Story of Manchester by Woodman Deborah

Author:Woodman, Deborah
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750984942
Publisher: The History Press

38 Friedrich Engels in 1845, aged 25. (Courtesy of Alamy)

It was not quite the same experience for the middle class who were moving away from the original high-class residential areas of Mosley Street, George Street, and Faulkner Street. By the 1830s, they were moving out to the new residential suburbs of south Manchester and Pendleton. The houses they left behind were increasingly being taken over by warehousing, and the people who were replacing them in the centre led to higher rates of poverty and vice. Contemporary observer Leon Faucher, who wrote Manchester in 1844: its present condition and future prospects, stated:

The rich man spreads his couch amidst the beauties of the surrounding country, and abandons the town to the operatives, publicans, mendicants, thieves and prostitutes merely taking the precaution to leave behind him a police force, whose duty it is to preserve some little of material order in this pell-mell of society.8

However, despite this overwhelmingly gloomy picture, the situation for the working-class started to improve. From the 1830s and ’40s there were a number of factory acts that dealt with issues such as the employment of children and limits to working hours. In 1844, legislation was passed that ensured that all new houses had a water supply and either an indoor or outdoor toilet. Cellar dwellings in Manchester ceased after legislation passed in 1853 and several hundred were demolished.

Manchester’s authorities were faced with increases in crime and social problems in consequence of urbanisation and concentrations of very poor people in working-class districts. One of the most contentious issues for the authorities to deal with was the working-class association with drink and pubs. Even though working-class people endured gruelling days, they made the most of their free time, which was often in their local hostelry. Manchester had in the region of 500 public houses around this time, so there were plenty of places to choose from. Furthermore, from 1830 the drink question became a pressing issue owing to the Beer Act of that year which transformed drink culture in places such as Manchester since it allowed anyone with a few guineas to obtain an excise license and open a beerhouse that, as its name implies, sold just beer. These beerhouses proliferated all over the city to well over a thousand, particularly in working-class districts such as Hulme, Newton Heath, Ancoats, and neighbouring Salford.9

One of Manchester’s most famous policemen was Detective Jerome Caminada, and his memoirs offers us fascinating insights into the less salubrious aspects of Mancunian life, and often incidents revolved around pubs and beerhouses. Born in Deansgate to an Irish mother and Italian father, Jerome was brought up in the area noted for its criminal underworld and vice during the nineteenth century. He began work at the police force in 1868, and soon developed through the ranks, becoming a detective in 1872. He was prolific in his investigations and convicted thousands of people and closed down hundreds of pubs and beerhouses down during his career. His two-volume memoirs – 25 Years of Detective Life – provide colourful accounts of some of the cases he dealt with.

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