We have the impression that all the districts of Manchester (apart from the mansions of the wealthy, on the outskirts of the town), were uniformly poor, dirty, with dirty water and excrement in the streets, and with houses with small rooms and people living in cellars. But the truth is that there was a great differentiation in the housing for the working class.
“Of the first or lowest class, averaging 1s. 3d. per week rent, the occupants are of the poorest description of persons, paying frequently one-fourth of their income for rent; by which the landlords or owners realize about eight per cent net on the outlay; whilst the dwellings are without ovens or boilers, and are often filthy, damp, and unfit for habitation; generally deficient of privies, or drainage; or, in manufacturing towns, one privy to 10 or 15 houses.
The second class of dwellings are occupied by a better class of labourers, paying about one-sixth of their incomes for rent; producing, perhaps, 8 ¾ per cent to the owners as interest on their capital; and although many of them are very defective, as regards drainage and privies, they are still much better provided than the class before described; and many of them have ovens or boilers.
Of the third or best class, the occupants being generally more skilled and a better class of workmen, whose rent amounts to about one-eighth of their income, producing 9 ¾ per cent on the outlay to the owners; and here we find far superior accommodation and comparatively comfortable dwellings, well drained, and provided with privies; frequently gardens, and in most of them ovens or boilers.
These results confirm the lamentable fact, that the lower the poor are reduced in the social scales, the more they are subject to imposition and extortion.
The cottages erected by the manufacturers, and other respectable owners of cottage property, are very superior in every respect to those built or purchased by avaricious speculators, whose sole object is gain, and who enforce the payment of their rents with rigid severity. They are moreover commodious, clean, white-washed, and in many cases have the advantage of school-houses.” 2.01
(These comments refer to the whole region of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire, not just to Manchester)
2.01 Poor Law Commissioners, “Local Reports on the Sanitary Condition of the Population”, 17. Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire, p. 247.
The houses in Manchester were built by people who used a flimsy form of construction in order to get out a maximum of profit from the property. The houses were built at a minimum cost, without cellars or foundations, and with walls of only half a brick thickness. The rooms were generally from 11 feet square to 14 feet square, one room above the other, ceiling height from 8 to 11 feet.
Following we have a section of a back-to-back house 2.02
PICTURE
This house is more “splendid” than the majority of back-to-backs; normally they had only two stories, and did not always have a cellar room. But in every case, it is clear that there is no movement of air through the house. There is also no individual “privy” for each of these houses.
But the investors were not necessarily rich people, but “building clubs”, whose members were workers with good earnings and tradespeople. There had been possibly 150 of these clubs in Manchester and nearby towns; if each club had 100 “investors” at 100 pounds each, this would correspond to a total of 1,500,000 pounds. At 60 pounds cost of construction each, this would be 25,000 houses which had been built with this scheme.
The members paid 10 shillings per month, thus every 2 months the club had 100 pounds to start a building. This shows us that there were a good number of working-class men who could save 10 shillings a month, and also had taken the decision to use this amount in an “investment”. A person who wanted to build at this moment on a given lot, could take up all the money for the house, and contracted to pay the money in the following months to his co-investors. The payments for the house were assured by a mortgage on the house. 2.03, 2.04
2.02 Hatton, John
“A Lecture on the Sanitary Condition of Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Delivered at the Request
of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association”, 1854, Plate before p. 9
https://archive.org/stream/b22337489#page/n1/mode/2up
2.03 Poor Law Commissioners, “Local Reports on the Sanitary Condition of the Population”, 17. Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire, 1842, pp. 240-241.
2.04 J. T. Slugg, “Reminiscences of Manchester Fifty Years Ago”, J. E. Cornish, Manchester, 1881; Chapter XXV, Building Clubs.
The lodging houses where the indigents could sleep for from 1 penny to 3 pennies a night, were the least sanitary housing units in Manchester. There were probably 5,000 to 8,000 people sleeping in these places each night.
“In some of these houses as many as 6 or 8 beds are contained in a single room; in others, where the rooms are smaller, the number is necessarily less; but it seems to be the invariable practice of these “keepers of fever beds”, as the proprietors were styled by Dr. Ferrar, to cram as many beds into each room as it can possibly be made to hold: and they are often placed so close to each other that there is scarcely room to pass between them. The scene which these places present at night is one of the most lamentable description; the crowded state of the beds, filled promiscuously with men, women, and children; the floor covered over with the filthy and ragged clothing they have just put off, and with their various bundles and packages, containing all of the property they possess, mark the depraved and blunted state of their feelings, and the moral and social disorder that exists. The suffocating stench and the heat of the atmosphere are almost intolerable to a person coming in from the open air, and plainly indicate its insalubrity.” 2.05
Cellars
In 1850, 16,000 persons were living underground in 4,600 cellars. These were not pleasant, but had the advantage that they were usually dry, and had a separate entrance from that of the house above.
2.05 Poor Law Commissioners, “Local Reports on the Sanitary Condition of the Population”, 20. On the Prevalence of Diseases …. Manchester, 1842, pp. 319-320
Sanitation
As is well known, in 1831, Dr. Kay made a “census” of the houses and streets in the Township (really, 30 % of the total) as to their sanitary characteristics.
But it must also be taken into account, that the better classes of Manchester did do something – starting in 1830 – to improve the drainage conditions. “In no place in England can more anxiety be shown to remedy the evils which I have described, or more humane and philanthropic desires evinced to improve the condition of the poor, than those which exist on the part of the wealthier classes in Manchester; and the following statement, made up to the end of October in the past year, of the improvements within the last eight or nine years, since the obtainment of the Manchester Police Act in 1830, will prove that the Commissioners have not been inattentive in their duties, as far as their functions enable them to act: 2.06
| Number of streets paved and sewered 181 Miles Yards Length of streets paved and sewered 16 540 Length of main sewers formed 15 678 Length of cross sewers formed 5 1223 Surface of streets paved, 289,971 square yards” |
2.06 Poor Law Commissioners, “Local Reports on the Sanitary Condition of the Population,” 1840, 17. Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire, Comment by Charles Mott, Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, p. 243.
We have some more detailed information as to the advances in sanitation:
“With these difficulties to encounter, too much praise cannot be given to the committee for the great improvements carried into execution by them. Since 1830, more then 32 miles of sewers have been constructed. The total number of streets sewered and paved, or “on the town’s books”, is 480; but there are still 450 unpaved and unsewered streets of sufficient size to come under the operation of the act.
10. The labours of the committee [“The Paving and Soughing (sewerage) Committee” of the town-council of Manchester] have not by any means been confined to the wealthy parts of the town, the poor districts having attracted a large, if not the largest share of their attention. And their labours have not been in vain; Dr. Howard and Mr. Leigh, who were intimately acquainted with these districts some years since, from the connection with the infirmary, kindly agreed to inspect the worst conditioned localities with a view to report on their present state. They both express their astonishment at the better appearance of the inhabitants, and of the physical condition of these districts since the time they were accustomed to visit them. A few years back they were unpaved and unsewered, “and in winter the streets in the district of Angel Meadow were trod up into a thick mud 12 to 14 inches deep, and were almost impassable; the cellars of the houses were flooded, and influenza, cholera or fever, prevailed in succession the year round”. The wards of the hospital were filled with cases from this district. Within the last few years, however, almost the whole of the streets have been put into thorough repair by paving and sewering; the footways have been well flagged, and the cellars have been well protected from the inundations to which they were formerly subject. But they show that there are still many evils connected with this district. “In one part a chandlery sends forth its disgusting effluvia, pigsties are dotted up and down, and heaps of filth are poured a precipitous clay bank to lie and rot.”
Dr. Howard and Mr. Leigh visited carefully all the worst districts of the town in which epidemics had formerly prevailed and cholera raged, and they state their general impression as follows: “These localities are those in which the greatest amount of disease was wont to prevail, and the condition of which is yet such as to attract attention. Still, compared with the appearance which they presented seven or eight years ago, their condition would scarcely be censured by those whose recollections of them extended so far back. Within that period they have nearly all been excellently paved and sewered.”
Mr. Bennett, a surgeon and registrar of deaths in the Ancoats district, in alluding to the health of his district not being impaired in late years with severe distress, states that the reason is “because the draining, paving, &c., is so much improved.”’ 2.07
2.07 “Appendix – Part II, to Second Report of the Commissioners for Inquiring into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts” (1845), pp. 4-5.
Street Sweeping Machines
Before 1842, the access to the side streets was very difficult for pedestrians and wheeled vehicles, as dust and refuse accumulated in them to a certain height, and the manual sweeping was inefficient and sometimes non-existent.
“That the filthy and disgraceful state of many of the streets in these densely populated and neglected parts of the town where the indigent poor reside, cannot fail to exercise a most baneful influence over their health, is an inference which experience has fully proved to be well founded; and no fact is better established than that a large proportion of the causes of fever which occur in Manchester, originate in these situations. Of the 182 patients admitted into the temporary fever hospital in Balloon-street, 135 at least come from unpaved or otherwise filthy streets, or from confined and dirty courts and alleys. Many of the streets in which cases of fever are common are so deep in mire, or so full of hollows and heaps of refuse that the vehicle used for conveying the patients to the House of Recovery often cannot be driven along them, and the patients are obliged to be carried to it from considerable distances. Whole streets in these quarters are unpaved and without drains or main-sewers, are worn into deep ruts and holes, in which water constantly stagnates, and are so covered with refuse and excrementitious matter as to be almost impassible from depth of mud, and intolerable from stench. In the narrow lanes, confined courts and alleys, leading from these, similar nuisances exist, if possible, to a still greater extent; and as ventilation is here more obstructed their effects are still more pernicious.” 2.08
“The surface of these streets is considerably elevated by accumulated ashes and filth, untouched by any scavenger; they form nuclei of disease exhaled from a thousand sources. Here and there stagnant water, and channels so offensive they have been declared to be unbearable, lie under the doorways of the uncomplaining poor; and privies so laden with ashes and excrementitious matter, as to be unusable, prevail, till the streets themselves become offensive from deposits of this description; in short, there is generally pervading these localities a want of the common conveniences of life.”” 2.09
“33. These remarks apply only to the state of Manchester when I first undertook its examination; but since then the whole system has been altered. Arrangements are now made by which the street-cleansing machine sweeps the streets twice as often as formerly, at a diminished cost of 500 l. Much attention paid to the efficiency of this machine enables me to state with confidence, that the streets of Manchester are kept much more cleanly [sic.] than under the old system of hand labour.” 2.10
Water Supply
The water from the rivers that crossed Manchester was not suitable for human consumption; it had to be left standing for some time, until it could be used at least for washing.
The annual report from the Constabulary Force for 1847 gave: 2,955 streets, squares, alleys. There were 46,922 dwelling houses, of which 11,190 received water by installed pipe, 12,776 had access to a tap in the street, 22,956 did not receive water. There were 5,070 dwelling cellars, of which 1,108 had piped water, 1,968 could use a common tap, and 1,994 had no access to a point of supply.
2.08 Poor Law Commissioners, “Local Reports on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population” ,1842, Manchester, Dr. Baron Howard, p. 305.
2.09 Poor Law Commissioners, “Local Reports …,”, Leeds, Mr. Baker, pp. 352-35
2.10 Appendix – Part II, to Second Report of the Commissioners for Inquiring into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts (1845), p. 12.
