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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF BIRMINGHAM 1

THE BULL RING RIOTS, 1839 19

GOSSIP ABOUT ROYALTY 37

BIRMINGHAM BANKS, OLD AND NEW 45

JOHN WALSH WALSH AND THE ASTON F?TES 69

G.F. MUNTZ, M.P. 79

JOSEPH GILLOTT 89

HENRY VAN WART, J.P. 101

CHARLES SHAW, J.P. 108

ROBERT WALTER WINFIELD, J.P. 116

CHARLES GEACH, M.P. 125

WILLIAM SANDS COX, F.R.S. 132

GEORGE EDMONDS 140

CHARLES VINCE 155

JOHN SMITH, SOLICITOR 164

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF BIRMINGHAM.

It is a fine autumnal morning in the year 1837. I am sitting on the box seat of a stage coach, in the yard of the Bull-and-Mouth, St. Martin's-le-Grand, in the City of London. The splendid gray horses seem anxious to be off, but their heads are held by careful grooms. The metal fittings of the harness glitter in the early sunlight. Jew pedlar-boys offer me razors and penknives at prices unheard of in the shops. Porters bring carpet-bags and strange-looking packages of all sizes, and, to my great inconvenience, keep lifting up the foot-board, to deposit them in the "front boot." A solemn-looking man, whose nose is preternaturally red, holds carefully a silver-mounted whip. Passengers arrive, and climb to the roof of the coach, before and behind, until we are "full outside." Then the guard comes with a list, carefully checks off all our names, and retires to the booking office, from which a minute later he returns. He is this time accompanied by the coachman, who is a handsome, roguish-looking man. He wears a white hat, his boots are brilliantly polished, his drab great-coat is faultlessly clean, and the dark blue neckerchief is daintily tied. His whiskers are carefully brushed forward and curled, the flower in the button-hole is as fresh as if that instant plucked, and he has a look as if he were well fed, and in all other respects well cared for.

Looking admiringly over the horses, and taking the whip from his satellite, who touches his hat as he gives it up, Jehu takes the reins in hand; mounts rapidly to his seat; adjusts the "apron;" glances backward; gets the signal from the guard, who has just jumped up--bugle in hand--behind; arranges the "ribbons" in his well-gloved hand; produces a sound, somehow, with his tongue, that would puzzle the most skilful printer in the world to print phonetically, but which a Pole or a Russian would possibly understand if printed "tzchk;" gently shakes the reins, and we are off.

As we pass toward the gateway, the guard strikes up with the bugle, and makes the place resound with the well-known air, "Off, off, said the stranger." Emerging upon the street, we see, issuing from an opposite gateway, a dozen omnibuses, driven by scarlet-coated coachmen, and laden entirely with scarlet-coated passengers. Each of these men is a "general postman," and he is on his way to his "beat." As the vehicle arrives at the most convenient point, he will alight and commence the "morning" delivery. The process will be repeated in the evening; and these two deliveries suffice, then, for all the "country" correspondence sent to London.

And this is Birmingham! The place which I, in pleasant Kent and Surrey, had so often heard of, but had never seen. This is the town which, five years before, had vanquished the Conqueror of the Great Napoleon! This is the place which, for the first time in his life, had compelled the great Duke of Wellington to capitulate! This is the home of those who, headed by Attwood, had compelled the Duke and his army--the House of Lords--to submit, and to pass the memorable Reform Bill of 1832!

My destination was at the top of Bull Street, where my apartments were ready, and a walk to that spot completed an eventful day for me. I had come down on a special business matter, but I remained six months, and a few years later came again and settled down in Birmingham. My impressions of the place during those six months are fresh upon my memory now; and, if I write them down, may be interesting to some of the three hundred thousand people now in Birmingham, who know nothing of its aspect then.

High Street, from Bull Street to Carrs Lane, is a good deal altered. The Tamworth Banking Company occupied a lofty building nearly opposite the bottom of Bull Street, where for a very few years they carried on business, and the premises afterwards were occupied by Mrs. Syson, as a hosier's shop. The other buildings on both sides were small and insignificant, and they were mostly pulled down when the Great Western Railway Company tunneled under the street to make their line to Snow Hill. "Taylor and Lloyd's" Bank was then in Dale End. The passage running by the side of their premises is still called "Bank Alley." Carrs Lane had a very narrow opening, and the Corn Exchange was not built. Most of the courts and passages in High Street were then filled with small dwelling houses, and the workshops of working bookbinders. Messrs. Westley Richards and Co. had their gun factory in one of them. The large pile of buildings built by Mr. Richards for Laing and Co., and now occupied by Messrs. Manton, the Bodega Company, and others, is the most important variation from the High Street of forty years ago. The narrow footpaths and contracted roadway were as inconveniently crowded as they are to-day. The house now occupied by Innes, Smith, and Co. was then a grocer's shop, and the inscription over the door was "Dakin and Ridgway," two names which now, in London, are known to everybody as those of the most important retail tea dealers in the metropolis. Mr. Ridgway established the large concern in King William Street, and Mr. Dakin was the founder of "No. 1, St. Paul's Churchyard."

New Street is greatly altered. At that time it was not much more lively than Newhall Street is now. The Grammar School is just as it was; the Theatre, externally, is not much altered; "The Hen and Chickens" remains the same; the Town Hall, though not then finished, looked the same from New Street; and the portico of the Society of Artists' rooms stood over the pavement then. With these exceptions I only know one more building that has not been pulled down, or so altered as to be unrecognisable. The exemption is the excrescence called Christ Church, which still disfigures the very finest site in the whole town.

Hyam and Co. had removed from the opposite side of the street, and had just opened as a tailor's shop the queer old building known as the "Pantechnetheca," and the ever-youthful Mr. Holliday was at "Warwick House." The recollections of what the "House" was then makes me smile as I write. It had originally been two private houses. The one abutted upon the footway, and the other stood some thirty feet back, a pretty garden being in the front. The latter had been occupied by Mr. James Busby, who carried on the business of a wire-worker at the rear. The ground floor frontages of both had been taken out. A roof had been placed over the garden, two hideous small-framed bay windows fronted New Street, and a third faced what is now "Warwick House Passage." The whole place had a curious "pig-with-one-ear" kind of aspect, the portion which had been the garden having no upper floors, while the other was three storeys high. The premises had been "converted" by a now long-forgotten association, called the "Drapery Company," and as this had not been successful, Mr. Holliday and his then partner, Mr. Merrett, had become its successors. It was in 1839 that the first portion of the present palatial building was erected.

The Post Office occupied the site now covered by Lilly and Addinsell's shop. The New Street frontage was the dwelling house of Mr. Gottwaltz, the post-master. A little way up Bennetts Hill was a semicircular cove, or recess, in which two people might stand. Here was a slit, into which letters were dropped, and an "inquiry" window; and this was all. There were seven other receiving houses in the town, which were as follows: Mr. Hewitt, Hagley Row; Mr. E. Gunn, 1, Kenion Street; Mr. W. Drury, 30, Lancaster Street; Mr. Ash, Prospect Row; Mr. White, 235, Bristol Street; Miss Davis, Sand Pits; and Mrs. Wood, 172, High Street, Deritend. Two deliveries took place daily--one at 8 a.m., the other at 5 p.m. The postage of a "single" letter to London then was ninepence; but a second piece of paper, however small, even the half of a bank note, made it a "double" letter, the postage of which was eighteenpence.

Between Needless Alley and the house now occupied by Messrs. Reece and Harris, as offices, were three old-fashioned and rather dingy looking shops, of which I can tell a curious story. Rather more than twenty years ago, the late Mr. Samuel Haines acquired the lease of these three houses, which had a few years to run. The freehold belonged to the Grammar School. Mr. Haines proposed to Messrs. Whateley, the solicitors for the school, that the old lease should be cancelled; that they should grant him a fresh one at a greatly increased rental; and that he should pull down the old places and erect good and substantial houses on the site. This was agreed to; but when the details came to be settled, some dispute arose, and the negotiations were near going off. Mr. Haines, however, one day happened to go over the original lease--nearly a hundred years old--to see what the covenants were, and he found that he was bound to deliver up the plot of land in question to the school, somewhere, I think, about 1860 to 1865, "well cropped with potatoes." This discovery removed the difficulty, the lease was granted, and the potato-garden is the site of the fine pile known as Brunswick Buildings, upon each house of which Mr. Haines's monogram, "S.H.," appears in an ornamental scroll.

The Town Hall had been opened three years. The Paradise Street front was finished, and the two sides were complete for about three-fourths of their length; but that portion where the double rows of columns stand, and the pediment fronting Ratcliff Place, had not been built. The whole of that end was then red brick. Prom the corner of Edmund Street a row of beggarly houses, standing on a bank some eight feet above the level of the road, reached to within a few yards of the hall itself, the space between them and the hall being enclosed by a high wall. On the other side, the houses in Paradise Street came to within about the same distance, and the intervening space was carefully enclosed. The interior of the hall was lighted by some elaborate bronzed brackets, projecting from the side, between the windows. They were modelled in imitation of vegetable forms; and at the ends, curving upwards, small branches stood in a group, like the fingers of a half-opened human hand. Each of these branchlets was a gas burner, which was covered by a semi-opaque glass globe, the intent being, evidently, to suggest a cluster of growing fruits. Some of the same pattern were placed in the Church of the Saviour when it was first opened, but they, as well as those at the Town Hall, were in a few years removed, greatly to the relief of many who thought them inexpressibly ugly.

Nearly opposite the Town Hall was a lame attempt to convert an ugly chapel into a Grecian temple. It was a wretched architectural failure. It was "The School of Medicine," and, as I know from a personal visit at the time, contained, even then, a very various and most extensive collection of anatomical preparations, and other matters connected with the noble profession to whose use it was dedicated. From the Town Hall to Easy Row the pathway was three or four feet higher than the road, and an ugly iron fence was there, to prevent passengers from tumbling over. On this elevated walk stood the offices of a celebrated character, "Old"--for I never heard him called by any other name--"Old Spurrier," the hard, unbending, crafty lawyer, who, being permanently retained by the Mint to prosecute all coiners in the district, had a busy time of it, and gained for himself a large fortune and an evil reputation.

The present iron railings of St. Philip's Churchyard had not then been erected. There was a low fence, and pleasant avenues of trees skirted the fence on the sides next Colmore Row and Temple Row. I used to like to walk here in the quiet of evening, and I loved to listen to the bells in St. Philip's Church as they chimed out every three hours the merry air, "Life let us Cherish."

A few weeks before my arrival, a general election, consequent upon the dissolution of Parliament by the death of the King, took place. The Tory party in Birmingham had been indiscreet enough to contest the borough. They selected a very unlikely man to succeed--Mr. A.G. Stapleton--and they failed utterly, the Liberals polling more than two to one. The Conservatives had their head-quarters at the Royal Hotel in Temple Row. Crowds of excited people surrounded the hotel day by day and evening after evening. One night something unusual had exasperated them, and they attacked the hotel. There were no police in Birmingham then, and the mob had things pretty much their own way. Showers of heavy stones soon smashed the windows to atoms, and so damaged the building as to make it necessary to erect a scaffold covering the whole frontage before the necessary repairs could be completed. When I first saw it, it was in a wretched plight, and it took many weeks to repair the damage done by the rioters. The portico now standing in front of the building--which is now used as the Eye Hospital--was built at this time, the doorway up to then not having that protection.

From this point, going towards Bull Street, the roadway suddenly narrowed to the same width as The Minories. Where the extensive warehouses of Messrs. Wilkinson and Riddell now stand, but projecting some twelve or fifteen feet beyond the present line of frontage, were the stables and yard of the hotel. On the spot where their busy clerks now pore over huge ledgers and journals, ostlers were then to be seen grooming horses, and accompanying their work with the peculiar hissing sound without which it appears that operation cannot be carried on. Mr. Small wood occupied the shop at the corner, and his parlour windows, on the ground floor, looked upon Bull Street, the window sills being gay with flowers. It was a very different shop to the splendid ones which has succeeded it, which Wilkinson and Riddell have just secured to add to their retail premises.

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