A run of nineteen miles brings us to what the inhabitants call the Hardware
Village, a healthy, ugly town, standing upon several hills, crowned with
smoke, but free from fog.
The old railway station stands at the foot of one of these hills, leaving a
drive of a quarter of a mile through a squalid region, almost as bad as the
railway entrance into Bristol, before entering into the decent part of the
town; but the new station, now in course of rapid completion, will land
passengers behind the Grammar School, in New Street, the principal, and,
indeed, only handsome street of any length in Birmingham.
At the old station there is an excellent hotel, kept by Mr. Robert Bacon, who
was so many years house steward to the Athenaeum Club, in Pall Mall; and at
the refreshment-rooms a capital table d'hote is provided four times a-day, at
two shillings a-head, servants included, an arrangement extremely acceptable
after a ride of 118 miles.
[NEWTON ROAD STATION, NEAR BIRMINGHAM: ill16.jpg]
At the new station similar refreshment-rooms are to be provided, and it is to
be hoped that the architect will plan the interior first, and the exterior
afterwards, so that comfort may not be sacrificed, as it usually is in
English public buildings, to the cost of an imposing portico and vestibule.
As a railway starting point, Birmingham has become a wonderful place. In
addition to those main lines and branches passed and noted on our journey
down, it is also the centre at which meet the railroads to Derby and
Sheffield; to Worcester, Cheltenham, Gloucester, and Bristol; to London
through Oxford, by the Broad Gauge Great Western, to Shrewsbury and Chester
through Wolverhampton, beside the little South Staffordshire lines, which
form an omnibus route between Birmingham, Walsall, Dudley, and Lichfield, and
other iron nets "too tedious to describe."
To a stranger not interested in manufactures, and in mechanic men, this is a
very dull, dark, dreary town, and the sooner he gets out of it the better.
There are only two fine buildings. The Town Hall, an exact copy externally
of the Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome, built of a beautiful grey Anglesey
marble, from the designs of Messrs. Hansom and Welch, who also undertook to
execute it for 24,000 pounds. It cost 30,000 pounds, and the contractors
were consequently ruined. A railway company would probably have paid the
difference; but, in such cases, communities have no conscience, so the people
of Brummagem got the Hall of which they are justly proud "a bargain."
The interior is disappointing, and wants the expenditure of some more
thousand pounds in sculptures and decorative details, to bring it into
harmony with its noble external effect. The great room, 145 feet in length,
by 65 feet in width and height, will contain upwards of 8,000 persons.
Musical meetings are held here periodically, for the benefit of certain
charities; but the sight best worth seeing, is the Hall at the period of an
election, or of political excitement, crowded with a feverish army of
workmen, cheering, groaning, swaying to and fro, under the speeches of their
favourite orators. Then in this Pagan temple may be seen a living specimen
of a Brummagem Jupiter, with a cross of Vulcan, lion-faced, hairy, bearded,
deep-mouthed swaggering, fluent in frank nonsense and bullying clap-trap,
loved by the mob for his strength, and by the middle classes for his money.
The lofty roof re-echoes with applause.
The temple, the man, and the multitude, all together, are well worth a
journey to Birmingham to see.
There is also the Free School of King Edward VI., in New Street, a stately
pile, built by Barry, before he had become so famous as he is now; which
supplies first-rate instruction in classics, mathematics, modern languages,
and all branches of a useful English education, after the plan introduced
into our public schools by Dr. Arnold, to the sons of all residents, at an
extremely cheap, almost a nominal rate. Ten exhibitions of 50 pounds each
for four years at Oxford or Cambridge are open to the competition of the
scholars.
The salary of the Head Master is 400 pounds a-year, with a residence, and the
privilege of boarding eighteen pupils. Of the Second Master, 300 pounds.
Beside Under Masters.
These liberal appointments have secured a succession of competent masters,
and cannot fail to produce a permanent and favourable change in the character
of young Birmingham. The diffusion of sound classical learning was much
needed to mitigate the coxcombical pretensions of the half-educated, and the
vulgar coarseness of the uneducated. The inhabitants of manufacturing towns
are apt to grow petty Plutocracies, in which after wealth, ignorance and
assumption are the principal qualifications. Brass turns up its nose at
iron, and both look down upon tin, although half an hour in the world's fire
make all so black as to be undistinguishable.
Besides this, which we may term the High School, there are four schools
supported out of King Edward VI.'s foundation, where reading, writing, and
arithmetic, are taught.
The funds on which these magnificent ecclesiastical establishments are
supported, arise from lands in the neighbourhood which originally produced
only 21 pounds a year, and were part of the estates of the Guild of the "Holy
Cross." After being occupied first as fields and then as gardens, the rise
of manufactures and extension of the town of Birmingham, converted a great
portion into building land. The present revenue amounts to about 11,000
pounds per annum, and are likely to be still further increased.
Twenty years ago, school lands which are now leased for terms of years, and
covered with buildings, were occupied as suburban gardens at trifling rents.
Eventually the Birmingham Free School will enjoy an income equal to the wants
of a university as well as a school. Meagre accounts of the income and
expenditure of this noble foundation are published annually, under the
regulations of an Act of Parliament passed in 1828; but no report of the
number of scholars, or the sort of education communicated, is attached to
this balance sheet. It would be very useful; and we hope that the self-
elected corporation, who have the management, will see the propriety of
supplying it.
Birmingham also possesses a chartered college, "Queen's College," similar to
that at Durham; first established as a medical school by the exertions of the
present dean, Mr. Sands Cox, since liberally endowed by the Rev. Dr.
Warneford to the extent of many thousand pounds, and placed in a position to
afford the courses in law, physic, and divinity, required for taking a degree
at the University of London. Also a Blue Coat School, and School for the
Blind.
In a picturesque point of view there are few towns more uninviting than
Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by
smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,--and the few
modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of
place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of
busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness--cleanliness--can do
for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot-
pavements are, for the most part flagged, although some of the round pebble
corn-creating footways still remain in the back streets. One suburb,
Edgbaston, is the property of Lord Calthorpe, and has been let out on
building leases which entirely exclude all manufactories and inferior classes
of houses. The result has been a crop of snug villas, either stucco or
polished red brick; many of them surrounded by gardens and shrubberies, and a
few of considerable pretension. Of this suburb the Birmingham people think a
great deal; but, as it is built upon a dead flat in long straight lines, its
effect is more pleasing to the citizen after a hard day's work, than to the
artist, architect, landscape gardener, or lover of the picturesque.
Birmingham is, in fact, notable for its utility more than its beauty,--for
what is done in its workshops, rather than for what is to be seen in its
streets and suburbs. Nowhere are there to be found so numerous a body of
intelligent, ingenious, well educated workmen. The changes of fashion and
the discoveries of science always find Birmingham prepared to march in the
van, and skilfully execute the work needed in iron, in brass, in gold and
silver, in all the mixed metals and in glass. When guns are no longer
required at the rate of a gun a minute, Birmingham steel pens become famous
all over the world. When steel buckles and gilt buttons have had their day,
Britannia teapots and brass bedsteads still hold their own. No sooner is
electrotype invented, than the principal seat of the manufacture is
established at Birmingham. No sooner are the glass duties repealed than the
same industrious town becomes renowned for plate glass, cut glass, and
stained glass; and, when England demands a Palace to hold the united
contributions of "The Industry of the World," a Birmingham banker finds the
contractor and the credit, and Birmingham manufacturers find the iron, the
glass, and the skill needful for the most rapid and gigantic piece of
building ever executed in one year.
In order to appreciate the independent character and quick inventive
intelligence of the Birmingham mechanic, he should be visited at his own
home. A system of small independent houses, instead of lodgings, prevails in
this town, to the great advantage of the workmen.
It is only within a very few years that the working classes have had, in a
local School of Design, means of instruction in the principles of taste, and
arts of drawing and modelling; while, until the patent laws are put upon a
just foundation, their inventive faculties can never be fully developed. When
the artizans of Birmingham have legislative recognition of their rights as
inventors, and free access to a first-rate school of design, their "cunning"
hands will excel in beauty as well as ingenuity all previous triumphs.
The wealthier classes have, from various causes, deteriorated within the last
sixty years, while the workmen have improved within that time. Men who have
realized fortunes no longer settle down in the neighbourhood of their
labours. They depart as far as possible from the smoke of manufactures and
the bickerings of middle class cliques, purchase estates, send their sons to
the universities, and in a few years subside into country squires.
Professional men, as soon as they have displayed eminent talent, emigrate to
London; and the habit, now so prevalent in all manufacturing towns, of living
in the suburbs, has sapped the prosperity of those literary and philosophical
institutions and private reunions, which so much contributed to raise the
tone of society during the latter half of the last century. The meetings of
an old Literary and Philosophical Society have been discontinued, and the
News Room was lately on the brink of dissolution. Instead of meeting to
discuss points of art, science, and literature, the middle classes read the
Times and Punch, and consult the Penny Cyclopaedia. The literary and
scientific character which Birmingham acquired in the days when Boulton,
Watt, Priestly, Darwin, Murdoch, and their friends, met at the Birmingham
Lunarian Society, to discuss, to experiment, and to announce important
discoveries, have passed away never to return; and we are not likely to see
again any provincial town occupying so distinguished a position in the
scientific world. The only sign of Birmingham's ancient literary pre-
eminence is to be found in several weekly newspapers, conducted with talent
and spirit far beyond average. It is an amusing fact, that the sect to which
Priestly belonged still trade on his reputation, and claim an intellectual
superiority over the members of other persuasions, which they may once have
possessed, but which has long been levelled up by the universal march of
education. The richer members publish little dull books in bad English on
abstruse subjects, and, like Consuelo's prebendary, have quartos in
preparation which never reach the press.
In fact, the suburban system of residence and the excessive pretension of
superiority by the "pots over the kettles" have almost destroyed society in
Birmingham, although people meet occasionally at formal expensive parties,
and are drawn together by sympathy in religion and politics.
Nothing would induce an educated gentleman to live in Birmingham except to
make a living, yet there are residing there, seldom seen out of their
factories, men of the highest scientific and no mean literary attainments.
There are a number of manufactories, which, in addition to their commercial
importance, present either in finished articles, or in the process of
manufacture, much that will interest an intelligent traveller.
GLASS.--Messrs. F. & C. Oslers, of Broad Street, have attained a very high
reputation for their cut and ornamental, as well as the ordinary, articles of
flint glass. The have been especially successful in producing fine effects
from prismatic arrangements. Their gigantic chandeliers of great size, made
for Ibrahim Pacha, and the Nepalese Prince, were the steps by which they
achieved the lofty crystal fountain, of an entirely original design, which
forms one of the most novel and effective ornaments of the Crystal Palace.
The manufactory as well as the show-room is open to the inspection of
respectable strangers.
Messrs. Rice and Harris are also extensive manufacturers of cut and coloured
glass; and Messrs. Bacchus and Sons have been very successful in their
imitations of Bohemian glass, both in form and colour. Messrs. Chance have
acquired a world-wide reputation by supplying the largest quantity of crown
glass in the shortest space of time for Paxton's Palace. These works, in
which plate and every kind of crown glass is made, are situated at West
Bromwich. The proprietors have benevolently and wisely made arrangements for
the education of their workmen and their families, which are worthy of
imitation in all those great factories where the plan, which originated in
Lancashire, has not been already adopted. A letter of introduction will be
required in order to view Messrs. Chance's establishment, of which we shall
say more when noting the social state of the Birmingham operatives.
PAPIER MACHE.--Messrs. Jennens and Bettridge's works are so well known that it
is only necessary to refer to them for the purpose of saying that in their
show-rooms some new application of the art which they have carried to such
perfection is constantly to be found. Pianos, cradles, arm-chairs, indeed
complete drawing-room suites, cornices, door-plates, and a variety of
ornaments are displayed, in addition to the tea-trays and tea-chests in which
the art of japanning first became known to us.
Although Messrs. Jennens and Co. have the largest establishment in
Birmingham, there are several others who produce capital work; among them may
be named Mr. Thomas Lane and Messrs. M'Callum and Hodgson, who both exhibited
specimens of great merit at the last Birmingham Exhibition of manufactures.
But metals afford the great staple of employment in Birmingham, and we shall
avail ourselves, in describing the leading trades, and touching on the social
position of the workmen, of the admirable letters on Labour and the Poor in
Birmingham which appeared in the Morning Chronicle in the course of 1850.
{81}
* * * * *
BIRMINGHAM BUTTONS.--"A Brummagem Button" is the old-fashioned nickname for a
Birmingham workman. The changes of fashion, and the advances of other
manufactures, have deprived that trade of its ancient pre-eminence over all
other local pursuits; but the "button trade," although not the same trade
which made great fortunes in a previous generation, still employs five or six
thousand hands, of which one-half are women and children.
In the middle of the eighteenth century a plain white metal button was made,
which may occasionally be seen in remote rural districts, on the green coats
of old yeomen, wearing hereditary leather breeches. At that period the
poorer classes wore coarse horn or wooden buttons, chiefly home made, and the
tailor made, as well as the clothes, buttons covered with cloth. By degrees
very handsome gilt buttons came into wear, and continued to employ many
hands, while the blue coat which figures in the portraits of our grandfathers
remained in fashion.
In 1826, the Florentine, or covered button, now in almost universal use,
which is manufactured by machinery with the aid of women and children, was
introduced, and by 1829 the gilt button trade had been almost destroyed.
The change produced great distress, vast numbers of persons were thrown out
of work, who could not at once turn to any other employment. In 1830 a
deputation from the gilt button trade waited upon George IV. and the
principal nobility, to solicit their patronage. The application succeeded,
coloured coats with metal buttons came into fashion, and dandies of the first
water appeared in bright snuff-coloured, pale green, and blue coats, such as
are now only worn by Paul Bedford or Keeley, in broad farce. In 1836 a cheap
mode of gilding, smart for a day, dull and shabby in a week, completely
destroyed the character of gilt buttons, and brought up the Florentine again.
This change was, no doubt, materially assisted and maintained by Bulwer's
novel of "Pelham," which set all young men dressing themselves up like crows
with white shirts.
In 1840 a deputation to Prince Albert attempted another revival of the gilt
button trade, and at the same time the silk stocking weavers waited on the
Prince to endeavour to drive out the patent leather boots, and bring in the
low shoe. Both attempts failed. At present there are symptoms of a turn of
fashion toward coloured coats and bright buttons, which may be successful,
because the fashionable world abhors monotony. The flame coloured coats,
long curls, and pink under waistcoats of George IV., were succeeded by the
solemn sables of an undertaker; the high tight stock made way for a sailor's
neckcloth. For a time shawl waistcoats, of gay colours, had their hour. Then
correct tight black yielded to the loosest and shaggiest garments that could
be invented. Perhaps the year 1852 may see our youth arrayed in blue, purple
and pale brown.
But a very little consideration will prove that these artificial changes,
although they may benefit a class, are of little advantage to the community.
If a man gives 10s. more for a coat with gilt buttons than for one with plain
buttons, he has 10s. less to expend with some other tradesman.
The Florentine Button, first invented in 1820, and since much improved, is a
very curious manufacture. It is made--as any one may see by cutting up a
button--of five pieces; first, the covering of Florentine, or silk; second, a
cover of metal, which gives the shape to the button; third, a smaller circle
of mill-board; fourth, a circle of coarse cloth, or calico; fifth, a circle
of metal, with a hole punched in the centre, through which the calico or
cloth is made to protrude, to form the shank, to be sewed on to the garment.
"Ranged in rows on either side of a long room of the button factory, (says
the correspondent of the Morning Chronicle) are from 50 to 100 girls and
young women, from the age of fourteen to four or five and twenty, all busily
engaged, either at hand or steam presses, in punching out metal circles
slightly larger than the size of the button which is to be produced. Before
each press the forewoman is seated, holding in her hand a sheet of zinc or
iron, about two feet long, and four inches broad. This she passes rapidly
under the press if worked by hand, and still more rapidly if worked by steam,
punching and cutting at the rate of from fifty to sixty disks in a minute. As
they are cut they fall into a receptacle prepared to receive them. The
perforated sheets are sold to the founder to be melted up, and made into
other sheets. In other rooms younger women are engaged in cutting up
Florentine cloth, or other outside covering material, paste board and calico.
Of these a young woman can punch 57,000 a-day, and of metal, 28,000 a-day.
The upper discs are submitted by another set of girls to presses from which
each receives a blow that turns up an edge all round, and reduces it to the
exact size of the button. The lower disk is punched for the shank to come
through, stamped with the maker's name, or the name of the tailor for whom
the buttons are made, and coated with varnish, either light or black.
"The five pieces then pass into a department where a woman superintends the
labours of a number of children from seven to ten years of age.
"These little creatures place all five pieces, one after another, in regular
order, in a small machine like a dice-box, constructed to hold them, which is
placed under a press, when a firm touch compresses the whole together in the
neat form, which any one may examine on a black dress coat, without stitch or
adhesive matter."
This patent was the subject of long litigation between rival inventors, to
the great benefit of the lawyers, and loss of the industrious and ingenious.
Within the last twelve months Messrs. Chadbourne, button-makers, of Great
Charles Street, have adapted this Florentine button to nails for furniture
and carriages.
The Patent Linen sewn-through Button is another recent invention, which has
superseded the old wire button for under garments, than which it is cheaper,
neater, and more durable. It is composed of linen and circles of zinc.
Horn Buttons, with shanks, which are extensively used for cloth boots and
sporting jackets, are made from the hoofs of horned cattle, which are boiled,
cut, punched, dyed, stamped when soft, and polished by brushes moved by steam
power; the chief part of the work being done by women and children.
Pearl Buttons have become an important part of the Birmingham manufactures,
partly on the decline of metal buttons. They are extensively used on coats
and waistcoats, where gilt buttons were formerly employed.
The shell used in the manufacture of buttons, studs, card counters, etc., is
the mother of pearl, the Concha margaritifera of naturalists. Five kinds of
shell are employed:--First. The Buffalo Shell, so named because it arrived
packed in buffalo skins; it comes chiefly from Panama, is the smallest and
commonest, and sells to the trade at about 15 pounds a ton.--Second. The
Black Scotch, from the Sandwich Islands, whence it is sent to Valparaiso and
to Sydney, New South Wales, worth from 15 to 30 pounds a ton. The large
outer rim is of a blackish, or rather greenish, tint, the centre only being
white. The outer rim was formerly considered worthless, and large quantities
were thrown away as rubbish. Change of fashion has brought the prismatic
hues of the dark pearl into fashion for shooting-coats, waistcoats, and even
studs. It used to be a standing story with a Bristol barber that a square in
that city had been built on thousands of pounds worth of tobacco stalks,
thrown away as useless, until it was discovered that that part of the plant
was capable of making a most saleable snuff. And so in Birmingham; the
Irvingite Church, on New Hall Hill, is said to be built on hundreds of tons
of refuse shell, which would now be worth from 15 to 20 pounds per ton. The
third shell is the Bombay, or White Scotch, worth from 20 to 50 pounds per
ton. The fourth comes from Singapore, and is brought there to exchange for
British manufactures by the native craft which frequent that free port. It
is a first-rate article, white to the edge, worth from 80 to 90 pounds per
ton. The fifth is the Mother of Pearl Shell, from Manilla, of equal value
and size, but with a slight yellow tinge round the edge.
Pearl buttons are cut out and shaped by men with the lathe, polished by women
with a grinding-stone, and sorted and arranged on cards by girls.
Glass Buttons were formerly in use among canal boatmen, miners, and
agricultural labourers, in certain districts. They are now chiefly made for
the African market. The process of making them and studs is well worth
seeing.
Beside the buttons already enumerated, they make in Birmingham the flat iron
and brass buttons, for trowsers; steel buttons, for ladies' dresses; wooden
buttons, for overcoats; agate buttons, for which material is imported from
Bohemia; and, in fact, every kind of button and stud, including papier mache.
The manufacture of brass shanks is a separate trade, and the writer of the
letters already quoted, states the annual production at, or upwards of, three
millions per working day. Of these, part are made by hand, but the greater
number by a shank-making machine, wrought by steam power, and only requiring
the attendance of one tool-maker.
"The machine feeds itself from a coil of brass or iron wire suspended from
the roof, and cuts and twists into shanks, by one process, at the rate of 360
per minute, or nearly 75,000,000 per annum. Some button manufacturers employ
one of these machines; the majority buy the shanks."
* * * * *
GUNS AND SWORDS.--According to Hutton, the historian of Birmingham, the town
was indebted for its occupation in supplying our army with fire-arms, to an
ancestor of a gentleman who now represents a division of Warwickshire, a Sir
Roger Newdigate, in the time of William III.
The story, however, seems only half-true. Hutton would imply that the first
muskets manufactured in England were made in Birmingham. It seems more
likely, that the connexion with William III. arose from the desire of that
monarch to have the flint-lock, which was superseding the match-lock on the
Continent, made in his own dominions.
At any rate, the revolution of 1688, which the romantic anti-commercial party
of Young England so deeply regret, gave Birmingham its gun trade, as well as
Hampton Court its asparagus beds.
When Walpole gave us peace, the attention of the manufacturers was directed
to fowling-pieces, and from that time forward Birmingham has contained the
greatest fire-arm factory in the world, although, of course, subject to many
fluctuations. Twenty years ago, "A long war soon," was as regular a toast at
convivial meetings of Birmingham manufacturers, as at any mess-room or in any
cock-pit in her majesty's service.
The government has made several attempts, by establishing manufactories with
public money and under official control, to become independent of Birmingham,
but the end has invariably been great loss and pitiful results in the number
of arms produced.
We hope to live to see the time when our navy will be built as economically
as our guns are made--by private contract--and our public ship-yards confined
to the repairing department.
During the war which ended at the battle of Waterloo, the importance and
prosperity of the gun-makers were great. It was calculated that a gun a
minute was made in Birmingham on the average of a year, but the Peace threw
numbers out of work and reduced wages very considerably.
Time has brought the trade to a level; indeed, it is one of the great
advantages of Birmingham, that the prosperity of the town does not rest on
any one trade; so that if some are blighted others are flourishing, and when
one fails the workmen are absorbed into other parallel employments.
The gun trade now depends for support on the demand for--first, cheap muskets
for African and other aboriginal tribes; secondly, on cheap fowling-pieces,
rifles, pistols, blunderbusses, etc., for exportation to America, Australia,
and other countries where something effective is required at a moderate
price; thirdly, on the home demand for fowling-pieces of all qualities, from
the commonest to those sold at the West End of London, at fancy prices;
fourthly, on that for fire-arms required by our army and navy; and, lastly,
on occasional uncertain orders created by wars and revolutions on the
Continent.
There are a vast number of guns, or parts of guns, made in Birmingham, which
bear the names of retailers in different parts of the kingdom. Even very
fashionable gun-makers find it worth their while to purchase goods in the
rough state from Birmingham manufacturers on whom they can depend, and finish
them themselves.
This is rendered easy by the system. No one in Birmingham makes the whole of
a gun. The division of labour is very great; the makers of the lock, the
barrel, and the stock, are completely distinct, and the mechanics confine
themselves to one branch of a department. The man who makes the springs for
a lock has nothing to do with the man who makes the nipple or the hammer;
while the barrel-forger has no connexion with the stock-maker or lock-maker.
The visitor who has the necessary introductions, should by no means omit to
visit a gun-barrel factory, as there are a good many picturesque effects in
the various processes, beside the mechanical instruction it affords.