Kirby - Angel meadow - victorian britains most savage slum

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Pen & Sword History
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright (c) Dean Kirby 2016

Cover photograph of Mincing Street, Angel Meadow, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council. Map of Angel Meadow courtesy of the Digital Archives Association.

ISBN: 9781783831524
PDF ISBN: 9781473880290
EPUB ISBN: 9781473880283
PRC ISBN: 9781473880276

The right of Dean Kirby to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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And though it be long since the daisies grew,

Where Irk and Irwell flew,

If human love springs up anew

And angels come and go,

What matters it that the skies were blue

A hundred years ago.

(From The Irwell and the Mersey by Bessie Rayner Parkes, 1863.)

For my son, Thomas.

Authors note: Every story in this book is drawn from real events that took place in and around Manchesters Angel Meadow slum more than a century ago. The people in the book are real Mancunians the ancestors of people who inhabit the city today and their spoken words are printed here just as they were recorded by Victorian newspaper journalists, police officers, teachers, missionaries, magistrates and other social observers.

Contents

Preface: Going underground

I became fascinated by Angel Meadow when I discovered that my Victorian forefather had been among the 30,000 souls who lived there. He was a farm labourer called William Kirby, who fled to Manchester from County Mayo on the rugged west coast of Ireland in the mid-1860s, after surviving the Great Famine.

As I trawled the citys archives for clues about Williams life, I began to drift off to Angel Meadow in my imagination. I descended into damp cellars in search of him, stumbled through backyard pigsties and came face to face with scarred and tattooed scuttlers in the slums smoke-filled beer houses. I learned that new arrivals to Angel Meadow were forced to sleep naked with strangers in dingy lodging houses, cockroaches were welcomed because they ate the bed bugs and skulls were kicked around during games of football in a graveyard packed with the bodies of 40,000 paupers.

The more I read, the more astonished I became by my ancestors battle for survival which led, more than a century later, to my own existence in the city that his blood, sweat and tears helped to create. I eventually stumbled upon the location of his house in Charter Street, one of the slums forgotten thoroughfares, using old maps and rent books.

Then, in February 2012, archaeologists searching for evidence of the slum at the site of the Co-operatives new headquarters off Miller Street made an astonishing discovery my ancestors home. They gave me permission to visit the site during the filming of a TV series on British history. On a rain-soaked Saturday morning, I clambered down a metal ladder like a time traveller and reached out to touch the bricks of William Kirbys fireplace. Peering into the gloom, I could see that the walls of his 10ft square house were only half a brick thick. The archaeologists had found metal hinges, fragments of wooden door frames, broken bottles and, amazingly, a door key. They also found the privy William had shared with 100 other people.

Sadness swept over me as I stood in the bowels of the earth and thought about my ancestors. Only three of Williams seven children survived to adulthood. The departed included his fifth child, who died in that same house in February 1877. The baby, named William after his father, was just two weeks old and his death was caused by convulsions brought on by a fever. By coincidence, the archaeological dig began on the anniversary of his birth and lasted only slightly longer than his short life.

The bricks and mortar could tell me nothing of the grief that would have filled that house all those years ago. William, who could not write, signed his mark on his sons death certificate in a shaky hand.

I left the dig with a brick from Williams fireplace still covered in soot from the fire that had kept him warm on a similarly wintry day. I knew then that the story of Angel Meadow had to be told.

Dean Kirby,
Manchester, 2016.

Prologue: Firestorm

O n Saturday, 6 May 1893, the sun blazed in the heavens and the backstreets of Manchester were hotter than the boulevards of Paris. Spring had arrived early with an unflinching spell of dry weather the start of Britains longest drought. Crops would fail, cattle would starve and Manchester Corporation would take the frightening step of shutting off the citys water taps to conserve supplies and prevent a famine.

But at dusk that day, the sun turned pale as it slipped from the slate roofs and chimney stacks of Angel Meadow and the heat of the day was replaced by a deepening chill. Thomas Matthews, 28, buttoned up his waistcoat and jacket as he stepped heavily out of the Exile of Erin beer house in Nicholas Street. Two layers of tweed, a billycock hat, some facial hair and a bellyful of ale would help keep out the chill as he staggered home. They were comforts of sorts to a man whose lungs were scarred by bronchitis. At least the cool night air had diluted the cocktail of smells from Angel Meadows gasworks, tanneries, boneyards and privies, which had been overwhelming in the midday heat.

Matthews sniffed the air and set off. Lodging houses gaped from all sides as he turned down the slope of Angel Street, one of the slums main inroads. Their patrons glided like ghosts out of alleyways and disappeared into the cavernous doorways. The gaunt bell tower of St Michaels Church loomed above them in silhouette. In the Old Burying Ground next to the church, the flagstones covering the mass graves of thousands of paupers were pewter grey. The slums factories, back-to-back houses and smoke-blackened railway arches stood silent and in shadow. Angel Streets four gas lanterns gave off a jaundiced light.

It was almost 11pm. Soon the landlords of the gin palaces would be calling last orders. When the gasworks clock struck midnight, it would herald the start of Matthews day of rest.

He would have one cherished day of respite until Monday, when he would rise before the sun and trudge back up Angel Street towards the teeming passageways of Smithfield Market, where he worked as a porter. Competition for work among the stalls piled with fish, rabbits, turnips, cabbages and other produce was fierce and often turned violent a tough job for hard men. Soon Matthews would be climbing the three stone steps to the front door of his rented tenement in Old Mount Street and then up the wooden staircase to lie with his wife, Mary Ann. Their five-year-old daughter, Margaret, would hopefully be asleep.