allow the shuttle bearing the weft to pass between. Each pass of the shuttle forms a pick; the threads are then reversed, and the shuttle repasses, and so on. This is the simplest form of weaving. There are many others in which the " shedding " is produced in various ways. The most recent improvement in the loom is a Ger man patent, manufactured by Messrs. Hall of Bury. It is an extremely intricate machine, but ordinarily the Jacquard typo prevails as yet. By means of " tappets " or other arrangements governing the movements of the healds which lift the warp-threads, different kinds of cloth are produced ; and in this way the clumsy loom produces all the various kinds of cotton cloth which are the foundation of Manchester's trade — shirtings, domestics, printers, twills, spots, jeanetts, satins, drills, serges, velvets, and a dense array more. Messrs. Bannerman, the firm we have been dealing with as typical of a Manchester heavy goods warehouse, is technically known as a home-trade house. Their travellers cover the whole of the United Kingdom, and their goods are prepared for those markets. The shipping trade, which they also cultivate in connection with their mills, is considered quite separate and distinct. The markets, foreign and colonial, differ altogether in their requirements — different material, different counts of yarn, different cloths and designs. Not that there is an essential difference in the fabric so much as in the market needs and conditions and customs. Distinct, however, the shipping trade is, and it would be difficult to convey an idea as to the magnitude of it. The principal markets are Turkey, China, and India. During the first month of 1894, 8,622,500 yards of grey cotton piece-goods were exported to Turkey, three times that amount to IN WAREHOUSE-LAND (SCHUSTER, FULDA, AND CO.). 12 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. China and Hong Kong, and more than 122,107,500 to the British East Indies. Of bleached piece-goods Turkey took 4,900,100, and Egypt 7,678,300 yards; China 9,688,900, and India 36,000,000. The next great division is printed cotton piece- goods, of which Turkey took in January, 1894, 8,900,500 yards, China 1,870,800, and the British East Indies about 24,913,600. Similar figures could be given for dyed piece-goods. The total length of cotton piece-goods of all kinds exported during this period of one month was 461,951,200 yards, valued at £4,622,821. If this is an average, it gives an export trade of this almost entirely Lancashire product of the round value of £56,000,000 per annum, an amount which does not include VIEW FROM LONDON ROAD STATION, WITH HOTLE S WORKS. the value of cotton-yarn, which was in January, 1894, 18,310,600 pounds, or of lace, cotton hosiery, or thread also exported, which, if included, would give a grand total for the month quoted, of £6,175,668 value exported. For the sake of illustration as to the essential magnitude of this shipping trade, compare it with the output of any other great British industry. The total value of the exports for January, 1894, of woollen and worsted yarns and goods was £1,722,667, of coal £1,531,603, of machinery and steam-engines £967,519. As will be seen from these figures, one of the chief — indeed, the chief — market for this Manchester shipping trade is the East Indies. About one-third of the production WILLIAM GRAHAM AND CO. 13 INTERIOR OF A CALICO-PRINTING HOUSE. of Lancashire goes to British India. The steady expansion of this particular trade has been very remarkable. To go no farther back than the "fifties," the shipments from the United Kingdom to British India were 25,000,000 pounds of yarn and 450,000,000 yards of cloth annually. In 1891 the corre sponding figures were 53,000,000 lbs. of yarn and 1,960,000,000 yards of cloth. Of the many influential and wealthy firms engaged in this trade, among the oldest and most representative are Messrs. William Graham and Co. and Lyon Lord and Co. The first-named firm started about 1836 as merchants in Bond Street, and shortly after wards opened a house in Bombay, followed in the " sixties " by the establishment of a house in Calcutta, and lastly by a branch in Korachi, in the " eighties." The Manchester address of the firm has undergone several changes — from Bond Street to Aytoun Street, to 33, Chorlton Street, to Major Street, and finally, in 1883, to 48, Sackville Street, which was unfortunately burned out in 1893. The founder of the business, Mr. William Graham, a well-known man in his day, was for some years member for Glasgow in the Liberal interest. To-day the firm is represented by Sir F. Forbes Adam, CLE., and Mr. A. J. Hunter. Messrs. Lyon Lord and Co. are a younger house. The firm started as Lord Brothers some time before 1868 in David Street, off Portland Street, but now has its warehouse, with a different title, in Princess Street. Mr. Lord is well known as, along with Sir Frank Forbes Adam, the stoutest champion of monometallism in Manchester. 14 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. The chief markets for this Manchester shipping trade outside the East Indies are Turkey and South America, and as typical more especially of the latter branch we may take one of the oldest-established shipping-houses in Manchester — Messrs. Schuster, Fulda and Co. The founder of this house was Mr. Leo Schuster, who began trading in Manchester some time before 1824 at 22, Charlotte Street. The warehouse was successively changed to 18, Mosley Street, 50, Spring Gardens, and then, in 1850, with the altered title of Leo Schuster, Brothers and Co., to 33, George Street. From 1858 onwards the firm styled themselves shipping merchants, having previously acted in several other capacities — e.g., as agents for Pascoe, Grenfell and Sons, copper-roller manufacturers. In 1866 the house removed to its present premises in Sackville Street, and eight years later its style was altered to Schuster, Fulda and Co., as it is to-day (p. 11). One would like to catch a glimpse of the interesting founder of this house, who is said to have borne a striking resemblance to the first Napoleon ; but we have only a few fugitive references. At the meeting of merchants on the 10th of January, 1839, which was to prove the first real step in the formation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, Mr. J. B. Smith, afterwards secretary of the movement, to whose memory very insufficient honour has been paid, after promising his own sub scription of £100, told the members that he was commissioned to put down Mr. Schuster's name for the like amount. One further item of information seems to be incorrect. It is well known that in those early days Mosley Street was mainly a residential part of the town. The street appears to have been laid out some time after 1750, and was looked upon as the extreme limit of the town on that side. It was accordingly chosen as the locality for numerous fine churches, the Unitarian Chapel, the Mosley Street Independent Chapel, etc., as also for the public institutions that were growing up — the Manchester Academy, the Eoyal Institution, the Portico, and the Assembly Eooms. It is not surprising, therefore, that most of the wealthy families of the town resided there, and in 1793 Dalton described it as the most elegant and retired street in the town. In the list of the wealthy residents of a later date, Mr. Schuster's name is given, but seemingly with only his business address, for we find his " house " address to have been Crumpsall Green, and then successively Cheetham Hill; the Polygon, Ard wick ; and Hope Field, near Eccles. He died at Eoehampton, near London. ROTHSCHILD BROTHERS. 15 It is evident, therefore, that the transformation of Mosley Street into a business part had already begun in the first quarter of the century. During the same period, for instance, Messrs. Car dwell and Longworth's mill stood on the site of the present Manchester and Salford Bank. But the street was a long time before it quite lost its residential character. In 1808-9 Nathan Meyer Eothschild resided there, at No. 25, presumably the house at the corner of York Street, which was occupied for many years by Messrs. Bradshaw, Hammond and Co., calico printers. At the age of twenty-three this extraordinary man was sent over from Frankfort by his father to purchase Manchester goods. In 1804 he describes himself as merchant and manufacturer, of Brown Street, with his house in Downing Street, Ardwick. Seven years later the firm became Eothschild Brothers, merchants, 5, Lloyd Street, Cooper Street, a little low pile of warehouses only removed some years since, and situated within a few yards of Dr. McKerrow's chapel. During his residence in Manchester Eothschild likewise occupied, previous to his removal to Mosley Street, the third house on the left-hand side in Faulkner Street. It was probably owing to his father's death, in 1812, that he abandoned business in Manchester for the great financial pursuit in which he made so much more than renown. Three years later he accomplished one of the most remarkable feats in his remarkable career, in securing the intelligence of Napoleon's escape from Elba twenty-five hours before the news reached the British Government. There are various traditions in Manchester that as a merchant here he was regarded with some caution and reserve by our steady- going and long-headed forefathers, and was generally required to pay cash down for his purchases before he could get delivery. We have been told that the business started by him was taken on his departure by Martin Schunck, then (about 1813) of 9, Back George Street, and founder of the present Schunck, Souchay, and Co., 62, Peter Street. Among the other mercantile celebrities who resided in Mosley Street was Daniel Grant, of the firm of William Grant and Brother. The oft-repeated tradition is that these two old figures were the origin of the Cheeryble Brothers of " Nicholas Nickleby." Among others, Mr. Slugg, who knew them, has, however, something to say about this. " If Dickens has attempted their portrayal in these two characters, as regards their generosity, benevolence, and goodness of heart, I consider he has drawn a true picture, but all the rest is mere caricature. From what I remember of 16 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. Daniel Grant, I should say he was anything but loquacious, and was rather reserved and dignified in his manner, though condescending, considerate, and very kind to all he had to do with. I well remember how proud I was one morning when my master, having learnt that they were wanting concentrated lime-juice at the works, sent me to the warehouse to see Daniel Grant, and make him an offer of some. To THE IHWELL AT ORDSALL J WOERALL'S WORKS. my delight, he ordered about £100 worth. In giving me the order he wasted no words, and yet he did it so kindly that I have never forgotten the circumstance. In later years he used to arrive at his warehouse about ten or eleven o'clock, and usually came in his carriage. By the time of his arrival a number of poor people had gathered at the warehouse-door awaiting his coming. When his carriage drew up they would divide into two lines, forming an avenue from the carriage to the warehouse-door. If he did not distribute his alms to them himself, he would send a clerk out to them, and I believe they seldom went away unrelieved." The Grants had their warehouse at the lower end of Cannon Street. Besides them, in Mosley Street lived David Bannerman, Eichard Cobden, as we shall see, S. L. Behrens, and Hugh Hornby Birley. The last-named from 1815-36 occupied the house then numbered 28, York Street, at the corner opposite to the present Man chester and Salford Bank. Even in those days the Birleys were a notable house. The original firm started THE BIRLEYS. 17 in 1808, or somewhat earlier, as Birley and Hornby, manufacturers and spinners, of Tipping's Court, Cannon Street, their factory being in Oxford Street. The ware house was afterwards changed to 16, Back George Street, and in 1821 the firm became Birley, Hornby and Kirk, then Birley and Kirk, then, in 1838, Birley and Co. The various business ramifications of this family would of themselves fill a chapter of local history. Almost coeval with the first firm just referred to was that of Swainson, Birley, Turton and Co., spinners and manufacturers, who have worked the Fishwick Mills at Preston for half a century and more. Their first town warehouse was at 5, New Market Build ings, and after wards, for over twenty years, in Portland Street. At present the firm — now an d since 1838, Swainson, Birley and Co. — de scribe them selves as cotton-spinners and manufacturers of longcloths, shirtings, sheetings, plain and fancy muslins, and what not. Their Manchester warehouse is at No. 7, Charlotte Street. They have warehouses also in London and Glasgow. Another branch of the family became concerned in the manufacture of one of the more modern of Manchester fabrics — waterproofs. The name of Charles Macintosh and Co., manufacturers of patent waterproof and airproof cloth, first appears in Manchester in 1828. The firm was then located in 45, Back George Street, with works at Cambridge Street, Chorlton Eow, or, as it is now called, Chorlton-on-Medlock. Besides their waterproof productions, by virtue of which the firm has given its name to the Macintosh overcoat, Messrs. Macintosh and Co. were the original patentees of vulcanised indiarubber, and are to-day manufacturers of indiarubber goods generally, as well as waterproof fabrics. The title of the firm, VELVETEEN - CUTTING BY HAND: PLATT'S WORKS, WARRINGTON. 18 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. which to-day has warehouses in Piccadilly, and at 2, Lever Street, as well as in London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, has never changed, although from the commence ment the first-named Birley concern coalesced with it. They found the capital, and in process of time the extensive mills worked by Birley and Co. were converted into the Macintosh Indiarubber Works, and from some date before 1869 the former title disappears. One of the partners in this concern of Macintosh was Hugh Birley, M.P., who died in 1883 at his residence in Didsbury. He represented Manchester in the Con servative interest from 1868 till his death, and, like all the Birleys, concerned himself deeply in the well-being of his townsmen. It is said that the various donations he made for the founding of churches in the city and neighbourhood amounted to no less a sum. than £100,000 from first to last. The indiarubber industry which thus started out of the greater related art cotton manufacture has become a most important factor in the trade of Manchester, there being between fifty and sixty, and probably more, considerable firms devoting themselves to it. The founder of this representative family, Hugh Hornby Birley, was a well- known figure in Manchester. As major of the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry at the time, he was by many held responsible for the affair of Peterloo — the massacre, as it was called. This was during the most heated period of the Eeform agitation, and an attempt was made on the popular side to fix blame upon the yeomanry officers by bringing an action at Lancaster. As may be imagined, the case was dismissed. For our immediate purpose he is more noteworthy as the first President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. This association had been first started in 1820 for the promotion of measures calculated to benefit and protect the trading interests of its members and the general trade of the town and neighbourhood. There was crying need for such an institution, and the part which it has played in re presenting mercantile interests, especially to Parliamentary authority, is worthy of most marked recognition. During a portion of the eighteenth century the wearing of printed calico had been forbidden under a penalty of £5 to the wearer and £20 to the seller of it. The idea was to protect the linen industry from this dangerous upstart rival, cotton ; and when, in 1736, the manufacture of calico was allowed in Great Britain, it was THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. 19 on the condition that the warp should be made entirely of linen yarn. The story has been often told how, when Arkwright had made his first all-cotton calico, it was sent back by the merchant in a terrible hurry when he found out that the material contravened the law. Afterwards when, from 1774 onwards, whole-cotton fabrics and prints were made, they were allowed to be lawful wear on payment of 3d. a yard, a duty which in 1806 was raised to 3£d. This incomprehensible piece of stupidity actually remained in force till 1834, when its repeal was carried by Mr. Poulett Thompson; and in the reminiscences of old firms and trade customs, in which Manchester local literature is so rich, frequent mention is made of the unscrupulous way in which the old Manchester merchant contrived to " do " the exciseman. Every print-works was under the supervision of one of these officials, who used to visit the place at stated times. He stamped tho tab-ends of prints with certain numbers and hieroglyphics, and levied the duty in accordance. Eeport says that one favourite way of getting over him was to ply him with hospitaliby until he gradually lost consciousness and self-control, then to borrow his stamp and use it as quickly as possible in stamping hundreds of pieces, which thus got into the market duty-free. It was for the correction of such blockhead legislation as this that the Manchester Chamber of Commerce was established; and great credit is due to it for the prompt and wide-embracing championship with which it has watched the best mercantile interests of the community. If its history were written, its directorate would probably be found to furnish a chronicle in brief of the chief mercantile houses of the century. The first list of directors given — that for 1826 — includes such figures as Thomas Hoyle, Henry Houldsworth, Thomas Sharp, Thomas Cardwell, of Cardwell, Longworth and Co., and many others. The first of these names — that of Thomas Hoyle, the calico printer — is repre sentative of one of the oldest-established businesses in the city (p. 12). Calico printing and dyeing form the two complementary industries of the cotton trade. Of both these, as of the cotton trade itself, Lancashire is the centre and seat, and Manchester the home. The first mention of calico printing, or rather of calico printers, in the town, is in 1763, when William Jordan, " callique-printer," of Little Green, baptised his child at the parish church. To-day there are, in or near 20 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. the city, something like fifty or sixty print-works, and that, too, although the con ditions of the industry — the absolute necessity of a plentiful supply of pure soft water — have a tendency to drive the works to moorland districts. Very notable among these Manchester calico-printers is this firm of Thomas Hoyle and Sons, Limited. Long before the close of the last century the Hoyles were famed as dyers. At first DYE HOUSE IN MESSES. WOREALL S WORKS. they were styled "dyers, Ardwick," then, in 1794, in Ancoats, and, three years later, their address was given as " Thomas Hoyle and Sons, dyers, Mayfield." The original founder of the concern, Thomas Hoyle, senior, resided at first in Piccadilly, and afterwards near the Mayfield works. He died in the first quarter of the present century, leaving three daughters, one of whom was married to Alfred Binyon, a descendant of a rich banker at Kendal, who had provided the capital with which Arkwright began the cotton trade. A second daughter married Alderman William Neild, and the concern ultimately passed into his hands, although neither at that time, nor since, has its title been changed. In 1874, by which time the bleach- works at Sandy Vale, in Dukinfield, had been added to the Mayfield works, the firm was turned into a limited company, under the managing directorship of Mr. Alfred Neild and Mr. Joseph Compton, junior; but at the present time it is entirely under the direction of the former, Mr. Alfred Neild, for many years treasurer of the Owens College and now of the University. HOYLE AND SONS, LIMITED. 21 As has been stated, the firm began as dyers, and it was not until about 1808 that they were noted as calico printers and dyers. This style was preserved for another forty years, but from 1845 onwards they designated themselves calico printers only. A glance at the process itself, however, reveals the fact that the two names mean pretty much the same thing. In calico printing there are, broadly, two classes of treatment, the first in which colours are printed directly in the cloth, the second that of the development of the colours through the medium of mordants, and by the pro cess of dyeing. As the second of these processes practically implies the first, a description of it will suffice for both. Before the cloth is ready for a printer it has to be singed and bleached. If the reader has ever been shown over a calico-printing works he will probably have had his atten tion first drawn to the pre- FIEST EXCHANGE, 1729. (From Casson and Berry's " Plan nj Manchester.") paration of the design and the engraving of the copper rollers which are used in the printing-machine. But this is only one of the adjuncts of the trade, and has relation rather to etching and engraving than to the distinctive Lancashire industry. Taking all this for granted, therefore, the first actual treatment of the cloth is mordanting, i.e., getting fixed upon the cloth a mordant varying according to the pattern desired, which, by " biting into " the fibre, shall prepare it for the absorption of the ultimate colouring matter. The mordant, which is faintly coloured, or sightened, is printed on the cloth by the printing-machine, just as the colours themselves would be. Those who remember the illustration of calico-printing which was given at the Jubilee Exhibition will also remember the feeling of awe produced by the huge machine (p. 13). In principle the thing is very simple, but the nicety to which every thing has to be adjusted is marvellous, as the least variation would lead to a want 22 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. of correspondence in the various lines and colours of the design. As each roller can print only one colour, there must be an arrangement of as many rollers as there are colours in the pattern, and some of these enormous machines are made to carry not less than sixteen. These are arranged round a large cylinder or drum, thickly cushioned with some soft material. The cloth to be printed is taken to the back of the machine, and, after passing sundry tightening bars, is carried between the drums and the engraved rollers. Each of these last is supplied with colour by its own pad working in a separate pan of colour, and to make the design complete it will be easily understood that the engraving on the various rollers will have to vary just in accordance with the difference in the colour of the lines in the pattern, so that the design is not perfect until it has left the last roller. Those who are acquainted with the clumsy hand-process of block-printing in whatever industry — for instance, in the printing of linoleums and floor-cloths, in which hand-printing is still indispensable in spite of all the efforts to construct a printing-machine — will understand what a degree of nicety and beauty this machine has reached. After receiving this faint mordant impression the cloth is subjected to the processes of " ageing," " dunging," and washing, with the object of removing the acetic acid and sightening colour mixed with the mordant. When this is accom plished, there is left on the cloth little but an almost invisible stain representing the original pattern. On this fabric one single operation produces an almost magic effect. A bundle of prints is taken and plunged into the dye-beck, containing a yellowish-brown fluid — alizarine. After a single immersion the apparently colourless cloth comes out displaying, according to the several printings of the mordant, the most varied effects of coloured patterns — reds, pinks, lilacs, purples, etc. The operation strikes the uninitiated as perplexingly strange and wonderful ; but, so far from being a new or a Manchester thing, it is probably one of the oldest processes practised by man. It was certainly known to the Egyptians, and further than that, we, for our part, do not care to go. After an additional washing or clearing, the cloth undergoes the final finishing processes of starching, calendering, etc., and is ready for its market. Before we complete this view of the technical side of Manchester trade we must give one glance at a firm equally old and well-established and typical with that of Thomas Hoyle and Sons. Every purchaser of what is known as County velveteen is informed, DYEING. 23 as a guarantee of its excellence, that it has been dressed by Messrs. J. and J. M. Worrall, Limited. The reputation of this firm rests on the experience of a century, and is world-wide. Their dyeworks at Ordsall consist of a maze of dye-sheds interspersed among loftier buildings, cover ten acres of ground, and find employ ment for as many as two thousand "hands" (pp. 16, 20). Velveteen, in the dyeing and dressing of which this firm takes the lead, is the lineal descendant of the old fustian, the main product of the Manchester looms of ¥ mf^Jm»^S ill I rr~- -jM-£;' p> mM^rMJ'I^i J«J-'j« J> *>f-— ' m. ¦„ iic ,. • % » I $ ! ¦ * i EXCHANGE, WITH ST. ANN'S SQUARE, 1808. (From an Old Print.) the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Strangely enough, though it is a com monly known fact, this one name "fustian" covers, in the course of English industrial history, every class of English textile fabric — woollen, mixed linen and cotton, and all-cotton stuffs. In the earliest times the trade of Manchester, like that of England generally, was confined to woollen, and we have already seen at what an early date there is mention in the Salford Charter of the fulling-mills of the Irk. This earliest of our textile industries was confessedly pirated from the Flemish, and with such success that, in the opinion of Professor Thorold Eogers, you might as well have been clothed with a hurdle as with English broadcloth for any protection it gave against wind or 24 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. weather. However, whatever their quality, these woollen goods, whether in Lanca shire or in Norwich (which was distinctly the home of the craft), were designated fustians, and when, towards the close of the sixteenth century, and about the time when the East India Company was beginning to import cotton from Smyrna and Cyprus, certain Protestant re fugees came over from Ant werp, settled in Manchester, and introduced the cotton in dustry to Lancashire, the new product still retained the old time-honoured name of fus tians or Manchester cottons. Old Humphrey Chetham, the founder, was a fustian merchant, as were his towns people, the Hartleys, Mosleys, Walworths, etc. — all the typical Manchester names of the time. Bolton was the principal seat of its manufac ture, and the chief market was Manchester. But this fustian was no longer even in part a woollen fabric. It was built up of a linen warp and a cotton weft, and this continued to be the case until the mechanical inventions of the eighteenth century enabled the Lancashire manu facturer to spin a cotton yarn strong enough for warp. Out of this fustian has developed — first, velveret, and then the modern cotton-velvet or velveteen, the first manufacture of which appears to have been about 1780. The idea of velveteen is that the warp yarns form the back or groundwork of the cloth, and the weft yarns when cut form the velvet-pile. In order to produce the conditions favourable to the raising of this pile, the weft has to be floated loosely over the warp threads, and bound to them at certain intervals, according to THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO THE EXCHANGE, 1851. {From a Water-Colour Drawing by S. Walker, in the Town Hall.) VELVETEEN. 25 the length of the pile required. The pile is then raised by cutting these weft threads. This cutting is mostly by hand, and is one of the deftest operations eye and hand have to perform probably in any industry (p. 17). It is done by a knife, two feet in length, and tapering to an edge of the extremest fineness. " When the cloth is ready for operating upon, the cutter finds the first adhesive line of the warp, and H,ETilM".«ivMI " ON THE BOARDS " . INTERIOR OF THE ROYAL EXCHANGE. introduces the guide or guard of the knife into the floated weft which forms the race. Balancing herself upon her right foot, she passes the knife along the race in a straight, undeviating line to the end of the two yards which form the length of the cut, carrying her left foot forward to the distance of a yard in the process. Now, if we consider that in a piece of velveteen twenty-four inches wide there may be from 950 to 1,000 races, and that it takes an hour to cut a two-yard length, it is evident that in her forward and backward movement the cutter must go through a great deal of exercise in the course of a day." In all these respects, though with infinite improvement in detail, the main principles and features are the same to-day as in the old-fashioned manufacturing and 23 26 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. cutting ; for hand-cutting still largely survives, although machine-cutting — a new and important departure — is steadily coming into use. The most considerable advance in technique as recorded in the art of the firm with which we are now dealing concerns only the processes of dyeing and dressing. This improvement consists in the evolution of the process of dressing in the grey before dyeing. In the development of this idea it is said that the way was led by a certain John Wilson, of Ainsworth. As the various manufacturers' cloths arrive at the dye-works, after being cut, dis tinguishing marks are put upon them. They are then soaked in boiling water to remove any stiffening, then dried and brushed, and shorn by a kind of grass-cutter machine. In the next operation the cloth is singed by passing over red-hot copper cylinders, or gassed in order to remove all fluff and make the pile more solid and more even. A final brushing completes the first set of processes, and the cloth is then in its " dressed-off " state. It is afterwards bleached and dyed, and finally finished by successive processes of beeswaxing and brushing by machinery. Such is a very brief outline of the industrial processes practised in these great Salford works in the dressing, dyeing, and finishing of velveteen. The amount of technical knowledge lying behind it we should find it hard to realise, summing up, as it does, all the practical traditions of bygone generations of experience with all the theory of most recent science. It has only been by these generations of skilled and progressive endeavour that Lancashire has acquired the lead which she holds to-day in the world's greatest technical and textile industry. The informing spirit in this concern was Mr. James Worrall, who was Mayor of Salford in 1862, and to whom the town owes its improvement scheme of that year, besides the Ordsall Schools, and much more. Besides being a practical dyer, he was in every sense an engineer, having no less than twenty patents bearing his name. When he became head of it the place employed only about two hundred hands. To-day the firm includes within itself the Mordanting Company and Clegg's Court Calico Printing Company, Salford; the old Garratt Dyeing Company, Princess Street, Manchester; the Gay thorn Dyeing Company, Manchester ; and the Crimsworth Dyeing Company, Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. In these various branches there are 3,000 men at work. In February, 1890, the concern was turned into a limited company, the directors being the three sons of the late proprietor. With a glance at one companion old-established house we must leave the record BEALEY'S. 27 of the technical side of the cotton trade. The firm of Eichard Bealey and Co. have to-day their bleach-works in Eadcliffe, where they had it in the days of George II. The first lease of their bleach-works dates from 1750, and it had been in their occu pation previously. In those days they were styled, not bleachers, but "whitsters," a business as old as the cotton trade, says one, but surely much older. When old Falstaff was carried out in the basket, did not merry Mistress Ford bid her men bear it to the whitsters in Datchet Mead ? As to the personnel of the firm, Mr. Slugg has presented us with the follow ing : — "The first conveyance just referred to was from James Marsden to William, Eichard, and Joseph Bealey. Joseph was the second son of William and the great- great-grandfather of the present head of the firm. Joseph's son, Eichard, succeeded to the business and partnership with his brother Ealph, their warehouse being in Bank Street. In 1811 Eichard was in partnership with his son Adam, as Eichard Bealey and Son, their warehouse being in New Cannon Street. Eichard died in 1817, and was succeeded by Adam, who married a Chester lady. She survived her husband, and carried on business as Mary Bealey & Sons. Both she and her husband were strongly attached to the Wesleyan cause, and amongst that body few ladies have been as widely known and as deservedly respected on account of her noble deeds and many virtues. Her daughter married Mr. Percival Bunting, the son of that well-known Wesleyan minister, Dr. Jabez Bunting. Some years since Mr. Bunting, of considerable repute in the legal profession, retired from Manchester to London," and his son Percy William became the editor of the Contemporary Beview and treasurer of the Wesleyan West Central Mission. Mrs. Bealey's eldest son, Eichard, a county magistrate, succeeded in the direction of the concern. Besides their warehouse in Bank Street (now 89, St. James's Street), the firm had in olden days its public-house address — the "White Horse," Hanging Ditch. This was in those times a simple matter of necessity. If a manufacturer lived outside the town, he would visit Manchester on certain days — perhaps the three market-days of the week — put up at his inn, and transact business there, and that inn is given in the Directory after his name, along with the ordinary address of the firm. Intimately associated with this trade custom was another, which has also happily 28 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. vanished. Nowadays if a buyer goes the round of the manufacturers, though he has seldom need to do it, he determines his calls just as he is led up or down of the spirit. But in those days of posting and coaching it was a different and more important matter, and the Manchester firms got into the way of employing a kind of amateur detective — " hookers-in," they were called. It was their work to POST OFFICE FROM MARKET STREET. hang round the inns and pick up the names of the arrivals overnight, and then by hook or crook get them into their patrons' warehouses, or else hurry off to the warehouse with the name. Many are the tales told of this fraternity. One given us by Mr. Slugg was that an old and a young stager in different lines were talking together when a gentleman passed, on which the old stager said to the other, " That is Mr. So-and-So from Leicester; he is a large buyer in your way." Away went the young one after the gentleman, and, presenting his card, begged him to turn in and look round, with the assurance that they had some goods very cheap which would " HOOKERS-IN." 29 just suit him. He did his work so well that there was no resistance, and Mr. So- and-So followed to see the stock. Casting his eye round the first room, he quickly assured the salesman that there was nothing in that room in his line. So with the next, and so with the next. At last the question was put to him, "What line is yours?" "Oh," replied he, "I am David Bellhouse, the timber-merchant." It is hardly to be credited that such a vocation could bring a man £1,000 a year, ills t ¦¦¦¦\^U *' ¦¦l~;i ROAD-MAKING: CHURCH STREET WITH PHILIPS' WAREHOUSE. but such we are assured by one who knew them in their palmiest days (1830-45) was the case, before the railways put an end to their usefulness and debaucheries. It used to be said that the firm of William Grant and Brothers — Cheeryble Brothers aforesaid — was the first to employ "hookers-in," and was also the first to discontinue the undesirable practice. Although many of the general merchant houses which have yet to be noticed started originally as dealers in cottons, and still give a large share of their attention to it, the " heavy trade," or Manchester goods, now forms only a portion of their total business. The development of the fancy trade here has led to the transfer 30 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. of much of it from London, and in the ordinary warehouse of to-day "fancies" are as prominent as grey goods. It may be as well, therefore, before passing to them, to give something of unity to this account of the great Lancashire cotton industry, of which we have been sketching the technical side, by a reference to the Exchange. Although the Eoyal Exchange is not coeval with this cotton trade which has made Manchester and become representative of it, its history in reality sums up the essential facts of the growth alike of the trade and the town. As has been already said, it was in a time of early eighteenth-century expansion that the first Exchange (p. 21) had been built by Sir Oswald Mosley. This earliest 1729 building, a plain, square, unpretentious affair, was erected in the Market-place, on a site directly opposite to the present Exchange. The ground floor was open to the Market-place, and, we are told, suggested rather the idea of a modern market- house than of an Exchange, as, indeed, it proved. For the "chapmen," for whom it was intended " to meet in and transact their business," often found their Exchange occupied by butchers' stalls, and before the place was pulled down it is said to have become the resort of all the blackguards of the neighbourhood. Upon its demolition, in 1790 or 1792, there was for a time no Exchange, and the merchants met one another in the open air on " Penniless Hill," close by. In 1804, however, they resolved upon " the erection of a handsome building in the Market-place and Exchange Street for the purposes of a commercial coffee-room and tavern." Fifty-pound shares were issued, but not subscribed very readily by the public ; by the end of 1808, however, the building was ready to be opened (p. 23). In accordance with the original intention, a "bar" was established, and a bar-keeper appointed, and the business of a tavern, along with that of an exchange-room, was for some time carried out, and the word " bar " is still used to describe that part of the Exchange where the attendants stand. This building was no sooner erected than it was found to be too small, and its whole history from that day to this has been that of a continual series of extensions. The original site — only a small portion of the present one — was pur chased from Lord Ducie, the total sum paid for land, including the purchase of some interests, being over £19,000. To this site was added, in 1836, all Lord Ducie's land " situate and extending from Ducie Place to the new Market," which THE ROYAL EXCHANGE. 31 was bought for £12,000. On this plot the directors proposed to extend and add a post-office, but the plan, as we shall see, was not carried out, and the extension, as planned by Mr. Alexander William Mills and his partner, Mr. Murgatroyd, who have ever since retained the position of architects to the institution, dealt mainly with the enlargement of the room, which was extended from an area of &•> *. THE INFIRMARY CORNER, TOP OF MARKET STREET. 452 to one of 799 square yards. A further extension was begun in 1847, and two years later the Exchange was opened by the celebrated fancy dress ball. Altogether these extensions cost a matter of £86,000 and were not complete till 1850. It was this enlarged structure that was chosen as the fittest in the town for the reception of the Queen during her visit in 1851, and that drew from her the remark she made to the Prince Consort as they entered, "What a magnificent room ! " It had been most gaily decorated for the occasion, and was considered one of the largest in the kingdom, although small in comparison to the present room. Within a month of the date of this visit the Queen signified her pleasure to the Mayor that the building should henceforth bear the title " The Manchester Eoyal Exchange " (p. 24). Sixteen years later the whole of this building was pulled down. After one of 32 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. those furious " battles of sites " for which the town is not a little famous, it had been determined to erect a new building to cover the whole plot from Exchange Street to Cross Street, and from Market Street to Bank Street, a total area of 6,000 square yards. For this purpose various purchases were made, among them being Newall's OXFORD ROAD AND LONGFORD MILLS. Buildings, in which had been located the headquarters of the Anti-Corn-Law League. In 1866 an Act of Parliament was obtained for the erection of the new Eoyal Exchange, and on the 2nd of October, 1871, the first portion of it was opened. The area of the new room — the present room — is 4,405 square yards ; that of the first Exchange had been 452 ; while that of 1851, so much admired by Her Majesty, was no more than 1,634 square yards. Despite this, it is being found necessary still further to enlarge, in order to find room for the ever-increasing body of subscribers. In the course of 1892 there was some talk of removing the fine and imposing Cross Street front (Plate 15), with its octostyle Corinthian portico, and of bringing the body of the building level with the main line of the thoroughfare. The difference between the old and the suggested new THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, CROSS STREET. 15 THE ROYAL EXCHANGE. 33 as seen in the cuts which were published at the time was considerable, and one can understand the regret of the architect, Mr. Murgatroyd, at having to spoil so fine a work. Fortunately, at the last moment, the Corporation forbade the scheme. The portico, admittedly the most imposing in Manchester, is approached by a double flight of steps, and consists of eight massive Corinthian columns, thirty- five feet high. The pediment is filled with the royal arms, and its supporting figures from the old Exchange. The mention of Newall's Buildings (p. 37) brings to mind one incident in connection with the Anti-Corn-Law movement which transpired in the old Exchange. It is thus detailed in the report of Mr. Wrigley, the "Master," in March, 1834:— " On Tuesday, at about five minutes after one, and during the crowded time of 'Change, my attention was drawn to the room, from which proceeded very great noise and disorder. I instantly went into the room, where I perceived a gentleman (whose name I was afterwards informed was John Bright, of Eochdale) standing on one of the seats and addressing the sub scribers. I immediately approached Mr. Bright, and intimated to him that his mode of proceeding was an infringement of the laws of the institution, and requested him to desist from speaking in the room. He took no notice, but proceeded with his address, amidst cries of ' Go on ! ' ' Turn him out ! ' ' Pull him down ! ' Finding that I could not be answerable for the consequences if he were allowed to proceed, I took the liberty of removing him from the seat on which he was standing. I had no sooner done this than I was elbowed and pulled about by Mr. Bright's friends, who advised him to proceed. Mr. Bright still attempted to go on with his address, and I then informed him that, if he were still determined to proceed, I must give him into the hands of the police. This latter threat had the desired effect, and a cry of ' Adjourn ! ' was raised, Mr. Bright and his friends leaving the room (in the rush to get out breaking a window), and addressed the people in Ducie Place from a staircase window near the Times office." Almost from the first the Manchester Post Office was connected with the Exchange. The first mention of a post-office in the town is in 1687. Forty years 24 SAM MENDEL. {From a Photorjrayh by Franz Baum, 22, St. Ann's Square, Manchester.) 34 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. later letters were forwarded three times a week to London, and eight days was the shortest time within which a reply could be got. In 1772 the Post Office was situated opposite Queen Street, St. Ann's Square — at the corner of Back St. Ann's Square and Toll Lane nearest Deansgate. This was during the post mistress-ship of Mrs. Willet, who did the whole postal work of the town by the assistance of two clerks. After being located for a time in Market Street, the Post Office was removed to a low, shabby-looking building at the back of the New Exchange. The old Post Office here spoken of had been put up in conjunction with the second Exchange. During the course of the erection of this latter the postmaster, Mr. Whitelock, made an offer of £80 a year for the occupancy of a part of the building as a post-office. His offer was accepted, and for many years the two institutions were intimately connected. During the extension in 1838 it was pro posed to include a new Post Office, to be still in connection with the Exchange, but in the Town Council Eichard Cobden carried a resolution condemnatory of the scheme. The Mayor and Corporation recommended the site in Brown Street to the Postmaster-General, Lord Lichfield, and the Lords of the Treasury having finally determined on it, it was erected there, under the borough Court, and opened in September, 1840. In 1875, however, the Chamber of Commerce agitated for better accommodation, and a Bill was passed in April of the following year to enable the Postmaster-General to acquire a site for an extended structure. After long delays, the new building was opened in September, 1884, having been erected from designs by Mr. Williams, surveyor to Her Majesty's Board of Works, at a cost of about £120,000. It occupies the site of the old Post Office, just off Market Street, with one face in Brown Street and another in Spring Gardens, but it is a much larger and finer structure. So much for the official side of Manchester trade. In the front rank of the general warehouses stands the great business of Messrs. J. and N. Philips & Co., of Church Street (p. 29), a house whose reputation is untouched by any the world over. The Philipses originally came from Staffordshire, but they have been settled in Manchester since far back in the last century. In 1743 Nathaniel Philips is described as a " tradesman " of Manchester, and his sons, John and Nathaniel — old Grammar School boys — became " merchants " of Manchester. From the elder brother of the tradesman descended Sir George Philips, Bart., and Mark Philips, J. AND N. PHILIPS. 35 who became the first member for Manchester after the Eeform of 1832. Very memorable, too, the latter is as the stout colleague of Neild and Potter in the fight for the Corporation Charter. He was returned for Manchester no less than four times, and it is well known that in one of these contests he beat Mr. Gladstone. His brother was the late Eobert Needham Philips, the member for Bury up to the time of his voluntary retirement, when he made way for Sir Henry James. At the time the present house started, most Manchester merchants were either fustian dealers or " smallware manufacturers," and this particular firm occurs first in 1808 as John and Nathaniel Philips, smallware manufacturers, 7, Somerset Street. They are then said to have had a mill in Salford. Some years later they had included and taken in the adjoining warehouse, No. 6, afterwards changing it to No. 14. There they remained till some time after 1832, when they removed to 57, Church Street. At first the warehouse was a small place, situated between High Street and a little court opening out of Church Street ; on the other side of the court was Townend's. From this they have gradually extended, absorb ing all the surrounding places, until the block they now occupy is deep enough to swallow up any three adjoining blocks, with intervening streets thrown in. In popular estimation the firm of Messrs. Eylands and Sons stands side by side with Philips's. The whole history of this concern centres in the life of one man, probably for the last thirty years the best-known figure in Manchester trade. John Eylands was the third son of Joseph Eylands, of St. Helens. The father was a yeoman and handloom-weaver, a man of an indomitably acquisitive nature, who endowed his son with the same in treble measure. In addition to manufactur ing in his handlooms ginghams, checks, ticks, dowlahs, calicoes, etc., he opened a shop in St. Helens, and in 1824 removed to Wigan. All the sons learned hand- loom weaving, and when the Wigan shop was opened John assisted in his spare time in the shop, and took a turn at the loom on Saturdays. The youth's first independent venture was made at the age of sixteen, when with his pocket-money he bought the miscellaneous contents of a drawer of trinkets at an auction. Having retailed them at a big profit, he invested in warp and weft, had it woven by his old nurse, and sold the cloth. For two years, 1817-19, he did business in this way, until his elder brother, Joseph, seeing him thriving, offered to take him into partnership. He accordingly joined him and took the travelling, covering 36 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. Shropshire, Cheshire, and North Wales, travelling, as was then necessary, on horse back and with his samples in saddle-bags. Finding his sons going ahead, the father made them overtures, and in 1819 they started in the manufacturing way in Wigan as Eylands and Sons. In 1822 the firm began selling goods in Manchester. For this purpose John was sent over, and opened a place at No. 11, New High Street. His sales during his first eight days amounted to one £20 parcel, and his own account of his frantic chagrin and despondency is very characteristic. At this time High Street was only in the process of becoming a purely business thoroughfare. In the eighteenth century it was "out of town," and contained the residences of many notables — among them of the Bowers family. Their house was sub sequently converted into the " Bridgewater Arms," High Street, which for more than forty years served as the centre of the mail- and stage-coach traffic of the town. It was at this place, it will be remembered, that Southey put up, and Maximilian, Arch duke of Austria, and such like. About 1827 the place began to be transformed into warehouses. The stables went first, then the part in front. Long before the growth of Eylands's, these por tions were occupied for nearly forty years by Messrs. Stretton, Welsh and Co., and their suc cessors, Messrs. Harrison, Griffin and Co., claim still to occupy the hotel buildings. Then other warehouses arose — James Worthington's, at which Alderman Heywood worked as a lad ; Brooks's, founders of the banking house of Cunliffes, Brooks and Co. ; and Matley's, the calico-printer — a very Eadical family. Mistress Matley, we are told, did with, her own hands make the Cap of Liberty which was carried in the affair of Peterloo, which ended in the massacre, as it has since been persistently styled. Here, too, Fort Brothers had their warehouse, very memorable in Manchester history as the first patrons of Cobden when ho came to the town. Some years after John Eylands had started here, and when he was making headway, there were only thirteen warehouses in the street, and his own was only a small place, several windows long but of no depth, and employing no more than six JOHN EYLANDS. (From a Photograph by A. Debenham, Hyde, I. W.) JOHN RYLANDS. 37 men and one salesman. In 1829 the firm resolved to become merchants, and to add to their own manufactured goods — which alone they had previously sold — Irish and Scotch linens. We are told that this so aroused the bile of certain Manchester houses, who held the monopoly of the linen trade, that they formed an association to "boycott" all manufacturers who dealt with the upstart, but it failed of its aim. The firm grew, and it would be next to im possible to tell in detail its growth. To-day it occupies in Manchester three immense blocks stretching parallel with Market Street row after row (p. 31). Between Bolton and Bury is situate d their Ainsworth cotton-mill, purchased in 1839, and in Wigan the (for a mill) "beauti ful" Gidlow works. Be sides these, the firm possesses mills at Gor ton and the Longford Mills in Oxford Eoad (p. 32), and the Midland Mills in Lower Cambridge Street— though these latter are now used only as a warehouse and a making-up place for ready-made clothing. Of the business ramifications of the firm in London, throughout England —indeed, throughout the whole mercantile world— it would be endless to speak. The total number of hands employed by the concern in one way or another cannot be less than 15,000 — a huge, many-sided structure to be, as it is, the monument of the pertinacity and application of one man. In 1855 Mr. Eylands bought the Longford Hall estate, situated in Stretford, and there he built the beautiful hall in which he died in 1888. By the munificence of his widow, Manchester now possesses an absolutely unique memorial of him in the shape of Mr. John Eylands' library, NEWALL'S buildings. (From a Photograph by Mudd and Son.) 38 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. formerly the noble Althorp collection, purchased at a cost of a quarter of a million, and bestowed as a free gift on the town. If there is no name more characteristic of mercantile Manchester than that of John Eylands, there is no warehouse better known as a warehouse than that of S. and J. Watts in Portland Street, for "Watts's" is the sight of Manchester (Plate 16). The members of the firm were sons of a respectable Lancashire yeoman, who until his death, in 1855, farmed a small plot of five or six acres near the village of Burnage, a district which has now become the residential quarter for some of the professional elite of Manchester's university. The ancestral house was a long, two- storeyed, red-brick building, a few hundred yards from Mauldeth Hall, the palace of the first Bishop of Manchester, and here the sons learned and practised handloom weaving, along with the eight or ten operatives employed by the yeoman trader. The founder of the firm, John, was apprenticed to a draper in Deansgate, and afterwards commenced a draper's shop on a small scale at the corner of the Parsonage in Deans gate. He then took in his brother Samuel as a partner, and from about 1825 or 1826 the firm was styled S. and J. Watts. Six years later they rented Brooks's Bazaar, in Deansgate, and there the firm was joined by James, who had served apprentice ship to a draper in Ashton-under-Lyne. It is to this firm that is due the credit of developing, about the time we are speaking of, the fancy trade in Manchester. Pre viously London had held the monopoly of this trade, and it was by means of the enter prise and example of the Wattses that it was diverted. A glance at a modern general Manchester wholesale house will reveal the meaning of the change. In the various departments will be found ladies' hats, of straw or felt, according to the season, trimmings, ribbons, and silks in every form, everything that goes under the name of millinery; and, besides furs and mantles and everything in the way of light drapery, as well as " sundries," which include umbrellas and a thousand other articles. All these are now constituent parts of an ordinary Manchester wholesale house, but two generations since they were unknown, and the warehouses dealt only in typical Man chester stuffs, cloths and small wares, tapes, inkles, braids, etc. In 1835, the firm, finding this wholesale fancy trade increasing enormously, left the retail trade in Deans gate in the hands of Kendal, Milne, and Faulkner, who had up to that time acted as their confidential managers there. From this sprang the great Deansgate fancy house of Kendal, Milne and Co. Turning their attention entirely to the wholesale trade, PORTLAND STREET: WAREHOUSES OF MESSRS. WATTS AND CO. AND MESSRS. HENRY. 16 S. AND J. WATTS. 39 the Wattses took a warehouse in New Brown Street, removing from there in 1852 to a much more substantial building in Fountain Street. From this latter they moved, in 1858, into the princely structure in Portland Street, held to be the finest warehouse in the world. Internal and external appearance alike bear out the boast. We have already, in speaking of the town's mayors, had occasion to characterise Sir James Watts. His brother Samuel, who died in 1865, was, like him, a man of great and unostentatious liberality, and considered one of Manchester's best specimens of personal worth. His death left in the firm his brother James and the two nephews ; but the partners at the present moment are James, son of Sir James, and Edward, son of the original Samuel. It is probably on account of the presence of this structure that Portland Street is held by outsiders to be the typical street or centre of Manchester trade. One hundred years since, the centre of gravity was the Market-place ; then, with the commencement of the present century, Cannon Street for the merchant folk, and a little higher up for the manufacturers; and later, as has been said, High Street and Mosley Street followed in the wake. Although we doubt whether Portland Street is to-day any more the real centre of Manchester than, say, Church Street, or Mosley Street, or York Street, it has an interesting record both of structures and personalities. Here, in 1833, Messrs. A. and S. Henry erected the warehouse they still occupy (Plate 16). The founder of the firm, Mr. Alexander Henry, was a native of Ireland, who came to Manchester in 1816, to start for himself, at tho age of twenty-one. Now, there were giants in those days, and amongst them he took rank. He commenced in Palace Street, but afterwards removed to Spear Street, taking his brother Samuel into partnership. For some years he sat in Parliament, as did also his sons, John Snowdon Henry, who represented the eastern division of the county as a Conservative, and Mitchell Henry, who contested Manchester unsuccessfully in 1867, and after wards became member for County Galway. Eecently the firm has been made into a Limited Company. It was in Portland Street, too, that Sam Mendel, the merchant prince, one of the most noted names in Manchester trade, had his warehouse (p. 33). The story of part of his extraordinary career is probably well known. His father, Emanuel Mendel, a rope-manufacturer, was a member of the Jewish synagogue of Manchester, which used to meet in his days in a little shabby room in Long Millgate. But 40 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. when the son found employment as a lad at Liebert's, in Bow Street, he is said to have been brought to Manchester from Liverpool. He started business off Blaokfriars Street, but after he had succeeded to the business of Mr. Eobert Gardiner, a Levant merchant, he built a warehouse in Dickenson Street, removing thrice — to Booth PETER STREET: THE FREE TRADE HALL. Street, to Portland Street, and finally to his splendid warehouse in Chepstow Street. It is said of him he was never known to do a shabby act, but in the end he felt the frown as well as the smile of fortune. In 1875 his magnificent estate — Manley Hall ¦ — was the scene of a memorable sale, and it has ever since been but the ghost of its former self, in spite of effort after effort to galvanise it into life. The estate was cut up into building lots, and the tenantless hall survives only to witness the short-lived greatness of its builder. With regard to the manufacturing side, it has been steadily deserting Manchester for the outlying districts. A typical instance in which this has occurred is that of the firm owned by Sir William Henry Houldsworth, M.P. The Houldsworths are prob ably the oldest spinners in, or anywhere near, Manchester. The firm began before the close of the last century as spinners at 58, Little Lever Street, under the style of William THE HOULDSWORTHS. 41 Thomas and Henry Houldsworth, changed more than fifty years later to that of Thomas Houldsworth and Co.— the Thomas being the grandfather of the present member, and himself a Member of Parliament three-quarters of a century the in Little Lever Street, but about mills at Eeddish, a few miles out and since then the whole of business has been transferred the firm has literally created, described as over shadowing Another firm of immediate ality, is that of William Holland for' many years. For nearly firm continued manufacturing 1866 the first of the magnificent of Manchester, was erected, the manufacturing part of the thither, with the result that if, indeed, it may not be the growing little town. note, on account of its person- a_nd Sons, whose mills at Miles STATUE OF JOHN BRIGHT IN ALBERT SQUARE. (By A. Bruce Joy.) Platting now cover a floor-space of ten acres, and employ about 1,000 hands in cotton and worsted spinning. The addition of this latter class of work since 1878 is due to the enterprise of the junior partner, Mr. W. H. Holland, J.P., younger son of Mr. William Holland, J.P., of Miles Platting and The Elms, Higher Broughton. 25 42 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. The Potters have been already referred to. For generations they were a repre sentative home-trade house. From Cannon Street they removed, in 1836, to George Street, with the title Potters and Norris, which was afterwards altered to Potters and Taylor and Potters and Martin. In 1878 the business was purchased by Bannermans', and the old house is now extinct, although its head, Mr. Thomas Bayley Potter, M.P. for Eochdale, still preserves the family tradition. Extinct like theirs, too, is many another historic house — the old firm of Joseph Thompson and Sons, founded by the grandfather of the present Alderman Joseph Thomp son. The founder started as a cotton merchant and yarn and cloth agent in 1818, and subsequently embarked in manufacturing along with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Elkanah Armitage. On the dissolution of this partnership, he, with his brother and another, took the Muskery and Pin Mills in Ardwick, the latter of which, from 1838 onwards, became his exclusive property, and it is said that the late Mr. Hepworth Dixon was once a clerk in their employ. To this mill was added, in 1857, the Sandynook Mill ; but in 1878 the family gave up business and sold the mills to J. H. Gartside and Co. Another such is the old house of S. Fletcher and Co., founded in 1811 by the friend of John Owens and the trustee of Owens College, a well-remembered worthy figure. His warehouse was in Parker Street, and occupied at the time a leading position among the home-trade houses of the city. And there was, too, the equally notable firm, Kershaw, Leese, Sidebottom and Co., which was started before 1810 by Joseph Leese, senior, a linen-draper from Burton-on-Trent. The original style of his firm was Leese and Millington. In 1824 it became Leese, Kershaw and Callender, and afterwards Leese, Kershaw and Co., Kershaw, Leese, Sidebottom and Co., Kershaw, Sidebottom and Berry (1858), and Kershaw, Sidebottom and Co. in 1869. The present lineal descendant of this long line is the house of George J. Sidebottom and Co., of Portland Street, but one other collateral branch, which was re-formed as a limited, under the title of the Portland Street Warehouse Co., came to grief. It went into voluntary liquidation in 1878. The original founder of so numerous a progeny was quite a character in the town. He Avas a man of method and a believer in it. He used to leave his house, in the Polygon at Ardwick, at seven in the morning, and so familiar a sight was his punctual phaeton that it was styled the "Polygon diligence." In later life he retired from the firm, and in his old age met with many THE CO-OPERATIVE WHOLESALE. 43 undeserved reverses. It was from the above firm that William Eomaine Callender retired in 1836 to start the firm of Callender, Bickham and Co. In 1868 this firm, whose present style is Callender, Sykes and Co., of 28, Princess Street, purchased Bazley's two mills. This latter name, too, is of much note in Manchester trade. The Bazleys had been cotton-spinners since 1828, when they opened their mill in New Bridge Street. Thirty years later Mr. Thomas Bazley was elected member of Parliament for Manchester in place of Sir John Potter. In 1869 he was created a baronet for his public services, and continued to represent Manchester as a Liberal until 1876. He was, too, for many years Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce at a time when the rival "Commercial Association" was in existence. A partner of his, in 1838, founded another historic house, under the style of Gardner, Atkinson and Co., of 13, Pall Mall, which afterwards became Atkinson, Tootal and Co., Edward Tootal and Co., and, in 1858, Tootal, Broadhurst, and Lee, of 56, Mosley Street, one of the great representative houses of to-day — calico-printers, cotton-spinners, manufacturers of every class of white, printed, stuff, and fancy dress goods, plain and fancy muslin handkerchiefs, etc. The firm afterwards became a Limited Company. In Nasmyth's Autobiography, Edward Tootal, a chairman of the Trent Valley Eailway, and an early patron of Sir E. W. Watkin, is mentioned as one of his earliest and kindliest friends when he was just establishing himself as a mechanic in the town, and it was from him that he got his first order — for a new piston for a small steam-engine. Of all the wholesale distributing agencies, however, probably the most extra ordinary and extensive is the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which has its centre in Manchester and its extremities literally in all the earth. It is — so far — the final outcome of the principle of co-operation, and a remarkable outcome, too. In the early days of co-operation, Lancashire was slightly behind London, and when a practical turn was given to the idea, it was by the Eochdale Equitable Pioneers and not by Manchester. But no matter ! Between 1826 and 1830 seventeen co-operative societies were established in Manchester and Salford ; and some time after the starting of the Eochdale Equitable, William Cooper wrote to Holyoake, " Even Manchester, which is good for nothing only to sell cotton, has created a Manchester and Salford Stores " — the most unkindest cut of all, those words, surely, seeing that it was at Manchester and in the cotton trade that Eobert Owen, 44 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. the father of co-operation, had found his legs and made a fortune. As a matter of fact, the idea of wholesale co-operative supply was first started in the Conference at Manchester in 1832, and, although it was actually tried in Eochdale before Manchester, it was in the latter town that it finally and fully established itself. The central offices and banking department and the most stupendous of the warehouses of the " Co-op. Wholesale " are located in Manchester ; but for anything like an adequate idea of its totality one would be obliged to travel far and wide — over Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark, and America. Besides working a large ship- ping business as owners of the Goole and Hamburg and other lines of steamers, the society has established factories in various parts of En°-land in various departments of trade — -boots, soap, biscuits, woollen cloth, etc. Quite as widely distinguished as the " Co-op." from the ordinary Manchester warehouse of the type with which we have been dealing, but more by its method than anything else, is Lewis's, in Market Street, one of the most recent and one of the best-known houses in the town. It is for Manchester what the Army and Navy or Whiteley's is for London. Mr. David Lewis, the founder of the business was born in London in 1823. At the age of sixteen he found employment in a Liver pool house, rising within eighteen months to be manager. Subsequently, in 1856 he started in business on his own account in Eanelagh Street, Liverpool, annexing and STATUE OF SIE ROBERT PEEL IN PEEL PARK. (By M. Noble.) LEWIS'S. 45 reconstructing and extending as his Market Street, Manchester, and here its kind that the city can has been made architecturally annexation of a building the original block by Twist ment of the Manchester by that of a third in the ham business. Besides being man, a linguist, and a proved himself liberal to a business grew. In 1879 he secured ground in he erected by far the most elegant building of boast — a block which quite complete by the formerly separated from Street. The establish- branch has been followed very centre of Birming- a thorough business musician, Mr. Lewis degree, and unsectarian STATUE OF RICHARD COBDEN IN ST. ANN'S SQUARE. (By Marshall Wood) in his giving, though a Jew. But to what extent, or how really, was only revealed at his death. By his will he left the whole of his property to two trustees Mr. B. W. Levy and Mr. George J. Cohen — with an expressed wish that the proceeds of the trust, which at present amount to £200,000, and are expected by the time 46 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. they are realised to have increased to £350,000, should be devoted to some scheme of benevolence for Manchester and Liverpool. Messrs. Eichardson, Tee, and Eycroft, of Portland Street, who started in 1848 at 115, Market Street, as linen manufacturers and merchants, with their mills at Barnsley, are still predominatingly a linen house. And in connection with the silk trade there is at least one reminiscence of literary interest to Manchester men. Catherine Winkworth, whose "Lyra Germanica" won her the reputation of being, if not the earliest, certainly the first of our modern translators from the German, was the daughter of a Manchester silk manufacturer. In private life it will be remembered in what esteem she was held, equally with her sister Susannah, also a translator and authoress. Their father was a member of the firm of Winkworth and Procter, a concern which occurs as early as 1829 as silk manu facturers at York Buildings, George Street. After many years, however, the firm ceased from Manchester, and from 1863 was transferred to Macclesfield, as one might expect ; and the Winkworth sisters were born, not in Lancashire, but in London. With a last reference to one extinct house of unique interest we must leave the warehouses. It was in September, 1828, that Eichard Cobden (p. 45) first came to Manchester. He had previously been a commercial traveller in London; but the firm he represented was disposed of to the employes, and three separate concerns were started as the outcome — Sheriff, Gillet and Co., of London ; Sheriff, Foster and Co., of Hebden Bridge; and Eichard Cobden and Co., of Manchester. It was in the company of his two partners, that Cobden travelled to Manchester by the " Peveril of the Peak" coach, doing the journey in the marvellously short time of twenty hours. They were all young, and none of them worth £200, but they were fortunate in making a good impression on a firm of calico-printers — Fort Brothers, of High Street and Peel Street, and in less than three years that firm was trusting them over £40,000. Cobden's concern, No. 6, Mosley Street, was remarkably successful. During the early years of the Anti-Corn-Law movement, he used to speak quite confi dently of his own income as assured, and he was then making, it is said, £9,000 a year. In 1831 they took over from the Forts one of their printing-works, and became producers of their own celebrated Cobden prints. The movement for the repeal of the Corn Laws is not more intimately associated with the name of the town than it is with that of this man and his friend — John Bright. COBDEN. 47 Before the movement had formally begun here, Cobden had contributed anonymous papers to the Manchester Times, and Mr. Prentice tells us of his intense curiosity to meet the unknown author. " I was not disappointed," he says, " except in one respect. I found a man Avho could enlighten by his knowledge, counsel by his prudence, and conciliate by his temper and manners. But I had been an actor amongst men who from 1812-32 had fought in the rough battle for parliamentary reform, and I missed in the unassuming gentleman before me not the energy, but the apparent hardihood and dash which I had, forgetting the change of times, believed to be requisite to the success of a popular leader." Whether Cobden did become a popular leader or not we need not waste time in discussing; certainly no great leader was ever less of a demagogue. In his last years, when he had gone back to live and to die in the beautiful little Sussex village in which he had been born, this cosmopolitan statesman — he whom the crowned heads of Europe hastened to honour — was hardly known in his own village. We remember seeing somewhere an account of the difficulties a would-be visitor had to find his house, of the repeated questions he had to ask — " Where does Mr. Cobden live ? " and of the dense ignorance of the villagers as to his very name or existence. The Anti-Corn-Law movement did not actually begin in Manchester, although in the end it was to become in every sense a Manchester movement. For more than a dozen years before the formation of the League, the subject had been agitated in Parliament by Hume, Whitmore, Thompson, Villiers. Towards the end of 1836 a League had been formed in London, but it was not till the following year that Cobden had his attention riveted to the subject with the force of conviction. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce having advocated repeal so early as 1826, Cobden easily carried the matter there, but the fight was not to be won on so narrow a basis. jAfter all previous associations had failed, the memorable Anti-Corn- Law League was started in September, 1838, by a meeting held in a little room over the stables of the York Hotel, Manchester. This meeting was attended by seven persons. In October a provisional committee was formed which included the names of most of the historic Manchester business-houses, Elkanah Armitage, John Bright, W. E. Callender, Alexander Henry, James Kershaw, Eobert Philips, Thomas Bazley, David Bannerman, Eichard Cobden, William Neild, Samuel Watts, and many more. The system of lecturing was adopted, and early in the movement the services of John 48 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. Bright (p. 41) as a speaker were obtained. The Brights have long had business con nections with Manchester. From before 1858 they have had a warehouse here as they have it to-day, in Portland Street. But it was in his native town, Eochdale, and in 1839, that Cobden was first struck by John Bright' s eloquence. Here we need not tell the story of that movement, worthy though it is of repetition. The beginning did not promise so great a following. " I have a vivid recollection," says Mr. Slugg, " of attending one of the earliest meetings of the Anti- Corn-Law agitation, held in the first Free Trade Hall (p. 37), at which John Bright spoke, before he was M.P., and John Brooks. The audience had to stand — there were no seats. The room was not more than half full, and the rain was dripping through the roof here and there. There was a little sympathy and a little enthusiasm — the tide was just beginning to turn — but I often contrast that meeting with the last oc casion on which John Bright spoke on the same spot." When first the "League Eoom " was opened — a richard Roberts. small narrow room in Newall's Buildings in Market (From a Painting by T. Rippingille.) Street, now covered by the Exchange — there were usually not more than seven or eight members present, " and the room being very cold we had a red blanket hung up to mitigate the draught of wind." Yet from this room there gradually radiated such an organisation as we have not seen in England either before or since. Branch associations were formed, lecturers employed, pamphlets and circulars distributed. And year after year petitions were drawn up and deputations sent to the successive Governments. This last was a particularly thank less task. In March, 1840, two hundred deputies assembled in London to interview Lord Melbourne. Having stated their object, the repeal of the Corn Laws, his lordship curtly remarked, "You know that to be impracticable." The Leaguers then sought Sir Eobert Peel and Sir James Graham with equally unsatisfactory results. The last-named member of the Government was, says Mr. Ashworth, perverse and captious to a degree. " When Mr. John Brooks, the boroughreeve of Manchester, described the distress in the cotton trade, Sir James retorted that the consumption of cotton was greater than at any previous period, and Mr. Thomas Ashton replied that THE FREE TRADE MOVEMENT. 49 the dependents were more numerous than at any previous period, and that coarser yarns were being spun. Mr. Brooks proceeded with his address, when Sir James tripped him up again by calling him a Chartist, and Mr. W. Eawson interposed and told Sir James that Mr. Brooks was not a Chartist, but that he (Mr. Eawson) had no objection to be called by that name. My turn came next and I exclaimed against the injustice of restricting the im portation of food in order to uphold rents. At this point Sir James called out ' Why, you are a leveller ! ' and in an insolent tone de manded whether he was to infer that the labouring classes had some claim to land lords' estates. Being ° THE OLD RAILWAY BRIDGE, WATER STREET. somewhat startled I appealed to my colleagues as to whether anything I had said supported such an idea, when Mr. Thomas Ashton called out, ' Go on, Mr. Ashworth, and never mind what he has said.' " It was after this interview that the deputies passed a resolution to disregard all party politics and to work only for Eepeal — unconscious as they were to what a long-drawn fight they were pledging themselves. In 1843, when they erected the Free Trade Hall it was, in their intention, to stand only for a year or so. By that time the end would be reached. But for other four years it was to be the scene of a series of meetings unparalleled in history for numbers, manly determina tion and enthusiasm. The League met its expenses by voluntary subscriptions, first of £50,000, then of £100,000, and when in the last year of the agitation a subscription of £250,000 was called for, manufacturer after manufacturer rose — it was in the old Town Hall in King Street — to promise his £1,000. Within an hour £60,000 was promised. But the money was not needed. Early in 1846, more than eight years 26 50 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. after the first meeting of the League in Manchester, Sir Eobert Peel (p. 44) carried the total repeal of the corn duty, and the gigantic organisation that had won the fight peacefully dissolved. The Hall itself — a wooden structure at first — which had been the scene and centre of this campaign, was closed in 1852, and four years later the present Free Trade Hall — the theatre of many a notable political and musical gathering — was opened on the 8th October, 1856, having been built at a cost of £40,000 (p. 40, Plate 17). It is interesting and, doubtless, well known that the Minister who thus in the finish linked his name with that of Cobden and Bright in the great cause was himself a Manchester man. The first Peel — " Parsley Peel " as he is still spoken of round Blackburn — was the earliest to conceive the idea of roller printing on calico, his first pattern being a parsley leaf. Finding he had hit on a gold mine, he gave up farming and started a printing concern at Brookside. His son was Sir Eobert Peel, the first baronet and the father of the statesman. Besides his works at Nuttall, near Bury, Sir Eobert had others on the Irwell, and a warehouse in Peel Street, the latter worked under the title of Peel, Yates, and Halliwell. Peel Street was then almost a country part of Manchester, and it was considered a venture to place a warehouse there ; but so celebrated were the firm's prints that the customers followed, and " in the mornings when the cart arrived, as it did three times a week, from the works, the warehouse doors, in those days approached by an avenue of trees, were besieged by a crowd of drapers. The moment the doors opened at 9 a.m., a frantic rush upstairs and scramble for the prints ensued, each draper making a pile for himself on the floor and then waiting for the entering clerk to come round. No wonder the first Sir Eobert is said to have died worth two and a half millions." It was while lodging in Manchester, in the house of Yates, who became his partner in the warehouse, that the first baronet met Nelly, the daughter of Mr. Yates, whom he married when she was only sixteen, and who became the mother of the statesman. We may just add that when, in the course of time, the first Sir Eobert desired to retire from business, the whole of his works in the Nuttall neigh bourhood were purchased by the Grant Brothers. Not many years before, the three brothers, sons of a Scots herdsman, had passed the place on their journey south in search of employment. They were so struck by the beauty of the situation, that they hesitated whether to seek work there or push on to Manchester. To decide THE FREE TRADE HALL : ORATORIO NIGHT. 17 THE HAT TRADE. 51 themselves, they put up a stick and agreed to follow the direction in which it should fall. The stick fell away from Nuttall, " so they followed the Irwell." Now let us turn to the remaining sides of Manchester trade, for it is by no means, as Dickens was told, " all cotton." One of the oldest industries, perhaps older than the cotton, is that of felt-hatting. Of this art Manchester was as distinct a centre for two centuries as it was for cloth, and in the old directories of the town there will probably be found one hatter for each fustian merchant or fustian cutter. It was doubtless because of the ancestral practice of the art of fulling that the industry centred here, for Manchester dealt in wool long before she knew what cotton was, and numerous "walk" or "fulling" mills yet testify to this. The woollen industry has migrated to the hills and over into Yorkshire, but the centre of the hatting industry is still the district near Manchester — Stockport, Denton, and Hyde. The actual manufacturing has, indeed, left Manchester, but the town is still a centre for the hat merchant. Most of the general warehouses include hats in their list, and a small number devote themselves to it entirely. Chief among these is one of the most respectable and steadiest-going old-established houses in Manchester, Messrs. Joseph Wood and Sons, of 50, Newton Street. The firm started in Church Street in a block now covered by Philips's warehouse, removing subsequently to New Brown Street, and then to Wood Street. The three sons of the founder — John, Thomas, and James — were all apprenticed to Manchester houses, but afterwards joined their father's firm, and the younger two still remain connected with it. This firm yet retains the honourable custom of pensioning their old servants. 0 si sic omnes ! Of much greater consequence is the mechanical industry of Manchester. In large it is at once the creator and the creature of the cotton trade. It was not until the mechanical inventions of last century that such a boundless scope was given to that trade, and its expansion immediately called into being a huge array of machine- works. It is strange that in that long series of inventions Manchester had no part. Wyatt, the inventor of roller-spinning, was a Birmingham man ; Hargreaves, who first introduced the spinning-jenny, was a native of Blackburn, as was Arkwright of Preston, and Crompton, the inventor of the mule, of Bolton. When Cartwright, a clergyman of Kent, constructed his power-loom, he got his hints from certain merchant gentlemen of Manchester, whom he had incidentally met at Matlock or Buxton. But in no one act in this series had any Manchester native a 52 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. hand. It is only in connection with the mule, and at a later date, that any of her townsmen challenge notice. It was not till the mule was made self-acting in prin ciple that it became really serviceable, and this was accomplished by Richard Eoberts, a Welshman by birth, but intimately associated with Manchester throughout his 7 '"-<"«,, tWr R\W ~ ¦*¦¦'' "^ EXCHANGE STATION AND CROMWELL STATUE. later life (p. 48). He was one of the most fertile mechanical geniuses the town has ever seen. While a young man, working at Taplin, he was drawn for a soldier, and beino- determined not to serve, he walked to Manchester, and found employment with a wood-turner at Salford, but, hearing that he was "wanted" by the militia officers, he left in a hurry, and made his way to London on foot. There he found employ ment in the famous works of Henry Maudslay, which has been the training-place for so many of our engineers. He afterwards returned to Manchester, and the number of his inventions, made during the remaining years of his life there, is almost in credible. At the request of the boroughreeve and constable, he constructed an oscillating and rotating wet gas-meter, which enabled them to sell gas by measure. He was the first to construct a planing-machine, and this tool was in general use RICHARD ROBERTS. 53 until replaced by Whitworth's; and in connection with the cotton trade he had patents relating to nearly every machine in use at the time — for roving, slubbing, spinning, doubling, and the rest. In 1848 the contractors for the Conway Tubular Bridge were threatened with loss by strikes of the men. They applied to Eoberts to take up the matter of some different method of punching. He did so, and the result was the patent self-acting punch. In just the same way it was a strike of spinners, in 1824, that led to his invention of the self-acting principle of the mule. In the course of that dis turbance, Mr. Ashton, of Hyde, and a deputation of spinners waited on Messrs. IN VICTORIA STATION. Sharp and Eoberts to have an interview with Eoberts. The inventor cut them short by declaring that he knew nothing of cotton-machinery, and apparently declined the task, and although the masters called on him three times in their despair, he persevered in the same attitude until he had secretly perfected the machine, doing it all in his head, we are told, whilst sipping his tea. It is this machine which has been one of the factors in the making of the firm of Piatt's, at Oldham, one of the greatest machine-shops in the world. But, in the first instance, the fruits were reaped by Eoberts and his partner. In 1821 54 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. he had entered into partnership with Mr. Sharp as Sharp, Eoberts and Co., engineers, of Globe Works, Faulkner Street. They afterwards extended and added the Atlas Works in Great Bridgewater Street. When, in 1845, the partnership was dissolved, Eoberts took the former works, with the style of Eichard Eoberts and Company, but eventually came to grief, as his talents were purely mechanical and not commercial. The Bridgewater Street Works were taken by Sharp Brothers and Co., which, in 1858, became Sharp, Stewart and Co. Here the firm remained till 1888, when the business was transferred to Glasgow, after being formed into a Limited. Among the many great mechanical firms of Manchester, none have had a more representative career or a more intimate connection with all the industrial developments of the place than this last named. When the era of railways was beginning, the firm seized the opportunity by the forelock, and threw itself into the new industry. Up to the time of their removal to Scotland they had turned out, it is said, not less than 3,400 locomotives of every imaginable type, and the great modem works of the same kind — Beyer Peacock's, The Gorton Carriage Co., etc. — are to be regarded as their successors in this industry. It is commonly known that the real inauguration of the railway system — the most revolutionising development of modern times— is to be attributed to Manchester and Liverpool. The first connection between Liverpool and Manchester was by water, then it was by rail, and now they have returned to the canal. Under the tyranny of the old canal companies, when they had grown fat and pursy, the trade of the two towns lay almost as under a blight. It is on record that it occupied more time to get goods from Liverpool to Manchester than from New York to England and this, too, in the days of sailing-ships. In the matter of tariff also the canal companies were supreme and unapproachable. Not one jot or tittle would they abate, and this was their attitude up to the moment that the first railway became what the Times calls " a fact," although far-seeing eyes could discern the change that was impending. " They will last my time," said the old Duke of Bridgewater, speaking of his beloved canals; "but I see mischief in those tramways." .Although the ground between Liverpool and Manchester had been surveyed for a railway as early as 1822, it was not till 1829 that a prospectus of the company was THE FIRST RAILWAY. 55 issued. The fight the projectors had to make was little short of heroic. Interests were hostile, and the public and its wiseacres were incredulous, nor were the engi neering elements at all assured. Up to this time only one railway had been used for passengers — that between Stockton and Darlington — and in that case the carriages were drawn by horses. The only use to which steam-engines had been hitherto put was in drawing coal-waggons, and numberless were the failures on record even in this. When the line was approaching completion, therefore, the directors of the company offered a prize for an engine. The conditions were that it should draw three times its own weight, and run at ten miles an hour. The competition took place at Eainhill, in October, 1829, and four engines turned up. In the course of the trial one got its boiler burst, two others broke down, and the prize was finally adjudged to Stephenson's " Eocket," which filled all beholders with breathless be wilderment by running at fourteen miles an hour with a load of seventeen tons. The driver of the "Eocket" on this memorable trial was Charles Fox, afterwards the builder of the Crystal Palace. When completed the railway terminated at the Manchester end at the corner of Water Street (p. 49) and Liverpool Eoad. The booking-office was placed in Market Street, and in booking, passengers had to give their names and addresses, which were entered on the way-bill. "After a hot contest, it was agreed that on Sundays trains should run only when people were presumed not to be in church. During the five or ten minutes that the passengers were taking their places — not rushing, as now, like a forlorn hope, into the deadly breach, but placidly and with dignity — a tune was played on the bugle, and on the train pulling up at Eccles the villagers brought Eccles cakes." There were at first no fixed stations on the route — the trains stopped according to the convenience of the passengers, as they are said still to do in the Isle of Man. The history of this later growth is of some local as well as much general interest, although in the actual process itself Manchester seems at first to have lagged behind somewhat. For instance, the idea of a connection with London was pushed much more energetically by Liverpool than by Manchester folk. The Bill for the Grand Junction Eailway, which was passed in 1833, was carried by Liverpool men. It provided for the construction of a line from Birmingham to Warrington, and by that means to Liverpool and Manchester. The line was opened in July, 1837 and in the following year the connection with the South was completed by the opening 56 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. of the line from Birmingham to London. The most important advance on this achievement, as far as Manchester was concerned, was the construction of a more direct line to Birmingham vid Crewe, so as to avoid the long detour by Warrington. It was in connection with this development that London Eoad Station was erected. A temporary station had previously stood near Travis Street; but in 1839 the " Manchester and Birmingham " got powers to bridge over Store Street, in order to form their station and to make a carriage way down to Piccadilly. This involved pulling down the old London Inn and the London Eoad Market, and when complete the station took the place of the Liverpool Eoad Station, from which all the London trains had previously started. LONDON ROAD STATION, It is from the series of railways just named that has sprung the greatest railway company in the world — the London and North Western. The years of railway mania (1845 and 1846) were also years of railway amalgamation and incorporation; and it was in those times, and by means of successive absorptions, first of the "Liverpool and Manchester," then of the "London and Birmingham," then of the "Manchester and Birmingham," that the old Grand Junction at last, in 1846, became the London and North Western. The second of the great stations now existing in Manchester was the outcome of a joint effort. In 1838 the " Manchester and Leeds " Eailway proposed to the "Manchester and Liverpool" a connecting line from Collyhurst to Orsdall Lane, with a station midway at Hunts Bank. This — the first Victoria Station — was opened VICTORIA STATION. 57 in 1844, and though at the time possessing only one platform, was considered one of the largest in the kingdom. When the connections with this station had been completed, the "Manchester and Leeds" abandoned their old Oldham Eoad Station for passenger purposes, as did also the "Manchester and Liverpool" their old Liverpool Eoad Station ; and from that time forward until 1884 Victoria Station remained the joint property of the London and North Western (as successors to the ^i-^'Jjli.y.Wv'.Ji'.P'.'V ry,:"*' i'li'Tr'- .1 ' fa~r*r-i ¦ SIR JOSEPH WHITWORTH AND CO.'S WORKS, FROM THE RAILWAY. "Manchester and Liverpool"), and of the various lines which have grown up by amalgamation with the "Lancashire and Yorkshire." The nucleus of this latter system was formed by the old " Manchester and Leeds " Co., which between the years 1845 and 1850 had been carrying on a process of steady extension under the chairman ship of Henry Houldsworth, absorbing the Manchester, Bury, and Eossendale, and a network of minor lines. The immediate result of the process was a great weakening, and it was a long time before the " Lancashire and Yorkshire " obtained the position held by the old " Manchester and Leeds." That time of trial, however, has long since been passed, and the company now stands substantial and strong. Correspondingly, a great development has taken place in the station accommodation. Soon after 1880 the London and North Western people commenced the erection of a new station, removing from the old Victoria where they had most insufficient quarters. Simul taneously, the " Lancashire and Yorkshire " undertook the extension of Victoria Station, and it has been accomplished at an immense cost under the direction of the chief engineer of the company, Mr. William Hunt. The present station covers an area of over 52,000 square yards, and possesses 27 58 OLD AND NEW MANCHESTER. no less than thirteen platforms and four carriage and two foot approaches leading to Corporation Street and Strangeways (p. 53). Those who remember the old approach from Corporation Street over the narrow foot-bridge across the river and up the steps, will be devoutly thankful their eyes have been allowed to see such salvation. " 'Twas joy in such a time to be alive," says the poet ; " but to be young was very " — necessary. Exchange Station (p. 52), to which the London and North Western people moved when they vacated Victoria, was opened in the same year (1884) in which the Victoria extensions were completed. It is a finely harmonious structure in the Italian style, erected by Eobert Neill and Sons, under the supervision of the company's engineer-in-chief, Mr. Francis Thomson, and of the resident engineer, Mr. J. G. Brickenden. As the building faces the river, it involved work of much difficulty in the way of river walling and bridging for the purposes of the requisite approaches from the Exchange and from Strangeways. Two handsome bridges have been flung across the Irwell, and as we stand on the southernmost and gaze down on the old Salford Bridge so far below, we wonder how it can ever have been accounted so greatly of. In consequence of the opening of the second bridge leading to Strange ways, room has been made for further extension by carrying the waiting-rooms at the end farther out to the river. This end of the station, which rises four storeys high, contains the various offices of the district superintendent, Mr. G. E. Mawby, and others. Besides this Exchange Station, the London and North Western have now part ownership of the London Eoad Station, where in 1881 they opened an extension which had cost them over £300,000. This station has had a most remarkable history. The Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Co. was formed during that same period of amalgamation, 1846. For the first eleven years of its life it existed to a great measure by means of an agreement with the London and North Western; but in 1857 a rupture took place. The Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire made an agreement with the Great Northern, and thus obtained independent access to London. Then ensued one of the keenest railway wars we have ever seen. At one time the excursion fare to London was as low as 5s. At the same time litigation was entered into over the possession of London Eoad Station, and it was not settled until the following year, when the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire obtained -rCor-Jhr< CnCJJrA