Sneinton and Me 4 - The Building Boom of the 1820s and its effect on Sneinton due to Failure to Enclose Nottingham's Fields

• For a period of twenty years Nottingham's only spatial expansion consisted of a north-easterly advance into the parish of Sneinton.

In his examination of building activity in England in the nineteenth century EH Cooney bases his estimates upon the importation of lath wood - oak or fir cut to size for laths for roofing and plastering - which can safely be said, unlike other commodities, to have been used exclusively for building purposes (1). He considers that brick production, being subject to the effects of speculation, can be an untrustworthy indicator. As far as the period considered here is concerned, however, his estimates based on lath wood imports give results which confirm estimates based on Shannon's index of brick production (2). Both these indicators show that during the period 1815 to 1849 peaks and troughs occurred in building activity roughly every ten years. Major peaks occurred in 1825 and 1836.

The local press gives evidence of a high degree of building activity in Nottingham during the mid-twenties. J and S Walker, builders, of Chapel Bar advertised in May 1825: 

'The present state of the trade in Nottingham rendering more bricklayers necessary, 30 or 40 good hands from a distance may be directed to regular employment...' The advertisement was directed to journeyman bricklayers (3). 

John Taft advised that his Stapleford brickyard was '… stopped from being a sale yard at present' in order to protect his regular customers and those with orders at the time outstanding (4). Chapman reports that brick prices rose from 30s to £3 per thousand mid decade (5) and land in the town was fetching 36s per square yard.

Fig.1  H M Wood's Map 1825

Examination of H M Wood's map of 1825, and Staveley and Wood's of 1828-9, indicates that building must have continued at a great rate after 1825 (Fig.1, Fig.2) – perhaps indicating that the abnormally prosperous conditions in the lace trade and the home-based nature of its organisation produced a plateau of building activity rather than the peak experienced by the country as a whole. The brickyard at Mapperley was only developed for brick production after 1825. (6)

Fig.2  Staveley and Wood's Map
 1829-31

The increase in building in the town itself as shown by comparison of the two maps is very considerable. There is a general increase in the density of building in the town, almost every area showing signs of additional building in the 1828-9 map. The block surrounding St Peter's church, bounded on the North side by Timber Hill and Poultry and on the South by Low Pavement, is shown by comparison of the maps of 1825 and 1828-9 to have been filled during that period with a warren of courts and alleys. 

Fig.3  1825 - H M Wood's Map

Similarly, the block bounded to the North by Carlton Street, to the East by Stoney Street, to the South by Low Pavement and the West by Bridlesmith Gate has been packed during those years to a very high density indeed. (Fig.3, Fig.4)

Fig. 4  1829 - Staveley and Wood's Map

Indicative of both the high demand for premises and the effect of the non-enclosure of the fields is the drastic increase in the number of courts between 1825 and 1829. Nottingham had its courts before the late 20s of course. There are, on Wood's map of 1825, a number of them dotted about: behind and to the North of Long Row for instance (the area reported by Chapman to have been congested with working class dwellings by 1784 – see above), and to the North of Rick's Gardens and in the vicinity of Plumptre Street there are fully enclosed courts, and there are a fair number of three-sided courts, for instance to the East of Rick's Gardens. But on Staveley and Wood's map of 1828-9 it is difficult to find a block which does not consist of courts. Open spaces and gardens have been filled in by houses arranged around courtyards; and this is clearly the period when the 'notorious Nottingham practice' of blocking the open end of a courtyard with an extra dwelling grew. The practice meant the existence of numerous dwellings whose only out-facing side faced into a completely enclosed yard whose only access was by a tunnel entry of about 30-36 inches (76-91cm) width.

The map below shows clearly the effect of the housing boom and the failure to enclose the fields upon the spatial development of the urban area and upon the growth of New Sneinton. This colour shows the building line of the year 1820 along the North-eastern and Eastern sides of the town. This colour shows that while the line had not advanced any further outwards, some deep breaks in the line, such as those to the East and to the West of Richmond Hill, and in the vicinity of Pipe Street, had become infilled, making the line rather smoother. This colour shows that the building line had remained completely static during the following four years along almost its entire length, except where it came into contact with Sneinton parish. And here, a considerable advance had taken place, the line pushing out along Carlton Road and including a new block of buildings bounded by Carlton Road, gardens a little to the North of North Street, Haywood Street, and Sneinton Road. In addition, there was another block of houses at the junction of Sneinton Road and Windmill Lane, around Notintone Place. This colour shows that by 1841 the building line had continued to remain static except along that portion adjacent to Sneinton, where further considerable advance had been made. The blocks at the Carlton Road end of of Sneinton Road and at the Windmill Hill Lane end had been joined into one large block which had then advanced further into the gardens of Sneinton. In addition again, a new block had appeared at the junction of Long Hedge Lane (now Gordon Road) and Clarence Street.

Thus for a period of twenty years, Nottingham's only spatial expansion consisted of a North-easterly advance into the parish of Sneinton. Progress was arrested along he rest of the building line, and the other growing areas were centred upon villages some distance from the town. It is, therefore, more proper to speak of the building of the New Sneinton area as being a continuation of the growth of Nottingham than to speak of it as a phase of growth occurring in a village due to conditions in the town. New Sneinton was, at this time, half a mile or so from the village of Old Sneinton.

Base map: Staveley and Wood - surveyed 1829, published 1831

The building lines are based on:

1820 - H Wild's Map

1825 - H M Wood's Map*

1829 - Staveley and Smith's Map

1841 - Dearden's Map

*Wood's Map needs handling with care because it lags behind the rate of building in the town (above, passim).

Detail from Dearden's
Map 1841

'Brunswick Circus'

Detail from Dearden's map, showing the area between Carlton Road and Long Hedge Lane (later Gordon Road)

This is not, in fact, the layout of the eventual development. There was, instead of Brunswick Circus, Clarence Crescent and a different arrangement of the streets. The actual development can be seen on any of the large scale OS maps later in the century. (And I can remember it.)

This factory - unpowered - in the Clarence Street area, was revealed during demolition in the 1970s.

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Notes

1/ 'Long Waves in Building in the British Economy of the Nineteenth Century' in Econ. History Review 2nd series, vol.8 no.2 p.257 

2/ Ibid. p.258

3/ Nottingham Journal 7th May 1825

4/ op.cit 30th April 1825

5/  op.cit p.150 (Revision)

6/ Nottingham Journal 29th January 1825 and subsequent issues.

From Nottingham City Library, Local Studies Dept:

H Wild's Map 1820

H M Wood's Map 1825

Dearden's Map 1841

Wood's Gas Bill Map 1841

Staveley and Wood's Map, surveyed 1828-9, published 1831: High resolution download available at:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nottingham_Map_1831_by_Staveley_and_Wood.jpg

Photo of old factory: WhysWhys

Sneinton and Me 3 - Graft on the Corporation and Spatial Expansion

 

Burgesses control the land surrounding Nottingham - prevent the outward expansion of the town in order to profit from land values in the town - leads to congestion and squalor - housing starts to appear in parishes at a distance and in Sneinton Parish where it abuts the town for a short distance.

White's Directory for 1832 says that,

'... the population has, during the last 30 years, nearly doubled itself, and the increase would have been much greater if the 12000 acres of burgess pasture land which nearly encompasses the town could have been sold or leased for building purposes. Within the last ten years almost every vacant piece of land that was suitable ... has been built upon.' (1)

Nottingham's open fields remained unenclosed until 1845, in which year the opposition to enclosure by the dominant Whig group on the corporation was broken by the efforts of an enclosure movement led by the Nottingham waterworks engineer Thomas Hawksley (2). Opposition to enclosure was due, in Hawksley's opinion, to the fact that, 

'... several influential members of the corporation are extensive owners of the small houses inhabited by the working classes in the worst conditions districts, [sic] and have repeatedly avowed their hostility to the principles of enclosure under ... the ... impression that their property would sustain permanent injury by the erection of better, more healthy, and more comfortable dwellings on the enclosed lands' (3)

There were two results of this failure to enclose. First, land values in the town rocketed as land became scarce. With the increasing demand for accommodation, congestion in Nottingham reached a point which prompted an investigator of the Health of Towns Commission in 1844 to describe Nottingham's housing situation as the worst in the country. (4) Second, the spatial expansion of the town was arrested, leading to the appearance of new developments outside Nottingham and beyond the fields, as the more prosperous artisans and middle classes sought better conditions in which to live. 

Evidence exists of these effects of the pressure of demand for building land before the turn of the nineteenth century. The Nottingham Journal in 1789 reported a case indicating the lengths to which developers would sometimes go in order to profit from the situation: 

'Within the last few years past, entire lands about this place being very scarce and difficult to obtain, and general increase of inhabitants holding forth a prospect of advantage ... to builders ... some of the closes immediately contiguous to the town have been bought at a very high price, and the purchasers ... have taken the opportunity of building several homes thereupon ... ' (5) 

Prompt retaliation in the form of a committee for the 'vindication of Burgess' rights ensured the demolition of these houses, and no further spatial expansion of the town took place until after enclosure.

In 1796, Benjamin Darker, a needle maker, built a row of thirteen back-to-back houses on the land made available by the Lenton enclosure act of that year, at Sion Hill (now Canning Circus) beyond the Sandfield and in the parish of Radford (6). In the boom years of the 'twenties and 'thirties of the next century, satellite communities grew up at New Radford, New Lenton, Carrington, Hyson Green and New Sneinton. 

Fig.1

New Sneinton differs, however, from the others, and it is perhaps inaccurate to describe it as a satellite community. The other places were satellite communities in that they centred upon villages some distance away from the town and beyond the open fields. White describes the open fields as 'nearly encompassing the town'; the fields did not completely encompass the town because on its eastern side the town bordered upon part of the enclosed land of Sneinton. 

Wood's 'Gas Bill' Map of 1841 (Fig.1) shows very well the  restricting effect of the Nottingham fields, shaded in yellow, and the consequent developments in adjacent parishes.

This situation makes the early development of Sneinton somewhat different from the early development of Hyson Green and the rest.

For the next chapter scroll down and select 'newer post' or the Left arrow

Notes

1/ p.75

2/ For more about Mr Hawksley see:

https://whyshistory.blogspot.com/2016/05/whats-your-poison.html?m=0

3/ Quoted by Chapman, op.cit p.156 (Revision)

4 / J R Martin, Second Report of the Health of Towns Commission, appendix, part 2, pp. 249 -257.     quoted ibid p.153)

5/ Sept. 26 1789

6/ Chapman op.cit p.76 (1961)

Wood's Gas Bill Map, 1841: Nottingham City Library, Local Studies Dept.

Sneinton and Me 2 - The Industrial Revolution as a Stimulus for the Growth of a Domestic Outwork System

In Nottingham

• an increase in the availability of cotton and yarn, made possible by industrialisation, led to a boom in domestic framework knitting and lace production - and contributed to a building boom in the early nineteenth century. 

Traditionally it has been considered that a characteristic trend of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was that of a transition from individual self employment as a means of of support to a pool of labour employed for wages. This was the time when inroads were being made into the old type of economy based on self supporting village and family units. New farming methods and enclosures turned villagers into wage earning labourers or dispossessed them completely. The mechanisation of cotton spinning brought the domestic outwork system of cotton spinning to an end, and with no means of providing their own food and with no income from cotton spinning, families moved to the large centres of cotton manufacture becoming employed as wage earning labour in factories.

Developments in Nottingham were a little more involved. Since the invention of the stocking frame locally around the turn of the seventeenth century the stocking frame industry had gravitated towards London. Early in the eighteenth century, however, a movement began away from London and back to the East Midlands as knitters became disenchanted with the irksome and restrictive regulations of the Chartered Company of Frame-Knitters. Distance from London, supplies of wool from Leicestershire and, later, of cotton after the setting up of factories by Arkwright and Hargreaves made the region very suitable for the industry. (1)

The presence of such an industry modified the effect of the industrial revolution upon the labouring classes of the area. Far from there being a depression of the domestic outwork system, there occurred two 'golden ages' in the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the second and third of the nineteenth century.

Factory spinning made available large quantities of worsted yarns and cotton at cheap prices and this led to a rapid growth in the making-up side of the industry. Between 1782 and 1812 the number of stocking frames in Britain increased by 50%. (2) The first boom occurred in the production of hosiery, and this was produced by skilled operators working the hand-operated stocking frame – in their own homes.

As early as 1764 the stocking frame had been adapted to produce lace of an elementary design (3), and it is clear that, with the abundance of cotton and the existence of skilled frame-smiths and operators, there should have been some incentive to develop a frame which could produce the expensive lace net.

The breakthrough occurred in 1808 when John Heathcote perfected his bobbinet machine, which could produce a strong, stable, hexagonal net. (4). In the 'twenties and 'thirties, as the domestic hosiery industry went into a protracted decline, a major boom occurred in the domestic lace-making industry. 

Lace-making was a much more skilled task than the operation of the original stocking frame: the machines were complicated and required constant attention to every thread and moving part. (Perhaps this explains why all the labour force employed on the stocking frames was not absorbed into the lace industry, and is the reason why a large number of stocking-frame knitters existed in the most miserable circumstances alongside the prosperous bobbin-net makers.) Wages were high: earnings for operators during the twenties could vary between 30s and £4 (5). The skilled smiths who built the machines earned £3 - £10 per week. 

An indication of the number of people earning these fabulous wages – at a time when stocking knitters were making 12s a week – can be gained from the sheets of signatures attached to an agreement to restriction of hours in the bobbin-net trade, organised by William Felkin in 1829, and from his comments on the agreement in his book, History of the Machine Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacturers (1867). He says in his book that a seven-eighths majority was missed by 55 machines. (6). Owners of 3,307 machines signed out of a total of 3,842 machines existing to Felkin's knowledge. Not all of these were in Nottingham of course, but examination of the signature sheets, which include the owners' addresses, shows that a very large majority were Nottingham based. Further, a large number of the machines not included in the votes in favour belonged to one large out-of-town operator (7). As for frame builders, Chapman quotes a figure of 1500 in Nottingham. (8).

The years at the end of the eighteenth century, then, and the twenties of the nineteenth were periods when there existed artisan elites of highly paid workers: workers who worked within a domestic outwork system. It is therefore to be expected that these people should want, and should be able to afford, housing of a reasonably good standard in which to live and carry on their trades.

This factor needs to be considered in conjunction with another factor: that of population growth. In common with the rest of the country the population of Nottingham began on a rapid upward curve. Blackner says that in 1779 there were 3,556 families in Nottingham (9). An examination of later censuses shows an average of five persons per family. If there were five persons per family in 1779 (and it is unlikely that the figure would have been higher) Nottingham's population would have been around 17,500 persons. The census returns for 1801 give Nottingham's population as 28,861 – an increase of more than a third on the 1779 estimate. By 1821 it was 40,000 and by 1831, 50,727 (10). The population of Nottingham trebled between 1779 and 1831 – and had nearly doubled in the years 1801-31. 

Such a large growth in numbers and the prosperity of the boom years would be expected to have contributed to a large increase in housing accommodation – and such an increase did occur. According to Chapman, by 1784 concentrations of working class housing had appeared to the North of the Old Market Square between Long Row and Back Side (now Parliament Street - see below, (Fig.1), and the ' … peripheral Narrow Marsh and Broad Marsh [areas] were only beginning to emerge as distinct working class districts …' (Fig.2, Fig.3) Even so, Dearden's enumeration of houses suggests that the area contained at least 17% of the houses in the town. (11)

Fig.1  H Wild's Map of the Town of Nottingham, 1820

The real boom in house building occurred in the 'twenties of the next century however. H Wild's map of the town in 1820 shows that a considerable amount of building had taken place since Deering's enumeration (Fig.2). The Leenside area and Red Lion Street area (Narrow Marsh) has been filled with a concentration of terraces and courts packing the area between Red Lion Street and the Nottingham Canal. However, open spaces remain in the area bounded by the triangle between Rick's Gardens in the North and St Mary's church and Pennyfoot Stile to the South. Comparison of this map with Staveley and Wood's map of 1828-9 shows the extent to which building went on during the decade, filling in most of the remaining open spaces (Fig.4).

Fig.2  Narrow Marsh 1820: H Wild's Map of the Town of Nottingham 

Fig.3  Narrow Marsh 1829:Staveley and Wood's Map of Nottingham (surveyed 1829, published 1831)
  

Fig.4(a)  1820 - H Wild's Map

Fig. 4(b) 1829 - Staveley and Wood's map, (published 1831)

Houses in Pennyfoot Street, with characteristic upper storey workshop windows

But before this increase in building activity can be considered in detail, it is necessary to take account of another factor of great importance.

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Notes

 1/ Royal Association, Nottingham and its Region, p.303

2/ S.D. Chapman, 'Working Class Housing in Nottingham During the Industrial Revolution', in Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 1963, p.70)

3/  'Nottingham Lace', in Industrial Nottingham, April 1967, p27

4/  Ibid.

5/ Chapman, op.cit. p.76. His sources include J. Blackner, History of Nottingham, Wm Felkin (see below), and Dearden's Nottingham Directory, 1834 

6/  pp.335ff.

7/ Ibid. - this would possibly be Heathcote in Somerset – and Felkin was Heathcote's agent in Nottingham (Dearden).

8/ op.cit. p.76, source: Nottingham Journal

9/ J Blackner, History of Nottingham, 1815, p.50

10/ White's Directory 1832, p.76

11/  op.cit. p.138 revised 1971 in Symposium: The History of Working Class Housing

Photo of Pennyfoot St: Picture Nottingham at 

https://picturenottingham.co.uk/

Maps: 

H Wild's Map of Nottingham 1820: Nottingham City Library, Local Studies Dept.

Staveley and Wood's Map of Nottingham, surveyed 1828-9, published 1831: a high resolution download is available at

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nottingham_Map_1831_by_Staveley_and_Wood.jpg

Sneinton and Me 1 - Introduction 2025

Sneinton is where I spent most of the early part of my life. When I went to uni I studied the history of working class housing. This entailed a piece of research leading to a dissertation and for this I chose the first phase of Sneinton's growth from a rural village into a densely populated urban area. I loved doing it and it was the start of a lifelong interest.

Recently, I dug it out to help a young relative who was doing a school project. And having done so, it seemed natural to include it in my History blog. It was written over 50 years ago and, while I think the research stands the test of time, some contemporary references may be out of date. And whereas I'm sure the sources I cite do still exist - quite possibly some of the places where I say you can find them don't. But I've added in some more up to date sources too.

With it I have provided supplementary posts giving context. I was writing it at a time of huge urban redevelopment: as I was researching its origins the world I had grown up in was being torn down around me.

I have not uploaded the original, 1974, introductory chapter of the dissertation as it is full of now out of date contemporary material. Odd bits that are useful, I have posted as notes and footnotes.

The Illustrations 

Originally I illustrated the growth of Nottingham and Sneinton by using a series of transparent overlays which could be folded across a base map. As I do not possess the tech to do this online, I have included pictures within the text which, I hope, will serve just as well. 

The Sneinton Enclosure Act

Sneinton's open fields were enclosed in 1796 by an act of Parliament of that year. The principal beneficiaries were the Lord of the Manor, Lord Newark, and John Musters of Colwick Hall. The dissertation deals largely with parcels of land allocated to these two by the act. A map of Sneinton was drawn up to show the holdings of the beneficiaries, and this is referred to as the Enclosure Map. Here's  the relevant portion of the map, showing who owned what.

This is sufficient to provide a bit of background to what follows. It is not my intention here to discuss the enclosure movement in general. There's plenty of information online if you want to know more about it. Lord Newark became Earl Manvers in 1806 and this is how he is referred to in the dissertation. His actual name was Charles Pierrepont. He was also heir to the estate of his uncle, the Duke of Kingston. Basically you can't walk more than a few yards in Sneinton without blundering into something named after him. My grandmother was born on Evelyn Street. He had a brother called Evelyn ... 

The Nottingham Enclosure Act

Nottingham's open fields were not enclosed until 50 years after Sneinton's - for reasons which will become apparent in Me and Sneinton 3.

A word About Money

The changeover from pounds shillings and pence had happened just a couple of years before I did this, so there was no need to explain what it meant in 'new money'. So, if you weren't there at the time:

The Posts

       Sneinton and Me 1 - Introduction 2025 (This one)

Sneinton and Me 2  - The Industrial Revolution as a Stimulus for the Growth of a Domestic Outwork System

•  An increase in the availability of cotton and yarn, made possible by industrialisation, led to a boom in domestic framework knitting and lace production - and contributed to a building boom in the early nineteenth century.

Sneinton and Me 3. Graft on the Corporation and Spatial Development

• Burgesses control the land surrounding Nottingham -  prevent the outward expansion of the town in order to profit from inflated land values in the town – leads to congestion and squalor - housing starts to appear in parishes at a distance, and in Sneinton Parish where it abuts the town.

 Sneinton and Me 4  - The Building Boom of the 1820s and its effect on Sneinton due to Failure to Enclose Nottingham's Fields

• For a period of twenty years, Nottingham's only spatial expansion consisted of a North-easterly advance into the parish of Sneinton.

 Sneinton and Me 5 - Nottingham Spreads Into Sneinton

• Whereas in other areas at this time growth was brought about by migrants from Nottingham, driven out by conditions and prices in the town, the growth of New Sneinton was was one and the same with the growth of the town. At this stage, houses on land allocated to Lord Newark (aka Earl Manvers) were of a poorer quality than those on John Musters' land on the north side of Sneinton Road.

More:

Sneinton and Me 6 - The View From Fifty Years On

Sneinton and Me 7 - Peter Elliot Bate - Property Developer

Sneinton and Me 8 - The Bedsit, Castle Street and Sneinton Hollows

To go to the next chapter scroll down to the bottom and select 'Newer Post' or the Left arrow.

No Place Like Home

I live in a very small terrace house, 'two up, two down'. It was built over 140 years ago, and as an enthusiast for 19th century history I have done it out in period style. The furniture in my front room is a mix of styles from throughout Victoria's reign, but I have tried to create overall a look reminiscent of the 1840's, sometimes known as 'Regency Victorian'. This I find pleasant to live with - unlike the dark, heavy and cluttered High Victorian style popular when the house was built. 



But as one who studies the past, I don't fool myself that I'm recreating anything here. It's an agreeable pastiche, not an historical re-creation. 

The house is one of of a pair built for a framework knitter in the mid-1870's who went on to live in the slightly larger one next door (belongs to an electronics engineer now). He rented mine out to a young railway guard and his family, incomers from London.

The house is very neat and cosy; it's low maintenance and cheap and easy to keep warm. Ideal for a guy on his own with a busy life to be getting on with. That's not how it was in Mr Framework Knitter's time though. An ideal home for a busy single professional now, it was much less than ideal for the families who lived in it in the past. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a family of 7 living in it: Mr and Mrs Hollyoak and their 3 daughters and 2 sons. 

I could now try to give a picture of what it was like for them. But I can go one better, by calling on a professor at the University of Florida, who had the experience at first hand.

  William Woodruff, academic, author and long-time professor at the the University of Florida, died in 2008 at the age of 92. He was born far away from there though, in the industrial North of England, in a house similar to mine. He tells us in his autobiography, The Road to Nab End,

'My brother Dan and I shared a bedroom with our parents. There were two metal beds with straw mattresses resting on thin metal slats. Sometimes the slats sagged, leaving a pocket into which we sank our hips. Dan and I slept in the same bed. We slept so close to our parents we could touch them. The nearness of our bodies made us feel safe. No one noticed the lack of privacy. I accepted my parents' love-making long before I understood it. It was as natural as someone using the pisspot (I didn't know the word chamber-pot until I had left school). It didn't disturb me, or confuse me, or revolt me. Like father's deep snoring, I ignored it.

My sisters Jenny and Brenda slept in the other bedroom, behind a paper-thin wall.'

The Hollyoaks' experience would have been similar, except with three girls sharing, not two. 

Also, the house they and I have lived in is built to a better spec than Woodruff's despite being the same size and layout. My house was built at the time of the passing of the 1875 Public Health Act which brought in the era of the 'bye-law houses', so called because local authorities could enforce quality and design standards through local legislation - bye-laws. So at least the girls would not be sleeping 'behind a paper thin wall', and the floors and external walls are much better quality than in the older, flimsier, jerry built housing Woodruff was born into.

In Woodruff's kitchen,

'Under the window there was a stone sink and a slop stone, or draining board. Above the sink was the only tap in the house.'  

We can assume things were similar for the Hollyoaks. In fact, they were the same in the house in which I was born thirty-odd years later. These houses didn't have bathrooms or indoor toilets of course. Woodruff says they bathed in a tin tub which hung on the wall outside in the yard. 

A typical tub - oval, centre - seen recently
 on a wall in rural Derbyshire. This is identical to
the one I was bathed in as a child.

As you will know from my previous posts, I don't usually go around saying the past was better than the present. But for once I will. Bathing has never got better than that: our mam pouring hot water over our heads with a saucepan, and towels and fresh pyjamas warming on a clothes horse in front of the fire. But then we weren't the ones who had to drag the tub in from the yard, and ferry water from the kitchen fireplace to the tub using that saucepan. And we weren't the ones who had to  to bail the used water out of the tub and down the sink before dragging it back out into the yard.

All this was tough, and I wouldn't want to go back to a life like that. But one dealt with the very basic facilities by being organised and capable. I remember in the 90's there was a reality TV show which put modern people into historic lifestyles to see how they coped. I found the one about the 1900 house rather irritating. The family seem to have been chosen for their inability to handle novel situations; more entertaining TV I suppose. I remember one episode dealt with the lady of the house attempting to wash her long hair. Of course she got into a chaotic mess, not having running hot water, shower head, dryer or shampoo. 

It didn't have to be like that, with a little thinking beforehand. As a child I helped my mum wash her long black hair. Pans of water were brought to the right temperature on the gas stove, she held her head over the sink while I poured enough of it over her hair to thoroughly wet it, then she lathered it. After that it was my job to pour more warm water over her hair to rinse it clean. Drying involved towels and time: no hair dryer of course. So: inconvenient and time-consuming, but doable and capable of getting an acceptable result.

(A later series, The 1940's House, was better and more realistic I thought, because that family were resourceful and capable of working together to find solutions, and ended up living quite well.)


I was born into a Victorian housing stock. The epic expansion of the previous 150 years had left us great areas of densely packed houses of variable quality, from the infill jerry building of the early 19th century through the increasing quality raising interventions of government to the beginnings of social (council) housing. I have friends now who grew up in houses far worse than the one I was born into. One friend, as a child, shared a bedroom with six brothers and sisters, sleeping on mattresses laid out on the floor of one of the two bedrooms. Another shared his childhood with the hordes of cockroaches living behind the wainscoting in their decaying terrace house.  

These guys now live in smart modern houses, a measure of how far we have come. But the struggle to keep everyone housed decently goes on, as prices escalate, young people experience difficulty getting on the 'housing ladder' or struggle to afford high rents, and as developers planners and the public don't always see eye to eye about what housing should be provided.

--------------

Notes

The Original Residents:

I went as usual to the census returns for the relevant years for details of the people who lived in my house in the past. Censuses from 1841 to 1911 can be found at

http://www.ukcensusonline.com/index.php

Framework knitting, which is to say the manufacture of hosiery on hand and foot-operated machines, usually in the home of the operator, had been a boom industry in the early part of the century. After that it declined, causing much hardship. However, it was still possible to do well at the high end of the market if you were skilled enough. Our two houses, though, were never adapted for frame knitting (large windows are needed to provide good light levels). So he must have worked elsewhere. Well, there's an old 3 storey factory building nearby- unpowered, big windows, typical of operations where hand machines were grouped together under one roof by one owner. So it's just possible he worked there. Neglected for a long time, it's now been sensitively restored and rented out as apartments.

For more see:

http://www.frameworkknittersmuseum.org.uk/about-framework-knitters/

Nearby, there are two railway stations and what was, until fifty years ago, one of Europe's largest marshalling yards. So it's not too difficult to figure out how a London railwayman happened upon a nice little house to rent in the nearby countryside, as it was then.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colwick_marshalling_yard

There's a nice Wikipedia article about Sneinton, the area in which I was born and spent much of the first half of my life:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneinton

Also, the nearby area, now known as St Ann's, where the two friends mentioned at the end of my post were born, has a good website:

http://stannswellroad.weebly.com/virtual-walk.html

What's Your Poison? Again

In What's Your Poison? I told of my grandmother's experience of being poisoned by a 'medication' given to her in the 1890's and of the poisoned beer catastrophe of 1900.

A little earlier in the century, journalists Charles Manby Smith and James Greenwood wrote on similar themes. They were writing at a time when dreadful epidemics were raging in Britain's teeming cities. Cholera, with victims vomiting and shitting themselves to a nasty dehydrated death, was especially feared.

It was a time when there was no systematic, scientific, way of approaching this kind of phenomenon. A lot of heavy duty thinking and investigating around the subject was going on but unfortunately for cholera victims the approach of the professionals was going into a blind alley, involving smells, or miasma, as they called them. This had been adopted as the official view. So it was that the findings of Dr John Snow's investigation, which had correctly identified water pollution as the source of infection, were long ignored. 

 This could be characterised in tabloid terms as baddy establishment overrides humble local doctor/campaigner. But we must remember that they were groping their way step by step into the unknown, piecing stuff together which, over the following century, would build into the knowledge which is our salvation now. In that scenario, why not believe that foetid, poo-smelling atmospheres are the carriers of disease? Having said that, Edwin Chadwick, the guy who set up the miasma legislation, was an odd and very pushy man, not given to tolerating the ideas of others.

 Even the concept of having government departments and inspectors to deal with health was only just getting established – against the usual tide of opposition. 

This cartoon, published in McLean’s monthly sheet of caricatures; March 1, 1832, sends up the new Board of Health inspectors.

 James Greenwood tells us that, struggling to come up with measures to control the disease, some authorities recommended the moderate drinking of alcohol as a preventive. The pub trade, he says, was eager to help:

A West-End Cholera Stronghold*

(*This paper was written during the last visitation of this terrible epidemic.)

 There never were such roaring times for a poor neighbourhood publican. He is never the poorer for a cholera visitation, for although his trade in beer at such periods is lamentably injured, it has always been the fashion to recommend brandy as an anti-choleriac, and under the management of the knowing proprietor of the Pig and Whistle a quartern of brandy may be made to yield as much profit as four retailed pots of beer, and so the matter was as nearly as possible equalised. But with this season's visitation of the scourge a new fashion in drinks has been introduced. “The safest and simplest drink during the prevalence of the epidemic is a mild compound of good rum and pure water, taken in moderation”, is the formula promulgated by certain well-meaning M.D.s, furnishing a hint not likely to be thrown away, either by the landlord of the Pig and Whistle or his dram-drinking customers, who, so long as they are permitted to guzzle until they are drunk, are quite indifferent as to the means employed. So I found matters in a dirty tavern in Hare Street, [where] a puncheon of “fine old vatted rum” was under-labelled in great chalk letters “Cholera Mixture” 

Let's now go behind the bar with the other journalist, Charles Manby Smith:

 The Drink Doctor

Mr Quintin Quassia, D.D., as the gin-spinners and beer-druggers who require his services gravely address him ... is a member of no learned profession, and is in possession of no degree, save a very considerable degree of quiet impudence and self-possession ... Under his miraculous management three hogsheads of proof gin from the distillers shall be in the course of a single night become transformed into seven substantial hogsheads of "Cream of the Valley". He has the assistance of a redoubtable necromancer in the person of Father Thames, whom he secretly invokes from his oozy bed at his beck at the dead of night.

'Father Thames', in a contemporary cartoon. 

Bear in mind that we now know, and Dr Snow at the time suspected, that 'Father Thames's' water was responsible for the cholera; that it had so much reeking stinking ordure bobbing about in it that Parliament had to move out of Westminster because of the unbearable smell - the Great Stink of 1858.

Watered gin would of course be insipid (unless there were a turd floating in it) and easily detected. Other additions were therefore used to put some taste back. Large amounts of sugar were added; an additional 'benefit' of sugar was the excitement of thirst so that, having finished one drink, the drinker was inclined to buy another.

But strong spirits require a 'kick', so something else was required:

'He has also ... another liquid spirit at his beck – a spirit whose touch is torture, and whose function frequently is to burn what fire will not consume – the fiend of sulphuric acid, whose vulgar retail name is vitriol ... he carries poisons of terrible efficacy, and thirst exciting drugs to consummate his work.'

So: alcohol for the feel-good + water to increase profit + sulphuric acid to provide a kick when you swallow + sugar to make you want more + help to ward off cholera! Perfect, let's have another!

I suspect that, if asked, the drinkers of this stuff would say they preferred it to straight unadulterated gin, the taste having become associated with the euphoria provided by the alcohol. This thinking was certainly apparent among the drinkers of low quality beer at the beginning of the 20th Century, as reported by James C. Whorton in his book, The Arsenic Century. This stuff had never seen malt, its alcohol being derived from any available vegetable source, with added colouring and flavours. After the arsenic poisoning disaster of 1900 , when some brewers produced beer guaranteed to be made of authentic ingredients, many drinkers expressed disappointment at the taste compared with the fake stuff they had been drinking. 

It was the same with my uncle John (my gran's eldest son) in the 1970's. A dedicated six to eight pints a night man, he knew his stuff about beer. He could tell you all about the good breweries and the not-so-good, and all about those landlords who kept a good pint and those who didn't. Then, in the 1970's the British brewing industry panicked about its future in the modern world, industrialised its production methods, changed its recipes and reduced the product to a low quality generic fizzy drink. And Uncle John went right on drinking it and talking the same talk. Worse: in those years there was a bit of a craze for brewing your own, using kits bought from supermarkets or chemist shops. He went in for that, big time. The product was execrable. But at 5% abv who cares? He certainly didn't as he threw copious amounts of it down his neck. Many men were the same. I think it was a case of that well known rule of thumb: after the third pint it all tastes good.

---------------

Notes:

There's a succinct article here about cholera in London, and the róles of John Snow and Edwin Chadwick:

http://www.choleraandthethames.co.uk/cholera-in-london/cholera-in-westminster/

Charles Manby Smith wrote for the popular magazines of the day. In 1853 he republished a collection of his articles in a book entitled Curiosities of London Life, and this has been republished in the Victorian London Ebooks series with an introduction by Lee Jackson. It's a great read, an immersion in the lives of real people in mid-Victorian times. The passages quoted in this post come from this edition. 

My James Greenwood extracts come from his book, The Wilds of London, published in 1874, also republished in the Victorian Ebooks series and also with an introduction by Lee Jackson.

I got the Board of Trade Inspectors cartoon here:

https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101393365-img