‘HOW OUR HONEST POOR ARE TARGETED – Shocking revelations of suffering,’ reads a headline in the Birmingham Daily Mail from December 10, 1886. Brum’s well-to-do were about to have a winter window into another world.
Welcome to late Victorian Birmingham. Modern conveniences are there – gas lamps, water pipes, even electricity are beginning to make their way into the city.
The Industrial Revolution of the previous century firmly established Birmingham as a powerhouse, and it was a leader in commerce, education and engineering. For those who remain though, trapped in hastily built Revolution-era slums, they might as well have been living in an entirely different world.
READ MORE:Amazing snapshots of Birmingham’s lost lifestyles and city center
Led by religious figures and philanthropists, people began to notice the worst corners of big cities. Sometimes this led to changes from above, such as slum clearance – other times it caused “poverty tourism”, with the wealthy coming to gawk at the poor way of life.
Which brings us back to the “Honest Poor” title. After a call from a reverend in Bordesley, a writer from the Mail wandered into the forgotten north-west fringes of the city center – and that’s how they set the scene.
(Picture: Birmingham Post and Mail)
“Winter, with all the miseries that come with it for those without enough food and clothing, has come upon us.” Another Reverend from Newtown is quoted – “I have come across a number of cases over the past few weeks where parents have gone without food for days, saving the few scabs they had for the children whose cries for the bread were more difficult to bear than the pangs of hunger.”
Taking Reverend Bordesley with him, the journalist began his poverty tour. The Reverend took “dinner tickets” with him for the children – to be exchanged for discounted bread in some shops.
The first stop was a house on Hatchett Street, where three generations of a family lived under one roof. “When we entered…we found an old man and a woman, as well as the wives of two married sons and several children.”
“The grandfather, a weak and downcast old man, worn down by age and the toil of years, and still more by scanty food and clothing, was crouched beside the fireplace like a dog. nothing to sit on, so he had to get up and hold on to a stick for support while he got as close to a piece of burning coal as possible.”
All around him was the silent work of the women of the house – carding hooks and eyes in the half-light. They worked about a quarter of a penny an hour together, so they would have had to work 960 hours between them to earn a pound – not even £140 today.
“Does the fair lady, putting on a fine dress and complaining that the hooks and eyes are not fitted properly, ever conceive that those same hooks and eyes passed through the hands of her poor sisters at this travesty of remuneration? “, muses the writer. This was reality for some – parallel universes of rich and poor, the only point of contact being the things one made for the other.
Getting a job was the easy part for some – being employable was a roll of the dice. On the street, the Reverend acting as a guide asked a woman how her husband was doing at a lumberjack.
“He couldn’t do the job, so they sent him out with a handcart to bring wood to the people. They had to put him in the handcart and take him home – he got down so much for lack of food that he doesn’t have the strength to work now.”
Do you like nostalgia? Receive the best articles by email for free with our nostalgia newsletter. Click here to view all Birmingham Live newsletters .
Next stop was Hospital Street – “a vile slum of rickety cottages that look ready to crumble, their smoky outer walls but a vague foreshadowing of the filth and misery within.”
One belongs to the household of an old jeweler and his wife, out of work, but going to the factories to snatch up the work to be had. “Morning after morning” he goes out, waiting all day to see if anyone needs his services – often returning home at the end of the day empty-handed.
They lived in a nice, comfortable house in Winson Green, until work became scarce and forced them to leave. This was the fate of a number of “the town’s respectable artisan class, burying themselves and their poverty in the slums where everyone is poor and quite a few criminals”.
It was on Pritchett Street, just south of present-day Dartmouth Circus, that the reporter and the reverend found the worst sites. Pushing open a latchless door, on a street terrorized by gangs, their eyes “for a minute are unable to pierce the darkness”.
“We discover before us a miserable-looking woman and two shivering children. The fireplace is empty.”
The shelves are empty too – the plaster is crumbling from the walls, the windows are shattered, there is a gaping hole in the front door and the only piece of furniture is a table. Just about anything that can be sold has been sold to raise money for food.
“My husband is a brass caster,” the wife said, “for three months he hasn’t earned a penny in his trade. He’s expecting a job again before Christmas, and if he gets along, everything will be fine. again.”
So passed almost three columns of fine print in a major newspaper in 1886. A grim existence in the townhouse slums of Birmingham – it would be nearly another century before the vast majority of houses like these were demolished.
Do you know anything about your relatives in Birmingham in the Victorian era or in England? Comment below and tell us about it our nostalgia Facebook group.
See more history and nostalgia here!
Comments are closed.