Dean Kirby Angel Meadow

 Kirby, during research into his ancestry, discovered that his family had lived in Angel Meadow after moving from Country Mayo in the mid 1860's. In 2012, Kirby accompanied archaeologists who were excavating the area in search of evidence of the slum. His book reveals the information found on the slum life in 19th century Manchester. It was important in analysing Gaskell's representation of this life to compare it to historical fact. 

Wider context to Gaskell’s depiction of slum and working communities.

Dean Kirby, Angel Meadow Victorian Britain’s Most Savage Slum, (Great Britain: Pen & Sword History, 2016)

Within Gaskell’s work she notes that Esther, Mary’s aunt, lives in Angel Meadow, a notorious slum that thrived in early industrial Manchester. Kirby wrote the book after tracing back his ancestors who had lived in the slums.

Chapter 2 The Meadow pp. 12 – 18.

‘Smoke from the engines billowed into the houses and stained the walls and ceilings with soot… The rivers began to run murky and thick with pollution. Tall chimneys rose up around the train, the grass turned brown, the trees grew stunted and the paths were blackened with coal dust.’

Victorian passenger Edwin Waugh ‘moral desert, swarming hive of ignorance, toil and squalor.’ 1855.

‘Until the late eighteenth century, anyone standing at the top of Angel Meadow would have gazed down upon fields tree-lined lanes and the dusky coloured River Irk, which teemed with trout and eels.’

Essayist Benjamin Redfern ‘lamented the loss of this heavenly landscape, which he said had been one of the most beautiful views of vale and river, hill and woodland.’

‘Angel Meadows first residents included professionals and tradesmen: flour dealers, bakers, shuttle-makers, hatters and dress designers… Cows still grazed in the few remaining undeveloped fields and milk was sold from nearby dairies or ‘milk houses. But even in those halcyon days, Angel Meadow was earning a dubious reputation.’

‘It was unsurprising that thieves were drawn like moths to Angel Meadow, when the area’s inhabitants had every luxury and amenity. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the local residents even had their own pleasure ground.’

‘In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Angel Meadow seemed to provide its wealthy residents with every comfort, but its popularity faded overnight. As Manchester grew, the areas closest to the town centre became dominated by industry. The merchants and artisans fled to the new areas, such as Ardwick Green to the east, which was now within trotting distance of their carriages. Angel Meadow quickly became a slum.’

‘Unscrupulous landlords stopped carrying out repairs and their occupants began using the houses’ wooden frames as firewood, leaving them in a permanent state of ruin. Covered passages soon led from the streets to inner courts where no two human beings could pass at the same time.’

‘Engels found that cottages were built by the dozen, with walls the width of just half a brick. He wrote: ‘Of the irregular cramming together if dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in which they are crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey an idea.’

Chapter 5 The Cholera Riot pp. 32 – 39. – context to the illness the Davenport’s have.

‘Cholera arrived in Manchester in May 1832.’ Disease known as the blue death – turned victims skins blue-grey, came ashore in Sunderland when a ship of sailors docked in the port and spread through London, Glasgow and Belfast before it reached Manchester.

It reached the city through the railway to Liverpool which had opened in 1830. Due to Angel Meadow’s lanes lack of pavement the courtyards became dumping grounds for offal and animal dung. Engels noted that ‘People remembered the unwholesome dwellings of the poor and trembled before the certainty that each of these slums would become a centre for the plague.’

Panic spread through Manchester, a gardener named Alexander Whirk was murdered by his wife as she feared after a week if diarrhoea he had caught the plague. 19 inmates died at the New Bailey prison and six men died in one room in a workhouse.

Chapter 7 Hell on Earth.

Dr. Gaulter wrote of a court in Manchester. ‘You descend through a passage to the row of houses on the river’s edge by interrupted flights of steep steps and you find yourself at the bottom in a kind of well or pit, suffocated for want of air and half poisoned by the effluvia arising from two conveniences which stand in the centre of the well-like area.’ 18 people contracted the disease there in 48 hours.

‘Fever, bronchitis, tuberculosis and typhus were the biggest killers in Angel Meadow throughout the 1840’s. The slum had become a giant fever nest, with more than 900 cases recorded in one year alone. The worst outbreaks were in winter, when people bolted their doors and stayed huddled around fires in the airless, overcrowded rooms.’

The Manchester Courier blamed the ‘unclean people’ drifting into Manchester in search of work, who would have no access to bathing facilities when they arrived. Doctors believed at the time that fever was caused by human waste, overcrowding, and intemperance, and that typhus was incubated in the slum’s cesspools.

Old maps show how conditions had deteriorated in the years since the outbreak. Victoria Station opened below the workhouse in 1844 and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway viaduct soon curved over Angel Meadow and New Town.

The district’s medical officer Dr Edward Meacham wrote to Whitehall urging government ministers to intervene. His wish was granted and an inspector visited the cemetery with the Earl of Shaftesbury who was attending a social science congress in Manchester. The ground in Angel Meadow was eventually paved over.

Chapter 8 Family Life pp.56 – 62.

A stable family life was rare in Angel Meadow, where troops of boys and girls became parents of rickety children before they were out of their teens.

Dr James Phillips Kay – investigated Angel Meadow, ‘Home has no other relation to him than that of shelter – few pleasures are there – it chiefly presents to him a scene of physical exhaustion, from which he is glad to escape.’

No back yards, built back to back.

Description of a standard house in Angel Meadow ‘they stood no higher than 14ft to the eaves and contained two 10ft square rooms, one above the other. The lower room served as sitting room, kitchen and bedroom, with steps leading from the front door straight down into the street. Wooden stairs led to the upper floor, which was sometimes split into two smaller bedrooms. If they were lucky, a family might have a cupboard for plates and cups, a table and a couple of chairs. A smoke-browned china ornament often sat on a shelf above the fire, while further luxuries included a painted tea tray and a clock – essential for mill workers who needed to get up for work.’ p.57 

Description of cellar dwelling. ‘The poorest could only afford cellar dwellings, which were never well furnished and often had just a bed made from orange boxes in the dark and airless corner. The fire would smoulder among the unswept ashes. The floors of many cellars were constantly wet with water draining in from the street and some were so damp that their ceilings were permanently shrouded in fog.’ P.57. 

Chapter 10 – Lodgings pp.71 – 78.

Angel Meadow was the main lodging house district for the men and women pouring into Manchester.

1866 – 88 common lodging houses, offering 2,653 beds ranging from 3 pence to a shilling a night. As a result of this, Angel Meadow had a changing population of 3,724 lodgers on top of its population.

Lodging housing inmates were a mixture of vagabonds, wayfarers, workmen and harvestmen who arrived and departed like swallows. A few had regular jobs but too low wages to rent a house, others were educated men who had fallen on hard times.

Journalist from Manchester Evening News, recorded that ‘more than 30 lodgers were sleeping in a long, wide attic with boxed-off sleeping compartments running down either side. Rough doors were fitted to the compartments for privacy, but they had no hinges and had to be lifted out and dragged away before the occupants could get inside. The owner had smashed through a partition wall into the attic of the next house to create another dormitory… As the glare of the candle fell upon the sleepers’ eyes, some stared stupidly about, while others blinked and yawned as if too overcome with sleep to care much about what was going on. As long as the light remained, a babble of oaths and invectives could be heard.’

Biggest lodging house in Manchester was called The Rest. Located in an old mill in Factory Yard off Charter Street, contained beds for 600 lodgers. ‘Inside, they found a great quadrangle with a concrete floor surrounded by wooden benches. A journalist for the Manchester Courier, noted that ‘The lawyer and the merchant, having flung him back on his wooden bench, walked away, not heeding the wound and he still slept on in blissful ignorance of his injury. Nobody cared. Most of the inmates went on playing dominoes, and all were completely indifferent. It was sickening.’