It is all free fighting here. Even some of the windows do not open, so it is useless to cry for help. Dampness and misery, violence and wrong, have left their handwriting in perfectly legible characters on the walls.
Tag: Manchester
Charter Street Ragged School
Charter Street Ragged School still looks forbidding, even today. The school opened in a former dancing hall in the 1860s and provided thousands of children and adults with free meals, clothing and education. The aim was to keep the children off the streets and to divert their parents away from the slum's pubs and beer houses. It… Continue reading Charter Street Ragged School
Heaven on Earth
Before Angel Meadow became Victorian Britain's 'Hell on Earth', it was a picture of heaven. For hundreds of years, nothing but farmers' fields covered the hillside that formed the slope of Angel Street. Before the clanking of mill machinery filled the air with thunder, the only sound that could be heard was the melody of… Continue reading Heaven on Earth
Friedrich Engels, 1845
If anyone wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air – and such air – he can breathe, how little civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither.
Going underground
Walk through any car park in Manchester city centre and you are stepping on a thin crust of concrete that separates you from a lost underworld. Down there beneath your feet lie the carcasses of Victorian houses that were demolished in slum clearances 70 years ago. Only the foundations and the cellars remain. They were… Continue reading Going underground
Angus Bethune Reach, 1849
The lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy, and most wicked locality in Manchester... inhabited by prostitutes, their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants, tramps, and, in the very worst sties of filth and darkness, by those unhappy wretches the 'low Irish'.
The journey begins
Welcome to the blog that accompanies my book Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain's Most Savage Slum. I became fascinated by Angel Meadow when I discovered that my Victorian forefather had been among the 30,000 impoverished souls who lived there. He was a farm labourer called William Kirby who fled the rugged west coast of Ireland following… Continue reading The journey begins
Angel Meadow 