Capital of Discontent E-Book

Eric J. Hewitt

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 320

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The Industrial Revolution was a period of exceptional change in Britain, not only in terms of technology but also in law and order. The country's social order was shifting and in some towns the response was violence. In Manchester, the 'capital of discontent', events related to the Plug Plots, Peterloo and the Chartists created a very real fear of revolution on the streets of England. In its efforts to combat the disorder, the newly established police force became mired in political controversy, providing some disturbing but often amusing examples of corruption and misconduct. Eric J. Hewitt examines the reactions of those who experienced the revolution in this 'most dangerous' of places, and tells of such characters as the notorious serial killer Charlie Peace, the supposedly corrupt Deputy Constable Joseph Nadin and the illiterate millworker-turned-Home Secretary John Robert Clynes. Fascinating, and certainly eye-opening, this up-to-date account of Industrial Revolution Manchester is a must-read.

Leseprobe

For Sara and Jane

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

1 Manchester in the Nineteenth Century: Site and Setting

2 The Demise of the Watchman and the Rise of Joseph Nadin, Deputy Constable

3 Peterloo

4 Chartism, Anti-Corn Law League and the Birth of the Labour Party

5 Crime and Criminals

6 Punishments

7 The Establishment of a Professional Police Force

8 Irish Fenians and the Murder of a Manchester Policeman

9 Scandal and Corruption: A Struggle for Control and Independence

10 An Independent Chief Constable

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

People living in towns like Manchester during the nineteenth century experienced a period of change that was revolutionary in pace and scale. The transfer from medieval to modern, agricultural to industrial, township to urban, transformed their lives in many different ways.

Great opportunities for wealth arose from this Industrial Revolution, which were exploited to their advantage by members of the middle class, who maximised their entrepreneurial spirit and skills in the creation of a new world built on cotton manufacture. Everything else – engineering, canals, railways, factories and urbanisation – followed in its wake.

Those members of the old order who held prestigious positions of power and influence in the local government of the town found their grip on power loosening in the face of a new political class and, despite great efforts to protect their interests, eventually had to yield.

As for those members of the working class employed to work in the factories, herded in the most densely populated, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, their reaction was predictably confused, violent and demanding of some form of remedial action. However, no matter how squalid their situation, for many it proved to be no worse than what they had left behind in the countryside. Whilst some migrants were attracted to Manchester in the hope that it would provide them with opportunities to work and maintain their families, many were propelled from chronic poverty in the desperate hope that things might get better.

The responses of different groups to this changing environment will be analysed in the following pages, and any identified themes or trends over the period of the nineteenth century will be placed in the context of this Industrial Revolution.

During the first half of the century, the acquisition of wealth and status amongst sections of the middle class was there for all to see. It was proudly on display in the opulent houses built in the suburbs of Didsbury and Withington and in the many grand buildings in the centre of town, which were constructed in the classic style as testimony to success and civic pride – the civic pride having more to do with a pride in wealth creation than anything else.

Within the central districts, not a stone’s throw from the magnificent Exchange building, there existed a section of the working-class population that was largely untouched by the benefits of the Industrial Revolution and, within this group, a sub-group whose livelihood was wholly dependent on the proceeds of crime. This criminal class tended to congregate and operate around the public houses that proliferated in the districts of Deansgate, Piccadilly and Market Street. Like the wider society, it was hierarchically structured, with the swell mobsmen at the top and prostitutes and vagrants positioned at the bottom.

Their numbers were boosted by an influx of migrant criminals and vagrants attracted by the many opportunities provided by this new age of commerce and industry. Added to this section of the population were thousands of abandoned children, whose lifestyles were well described by Charles Dickens in his novel Oliver Twist. So fearful had these districts become that one visitor to Manchester was moved to describe it as being ‘the gateway to hell’.

For the vast majority of the working class, impoverishment and hardship was blamed on heartless employers, and violent protest became their watchword. It took many different forms, with small groups of the unemployed and underemployed taking direct action against employers’ property, both at the factory and at private residences, and larger groups, sometimes numbering hundreds and thousands, gathering in public places to demonstrate their frustrations and demand that those in authority heard their pleas and came to their aid. Often, Manchester’s working class would send petitions to the Prince Regent in the forlorn hope that he would be sufficiently moved to intervene. Gradually, with guidance from parliamentary reformers like William Cobbett, their protests were refocused and directed towards the reform of parliament. In many respects, parliamentary reform became a kind of panacea for all of their grievances – social, economic and political.

With no effective machinery of local government, an inadequate and ineffective police, and an economy subject to sudden fluctuations – throwing thousands out of work without notice or compensation – the political elite feared that the volatile environment in Manchester and the manufacturing towns was becoming a serious threat to the stability and good order that statesmen and businessmen alike sought to preserve. Convinced that revolution was in the air, the government response was a programme of repression aimed at deterring members of the working class from revolutionary direct action.

As part of the government’s response, habeas corpus was suspended; the judicial and penal systems were made even harsher; workers’ combinations were prohibited; and military barracks were constructed to encircle the ‘most troublesome towns’. In Manchester, the district of Hulme was identified as an appropriate location for stationing both soldiers and cavalry troops, followed a few years later by another huge barracks built at Ashton-under-Lyne, which became known as the Ladysmith Barracks. It must not be overlooked that it was common for the military to police any outbreaks of public disorder, and that the role of the local special constabulary was to provide support. It was not until the 1840s that a reformed, professional police force proved itself capable of taking over the role of the military.

Changes to the environment, work relations, and domestic living standards all impacted on the life chances of Manchester’s inhabitants. Population, for example, almost doubled in the first thirty years of the century, whilst housing, sewerage and policing lamentably failed to keep pace. It seems inevitable that frustration gave way to anger among the unemployed and underemployed, who targeted the modern machinery installed in the factories – the main cause of their misery. Politics, for the working class in Manchester, was often the politics of protest in the early nineteenth century.

Influenced by the writings of William Cobbett, this ‘Luddite mentality’ was gradually rejected by the majority of the working class in favour of parliamentary reform, aimed at widening representation in the growing urban towns at the expense of the ‘rotten boroughs’. This shift in ideas and objectives led to growing support of the Chartist movement, trade unionism and, by the end of the century, to the birth of the Labour Party. The Great Reform Act of 1832 turned out to have been a significant building block in this process, as it opened the door, ever so slightly, to greater participation in the political system. The subsequent Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 extended enfranchisement and secured manhood suffrage for many members of the working class, a process that effectively transformed the political landscape. Of course, it was not until the early twentieth century that women were given a vote.

In many respects, it was multitudinous Manchester, much more than manufacturing Manchester, which gave rise to its reputation as being ‘a most dangerous place’. Research carried out by A. Kidd1 and D.W. Neale2 concluded that it was the rapid growth in population, overcrowding and urbanisation, rather than the factory system per se, that so frustrated its inhabitants that they appeared to be in a constant state of agitation during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Faced with the pressures brought on by rapid population growth on such a scale, Manchester’s local government bodies proved unwilling and incapable of addressing the inhabitants’ demands and need for change. Their members even resisted and opposed the implementation of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 (which empowered local residents to elect borough councils and provided powers for the appointment of a professional police force), going so far as preventing newly elected councillors from accessing local government premises and equipment. This opposition so frustrated the new borough council that its members petitioned the Home Secretary, who agreed to intervene and appoint a Chief Commissioner of Police, with powers to seize control of public premises, levy rates and recruit candidates for a new police force. This embarrassing situation lasted for two years, by which time the opposition had subsided and the old order’s protests had effectively evaporated.

The newly elected borough council’s first duty under the Act was to appoint a Watch Committee and a new Chief Constable to replace the Chief Commissioner, who by now had returned to London with his new wife and daughter.

Manchester’s political leaders were to clash with central government, and particularly with the Home Secretary, on a number of occasions throughout the century, opposing what they perceived to be ‘unwarranted government interference in local affairs’. Whether their actions amounted to stubborn intransigence or fierce independence matters not, for this ‘little Manchester’ attitude was to put at risk the future finances of the town and the ability of its police force to maintain public order.

The huge significance of the town of Manchester in this period cannot be overestimated, and overshadows the developments in other parts of the region, which is the main reason for narrowing the focus at their expense. Of all manufacturing and commercial towns undergoing major changes at this time, Manchester has been chosen because, quite simply, its history is of national, if not international, importance and was seen to be so by many contemporaries. For example, Edward Baines, in his two-volume work entitled Lancashire, recorded the social and economic changes that had taken place by 1830. He wrote:

Manchester, as it is one of the ancient towns in Lancashire, so it is one of the most important towns in the kingdom. London, Liverpool and Bristol may claim a superiority as seats of foreign commerce but as a manufacturing station it is unquestionably the metropolis of the British Empire. Out of the £32 million worth of cotton goods produced annually in Great Britain, £20 million worth of this great staple are either actually manufactured here or passed through its markets. In point of population, Manchester ranks second only to London and in opulence probably holds the same rank.3

Political ideas and associations were also born out of the social and economic conditions endured in manufacturing Manchester. Harold Perkin claims that between the years 1815 and 1820, a working-class movement was born and that this movement was to go on to develop a working-class consciousness.4 This process of working-class consciousness was developed through machine-wrecking, trade unionism and collective activity, according to Frederick Engels, who lived and worked in Manchester during the 1840s. He argued that it was not only the birth of a working class that characterised Manchester, but the birth of a conflict between workers and employers that would inevitably result in a revolutionary situation. We now know, of course, that what Engels witnessed taking place in Manchester were not the death throes of capitalism but the beginnings of further economic expansion.5

However, to a certain extent this conflict model is undermined by evidence showing that some members of Manchester’s bourgeoisie were benevolent and supportive of members of the working class, especially those individuals attempting to lift themselves out of poverty and ignorance. For example, evidence drawn from the research of Foster6 and Walton7 identified a ‘respectable’ section of the working class, supported by the work of Sunday schools, Hampden Clubs, Mechanics’ Institutes and Lyceums, and individual benefactors such as Benjamin Heywood.

By 1817, forty Hampden Clubs were established in Manchester with more than 8,000 members.8 It was an unintended consequence of the prohibitive Combination Acts that so many working men were drawn to these associations. On the face of it, Hampden Clubs operated as working-men’s social clubs, where issues of the day were discussed and newspapers read. In reality, however, members often gathered to listen to radical guest speakers covering economic and political issues. A popular guest speaker in Manchester’s Hampden Clubs was Samuel Bamford, Middleton’s radical poet; and the most popular newspaper read by, or read to, members was Cobbett’s Political Register.9

Members of the governing class, in the early part of the century, focused their attention on events in France and concluded that volatile Manchester had become a seedbed of revolution and, as such, its inhabitants must be repressed at all costs. Alarm bells rang out loud and clear in the corridors of power when it was discovered that in Manchester’s Hampden Clubs members of the working class were reading the radical works of Thomas Paine (1791) as well as the writings of William Cobbett. The fact that Cobbett was advocating parliamentary reform through non-violent means provided little comfort or reassurance to a fearful political elite.

To understand the government’s response, it has to be appreciated that for politicians of the early nineteenth century, the present constitution was as near perfect as could be, having been settled by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William III and Mary replaced James II. The basis of the political constitution included the supremacy of parliament and a system of checks and balances designed to keep control of both the Crown and the common people. Thus, those advocates of parliamentary reform were viewed as radicals and revolutionaries who must be stopped at all costs.

Evidence shows, however, that Manchester’s working class were, for the most part, simply demanding that parliament be reformed to their advantage rather than being intent on revolution, as the government had feared. Their stated aims were essentially ‘knife and fork’ issues, such as improved wages and reduced food prices, rather than the overthrow of the government or the monarchy. In many respects the influences of religion (especially Methodism), social administration and the self-help principles of the co-operative movement have been underestimated when assessing the mindset of Manchester’s working class.

In Chapter 1, a description of Manchester in the nineteenth century focuses on the phenomenal expansion of industry and commerce, as well as the severe social and environmental problems left in their wake. This expansion depended on an army of workers and their families, for this was an age when women and children were encouraged to go out to work in the factories for comparatively low wages. Labour was in such demand that people descended on Manchester in huge numbers from the surrounding agricultural counties, and from as far afield as Ireland and even Italy.

In 1801, Manchester’s population was estimated to be 84,000, and by 1881 it had risen to 393,000.10 As the national distribution of population altered in favour of manufacturing towns like Manchester, so too did the source of wealth, as industrial production came to dominate both trade and agriculture. Without doubt, cotton manufacture made Manchester; everything else – commerce, transport, buildings – flowed from the manufacturing process. Not surprisingly, Manchester came to be known as ‘cottonopolis’.

It would be misleading, however, to assume that the town of Manchester was born out of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialisation didn’t burst forth as a consequence of mechanical inventions such as the introduction of steam power; rather it was the product of a chain of events beginning in Elizabethan times, which gathered pace in the second half of the eighteenth century and accelerated at a pace unprecedented around the beginning of the nineteenth century. Manchester expanded its boundaries throughout the eighteenth century, when the main source of its wealth was derived from the manufacturing of coarse woollens, linens and cotton. Thus, when the factory production of cotton goods began, Manchester was well placed to take advantage and exploit any expansion in demand, due to its skilled workforce, commercial and trading expertise, and the benefits of its location at the confluence of the Irwell, Irk and Medlock rivers. Population and urban growth followed new inventions, which required bigger factories to house the giant steam-powered machinery and both a skilled and non-skilled workforce.

It becomes difficult, therefore, to be precise about a start date for the Industrial Revolution. For practical reasons, this study will begin more or less at the start of the nineteenth century and close around the end of the century. In so many respects, dates are arbitrary, as historical events do not conveniently start and finish on specific dates. Therefore, there will be some overlapping as themes are studied over lengthy periods of time to gain some realistic notion of what was actually taking place. The first half of the century might sometimes seem to be covered disproportionately, but that only reflects the magnitude of changes taking place in that short space of time.

To give some idea of the sheer scale of economic growth that industrialisation had set in motion, Perkin provides some statistics showing that exports of manufactured cotton goods rose tenfold throughout the nineteenth century; imports of raw material, mainly cotton, rose even faster, from around £30 million a year to over £500 million a year; invisibles, such as banking and insurance, grew by almost a hundredfold. Total industrial production grew by as much as fourteenfold.11

These figures indicate that the property-owning, entrepreneurial middle class was enjoying untold wealth and prosperity, whereas the vast majority of the population, the working class, continued to endure conditions at work and at home that were unhealthy, cruel and degrading. Factory workers and domestic handloom weavers, in particular, had to face cyclical unemployment and underemployment resulting on the one hand from the vagaries of the market, and on the other from a labour force swelled by migrants and demobbed soldiers arriving home from the wars.

In the first half of the century, outbreaks of violent protest were put down swiftly by the authorities, usually with the aid of the military. There were many examples where protestors sustained serious injuries, which in some cases proved fatal, at the hands of the military. In Chapters 3 and 4, specific examples will be considered and the effectiveness of the government’s policies of repression and deterrence will be examined, alongside those critical factors that brought about change and helped restore peace and good order.

Without question, one of the greatest tragedies to hit the people of Manchester occurred on 16 August 1819, when a huge demonstration of workers and their families, drawn from around the region, gathered on St Peter’s Field to hear speakers calling for parliamentary reform. The gathering was dispersed by officers and soldiers of the yeomanry and hussars, resulting in 600 people being injured and eleven killed. This tragic event came to be known as the Peterloo Massacre.

Whether any blame could be attached to the Manchester magistrates, the police, the soldiers, or members of the assembled crowd, will be explored in Chapter 3. Valuable evidence provided by eyewitness accounts will be considered, together with the judgement of the court in the case of Redford v. Birley (1822), which arose from the actions of Captain Birley and others in the Manchester Yeomanry, who allegedly caused injury to Mr Redford during the demonstration.

A key witness at the trial was Deputy Constable Joseph Nadin, who was in possession of an arrest warrant and had taken the decision not to deploy his special constables into the assembled crowd as previously instructed by the magistrates. It was on his recommendation that the magistrates amended their instructions and called upon troops stationed nearby to assist the police in executing the warrants of arrest issued against the key speakers.

Historically, Joseph Nadin’s reputation has been tarnished by allegations that he was a ‘brutish and corrupt official’, who repeatedly abused his position for monetary gain. ‘How else could he afford to retire to the leafy suburbs of Cheadle?’ scoffed his arch-critic Archibald Prentice, editor of the Manchester Gazette. However, evidence from contemporaries casts doubt on the reliability of such allegations, most of which were politically motivated. Nadin was not a saint, far from it, but in the context of early nineteenth-century Manchester, there is overwhelming evidence to support the view that he was an efficient manager of the two bodies responsible for policing the town, and throughout his twenty years in office he displayed remarkable strength and courage in the face of hostility and considerable danger.

After Peterloo, more and more working people found expression for their grievances through the Chartist movement. Established in 1836, this parliamentary reform movement called upon the government to expand manhood suffrage and create a fairer and more equal voting system for the working class. It peaked in the years leading up to 1848 and then went into a fairly rapid decline. Evidence shows the movement to have been fatally divided between the pacifists and the radicals. Men like Joseph Rayner Stephens were part of the Manchester radical wing, advocating violent rebellion. These public calls to arms led to Stephens’ arrest on more than one occasion and gave the movement a ‘potential’ – but never more than that, for it was never sufficiently co-ordinated or well enough supported to cause the government serious problems. Chartist supporters were far more concerned with economic ‘knife and fork’ issues than with the overthrow of the political power structure. Its membership peaked when times were hard and then went into decline when economic conditions improved.

One explanation for the non-revolutionary path followed by Manchester’s working class was the expansion of religious worship, particularly Methodism. In Birth of Methodism (1971), Halévy points out that Methodism was the reason the English working class did not follow the French model of revolution. Other explanations include the influence of middle-class reformers like William Cobbett; the government’s ‘timely’ abolition of the Corn Laws; the popularity of the concept of working-class ‘respectability’; and the virtues of hard work, thrift and sobriety, promoted by men like Samuel Smiles in his best-seller Self-Help (1859). Engels’ prediction that revolution was inevitable failed to materialise, partly due to an underestimation of the willingness of successive governments to adapt and change, and to an upturn in the economy in the second half of the century.

There is little doubt that in the early part of the century, crime in Manchester was considered to have reached a level of violence and frequency far higher than what had gone before, even though meaningful evaluation was frustrated by a lack of statistical evidence. The situation had become intolerable for tradesmen, businessmen and visitors alike, not just in Manchester but in other large towns in the country. Commissions of Inquiry were set up by the government which repeatedly centred their debates on the extent to which criminal behaviour was a consequence of drunkenness, moral turpitude or chronic poverty. However well-meaning, the absence of reliable data frustrated their efforts as they quickly realised that the causes of crime are complex and do not lend themselves to simplistic explanations or solutions. For example, the popularly held view that crime was inextricably linked to economic fluctuations, and that when times were hard the honest section of the labouring poor were reduced to criminality to eke out a living, was seriously undermined by those office-holders whose privileged positions provided a valuable insight. The Rev. J.W. Horsley, prison chaplain, wrote: ‘Our prison population in London rises with prosperity and the consequent power of getting drunk. Bad times and the slackness of work in winter produces less crime and not more.’12

The identification of trends in crime can be frustrated by the absence of reliable statistics and common understandings of key words and definitions. McCabe warns: ‘there is no word in the whole lexicon of legal and criminal law which is so elusive of definition as the word crime.’13 In attempting to overcome these difficulties, reliance is placed on the assessments and perceptions of informed contemporaries. An example of a reliable source of information is the Rev. Clay, chaplain at Preston prison, where many of Manchesters’ convicted criminals were housed. One of the difficulties faced by the authorities was the identification of juvenile offenders who regularly made use of aliases and false birth dates to avoid being classed as adults and repeat offenders.

What is often overlooked is that the history of crime and criminal behaviour is also about the history of power, and how those in positions of power in a society define what action constitutes a crime and what is considered an appropriate punishment. Ideas and attitudes towards crime and punishment changed over the century as the composition of political elites and ideas changed. Harsh reaction and repression gave way to a more compassionate, enlightened penal policy, reflecting a more confident, liberally minded government. In practice, this was a triumph for humanitarian reformers such as Bentham and Howard, and meant punishments, such as hanging and transportation, were replaced by specified terms of imprisonment and the collection of fines.14

Any review of the government’s repressive agenda must appreciate that in the nineteenth century property was considered sacrosanct by the upper and middle classes. To a great extent, they were influenced by the ideas of John Locke and his Two Treatises of Government (1690), which stressed that government has no other end than the preservation of property. As for the property-less labouring poor, however, were they to resort to individual or collective protest they would find themselves at the mercy of a cruel judicial system armed with more than 280 capital offences and the powers of transportation or hard labour for relatively minor crimes against property.

Many contemporaries recognised that great inequalities existed in the criminal justice system. Writers such as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that ‘the criminal justice system was designed to protect the property owning classes and oppress the poor’. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote: ‘Private property is exclusive and elitist, its very existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of the many.’15 Engels maintained that criminal behaviour, such as theft, was a form of protest by the working class against a capitalist system that had alienated and exploited them to such an extent that they had become little more than appendages of the factory machine. He viewed the factory, Church and the police as the means by which the state controlled the working class.

A particular concern for the authorities in Manchester was the exceptionally large number of juveniles engaged in all kinds of criminal behaviour. Between the years 1832 and 1835, Manchester police reported that there were 8,650 deserted children roaming the streets of the town and that this number increased at times of economic depression when the cotton factories closed down. The estimated age of an offender was rarely taken into account by the courts, with sentencing equally as harsh and cruel for juveniles as for adults. Records show a 10-year-old girl sentenced to hard labour for wandering the streets at night, and a 10-year-old boy sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment and transported for the theft of handkerchiefs.

Among the many migrant groups congregating in the poorer districts, Manchester’s Irish community found themselves disproportionately represented in the police and court records of the nineteenth century. Without doubt, drink was the Irishman’s weakness and drunkenness was often the precursor of criminal behaviour, according to Manchester’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr James Kay. Research suggests that the majority of criminal offences committed by this section of the population were relatively minor in nature, consisting mainly of criminal damage and assaults. However, more recent research reveals that a disproportionate number of convicts hanged for murder at the Strangeways prison were of Irish origin, and that for most of them drink was to blame for their actions.

In the year 1867, Irish politics were transported to the mainland and featured in the Manchester courts when leaders of the Irish Fenian movement were arrested for unrelated offences. En route to Belle Vue prison, the horse-drawn prison van was attacked by Fenian sympathisers and the prisoners were rescued. During the escape, a police sergeant was shot and killed and a constable wounded. In Chapter 8, the main protagonists are identified, as well as members of the local community who courageously came to the aid of the police and assisted in the arrest of several armed Fenian supporters. In many respects this tragic event proved a watershed in Manchester’s police–public relations, indicating that attitudes towards the police had changed from the open hostility and suspicion that had marked their introduction in the early 1840s to an acceptance, tolerance and actual support of the idea of a ‘people’s police’.

One of Manchester’s top policemen in the last quarter of the century was Detective Chief Inspector Jerome Caminada, son of an Italian immigrant, who recorded his experiences and observations in a book entitled Twenty-five Years of Detective Life. The book is a valuable source of social history, with vivid descriptions of the wretched conditions endured by many of Manchester’s labouring poor in a period of so-called prosperity. Revelations that chronic poverty still existed at the end of the nineteenth century attracted national attention when two major reports, published by Booth and Rowntree, highlighted the wretched state of the poor in the cities of London and York and called upon the government to adopt a policy of intervention and support.

In summary, Manchester in the nineteenth century found itself in the eye of the storm that became known as the Industrial Revolution. Environmentally, fields and wastelands were taken over by huge factories, mills and warehouses, rows of terraced housing, navigable canals and railways, which together transformed the township into one of the world’s greatest cities. Without doubt, it was cotton manufacture that made modern Manchester, and the wealth and prosperity generated was there for all to see. The political power and influence of the urban middle class followed, as illustrated when Cobden and Bright, the leaders of the Anti-Corn Law League, persuaded Peel to repeal the Corn Laws at the expense of the agricultural interest.

A social consequence of change of such magnitude was the alienation and deprivation of large sections of the working class, whose anger and frustration was manifest in violent acts of criminal damage and public demonstrations demanding reform of the parliamentary system. Beneath this layer of the working class there existed a criminal class, so decadent and ruthless in its own pursuit of wealth that men of commerce and trade became fearful of visiting this ‘most dangerous place’.

By the second half of the century, contemporaries viewed the city as a ‘very much quieter place’, thanks to sustained economic growth, except for a period in the 1860s when the cotton famine threw thousands out of work. But this was to prove the pinnacle of Manchester’s success, as competitors, at home and abroad, began to catch up and overtake this ‘capital of industry’.

It is no accident that critics of the Industrial Revolution were in the ascendancy in the first half of the century, and its supporters in the second. The issues and problems, of course, arose in the beginning and the solutions and actions to tackle them came as a response. What follows is offered as a contribution to the knowledge and understanding of a period in our history that is not long past. Like all social histories it is selective, with some events and characters omitted on the grounds that they are not felt to be representative or particularly relevant. Any errors to be found are mine alone.

Notes

1. A. Kidd, Manchester, 1993.

2. W.B. Neale, Juvenile Delinquency in Manchester, 1840, p.58.

3. E. Baines, Lancashire, Vol.2, 1824, p.57.

4. H. Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1969, p.3.

5. F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892.

6. J. Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution, 1974.

7. J.K. Walton, Lancashire, 1987, p.154.

8. J. Rule, The Labouring Classes, p.274.

9. J.K. Walton, Lancashire, 1987, p.154.

10. E. Baines, Lancashire, 1824, p.128.

11. H. Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1969, p.3.

12. J.W. Horsley, Jottings from Jail, 1887, p.57.

13. S. McCabe, ‘Crime’, article in D. Walsh and A. Poole (eds), A Dictionary of Criminology, 1983.

14. V.A.C. Gatrell, ‘Crime, Authority and a Police State’, 1983.

15. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1844.

1

MANCHESTER IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: SITE AND SETTING

For practical reasons, we begin by placing Manchester in the context of social and economic changes taking place in the nineteenth century, the nature and degree of which have been described as ‘revolutionary’. Examples of the changes experienced by those living and working within Manchester’s boundaries include: rapid growth in the population; relative freedoms enjoyed by migrants previously shackled by feudalism; inventions of the age which transformed methods of working and travelling; and the emergence of two great classes, a middle class of wealth and prosperity and an industrial working class doomed to hardship and suffering.

These changes shaped the ideas of the period. In the early years, protection and regulation favoured the agricultural and landed interests at the expense of the industrial middle and working classes. An obvious example is the passing of the Corn Laws, which protected the profits of those associated with agriculture at the expense of everyone else.

Manchester’s inhabitants were totally dependent on the manufacture and sale of cotton goods. The manufacturing process was completely revolutionised as a result of brilliant inventions by Arkwright, Hargreaves and Crompton, along with the application of Watt’s rotative steam engine. Large-scale factory building to house the giant machinery changed the landscape by concentrating manufacturing and warehousing within town boundaries and away from traditional locations alongside riverbanks.

Hargreaves’ spinning jenny, invented in 1764, was the very first of the inventions to effectively change the social and economic position of the working class. The original machines were housed in domestic cottages, but as the number of spindles increased they were rehoused in purpose-built factories. Arkwright’s water-frame (so called because it was driven by water power) and Crompton’s mule hastened the trend towards factory production and urbanisation at the cost of the domestic workforce.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Manchester had already drawn large factories to its riverbanks, including Garrett and Pendleton’s mill on the Irk, Banks’ mill on the Irwell, and David Holt’s mill on the Medlock at Ancoats. The first purpose-built mills located in the heart of Manchester were built in the early 1780s for Richard Arkwright – the inventor: one in Miller Street, Ancoats, and another in Shudehill. The first to be powered by Watt’s steam engine was erected in Auburn Street, Piccadilly, for Peter Drinkwater. In the early nineteenth century, Drinkwater employed a young Robert Owen as his mill manager. Owen went on to start his own factory in Chorlton-on-Medlock before moving to the New Lanark mills, owned by his father-in-law, where he developed his now-famous co-operative ideas. It is widely acknowledged that Owen’s ideas on cooperation and socialism inspired Marx and Engels, the Chartists and the co-operative movement.

The biggest of Manchester’s cotton factories by the early nineteenth century was reputedly that owned by McConnel and Kennedy in Ancoats, which was six storeys tall. George and Adam Murrays’ mill, also in Ancoats, housed 1,215 operatives, and another three mills in Manchester employed between 800 and 1,000.1 In neighbouring Salford stood Watt and Boulton’s imposing mill, which was seven storeys tall, each floor being lit by gas burners and mantles. One visitor in 1814 commented: ‘It is impossible to describe the magnificent appearance of a mill with 256 windows all alight as though brilliant sunshine was streaming through them.’2

Giant factories such as these, however, were the exception rather than the rule. Gatrell points out: ‘Giant factories did not dominate the cotton manufacturing industry. During the first half of the century, only 3 per cent of cotton factories employed more than 1,000. Forty-three per cent employed fewer than 100.’3

The Murray’s mill stood next to the old Ancoats Hall in Every Street, a black-and-white timbered building that was the ancestral home of the Lord of the Manor, Sir Oswald Mosley. The Mosley family were London-based merchants who purchased the manor of Manchester in 1596 as an ideal location for conducting business in the wool trade.4

It is evident that Manchester’s inhabitants were already skilled in wool and cotton manufacture long before the beginning of the nineteenth century. A survey of the North West conducted in 1773 found that the small township of Manchester contained many small factories, and domestic workers making woollen hats and weaving coarse woollen fabrics. The report revealed that there were 311 houses, 361 families, 947 males and 958 females resident within its boundaries.5

By 1816, Manchester housed eighty-six steam-powered factories, most of them located around Ancoats, Oxford Street, New Cross and Beswick. A similar number of warehouses were concentrated in the town centre, with no less than fifty-seven warehouses listed around the area of Cannon Street. Spin-off industries, such as building and engineering, were also booming, with specialist engineers such as Nasmyth, inventor of the steam hammer, and Whitworth, with his standard screw threads, at the forefront.

An example of the entrepreneurial spirit in engineering is provided by William Fairbairn, who started out in the High Street, in partnership with James Willie, in 1817. The two men then set up an ironworks in Canal Street, Ancoats, which employed 300 men. Not only did they supply ironwork to local factories, they also developed a thriving export business supplying iron to Russia, Turkey and Sweden.

Transport was another important spin-off, with canal construction absorbing large numbers of able-bodied men. It started in the second half of the eighteenth century with the Manchester–Rochdale Canal, followed by links to Bolton/Bury; Ashton-under-Lyne/Huddersfield; and then on to Stockport and the Peak District. The principal cargoes were cotton, woollens, coal, stone and timber. The Rochdale Canal Company’s prosperity grew rapidly alongside industry and commerce. In 1829, tonnage was 500,000, and ten years later it had risen to 875,000. Toll receipts rose correspondingly from £38,000 to £62,000 in the year 1839.6