Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld (15 page)

For the ordinary working man too there was nothing to rival the appeal of the pub. That first pint on pay day was an unparalleled luxury, a well-deserved respite from numbing grind. And very often it was bought with coppers straight from a fresh pay packet, for although a law of 1883 outlawed the practice of paying men in the pub, it nevertheless remained common. Even those who received their pay elsewhere generally made it their first port of call. It was the working man’s club, as exclusive in its own way as the capital’s gentleman’s clubs in Mayfair and Knightsbridge. As the statistician G.R. Porter noted in 1851, ‘no person above the rank of labouring man or artisan would venture to go into a public house’.

The pub meant far more than drink to the working man. Many of the middle class reformers made the error of thinking that pubs were no more than places where the poor man drank himself into oblivion. But it was far more than that. It was where he met his mates and discussed the events of the day, football and their other shared concerns. It was the centre of trade union and political activity. The wise landlord was happy to extend the free use of an upstairs room to a political party or union meeting, knowing full well that talking was a thirsty business.

It often served as the workers’ bank. Many pubs ran savings clubs for clothes and boots. Others saved for an annual ‘picnic’ which might be a trip to a race meeting, the seaside or the countryside. Mates who spent time together developed a strong sense of community and the need for mutual support. The ‘whip-round’ for the unfortunate man who had lost his job or whose family was suffering illness, accident or bereavement was an established part of pub life.

The publican was often one of very few people in a working class area who had ready cash. Therefore he sometimes acted as an unofficial pawnbroker and moneylender, but only as a favour to valued customers. The pub was very much at the centre of working life because it was also an unofficial labour exchange. It was the unemployed man’s first resort, the place where he was most likely to find out about available work. This was particularly the case for tramping artisans. It was common practice for a union to issue a ‘blank’ or a ‘clearance’ to any member in search of work. This entitled him to supper and lodgings and, if he failed to get work, enough money to get to the next ‘house of call’. The most highly unionised workers – such as printers, builders and engineers, compositors and stonemasons – practised this ‘tramping’ in search of work. Having found work through ‘the local’ and settled in the area, the craftsman returned to the pub for much of his social life. Dog-fanciers, pigeon racers, brass bands, choirs, darts, football and cricket teams, allotment societies, angling clubs and clog-dancing troupes were only some of the groups who made the pub the focal point of their activities.

Furthermore, drink was locked into every significant working class social occasion. From wetting the baby’s head to funerals, and every major event in between – the start and finish of an apprenticeship, a betrothal, a wedding, a change of job, the wakes holidays – all provided occasions for a celebratory drink. The man who didn’t drink could never fully participate in community life. Is it any wonder people regarded the teetotaller as unsociable and odd?

Prejudices and urban myths reinforced the compulsion to drink. It was part of accepted working class lore that drink was good for you. Who could doubt that a man who spent all day sweating in front of a furnace needed to replace his body’s lost fluids? Everybody knew that a drink kept out the cold, put an edge on the appetite, induced restful sleep and kept the bowels regular. A man’s capacity for drink was a measure of his masculinity. A decent bloke ‘stood his corner’ and kept his mates by including them in his round. Throughout Britain, but, as the crime statistics prove, especially in Manchester, heavy drinking permeated every crevice of working class life. Like dirt on a miner’s skin, it penetrated every pore.

Industry figures show that in 1876 the average consumption of beer was 34.5 gallons and 1.3 gallons for spirits. This is a staggering amount as an average which includes every man, woman and child in the country. Given the large number of teetotal Nonconformists and respectable women whose consumption consisted of a small sherry at a funeral breakfast, these figures are amazing. Their reality is best appreciated by looking at the number of pubs in Manchester and Salford at the time. Between 1850 and 1870, in a single working class area, Chorlton-on-Medlock, there were 325 pubs. (In the 1980s only twenty-four remained.) And Chorlton was nowhere near the top of the pub league. Hulme, with over 600, had almost twice as many. One of the reasons for the number of pubs in this area was the cavalry barracks opposite St. George’s Church, just off Chester Road, which housed over 300 men and their non-commissioned officers. As always, the deeper the poverty, the denser the pubs. In 1892, after years of frenzied activity by the local authority in closing undesirable pubs and beerhouses, Manchester still had 3,031 licensed premises.

As late as 1896, when London had one pub for every 393 people, Liverpool one for every 279 and Sheffield one for every 176, Manchester gloried in her position as top of the table for the number of pubs per head of population. There was one for every 167 Mancunians, so many that if an invader had destroyed every dwelling house in the city, but left the pubs intact, no one would have been without a roof over his head. Salford was similarly well served. In 1861, Manchester’s sister city had 387 beerhouses and 111 pubs. Ten years before, Clifton alone had fifty beerhouses and pubs. Salford too was a garrison town with an infantry barracks on Regent Road housing over 700 men and their officers.

Even this, however, does not tell the full story of the extent to which drink permeated every crevice of the city. To understand this we have to look at the illicit distillers. In no country in the world was the illicit distillation of spirits so deeply embedded in peasant culture as in Ireland. Delight in defying the excise man was many layered. Drink provided a cheap pleasure in a country where pleasures were few and it tasted all the better because it involved cocking a snook at the British authorities.

In Manchester the police fought a war of attrition against the distillers, mostly Irish. The typical moonshiner did not produce a few bottles for personal consumption. When police arrested Ellen Broadhurst while she sweated over her still, they found forty gallons of whiskey in her bedroom. In a single year Manchester coroners attributed the deaths of 200 people directly to drink. This does not include the countless thousands who died as a result of the long-term effects of alcohol in undermining their health. When the United Kingdom Alliance, an organisation campaigning for a legal ban on alcohol, decided to site its headquarters where the need was greatest, it plumped for Manchester.

What’s more, there is a great deal of evidence that drunkenness among women was increasing at this time. The 1871 figures show a five-fold increase over ten years. And the evidence is that the drinking habits of the poor were changing for the worse and their liking for spirits was increasing.

As the century wore on, porter gave way to the thinner mild as the poor man’s most popular tipple. This ‘four ale’, sold in a public or ‘four ale’ bar, was available at fourpence a quart. In the saloon bar, whose patrons were a few notches higher up the social ladder, most preferred bitter at three pence or even fourpence a pint. On a special occasion gin, or from the 1860s the more popular Irish whiskey, was a treat. From the 1880s Scotch took the place of Irish, though many women still preferred gin or port. Brandy, at twice the price of other spirits, was the toffs’ drink and that of the man who had enjoyed a big win on the horses.

Toffs, of course, were not immune to the allure of drink. Newspapers often gave the impression that drinking to excess was an exclusively working class weakness. This is because the middle class drunk did not usually end up in court; a constable was more likely to send him home in a cab. Yet there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that many reputable businessmen regularly partook of a good lunch. To the middle classes, one working man was indistinguishable from another. But differences in status between working men were as great as those between the urchin and the earl. The independent artisans – skilled craftsmen, like carpenters and plumbers – were far above unskilled labourers, such as carters and navvies. A respectable pub attracted a lot of artisans and the better class of labourers, those in regular employment. A good licensee was jealous of his pub’s reputation and knew that in order to maintain it he had to bar beggars, criminals, prostitutes and noisy drunks and keep profanities and coarseness within the limits of decency. Most of all, gambling was a problem for the good landlord. A quiet game of whist or a board game was acceptable, but gambling led to fighting and attracted the wrong sort of customers.

Some pubs weren’t respectable for other reasons. The graphically nicknamed ‘Blood Tub’ – the Royal Oak, on Higher Cambridge Street – was renowned for its nightly violence. For young men in the area, drinking there was a rite of passage, proof that one was hard, a real man. As for the regulars, they were suspicious of newcomers and demanded they fight or slink back to their own neighbourhood.

The Devil’s Brew

Not one nineteenth century commentator questioned the link between drink and crime. It’s not only its capacity to provoke violence that makes drink the author of crime. For many, especially those motivated by religious fervour, drink was the cause of all forms of crime and removing drink from working class life was the only way to put an end to it. Others argued the connection was more complex. Whatever the nature of the link, all agree that the extent of drunkenness at this time was prodigious. You have only to look at the pages of any Manchester or Salford newspaper to find accounts of drunken brawling and beer-fuelled assaults on the police.

What is most remarkable about many of these incidents, however, is the indulgent attitude of the courts. The case tried on 15 August 1885 is typical. PC Robinson told the city’s Police Court that the previous night he attended the New Clavenden Inn, where the accused, Thomas Riley, was systematically smashing all the glasses in the pub. The constable’s presence did nothing to deter Riley, who promptly smashed a glass over the policeman’s head. Riley, a thirty-year-old clerk, pleaded guilty as charged and offered no explanation, beyond saying that he was drunk. The magistrate seemed to accept this as mitigation as he merely fined him ten shillings with costs.

Understandably the police resented this lenient approach, which they felt did nothing to stem the rising tide of drink-fuelled violence. The English crime figures for 1865 to 1866 paint a grim picture of a country awash with drink and alcohol-driven crime. During that year justices dealt with 94,000 cases of drunkenness and drunk and disorderly behaviour, or 250 for every day of the year. About one in five of these were women. Of these they convicted 63,000, including 10,000 women, the majority of whom they fined; 7,000, however, ended up in prison. By 1870, the situation was even worse as Manchester police made 11,083 arrests for drunkenness, nearly half the total for all offences.

Drunks were capable of every form of violence. There was no savagery unknown to the readers of the
Manchester Evening News
during this period. To take just a few of countless examples, the incident that took place outside Blunt’s beerhouse in Gorton is particularly interesting. The accused, Joseph Smith, who appeared respectable and well-dressed, for some reason took offence at something the labourer Patrick Moran said and proceeded to bite off the lower part of his ear. A disconsolate Smith could offer no explanation for his behaviour.

James Bent recounts how he was travelling from Croft’s Bank to Barton when he spotted a drunk lying spread-eagled on top of a cart of coals. The man was sliding down and about to fall under the wheels of the wagon when Bent rushed over and caught him. Rather than showering Bent with gratitude, the drunkard instead aimed a running kick at him, his heavy boot breaking the third finger on the policeman’s hand. Much to Bent’s annoyance his assailant got off with a five shillings fine – yet another example of the bench’s indulgent attitude to assaults on the police. Nor were women much better than men. They frequently appeared in court after drunken brawls. Usually the magistrate admonished them and sent them away bound over to keep the peace. Even when magistrates imposed the usual penalty, a fine of ‘five bob’, this was no deterrent. It was only in 1872 that a graded scale of fines for drunkenness was introduced, from ten shillings for a first offence to forty shillings for a third.

No one disputed the effect of drink on family life. The drunken husband who beat his unfortunate wife and starving children was a standard of temperance literature. His children were starving because he drank his wages or lost his job because of his addiction. Once he reached these depths he often resorted to stealing so that he could buy drink. Meanwhile, his neglected children, growing up without proper paternal guidance, drifted into crime. The drunkard, however, was also a victim. Official Manchester police figures show that in the middle of the nineteenth century over half the victims of violent robbery had been drinking. In most cases the perpetrator was a woman – usually a prostitute – or a woman with an accomplice.

Lord of All He Surveys

Yet, though opponents of drink frequently proclaimed its evils, their efforts had no impact on levels of drinking. Even less did they diminish the number of people who wanted to spend their lives behind the bar. Running a pub, either as a tenant or licensee, was an extremely attractive proposition. For both men and women it was often their only hope of escaping the endless drudgery of the factory or domestic service.