Manchester Centre for Regional History

Volume 21
2010

Business in the North West
Guest edited by Prof John F. Wilson

Obituary: Ruth Frow (1922–2008) (Kevin Morgan)
Obituary: Yoshiteru Takei (1929–2009) ( Alex J. Robertson )
Obituary: ‘In memory of Douglas Farnie’ (Yoshiteru Takei)

Capital ownership, capital structure, and capital markets: financial constraints and the decline of the Lancashire cotton textile industry, c1880–c1965
Abstract: The objective of this analysis is to provide a reinterpretation of the decline of the Lancashire cotton textile industry during the twentieth century. Its principal concerns are with the governance structure of the industry, the resultant capital structures of firms and the constraints thereby imposed on the activities of entrepreneurs. Its central thesis is that ownership of the industry, and the redistribution of ownership claims during booms and slumps, imposed pressures and constraints on decision-makers. These financial constraints dominated the strategic questions of re-equipment and modernization.
Keywords: Lancashire cotton textiles, excess capacity, dividends, debt, capital markets

Lancashire and the New Zealand market in the mid twentieth century: cotton, glass and locomotives
Abstract: Lancashire businesses had markets all over the world in the mid twentieth century, not least in the countries of the British empire and commonwealth. New Zealand was a more important market than its size might suggest, partly because of similarities of taste, and the influence of discriminatory international arrangements such as the sterling area and imperial preference. This article looks at how firms in the cotton, glass and locomotive industries sought to make the most of the New Zealand market, albeit with varying degrees of success. Pilkington Brothers were the most successful of the businesses we examine, setting up a local operation in order to take advantage of efforts to protect and develop a domestic manufacturing base.
Keywords: Lancashire, New Zealand, Pilkingtons, cotton, engineering

Freemasonry and civic identity: municipal politics, business and the rise of Blackpool from the 1850s to the First World War
Abstract: The relationship between business and local government in Blackpool’s late-Victorian and Edwardian development into the world’s first working-class seaside resort is well documented. This article brings an important additional item into the mix by demonstrating the importance of freemasonry in this process. Not only did membership of the craft pull together Blackpool’s municipal, business and professional elites, including the Church of England; the symbolism of freemasonry also infiltrated the town’s civic and public architecture, including the Town Hall itself. This is the first serious analysis of the relationships between freemasonry, business and municipal politics in an English town, and it is hoped that it will set an agenda for comparative studies elsewhere.
Keywords: Business, local politics, religion, freemasonry, leisure, tourism, resort, Victorian

Brewing in the North West, 1840–1914: sowing the seeds of service-sector management?
Abstract: This paper explores the contours of brewing in the north-west of England in the period 1840 to 1914. While accounts of the region have been dominated by considerations of cotton and engineering, it is argued that there was considerable innovation in the brewing industry in the region, notably in the development of the direct management of public houses in Liverpool. However, such success failed to ensure the expansion of companies outside the region and the paper considers the factors which may have led to this. It concludes that the heterogeneity of practice in the region, in particular the tension between Liverpool and Manchester, meant that the baton of innovation was passed to the Birmingham brewers, whose further development of retailing lay at the heart of their eventual importance at national level.
Keywords: Brewing, public-house management, Liverpool, Manchester

‘An absorbing epic’? The development of toy-manufacturing in the North West, c1851–1931
Abstract: Received wisdom has it that the First World War was responsible for the emergence of an indigenous toy-manufacturing sector in Britain as imports from traditional suppliers in Germany were cut off. Taking Liverpool and Manchester as its focus, this essay shows that contrary to received opinion, an indigenous industry was present well before 1914, that its higher profile during the war was generally short-lived, and that the firms which survived the post-war depression were generally those whose existence predated the advent of the First World War.
Keywords: Toy-manufacture, Liverpool, Manchester

Working on the frontiers of risk: the insurance industry in north-west England since 1700
Abstract: This paper surveys the development of the insurance industry in the north-west of England from its earliest days (the late seventeenth century) to the present. In several quite separate fields of insurance – marine, fire, industrial and life – and at different times, the business that developed in the North West played a prominent role in national markets. Moreover, in property insurance some of the companies that emerged in Liverpool during the middle of the nineteenth century became the largest multinational insurers in the world, out-competing not only their London- and Edinburgh-based rivals, but also the leading companies of other nations in the race for market share. This paper examines the reasons for the long-run success of the region’s insurance industry and searches for answers both in the nature of local markets, and in the networks and accumulated experience of the local business community.
Keywords: Insurance, Liverpool, industrial revolution, business networks, multinationals

Lancashire’s highway men: the business community and road improvements during the industrial revolution
Abstract: Recent research has analyzed the fundamental improvements that were made to Lancashire’s road network during the industrial revolution period, not only through greatly extending road mileage, but also through easing gradients and laying paved surfaces. This article examines the contribution that local businessmen made to these improvements, from providing finance for road construction to involving themselves in the formation and running of turnpike trusts.
Keywords: Road construction, management, toll-letting, businessmen, loans

Straws in the wind: the local and regional roots of an occupational disease epidemic
Abstract: Asbestos-related deaths in the UK are currently about 4,000 each year, with that total still rising. Most cases involve asbestos-related cancers (particularly mesothelioma). This national epidemic had local roots in the Manchester region, where Turner Brothers Asbestos (the largest asbestos factory in the UK) was located. The paper explores the recognition of asbestos cancers in the 1960s and shows how much of the evidence was either effaced or diluted by industrial interests or local officialdom. The use of asbestos was perpetuated beyond the 1970s with the support of local politicians, such as Sir Cyril Smith MP, who assisted Turner Brothers in fending off government regulation.
Keywords: Asbestos, mesothelioma, Rochdale, Sir Cyril Smith, Turner Brothers, Turner & Newall

Long Reviews
Michael Rose on:
J.F. Wilson, ed., King Cotton: a tribute to Douglas A. Farnie (Crucible Books in association with the Chetham Society, 2009)

Michael Nevell on:
Ian Miller and Christine Wild, A & G Murray and the cotton mills of Ancoats (Oxford Archaeology North, 2007)

David Walsh on:
A.J. Randall, Riotous assemblies: popular protest in Hanoverian England (Oxford University Press, 2006)

Michael Howard on:
Cécilia Lyon, Adolphe Valette (Phillimore, 2006)

Heather Norris Nicholson on:
Hilary Fawcett, ed., Made in Newcastle: visual culture (University of Northumbria Press, 2007)

Dave Russell on:
Gary James, Manchester: a football history (James Ward, 2008)

Neville Kirk on:
Robert G. Hall, Voices of the people: democracy and Chartist political identity 1830–1870 (Merlin Press, 2007)

Dave Russell on:
Robin Daniels, Cardus: celebrant of beauty (Palatine, 2009)

Brian Maidment on:
Brian Hollingworth, ed., The diary of Edwin Waugh 1847–1851 (Carnegie Publishing, 2008)

Volume 20
2009

Sport in Manchester
Guest edited by Prof Dave Russell

Obituary: Douglas Farnie (John F. Wilson)
Obituary: John Marshall (John K. Walton)

Sporting Manchester, from c1800 to the present: an introduction
Abstract: Manchester and its hinterland has one of the richest sporting cultures of any English city-region. This study analyses its growth and development from the beginning of the nineteenth century and considers the meaning and significance that sport has held for a number of groups within local and regional society. It suggests that while the Manchester region shares sporting characteristics with many other urban centres, local factors such as the early arrival of industrial society, the nature and structure of the population and patterns of inter-town rivalry have given it a distinctive flavour.
Keywords: industrialization, amateurism, gender, rivalry

Betting capital of the provinces: Manchester, 1800–1900
Abstract: Throughout the nineteenth century horse-racing laid claim to be England’s ‘national sport’, attracting much higher numbers of spectators than rival sports, and stimulating huge betting interest. This paper traces a long-lost dimension to Manchester’s nineteenth-century cultural history – its central role in horse-race betting. It begins by tracing the development of the various racecourses in and around Manchester that met on-course betting needs, from Heaton Park and Kersal Moor to Castle Irwell and New Barns. Manchester also had its own credit-betting ‘exchange’ at the Post Office Hotel, which from the 1840s until c1870s was a serious rival to Tattersall’s in London, and acted as a centre for the Manchester ‘division’ of book-makers travelling the racing circuit. By that time Manchester had become a thriving centre for illegal working-class cash-betting not just on the horses but on other sporting events, and nationally significant Manchester-betting journalism had emerged to cover it.
Keywords: book-makers, risk, credit, cash

Edward Hulton and sports journalism in late-Victorian Manchester
Abstract: This paper examines the entry of compositor Edward Hulton into the field of sporting journalism in 1870s Manchester, first as a part-time racing tipster, and then as editor and joint-owner of a turf-news service that grew to embrace weekly and daily specialist sports papers, a Sunday title, and regional morning and evening newspapers. Hulton’s success as a newspaper entrepreneur is traced alongside the unprecedented expansion of sports journalism in Manchester in the final three decades of the nineteenth century, a period marked by a growing public appetite for news and comment surrounding organized sport.
Keywords: horse-racing, Edwin Bleakley, press, Sporting Chronicle

Bowling for a living: a century on the Panel
Abstract: ‘Bowling for a living: a century on the Panel’ coincides with the 2008 centenary of the Lancashire Professional Bowling Association. It provides an overview of the Association’s history, with a special concentration on the period after World War Two. The unpublished memoirs of Glen Howarth, a Panel player from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s, provide a substantial primary source from which to investigate specific issues such as the viability of a professional career and attitudes to gender in the sport of crown green bowls at this time.
Keywords: crown green bowling, betting, Red Lion, Westhoughton, professional

'They shall grow not old’: mourning, memory and the Munich air disaster of 1958
Abstract: The mourning and commemoration of the Munich air crash of 1958, which resulted in the death of twenty-three individuals, including eight Manchester United footballers, is examined in the context of academic debates about the shift towards modern attitudes towards death and its remembrance following both the First and the Second World Wars. It is argued that the crash may have provided a space for the expression of grief suppressed after the Second World War, as well as demonstrating the robustness of traditional practices and beliefs.
Keywords: Manchester United, commemoration, First World War, monuments

The National Football Museum

Long Reviews
Mark Ockelton on:
John Dickinson, Misericords of north-west England: their nature and significance (Centre for North-West Regional Studies, 2008)

Christina Brindley on:
Margaret Lynch (leader; edited by members of the Ranulf Higden Society), Life, love and death in north-east Lancashire, 1510–1537: a translation of the Act Book of the ecclesiastical court of Whalley (The Chetham Society, 2006)

Andrzej Olechnowicz on:
Kevin McPhillips, Joseph Burgess (1853–1934) and the founding of the Independent Labour Party (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005)

Derek Brumhead on:
Michael Nevell and Norman Redhead, Mellor: Living on the edge: a regional study of an Iron Age and Romano-British upland settlement (The University of Manchester Archaeological Unit, The Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit, and The Mellor Archaeological Trust, 2005)

Tony Bostock on:
Pam Savage, Knutsford: a Cheshire market town, c1650–1750: its life and people (INTEC Publishing, 2003)

Volume 19
2008

Early Modern Manchester
Guest edited by Dr Craig Horner

Obituary: Neil Richardson

The regional road network and the growth of Manchester in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

In the labyrinth: John Dee and Reformation Manchester

Church or Chapel? Restoration Presbyterianism in Manchester, 1660–1689

Lost in translation? Documents relating to the disturbances at Manchester, 1715

‘What have I to do with the ship?’: John Byrom and eighteenth-century Manchester politics, with new verse attributions

The Manchester grocer (o r, where there is a will…)

Ordsall Hall: one of the oldest and best loved buildings in Greater Manchester

The Archive of the Booth Charities of Salford

Long Reviews
John Smail on:
Hannah Barker, The business of women: female enterprise and urban development in northern England , 1760-1830 (Oxford University Press, 2007)

Edward Royle on:
Michael L. Bush, The casualties of Peterloo (Carnegie Publishing, 2005)

Geoff Timmins on:
Jon Stobart, The first industrial region: north-west England c.1700-60 (Manchester University Press, 2004)

Douglas Farnie on:
Charles F. Foster, Capital and innovation: how Britain became the first industrial modern nation (Arley Hall Press, 2004)

Kazuhiko Kondo on:
Jonathan Oates, The Jacobite invasion of 1745 in north-west England (Centre for North-West Regional Studies, 2006)

Steve Davies on:
Robert Poole (ed)., The Lancashire Witches: histories and stories (Manchester University Press, 2002)

Stephen Connolly:
Dorothy Bentley Smith, A Georgian Gent & Co.: the life and times of Charles Roe (Landmark Publishing, 2005)

Volume 18
2007

The history of science and technology in the north west
Guest edited by Professor John Pickstone

Long Reviews

Volume 17 Number 2
2006

The literary culture of nineteenth-century Manchester
Guest edited by Professor Brian Maidment

Volume 17 Number 1
2004

Volume 16
2002-3

Eric Taplin

Obituary: Edmund Frow 1906-1997

Jane Bedford

Margaret Ashton: Manchester’s ‘First Lady’

Craig Horner

The Rise and Fall of Manchester’s "Set of Infernal Miscreants": Radicalism in 1790s Manchester

Ian Shaw

Rev. William Nunn and the Bennett Street Sunday School Manchester 1817-24

Debbie Hodson

Civic Identity, Custom and Commerce: Victorian Market Halls in the Manchester Region

Jenny Field

Survival Strategies in Mid-Nineteenth Century Bolton

Paul de Felice

Reconstructing Manchester’s Little Italy

Sandra Hayton

The Archetypal Irish Cellar Dweller

Father Robert Canavan

The Talbot Library

Nigel Wright

Astley Hall Museum and Art Gallery

Steve Little

The Manchester Civic Society

Philip Gooderson

Terror on the Streets of Late Victorian Salford and Manchester: The Scuttling Menace

Peter Gurney

The Politics of Public Space in Manchester, 1896-1919

Derek Brumhead

The Early Cotton Industry in New Mills, Derbyshire

Paul Pickering and Stephen Roberts

Pills, Pamphlets and Politics: The Career of Peter Murray McDouall (1814-1854)

Alex J. Robertson

Neither Inattentive Learners Nor Forgetful Guests: The Iwakura Embassy in the North-West, 1872

Edward Mynott

Frank Crossley - Saint or Sinner?

Fr David Lannon

The Salford Diocesan Archive

Kevin Campbell and Barry Mills

Bolton Archive and Local Studies Service

Alastair Gillies

Wigan's History Shop

Brian Paul Hindle

Manchester Geographical Society - Past and Present

Robert Glen

Anatomy of a Religious Revival: Stockport Methodists in the 1790s

Brian E. Maidment

Describing Manchester Poetically: Philip Connell's 'A Winter Night in Manchester'

Martin Hewitt

Popular Platform Religion: Arthur Mursell at the Free Trade Hall 1857-1866

Stephen Mosley

The 'Smoke Nuisance' and Environmental Reformers in Late Victorian Manchester

Bob Moore

Glen Mill: The International History of a Local POW Camp During World War II

Eddie Little and Eric Higgins

'A Nasty Outbreak': Anti-Jewish Disturbances in 1947

Viv Caruana and Colin Simmons

Municipal Enterprise in Pursuit of Profit: Manchester Airport 1945-78

J.D. Marshall

The Manchester Region History Review: The Shape of the Next Decade?

Malcolm Lorimer

Lancashire County Cricket Club Library

Mark Wylie

Manchester United Museum

Theresa Wyborn

Parks for the People: The Development of Public Parks in Victorian Manchester

John Bailey

Newly Awakened Taste: The Relationship Between An Artist and His Patron

Harvey Taylor

Footpath Protection Societies in Mid-Nineteenth Century Textile Lancashire

Peter Taylor

Handloom Weavers and Popular Politics in Bolton, c.1825-1850

John Singleton

Lancashire Since 1900: Recent Research on Cotton

Arthur McIvor

Health and Safety in the Cotton Industry: A Literature Survey

Alan Fowler

Labour in the Lancashire Cotton Industry

Ian McIntosh

"It Was Worse Than Alcatraz": Working for Ford at Trafford Park

Morris Garratt

Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society

Terry Berry and Paul Sillitoe

Oldham Local Studies Library and Archives Service

Jennifer A. Rennie

Haworth Art Gallery, Accrington

David George

Manchester Region Industrial Archaeology Archive

Introduction: 'More than an Example': Ancoats in Historical Perspective

Jacqueline Roberts

'A Densely Populated and Unlovely Tract': The Residential Development of Ancoats

Mike Williams

The Mills of Ancoats

Roger Lloyd-Jones and Merv Lewis

Housing Factory Workers: Ancoats in the Early Nineteenth Century

Peter Rushton

Family Survival Strategies in Mid-Victorian Ancoats

Audrey Kay

Charles Rowley and the Ancoats Recreation Movement, 1876-1914

Michael E. Rose

The Manchester University Settlement in Ancoats, 1895-1909

Michael Harrison

Art and Social Regeneration: The Ancoats Art Museum

Roger Cooter and John Pickstone

From Dispensary to Hospital: Medicine, Community and Workplace in Ancoats, 1828-1948

Trefor Thomas

Ancoats and the Manchester Slums in Two Late Victorian Novels

A.D. George

A Note on A.V. Roe and the Brownsfield Mill, Ancoats

Steve Little

Ancoats: Protecting the Unprotectable?

Malcom Lynch

The Devil in Ancoats: Images of Childhood

Andrew Davies

Oral History

Maureen Patch and Vincent McKernan

The Greater Manchester Country Record Office

Carol O'Mahony

Portland Basin Industrial Heritage Centre

Keith Parry, Bernice Brookes and David Grayson

Littleborough Historical and Archaeological Society

Peter Taylor

A Divided Middle Class: Bolton 1790-1850

Glenn K. Horridge

`Invading Manchester': Responses to the Salvation Army 1878-1900

Martin R. Jervis

The Padiham Power Loom Weavers' Strike of 1859

Peter D. Mohr

Gilbert Kirlew and the Development of Crippled Children's Societies in Victorian Manchester and Salford

Ted Wilson

The Battle for the Standard: The Bimetallic Movement in Manchester

David Nicholls

William Stokes (1803-1881)

Rainer Liedtke

Self-Help in Manchester Jewry: The Provincial Independent Tontine Society

Melanie Tebbutt

`You Couldn't Help But Know': Public and Private Space in the Lives of Working Class Women, 1918-1939

Eddie Little

The Manchester Peace Manifesto 1936-37

John Percy and John Blunden-Ellis

University of Salford Library and Archives

Derek Brumhead

An Eighteenth-Century Coal Mining Account Book for New Mills

Catharine Rew

Manchester Jewish Museum

Rev Ian H. Wallace

Eccles Local History Society

Jean Barclay

John Milson Rhodes, 1847-1909: Chorlton Guardian and Didsbury Doctor

Brian Rigby

Bolton and the Cinema: From Mass-Observation to the Diary of a Nobody

Joan Parker

Lydia Becker: Pioneer Orator of the Women's Movement

Su Coates

Manchester's German Gentlemen: Immigrant Institutions in a Provincial City 1840-1920

Stephen Bird

Archives of the Working Class Movement: A National Collection in Manchester

Morris Garratt

Local Studies in Middleton

Jim Garretts

'To Investigate, Instruct and Inspire': The History and Development of Bury Museum

Shirley McKenna

Stockport Historical Society

John Percy

Scientists in Humble Life: The Artisan Naturalists of South Lancashire

David Nicholls

Manchester Peace Conference of 1853

Eddie Little

Joseph Hanson: The Weaver's Friend

Simon Goodwin

The Historian and the Computer: The Example of Styal

Roy Garratt

The Co-Operative Union Library

Frank Galvin

130 Years of Stockport Museum, "The Chairman was authorised to buy an Umbrella Stand"

Chris Makepeace

Manchester Region Industrial Archaeology Society

William Shenton

Manchester's First Cinemas 1896-1914

Frank Neal

Manchester Origins of the English Orange Order

Emily White

A Village School and its Master: St James' School, Sutton 1887-1925

Jill Groves

'Such a Day as is Seldome Seen': The Memorandum Book of a Cheshire Yeoman, John Ryle of High Greaves, Etchells, 1649-1721

Jessie Campbell

Barclays Bank Archive

Mike Eddison

Local Studies in Cheshire

Ian Gibson and Robin Green

Helmshore Textile Museums

Philip W. Pilling

Northern Mill Engine Society

Michael Winstanley

News from Oldham: Edwin Butterworth and the Manchester Press, 1829-1848

Mary Turner

Drink and Illicit Distillation in Nineteenth-Century Manchester

Ruth and Edmund Frow

Collectomania

D.A. Farnie

John Worrall of Oldham. Directory-Publisher to Lancashire and to the World, 1868-1970

Ann Jones and Elizabeth Sprenger

Museum of Science and Industry Library and Record Centre

Robert McMillan

Saddleworth Museum

Robin Bluhm and David Rhodes

The Victorian Society: Manchester Group

J.S. Taylor

`Set Down in a Large Manufacturing Town': Sojourning Poor in Early Nineteenth-Century Manchester

Stuart Walsh

Beatrice Webb and Bacup

Grayson Holden

The Bolton Engineers' Strike of 1887

Keith Grieves

Audenshaw Tribunal in the First World War

Gwyn Rowley

Fire Insurance Plans

Robert F. Bonner

The Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum

Marnie Mason

The Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society

Lynne Hamilton and Margaret Myerscough

Local Studies in Stockport