20.4 Statements based on Contemporary Sources

Of the adult working population, only 28 % (males) and 32 % (females) were cotton mill workers.

The workers were generally seen as divided in two segments, the serious persons who saved their money, and those who spent all their money on drink, and thus (although they had good wages) they did not eat well and were behind with their rent payments.

The expression “Hungry Forties” was not used in writing in the 19^Th century. The phrase came from the title of a book published in 1904. From 1838 to 1842, there was a catastrophic depression in the North of England (people died). In the other years of the decade, the economy was normal.

The wages in the cotton industry were good, the adult male workers received 20 shillings or more; additionally, the other members of the family (who were usually engaged in the same mill), earned another 10 shillings. This was enough for good quantities of food (5 pounds of meat and 2 pounds of bacon per family) and weekly expenses.

The wages in the other occupations with continuous employment were sufficient, as the incomes were given by the market.

About 45 % of the working-class families in Manchester were in conditions to invest in the Government Savings Banks. The average balance was twenty-five Pounds.

The consumption of meat in the Manchester Conurbation was close to 100 pounds per person per year (2 pounds per person per week), “meat on the bone”, i. e. only 60 % was edible. Additionally, the people ate ham + bacon, pigmeat, poultry, fish.

There were 550 butcher’s shops in the Manchester Conurbation in 1840 (see external files, with names and addresses).

The cotton mill workers were a little shorter than the national average, and the face and body did not have any excess flesh. This was because they did not make any forceful movements which would have developed muscles.

Of the cotton mill workers, in 1849, the men wore blue striped shirts, trousers and slippers, and the women generally had coarse pinafores and loose jackets tying round the throat. The outdoor dress of the men was reported as comfortable and respectable: velveteen jackets and shooting coats, with waistcoats and trousers of dark fustian cloth. The people were uniformly well shod, and their general appearance was one of unostentatious comfort.

There were about 750 schools in Manchester, with about 70,000 pupils. But about 20,000 children did not attend any school, apparently their parents did not have any interest in sending them to school.

There were lectures every Sunday to adults in the “Hall of Science”, which had space for 3,000 persons. According to Engels, the workers were knowledgeable about political and social questions.

The Mechanics’ Institutes had a total of 3,000 members in Manchester. In the years from 1837 to 1844, the Institutes presented 5 exhibitions (total attendance of 300,000 persons) about advances in science and technology.

The housing of the working-class in Manchester was not of a uniform quality, but could be divided into 3 classes: Third class (best): “far superior accommodation and comparatively comfortable dwellings, well drained, and provided with privies; frequently gardens, and in most of them ovens or boilers.”

Half of the houses were built by “building clubs” of the better-paid workers, who used individual artisans to construct them, with a mortgage from a bank, and then rented them out to lower-paid workers.

Starting from the bad condition of drainage and paving reported by Dr. Kay in 1831, the town administration was successful in considerably improving these areas up to 1840.

Up to 1842, the smaller streets were full of an accumulation of dust and rubbish, which was a danger to health, and made it impossible to transit the streets, except on foot.

In 1843, a Street-Sweeping Machine with rotating brushes, and drawn by a horse, was introduced. This cleaned the streets down to their base level, and was four times faster.

According to the Local Report to the Poor Law Commissioners in 1842, made up by the Physician to the Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary, there were some very ugly and insanitary districts in Manchester, with an indigent population. However this classification could only be applied to a small number of districts (Ancoats, Angel Meadow, etc.)

The Suburbs (Hulme, Chorlton-upon-Medlock, and Ardwick) had better houses, better sanitation and a better class of inhabitant, than the Township.

The really horrible areas (à la Engels) were not more than 10 % of the area of Manchester Proper (reports from doctors and visitors). The suburbs included in the Chorlton Registration District had decent housing and infrastructure.

An investigation was carried out by the Manchester Statistical Society in 1844, of the area of Ancoats, which was generally taken to be that of the largest proportion of working class and those of the poorest description. Even so, 40 % of the dwellings were “comfortable”, the Ancoats Lyceum had 310 members with 1,700 books, and of 8,000 children under 12, the half went to Sunday Schools (these were real schools, held on Sundays, not only religious instruction).

50 % of the deaths in the Northern Industrial Towns were of children below 5 years old. This obviously means that the other 50 % of deaths were “spread over” the age cohorts of above 5 years. For persons of 5 to 44 years old, the probability of dying in the following 12 months was some figure between 0.5 % and 1.5 %

The figures of infant mortality in England as an average were much lower than in other countries during the 19^thcentury. The figures for Manchester and Liverpool, i. e. the worst cases in England, were about 210 / 1000 in 1840, and decreased to about 175 / 1000 in 1900. This means that the average in Germany was equal to Manchester and Liverpool from 1825 to 1845, and then was higher throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.

These small children did not die principally due to the general problems of hygiene in the town. Their deaths were due to the lack of care by the mothers, who left the children with “minders” of eight to ten years old; they did not give the small children nutritious and hygienic food; they gave them narcotic solutions and medicines suggested by druggists, which caused large numbers of cases of “convulsions”.

The birth rate in Manchester Conurbation in 1841 to 1851 was from 3.9 % to 4.2 %, and the death rate was from 2.5 % to 3.6 %. (Higher in Manchester Proper, lower in Chorlton).

The major causes of death in the Township in 1837-38 and 1838-39 (i. e. the first results from the new Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages) were: smallpox, measles, convulsions, pneumonia, consumption, teething. “Convulsions” were caused by use of “Godfrey’s Cordial” or by medicines irregularly prescribed by druggists.

“Consumption” was pulmonary tuberculosis. Unfortunately, we do not have the data to divide the numbers between “age less than five years”, “age five years or more”.

Manchester had the following medical services for the poor (all the medical institutions were without charge to the poor patient; the original cost of the buildings was covered by large donations; the running costs of medicines etc. was covered by monthly donations, the doctors gave their services free):

Royal Infirmary and Dispensary, Royal Lunatic Asylum, the House of Recovery (separate hosptal installation for fever patients), the Salford and Pendleton Royal Dispensary, the Chorlton-upon-Medlock Royal Dispensary, the Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary, the Eye Institution, the Lying-In Hospital (midwife at the moment of delivery of the baby), the Lock Hospital (venereal infections of women).

There were also institutions and funds for social needs (equally funded by donations):

Soup Kitchen, the Boroughreeve’s Charity, the Night Asylum for the Homeless Poor, the District Provident Society, the Asylum for Female Penitents, the Ladies’ Jubilee School, the School for the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind Asylum.

There were 32 libraries in Manchester in 1852, also 156 Public Institutions, and 9 Parks and Places of Amusement (including a Zoo).

Many of the working class were interested in going to concerts, and in singing in choirs.

Large numbers of working-class men and women were active in demonstrations, distribution of propaganda, bazaars to collect donations, and organizing petitions to the Government, for:

• The People’s Charter (Chartists),
• The Anti-Corn Law League
• The Ten Hours Act.