Chapter 18
At Manchester, some of the leading men connected with the calico-printing trade and looms of art, established a School of Design within the Royal Institution, where two rooms were lent rent-free; but, as soon as Government apportioned a part of a special grant to the Manchester School, the Committee, who were also as nearly as possible the Council of the Royal Institution, with that appetite for public money which seems incident to men of all nations, all classes, and all politics, voted 100 out of the 250 pounds per annum for rent. This school did nothing of a practical nature, and consequently did not progress in public estimation. The master was a clever artist, but not up, perhaps he would have said not down, to his work. A School of Design at Manchester is meant, not to breed artists in high art, but to have art applied to the trades of the city. The master was changed, and, at the request of the local committee, the Council of the School of Design at Somerset House sent down, in 1845, Mr. George Wallis, who had shown his qualifications as an assistant at Somerset House and as master of the Spitalfields school. At that time the Manchester school had been in existence five years, and had done nothing toward its original object. In two years from the time of Mr. Wallis taking the charge, the funds of the school were flourishing; the interest taken in it by the public was great, and nearly half the Institution was occupied by the pupils, while the applications for admission were more numerous than could be accommodated. Under this management the public, who care little for abstract art, were taught the close connexion between the instruction of the School of Design and their private pursuits.
This is what is wanted in all our towns. It is not enough to teach boys and girls,--the manufacturers and purchasers need to be taught by the eye, if not by the hand.
According to part of Mr. Wallis's plan, an exhibition was held of the drawings executed by the pupils for the annual prizes, which had a great influence in laying the foundation for the efforts made by Manchester at the Great Exhibition of Industry in Hyde Park.
While matters were proceeding so satisfactorily, the Somerset House authorities (who have since been tried and condemned by a Committee of the House of Commons), proceeded to earn their salaries by giving instructions which could not be carried out without destroying all the good that had been done. The Manchester Committee and Mr. Wallis protested against this red tapish interference. It was persisted in; Mr. Wallis {172} resigned, to the great regret of his pupils and manufacturing friends in the managing council.
The result was that the undertaking dwindled away rapidly to less than its original insignificance,--the students fell off, and a deficit of debt replaced the previously flourishing funds. Out of evil comes good. The case of Manchester enabled Mr. Milner Gibson, M.P. for Manchester, to get his Committee and overhaul the Schools of Design throughout the kingdom.
Certain changes were effected. The school, no longer able to pay the high rent required by the Royal Institution, was removed to its present site in Brown Street, placed under the management of Mr. Hammersley, who had previously been a successful teacher at Nottingham, and freed from the meddling of incompetent authorities. And now pupils anxiously crowd to receive instruction, and annually display practical evidence of the advantages they are enjoying.
The Manchester Mechanics' Institution was one of the pioneers in the movement which led to the Great Exhibition. In 1831, was held its first Polytechnic Exhibition for the purpose of showing the connexion between natural productions, science, and manufactures. Subsequent Exhibitions were carried out with great effect as a means of instruction and education, and with such success as to pay off a heavy debt which had previously cramped the usefulness of the Institution.
There are also several other institutions of the same class, amongst others Salford, Ancoats, and Miles Platting Auxiliary Mechanics' Institutes.
The Athenaeum constitutes a kind of literary club for the middle classes, who are provided with a good library and reading-room in a very handsome building.
The Manchester Library contains 10,000 volumes, the Manchester Subscription Library, established 1765, has the most extensive collection of books in the city.
A Concert Hall in Peter Street, exclusively used for the purposes indicated by its name, is supported by 600 subscribers at five guineas each.
The Chetham Society has been founded for the purpose of publishing ancient MSS. and scarce works connected with the history of Lancashire.
The Exchange has upwards of two thousand subscribers.
By way of helping the body as well as the mind, in 1846 the inhabitants of Manchester formed by subscription three public parks, called Queen's Park, Peel's Park, and Philip's Park, in three different parts of the suburbs.
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THE FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL was founded by Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, in the early part of the sixteenth century. It was originally founded for the purpose of furnishing simple and elementary instruction to the poor. This design is sufficiently proved by the language of the foundation deed, which describes those sought to be benefited as persons who had been long in ignorance "on account of the poverty of their parents." The present income of the school is upwards of 5000 pounds a-year, leaving a considerable income over its expenditure, notwithstanding that the operations of the school have been extended by a decree of the Court of Chancery. In the year 1833 the Court authorised the erection of a new building to include a residence for the master. There are two schools, called the Higher and Lower. The instructions given embrace the Greek and Latin, and the French, German, and other modern languages; English literature, mathematics, the modern arts and sciences, etc. A library is attached to the school for the use of the pupils. There are twelve exhibitions, of the annual value of 60 pounds each, for four years, in the gift of the Warden and High Master, who, however, respect the recommendations of the Examiners. These gentlemen are three in number, being Masters of Arts and Bachelors of Law of two years' standing, two of them appointed by the Professor, and one by the High Master. They each receive 20 pounds for their services. In addition to the twelve exhibitions mentioned above, there are fifteen others connected with the school, the bequest of a merchant named Hulme. These are appropriated to under-graduates of Brasenose College, Oxford. Their value is to be fixed by the patrons, but cannot exceed the sum of 220 pounds a year. They are to be held for four years from the thirteenth term after matriculation. There are sixteen scholarships to the same College; and sixteen to St. John's, Cambridge, varying in value from l8 to 26 pounds, stand in rotation with the pupils of Marlborough and Hereford Schools, and six scholarships of 24 pounds to Magdalen College, Oxford, Manchester pupils having the preference. The Examiners have also the power of making awards of books or mathematical instruments, to the value of 25 pounds, in any cases of great merit.
The High Master's salary is fixed not to exceed 600 pounds, with house-rent and taxes free. He is also allowed to take twenty boarders. He has the assistance of an Usher (salary 300 pounds, with house and fifteen boarders); an Assistant (salary 200 pounds, with house and twelve boarders); an Usher's Assistant (salary 150 pounds, with house and ten boarders). There are, in addition, a Master of the Lower School, a Writing, and a Mathematical Master, a teacher of English literature, and another of foreign languages; all, with the exception of the last, having houses, and their aggregate salaries amounting to 800 pounds.
Four hundred scholars attended in 1850.
MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE is an institution belonging to the Unitarian body, on the plan of King's College, London, and was opened for the reception of students on the 5th October, 1840. The curriculum of instruction embraces every department of learning and polite literature.
THE LANCASHIRE INDEPENDENT COLLEGE is one of the affiliated Colleges of the London University, and was established for the education of candidates for the Christian Ministry amongst Congregational dissenters. There are three resident Professors, the principal being the Rev. Dr. Vaughan, formerly Professor of History in the University of London.
OWEN'S COLLEGE has recently been opened on the testamentary endowment of a Mr. Owen, for affording an education on the plan of University College, London.
CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL, or, as it is more properly termed, "College," was founded by Charter in the year 1665, by Humphrey Chetham, a Manchester citizen and tradesman, who had, during his lifetime, brought up, fed, and educated fourteen boys of Manchester and Salford. He paid a heavy fine to Charles I. for persisting in his refusal of a baronetcy, and in 1634 was appointed Sheriff of his county. By his will Chetham directed that the number of boys he had previously provided for should be augmented by the addition of one from Droylsden, two from Crumpsall, four from Turton, and ten from Bolton; and left the sum of 7000 pounds to be devoted to their instruction and maintenance, from six to fourteen years of age, and for their apprenticeship afterwards to some trade. The funds having since increased, 80 boys are now received, in the following proportions, from the several places mentioned in the founder's will, viz.:--Manchester, 28; Salford, 12; Droylsden, 6; Crumpsall, 4; Bolton, 20; Turton, 10. They are clothed, fed, boarded, lodged, and instructed in reading, writing, grammar, and arithmetic. The boys are selected by the Feoffees in annual meeting at Easter, within six days before the Monday in which week an application must be sent in to the Governor, accompanied by a printed note of recommendation, signed by the overseers and churchwardens of the place in which the candidate resides.
THE COLLEGE LIBRARY is situated in the same old building in which accommodation is found for the College, and is a fine collection of upwards of 25,000 volumes. The germ of this library consisted of the books bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham, many of them of great scarcity and value. The collection contains comparatively few volumes of modern date. The library is open to the use of the public without charge or restriction, and a small, but convenient, reading-room is provided for their accommodation. Books are not allowed to be removed from the premises, and every reader is obliged to make an entry of each volume he wishes to obtain. Notwithstanding the immense population of Manchester and Salford, this valuable institution is comparatively little used, the number of readers averaging less than twenty per day.
SWINTON SCHOOL.--In connexion with the Workhouse an Industrial House and School has been erected at Swinton, five miles from the City, which affords so admirable an example for imitation by all manufacturing or crowded communities, that we are glad to be able to extract the main facts concerning it from a graphic description in the first volume of Dickens's Household Words:--
"Swinton School cost sixty thousand pounds, and is a handsome building in the Tudor style of architecture, with a frontage of 450 feet, containing more than 100 windows. Pleasure grounds and play grounds surround it, and it resembles more a nobleman's palace than the Home of Pauper Children. The inmates consist of 630 children, of whom 305 are orphans, and 124 deserted by their parents, under charge of a Chaplain, a Head Master, a Medical Officer, a Roman Catholic Priest, a Governor, a Matron, six Schoolmasters, and four School-mistresses, with a numerous staff of officials, Nurses, and Teachers of Trades, receiving salaries and wages amounting to 1,800 pounds a-year, besides board. Some in the institution are as young as one year and a half.
All are educated, and those who are old enough are taught trades and domestic employments. When they leave they are furnished with two suits of clothes. The character of the Institution stands so high, that the public are eager for the girls as domestic servants. If it has not already been done, we hope that the cultivation of land on the system of market gardens will be added to the trades, as affording a more certain, and, in some respects, more generally useful employment. Educated agricultural labourers are rare, much prized, and soon promoted to be overseers and bailiffs.
The education at Swinton is conducted on the modern plan, which prevails in the best schools under Government inspection. The children are taught to love and look upon their masters and mistresses as friends, to be consulted and applied to as they would to kind parents.
For instance take this bit, familiar to visitors of Infant Schools, but still new to many:--
The children under six years of age, summoned by the sound of a whistle from the play ground, trooped in glad groups to an anteroom, and girls and boys intermixed, at a signal from the Master marched into the schoolroom singing a tune.
Then followed such viva voce instruction as too many better endowed children do not get for want of competent teachers. Indeed a better education is now given in Workhouses than can be obtained for children under twelve years of age at any paid school that we know of. For instance:--
"What day is this?" "Monday." "What sort of a day is it?" "Very fine." "Why is it fine?" "Because the sun shines, and it does not rain." "Is rain a bad thing, then?" "No." "What is it useful for?" "To make the flowers and the fruit grow." "Who sends rain and sunshine?" "God." "What ought we to do in return for his goodness?" "Praise him." "Let us praise him, then," added the Master.
And the children altogether repeated, and then sang, a part of the 149th psalm."
Now all this is very fine, and a wonderful improvement on the old dog-eared Redinmadeasy, but better follows. After a time the children grew tired and sleepy, one fell asleep. Did the Master slap them all round and pull the ears of the poor little fat somnus? No. He marched them all out singing and beating time to play for a quarter of an hour.
We commend Swinton to the consideration of the credulous disciples of the firebrand school of economists, who believe that Manchester men devour little children daily, without stint or mercy for their poor little bodies or souls.
Manchester obtained a municipal corporation under the provisions of the general act for that purpose, passed in the reign of his late Majesty William IV. Gas works, established in 1817, are the property of the town, and produce a surplus income amounting to between three and four thousand pounds a year, which are devoted to public improvements. The corporation have recently obtained power to establish water works, and to purchase up the plant of an existing company.
The guardians of the workhouses of Manchester have a most difficult task to perform, especially in times of commercial depression, as thousands are thrown upon their hands at once. Among the most troublesome customers are the Irish, who flock to Manchester through Liverpool in search of work, and form a population herding together, very ignorant, very poor, and very uncleanly.
MANCHESTER MANUFACTURES.
It is quite impossible to give the same sort of sketch of the manufactures of this city as we gave of Birmingham, because they are on so much larger and more complicated a scale. One may understand how a gun-barrel or a steel-pen is made at one inspection; but in a visit to a textile mill, a sight of whizzing machinery, under the charge of some hundred men, women, boys, and girls, only produces an indefinable feeling of confusion to a person who has not previously made himself acquainted with the elements of the subject. To attempt to explain how a piece of calico is made without the aid of woodcuts, would be very unsatisfactory. Premising, then, that the cotton in various forms is the staple manufacture of Manchester, and that silk, mixed fabrics of cotton and silk, cotton and wool, etc., are also made extensively, we advise the traveller to prepare himself by reading the work of Dr. Ure or the articles on Textiles in the Penny Cyclopaedia.
A visit to the workshops of the celebrated machinists Messrs. Sharpe, Roberts, & Co. would probably afford a view of some parts of the most improved textile machinery in a state of rest, as well as a very excellent idea of the rapid progress of mechanical arts. Improvements in manufacturing machines are so constant and rapid, that it is almost a proverb--"that before a foreigner can get the most improved machinery which he has purchased in England home and at work, something better will be invented."
A Manchester manufacturer, on the approach of a busy season, will sometimes stop his factories to put in new machines, at a cost of twenty thousand pounds.
Of equal interest with Messrs. Sharpe, Roberts, & Co., are the works of Messrs. Whitworth, the manufacturers of exquisite tools, more powerful than any elephant, more delicately-fitted than any watch for executing the metalwork of steam-engines, of philosophical instruments, and everything requiring either great power or mathematical nicety. Some of these tools for planing, boring, rivetting, welding, cutting iron and other metals, are to be found in great iron manufactories. Indeed, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Whitworth are of a class of men who have proved that the execution of almost all imitations of natural mechanics are merely a question of comparative expense. If you choose to pay for it, you may have the moving fingers of a man, or the prehensile trunk of an elephant, perfectly executed.
From the manufacture of machines, the next step lies naturally to some branch of cotton manufactures.
COTTON.--The rise of this manufacture has been wonderfully rapid. In the time of Henry VIII., the spinning wheel came into use in England, superseding the spindle and distaff, which may still be seen in the south of France and Italy, and in India, where no other tools are used. In the same reign Manchester became distinguished for its manufactures.
In the seventeenth century, Humphrey Chetham, whose name has already been mentioned as the founder of a splendid charity, was among the eminent tradesmen.
The barbarities of the Duke of Alva on the Protestants of the Netherlands, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by which the persecutions of the French Protestants was renewed, supplied all our manufacturing districts with skilful Artisans and mechanics in silk and woollen.
In 1786, the importation of raw cotton only amounted to nineteen million pounds weight, obtained from the West Indies, the French, Spanish, and Dutch colonies, and from Turkey and Smyrna. Two years previously an American ship which imported eight bags was seized, on the ground that so much cotton could not be the produce of the United States!
So early as 1738, one Charles Wyatt, of Birmingham, took out a patent for spinning yarn by machinery, which he tried at Northampton, but reaped no profits from the invention, which was discontinued and forgotten. In 1767, James Hargreaves, an illiterate weaver residing near Church, in Lancashire, who seven years previously had invented a carding machine, much like that in use at the present day, invented the spinning jenny,--by which eighty spindles were set to work instead of the one of the spinning wheel. Hargreaves derived no benefit from his invention; twice a mob of spinners on the old principle rose and destroyed all the machinery made on his plan, and chased him away. In 1769, Richard Arkwright took out his first patent (having Mr. Need of Nottingham and Mr. Strutt of Derby as partners,) for spinning with rollers.
Arkwright was born in the humblest class of life at Preston in Lancashire. At "Proud Preston" he first followed the business of a barber, then became a dealer in hair, travelling the country to collect it, and selling it prepared to the wigmakers. Having accumulated a little money, he set about endeavouring to invent perpetual motion, and, in the search, invented, or sufficiently adapted and improved, a cotton spinning apparatus to induce two practical men like the Messrs. Need and Strutt to join him. His claim to original invention has been disputed. That he was not the first inventor is clear, and it is equally clear that he must have been a man of very considerable and original mechanical genius.
With Arkwright's patent, the rise of the cotton trade began.
In 1786, Mr. Samuel Crompton's invention came into use, called the mule jenny, because partaking of the movements of both Hargreaves' and Arkwright's inventions, by which, for the first time, yarn fine enough for muslins could be spun. Crompton did not, probably could not, afford to take out a patent, but worked his mule jenny with his own hands in an attic at Bolton, where he carried on a small spinning and weaving business. Already, in 1812, there were between four and five million spindles on this principle, but the inventor continued poor and almost unknown. Mr. Kennedy (author of a brief memoir of Crompton), and Mr. Lee, raised 500 pounds for him by subscription, and he afterwards received a grant of 8000 pounds from Parliament, which his sons lost in business. Mr. Kennedy again exerted himself and raised an annuity of 63 pounds, which the unfortunate inventor only lived two years to enjoy.
The spinning machines threatened to out-travel the weaving powers of the country, when, in 1785, Dr. Cartwright, a clergyman of Kent, with no previous knowledge of weaving, after an expenditure of 40,000 pounds, invented the power-loom, for which he afterwards received a grant of 10,000 pounds from Parliament. To supply our cotton manufactures, there were imported in 1849 1,900,000 bales of 330lbs. each. Of this quantity, 1,400,000 bales came from the United States.
The Manchester manufacturers have lately raised a small fund by subscription, and sent out Mr. Mackay, a barrister, author of The Western World, to examine and report on the prospects of obtaining cotton from India; and the son of the late Mr. John Fielden, a great manufacturer, has embarked a considerable sum at Natal in the cultivation of cotton. The dependence on the United States for such a staple has begun to render our Manchester men uncomfortable. They have not, however, displayed the spirit and energy that might have been expected either from their usual political vigour or from the tone of their advice to the farmers in distress.
The successive improvements in weaving by machinery we shall not attempt to trace. To use the phrase of a Nottingham mechanic, "there are machines now that will weave anything, from a piece of sacking to a spider's web." But fine muslins and fancy goods are chiefly woven by hand.
The power-loom has recently been adapted, under Bright's patent, to weaving carpets, which are afterwards printed.
With respect to spinning; fine yarns which cost twenty guineas a pound have been reduced to four shillings by improved machinery, and in the Great Exhibition of Industry Messrs. Houldsworth exhibited as a curiosity, a pound of cotton spun 2,000 miles in length.
Arkwright, among the early improvers, was the only one who realized a large fortune, which his patience, his energy, his skill, his judgment, his perseverance well deserved, whether he was an original inventor or not.