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Internet Modern History Sourcebook
Friederich Engels:
Industrial Manchester, 1844
Manchester, in South-east Lancashire rapidly rose from obscurity
to become the premier center of cotton manufacture in England.
This was largely due to geography. Its famously damp climate
was better for cotton manufacture than the drier climate of the
older eastern English cloth manufacture centers. It was close
to the Atlantic port of Liverpool (and was eventually connected
by one of the earliest rail tracks, as well as an ocean-ship capable
canal - although thirty miles inland, it was long a major port).
It was also close to power sources - first the water power of
the Pennine mountain chain, and later the coal mines of central
Lancashire. As a result, Manchester became perhaps the first modern
industrial city.
Friedrich Engels' father was a German manufacturer and Engels
worked as his agent in his father's Manchester factory. As a result
he combined both real experience of the city, with a strong social
conscience. The result was his The Condition of the Working-Class
in England in 1844.
Manchester lies at the foot of the southern slope of a range of
hills, which stretch hither from Oldham, their last peak, Kersall
moor, being at once the racecourse and the Mons Sacer of Manchester.
Manchester proper lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between
that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock,
which here empty into the Irwell. On the left bank of the Irwell,
bounded by a sharp curve of the river, lies Salford, and farther
westward Pendleton; northward from the Irwell lie Upper and Lower
Broughton; northward of the Irk, Cheetham Hill; south of the Medlock
lies Hulme; farther east Chorlton on Medlock; still farther, pretty
well to the east of Manchester, Ardwick. The whole assemblage
of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains about
four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less. The
town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in
it for years, and go in and out daily without coming into contact
with a working-people's quarter or even with workers, that is,
so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure
walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious
tacit agreement, as well as with outspoken conscious determination,
the working people's quarters are sharply separated from the sections
of the city reserved for the middle-class; . . .
I may mention just here that the mills almost all adjoin the rivers
or the different canals that ramify throughout the city, before
I proceed at once to describe the labouring quarters. First of
all, there is the old town of Manchester, which lies between the
northern boundary of the commercial district and the Irk. Here
the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as
Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and Shude Hill, the houses
dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction of the side
streets utterly horrible. Going from the Old Church to Long Millgate,
the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned houses at the
right, of which not one has kept its original level; these are
remnants of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former
inhabitants have removed with their descendants into better built
districts, and have left the houses, which were not good enough
for them, to a population strongly mixed with Irish blood. Here
one is in an almost undisguised working-men's quarter, for even
the shops and beer houses hardly take the trouble to exhibit a
trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in comparison
with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which access can
be gained only through covered passages, in which no two human
beings can pass at the same time. Of the irregular cramming together
of 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. And it is not the buildings surviving
from the old times of Manchester which are to blame for this;
the confusion has only recently reached its height when every
scrap of space left by the old way of building has been filled
up and patched over until not a foot of land is left to be further
occupied.
The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen
and thirty feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted
three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of
the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on the crest
of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river,
in short, the method of construction is as crowded and disorderly
here as in the lower part of Long Millgate. Right and left a multitude
of covered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts,
and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime,
the equal of which is not to be found - especially in the courts
which lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the
most horrible dwellings which I have yet beheld. In one of these
courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the
covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants
can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul
pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court
on the Irk above Ducie Bridge - in case any one should care to
look into it. Below it on the river there are several tanneries
which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction.
Below Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of the houses is
by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and
filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen's Court,
was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary
police ordered it evacuated, swept, and disinfected with chloride
of lime. Dr. Kay gives a terrible description of the state of
this court at that time. Since then, it seems to have been partially
torn away and rebuilt; at least looking down from Ducie Bridge,
the passer-by sees several ruined walls and heaps of debris with
some newer houses. The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed
from mortals of small stature by a parapet as high as a man, is
characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or
rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling
stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower
right bank.
In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green,
slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of
which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth
a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above
the surface of the stream. But besides this, the stream itself
is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime and
refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are
tanneries, bone mills, and gasworks, from which all drains and
refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the
contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be
easily imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits.
Below the bridge you look upon the piles of debris, the refuse,
filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here
each house is packed close behind its neighbour and a piece of
each is visible, all black, smoky, crumbling, ancient, with broken
panes and window frames. The background is furnished by old barrack-like
factory buildings. On the lower right bank stands a long row of
houses and mills; the second house being a ruin without a roof,
piled with debris; the third stands so low that the lowest floor
is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors. Here
the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station
of the Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this,
the Workhouse, the "Poor-Law Bastille" of Manchester,
which, like a citadel, looks threateningly down from behind its
high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working-people's
quarter below.
Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right
bank steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both banks
grows worse rather than better. He who turns to the left here
from the main street, Long Millgate, is lost; he wanders from
one court to another, turns countless corners, passes nothing
but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys, until after a few minutes
he has lost all clue, and knows not whither to turn. Everywhere
half or wholly ruined buildings, some of them actually uninhabited,
which means a great deal here; rarely a wooden or stone floor
to be seen in the houses, almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting
windows and doors, and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps of debris,
refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which
alone would make it impossible for a human being in any degree
civilised to live in such a district. The newly-built extension
of the Leeds railway, which crosses the Irk here, has swept away
some of these courts and lanes, laying others completely open
to view. Immediately under the railway bridge there stands a court,
the filth and horrors of which surpass all the others by far,
just because it was hitherto so shut off, so secluded that the
way to it could not be found without a good deal of trouble. I
should never have discovered it myself, without the breaks made
by the railway, though I thought I knew this whole region thoroughly.
Passing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing-lines, one
penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed huts,
in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living
and sleeping-room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely five feet
long by six broad, I found two beds - and such bedsteads and beds!
- which, with a staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the
room. In several others I found absolutely nothing, while the
door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned against it. Everywhere
before the doors refuse and offal; that any sort of pavement lay
underneath could not be seen but only felt, here and there, with
the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds for human beings
was surrounded on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the
third by the river, and besides the narrow stair up the bank,
a narrow doorway alone led out into another almost equally ill-built,
ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings....
If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on the opposite side
from Long Millgate into the midst of the working-men's dwellings,
we shall come into a somewhat newer quarter, which stretches from
St. Michael's Church to Withy Grove and Shude Hill. Here there
is somewhat better order. In place of the chaos of buildings,
we find at least long straight lanes and alleys or courts, built
according to a plan and usually square. But if, in the former
case, every house was built according to caprice, here each lane
and court is so built, without reference to the situation of the
adjoining ones....
. . . Here, as in most of the working-men's quarters of Manchester,
the pork-raisers rent the courts and build pig-pens in them. In
almost every court one or even several such pens may be found,
into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal,
whence the swine grow fat; and the atmosphere, confined on all
four sides, is utterly corrupted by putrefying animal and vegetable
substances....
Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description,
I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is
far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth,
ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations
of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the
construction of this single district, containing at least twenty
to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in
the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing
city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space
a human being can move, how little air - and such air!
- he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and
yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this is
the Old Town, and the people of Manchester emphasise the
fact whenever any one mentions to them the frightful condition
of this Hell upon Earth; but what does that prove? Everything
which here arouses horror and indignation is of recent origin,
belongs to the industrial epoch.
Source:
From Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in
England in 1844 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892),
pp. 45, 48-53.
This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
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© Site Concept and Design: Paul Halsall created 26 Jan 1996: latest revision 15 November 2024 [CV]
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