20.5. Improvements

The improvements in health care, in town services, and in charitable activities, introduced in Manchester up to our period, were as follows:

1752    Royal Infirmary

1762    Lunatic Hospital and Asylum

1765    Police Commissioners Act, cleansing, lighting, fire brigade

1774    Lock Hospital (venereal diseases of women)

1779    Public Baths in the Royal Infirmary

1790    Lying-in Hospital (midwife services at the moment of birth were free)

1791    Workhouse

1791    Act of Parliament for watching, cleaning, and lighting the town

1791    Stranger’s Friend Society

1792    Dispensary

1796    Board of Health

1797    House of Recovery (special hospital for fever victims)

1799    Soup Charity

1817    Manchester Gas Company constructed; profits from the charges to the users,

to be used in infrastructure projects.

1820-1826

New reservoirs, increasing supply from 120,000 gallons per day (only 15 % of required supply per house) to 900,000 gallons per day.

1824    First horse-drawn omnibus: from Market-street to Pendleton

1824    The Samaritan Society for the assistance of destitute families

1829    Gas lighting of the central part of Manchester

1838    Night Asylum for the Destitute Poor

1843    Road Sweeping Machine, to remove large quantities of compacted dust and refuse from the side streets.

1844    Manchester Police Act, for newly constructed houses: prohibition of back-to-back houses, requirement of individual privies

1846    Public Baths and Wash-Houses

1850    Longdendale Reservoirs initiated

Webb, Sidney and Beatrice

English Local Government: Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes,

Ch. 4, The Improvement Commissioners, 1922. (link in Wikipedia, “Improvements Commissioners”)

The reason for presenting this information here, is to show what was the accumulated progress made in the services of the town population. But even in 1851, there was still a lot to be done, in hygiene and drainage.

Improvement Commissioners were semi-governmental organizations in towns in England, formed to carry out works of paving, street lighting, cleaning the streets, nightwatchmen, Police, firemen. Each Commission was authorized by a separate Act of Parliament, with powers to levy rates. 160 such bodies in England came into being from 1725 to 1799. For Manchester there were Acts in 1765 and 1791.