APPENDIX.
IN the foregoing story of the “Manchester Man,” I have in a great measure dealt with history, recorded and unrecorded, with absolute people, events, and places.
I have not thought it advisable to break the narrative with cumbrous foot-notes calculated to disturb the general reader; but I consider an elucidating Appendix due alike to myself and all those who, in perusing a work of this kind, care to discriminate fact from fiction.
Little of the Manchester I have depicted remains intact, a whirlwind of improvement (!) has swept over the town, but old inhabitants will, I think, recognise the faithfulness of my descriptions, as they will remember many of the persons who come and go incidentally throughout.
Chap.I.—After writing this chapter, I learned that a cradled infant was washed down the Irwell from the Broughton, not the Smedley andIrkside, in the flood of 1837. I was familiar with the incident I relate when I was quite a child myself, and I am now fifty-three.
The two cases are therefore distinct, yet equally facts. In 1771, during the floods which swept away Tyne Bridge, Newcastle, a vessel took up at sea a cradle in which was a child alive and well.
Chap.III. (B).—The Rev. Joshua Brookes comes into my pages naturally—no story of Manchester life at the commencement of this century would be complete without him. I have endeavoured to do justice to a little-understood man. Many of his eccentricities are on record. At my own baptism and my mother’s churching, occurred the scene which I have endeavoured to reproduce; that delicate lady pushed and pulled about was a stranger to my mother and sponsors. A characteristic anecdote, which I have not met with in print, may not be out of of place here.
A printer, of republican tendencies, named Cowdroy, took his son to the font, and on the child’s name being required, answered “Citizen!”—“Citizen?” growled Joshua, “that’s no name. I shall not give the child a name like that!” “I’ve arightto call my child what name I please, and I dare you to baptise him otherwise,” boldly asserted Mr. Cowdroy. “Oh, you may call him Beelzebub if you like!” testily responded the chaplain, and Citizen the boy was accordingly baptized: and the large signboard of C. Cowdroy, Printer, overlooked the Old Churchyard long after Joshua Brookes was laid low in dust and ashes.
His odd friendship with old Mrs. Clowes is matter of fact. Similar scenes to those I have described took place at funerals and weddings when he officiated; and his last contest with the Grammar School boys may be found in Harland’s “Collectanea.”
Chaps.IV. and V. (C)—The little girl who made her way into the presence of Prince William, sat on his knee and amused him and his suite with details of toilettes in progress at home, to be rewarded with a plain shilling, the required information, and a bow as thecortégepassed down Oldham Street, was Amelia Daniels, in after years my own mother. The incident of the falling platform on Sale Moor is noted in history.
Chap.VII.—Mrs. Clowes was as eccentric in her way as Parson Brookes; but beyond her dealings with the chaplain and school-boys, her journey to Liverpool, her Sabbath dinners to the poor, and her attire, her place in this story belongs to the region of fiction. Her shop passed to a relative, but the date of her death is unknown to the writer.
Chaps.XVIII. and XIX.—Peterloo is rapidly passing out of remembrance, and those who were not themselves eye-witnesses may accuse me of exaggeration. To such I can only say that I have had my details from actors or spectators. The house I have assigned to Mr. Chadwick in Oldham Street, was occupied by my maternal grandfather, John Daniels, and he was the paralysed old gentleman in charge of his servant Molly, who, but for the timely interposition of a young man named Tomlinson, one of his own weavers, and Mr. Mabbott, would have been cut down. His daughters, anxious for his safety, looking out for his return home from the warehouse, saw from their open window more than I describe; for one thing—a woman passed with her breast cut off; the two vaunting officers who reared their steeds against the house with threats, were a cousin and afiancé; the man who was shot down in Ancoats Lane, whilst biddinghisgirls to retire, was, I believe, my grandfather’s tenant. The female sabred on the hustings was a Mrs. Fildes when I knew her. Her son, Henry Hunt Fildes, was in my father’s employ; and either that same son, or a grandson, is now an artist not altogether unknown to the world. From Miss Hindley I had nine years ago the story of her father’s fall. The author of the satire on the yeomanry was my paternal grandfather, James Varley, of Pendleton.
For the purpose of my narrative, I have antedated an occurrence in the Theatre Royal. I was myself the little miss who cried out in alarm that Edmund Kean was “killing Mrs. McGibbon,” but it was a few years later. Mrs. Broadbent’s school occupied the next box to our party on that occasion. I need scarcely add that I have drawn that lady, her school-room, &c., from information and observation. The broken collar-bone is not an invention.
Chaps.XXIX. and XXX.—The skating incident on Ardwick Green Pond was an episode in the early life of the same John Daniels before-named. Blindness followed his long immersion, and when all remedies known in the last century failed, he regained his sight by swimming across the Mersey, as related. I owe it to his memory to say that he must not otherwise be confounded with the man whom I have called Laurence Aspinall.
Chap.XXXII.—The Act for widening Market Street was obtained in 1821; but I find that the ancient houses did not begin to “crumble into dust” until the following year.
Chap.XXXVIII.—“I’ll please my eye if I plague my heart,” with itsanswer and consequences, formed the original base of this story; the wilful girl and her handsome savage of a husband being inallrespects but their names realities. They were both in their graves before the period I assign to their union. The old Hall which witnessed so many outrages and such sad catastrophes, may be found in the map of Hardwicke’s History of Preston under its true name.
Chap.XLVI.—For much information respecting the fatal launch of theEmma, I am indebted to the courtesy of the Secretary of the Bridgewater Navigation Company, and also to Mrs. Abel Heywood, who has just presented to Manchester a statue of Oliver Cromwell, in the name of her former husband, Mr. Goadsby, who had been Mayor of the city. Mrs. Heywood was originally the Miss Grimes who christened the luckless flat.
I cannot close this Appendix without acknowledging much kind assistance from literary and and antiquarian friends in my researches. Of these the late John Harland, Esq., antiquary and historian, the late Thomas Jones, Esq., librarian of Chetham Hospital, and the Rev. J. Finch Smith, M.A., R.D., must be placed foremost.
ISABELLA BANKS.
London, January, 1876.