|
|
|
|
|
Canning Place Ancoats,
c 1895. This was the street in which George and Mary Jane lived in the late 1880s, and where George died in 1891. The
house on view is number 1 Canning Place, whilst directly opposite was number 18, the home of George and Mary Jane.
Prior to his burial, George was laid out in the front room with two pennies resting on his eyes, as was the custom in those
days. Grandad George, who was around five years old, didn't see the sense in leaving money lying about and whilst no one was
looking, he nipped into the front room and 'pinched' the pennies from his father's eyes. And with the money safely in his pocket,
he toddled off to the corner shop to buy some toffee's. In the late 1890s, Mr. Hardisty,
a Headmaster of a local Ancoats school, complained about the foul atmosphere of Ancoats - which made him ill. 'Our atmosphere is dense with smoke and laden with poison from innumerable chimneys, chemical works and other works of an offensive nature, and this foul atmosphere has to be breathed day and night. On one side of the parish we have the City Health Works, where the City's refuse is dealt with. Imagine this nuisance depot, where 8,000 pails of refuse are dealt with daily, where 83,000 tons are manipulated annually, which is reduced to 46,000 tons by burning, the difference between the two sets of figures being evaporated into the air we have to breath; where decaying and corrupted animal and vegetable matter are carted; where the laden refuse vans pass along these thickly populated and narrow streets 625 times daily, their destination focussed at the Health Works, and 625 times repass - each one of the vans whether full or empty radiating its foul and sickening stench. 'Imagine all this and you cease to wonder at the sickness and death. Adjoining are the Bradford Road Gas Works, with the smells polluting the air. On the other side we have a series of works of an offensive character, destructive to animal and vegetable life, and most injurious to buildings. These are chemical works, slum works, soap and bone works, horse slaughtering works (where the flesh etc., is boiled) and other similar works, all clustering along the side of the Rochdale Canal, from Butler street to Hulme Hall Lane. The health of the community suffers because of these works. A few men enrich themselves at the cost of an appalling amount of sickness and deaths. The poor are often reproached for their dirty habits and drunkenness. 'They have my profoundest sympathy. In many cases they are driven to drink in consequence of their miserable dwellings, their dirty narrow streets and the black polluted atmosphere. They drink to forget their misery and wretchedness. Our back streets (and there is not what is called a front street in the parish) are little cared for. They are dirty and badly lighted, the courts are not lighted at all. The drains reek with sewer gas. How can their homes be clean, and pure and healthy? It is quite true that the poor themselves can do much to alter this sad condition. They ought to aid the authorities in respect of all sanitary matters, but the authorities ought to make it easy for these people to do right, and difficult for them to do wrong. A huge injustice is done to the poor which the middle and upper classes would not endure - no, not for a day. Why should offensive works all be focussed amid a dense
population of poor people? Simply because they are poor.'
|
