Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld (16 page)

Because beer was cheap and rent and rates low it required little initial capital. Yet a pub conferred independence and status. Landlords had standing in the local community and there is no doubt a good landlord could stamp his character on a pub. Though people of all types dreamt of having their name above the door of their own little pub, those who achieved it tended to be of a certain type. Many were the children of publicans, former shopkeepers or travelling salesmen. Many speculative builders put money into a pub, hoping to accumulate a nest egg. Former domestic servants, with their experience in household management, found running a pub very appealing. Ex-servicemen and retired policemen fancied they had the authority to keep an orderly house. Minor music hall and circus stars and former sportsmen – particularly jockeys and boxers – hoping to trade on their celebrity, often took a pub. But most of them didn’t own the bar they tended. Brewery policy in Manchester was to install managers. This ensured that every facet of the industry, from brewing to placing the foaming pint on the bar, was under the brewers’ control and with it the opportunity to maximise profits.

A pub was also very attractive to those who prospered in that twilight realm between legitimate commerce and dishonesty. Former sportsmen involved in gambling and fences, in particular, found a pub very attractive. It gave the fence a perfect cover for contacting his suppliers without arousing suspicion. The frequency with which police reports mention that certain pubs were the haunts of thieves suggests they played a major role in the disposal of stolen goods. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that many were dangerous for strangers. Nor is it surprising that the authorities were unable to enforce the proper running of pubs and waged a fruitless battle against breaches of the licensing laws.

In the 1850s members of the Committee of the Manchester and Salford Temperance Society visited 1,437 drinking establishments. They saw little evidence of any regard for the alcohol regulations. Instead a culture of vice and violence flourished, especially in the poorer areas. Worst of all was Angel Meadow, where they saw filthy spectres clad in rags drinking and gambling in the street.

In reality there were few enforceable regulations. Those that existed required the landlord merely to prevent violence and not allow his premises to become the haunt of criminals. It was only in the 1870s that it became general practice not to serve those under the age of sixteen. Yet even these requirements proved too demanding for many landlords. In 1871 alone, for instance, Salford magistrates summoned a tenth of all landlords and beer sellers for offences ranging from being drunk to running a disorderly house. The Chief Constable, however, had no illusions that this would change anything as the penalties available were ineffective. ‘The beer sellers,’ he said in his annual report, ‘have been exceedingly neglectful and no amount of fines seem to have the desired effect of preventing them breaking regulations.’

Nor does this mean that the remaining ninety per cent of landlords, who were not summoned, attracted a clientele consisting entirely of tip-top moral specimens. It simply means the summoned landlords were making no effort to dissuade blatantly criminal elements from using their premises to conduct their nefarious affairs. That being so, the landlord was likely to be actively involved in crime, either as a fence or a pimp. A decade later nothing had changed. A visitor to Oldham Road described the pubs and gin shops as ‘roaring full’. In every pub and street rows and fights were taking place – the indifference of the landlords suggesting they were the norm. ‘The whole street rang with shouting, screaming and swearing, mingled with the jarring music of half a dozen bands.’

Yet it was not until 1869 that magistrates regained control of beerhouses. The Wine and Beerhouse Act of that year signalled the beginning of a new, stricter era in the control of drinking establishments. At that year’s licensing session, Manchester’s mayor, John Grave, condemned the practice of indiscriminately granting beerhouse licenses to all who met the minimum rateable value qualification and could pay the two guinea fee. The result of this lax policy was that over 2,000 beerhouses, most of a ‘very inferior class’, choked the streets of Manchester. Nearly all were in the poorer areas of the city and the new legislation enabled the magistrates to close 200 that year. These were the worst of the worst – the haunts of thieves, fences and the lowest prostitutes. Yet drunkenness remained a major problem.

And it was by no means only low beerhouses that concerned the city authorities. Upper Moss Lane had in the Star of Denmark and Bentley’s Hotel two of the city’s most disreputable pubs which lost their licences in the 1890s, as did the Shoulder of Mutton in Jackson Street. All three were disorderly houses. The licensee of the Moulder’s Arms in Owen Street found himself in a worse position in 1897. The court convicted him of keeping a brothel.

He was by no means the only one. Many pubs were attached to dance halls where prostitutes trawled for clients. It was quite common for the licensee to run the nearby brothel, thereby controlling the full gambit of reprehensible pleasures. Police returns for the 1870s state that there were seventy-four pubs and 121 beerhouses in Manchester ‘frequented by persons of bad character’. In most cases this meant blatant prostitutes. Some Nonconformist reformers advocated nothing less than closing all such places but they were up against one of the most powerful vested interests in Victorian Britain – the brewers.

The Canterbury Hall on Chapel Street was typical of many of the bigger pubs of the time in offering a range of attractions. In 1861 Mr George Fox was advertising ‘Fox’s Victoria Music Hall’. Seventeen years later it was the venue for another working-class pastime – billiards – when it hosted a match between the champion, W. Cook and the former champion, John Roberts. Such a contest attracted a large crowd, a wager on the outcome sharpening the interest of many spectators. Sporting gentlemen who liked a bet featured large among the Canterbury Hall’s customers and this eventually led to its demise. In 1893, when police opposed its licence, they cited the landlord’s record of running illegal lotteries. They also claimed that the pub was ‘not required’, as in that area there was one public house for every 106 residents, a generous ratio even by Manchester standards.

Billiards also played a big part in the appeal of the White House, the oldest pub on Stretford Road. Its licensee in 1871 was James Platford, who made enough money to build a hotel in front of the pub. That year his employees included five domestic servants and a groom, all living in. Additionally, his boarder was a Mr S.W. Digges, who gloried in the title of professor of billiards.

The Railway in Greengate was one of Salford’s first beerhouses. The landlord in 1869, Bill Brown, was a prizefighting enthusiast. He and another Salford landlord, Jack Miller of the Pink Tavern, fought for a purse of £50. Unfortunately for them, magistrates summoned both men, imposed fines and warned them as to their future behaviour.

Last Man Standing

During this period prizefighting remained one of the underworld’s sources of income. It was an attraction that brought all classes together and had the bully rubbing shoulders with the barrister, the toff talking with the scavenger.

Deansgate was the focal point of the city’s prizefighting in the 1870s. Hundreds of pounds changed hands. By the time Victoria came to the throne in 1837, however, prizefighting was already in decline and was subsequently outlawed by a series of legal judgements. Yet this mix of bare-knuckle fighting and wrestling, with few rules, still attracted vast crowds and stirred intense emotions. If the fighters sometimes lacked finesse, there was no doubting their courage and durability. Fights often ran to 100 rounds, in the days when a round ended when one man was knocked from his feet, and lasted up to three hours. Provided a fighter could get to his feet within thirty seconds there was no limit to the number of knockdowns he might survive. On each occasion he hit the ground his seconds dragged him to his corner and spent the permitted time reviving him. The crowd felt cheated if a man conceded before being beaten senseless.

It was during the years of decline that rules standardising prizefighting came into force. The Rules of the Prize Ring introduced in 1838 specified the size of the ring, the role of seconds and umpires and banned head butting. In 1886 the Pugilists’ Benevolent Association adopted the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules, stipulating that contests last no longer than twenty three-minute rounds with a one-minute break between each. Now fighters wore gloves, no longer wrestled and enjoyed the luxury of a ten-second breather when knocked down.

Far more important, however, was the introduction of the points system. Prior to this the victor was the fighter who was not lying unconscious. Now they won points for both strikes and defensive parries. Further, the contest was no longer a fight to the finish: the referee stopped it if he deemed either contestant ‘unfit to continue’. Displays of raw courage and the capacity to endure punishment were no longer commonplace, with the inevitable result that fighting lost a great deal of its popular appeal. No amount of finesse could match the appeal of naked brutality and dogged endurance, which ensured the sport survived underground.

After the 1860s fights continued as a niche attraction but attracted little publicity. Those who organised bouts were never full-time promoters. They were duckers and divers, men who made a living by doing a ‘bit of this and a bit of that’ – the ‘this’ was often running a pub, the ‘that’ gambling or prostitution. At the bottom end of the sport, some pubs had resident bruisers. Many of these declining pugilists made a living as brothel bouncers or prostitutes’ bullies. Anyone who fancied his chances could hire gloves for a few coppers and take him on. Often, as at The Railway and The Pink Tavern singing and comic turns separated the bouts.

Good Enough for a Drunk

Fights were by no means the only pub entertainment available. Attractions came in an amazing variety of forms but the emphasis was very much on popular participation. People liked to provide their own entertainment, to such an extent that the distinction between the performer and the audience blurred.

Early in the Victorian period the ‘free and easy’ was all the rage. This was the nineteenth century equivalent of karaoke, with customers taking it in turns to sing, give a recitation or play a tune. Plenty of pubs provided music – mechanical organs, drums, tambourines and the Joanna. Sometimes there was a hurdy-gurdy man and a girl on a tambourine. Singing was a popular entertainment. Bawdy songs – the broader the innuendo, the louder the applause – were particularly popular. In March 1870 a
Manchester Guardian
journalist ventured into a working class Manchester beerhouse to observe the goings-on, in much the same way that he might have studied the Kalahari Bushmen at play. The area he explored was behind the Theatre Royal and the Free Trade Hall, a cluster of streets famous for drunken debauchery and fighting. Many of the punters were thieves and prostitutes. The prostitutes picked up their quarry there and took them to one of the many shops on Peter Street, which were fronts for brothels. It was the poor singing on offer in the pubs that had the biggest impact on the journalist. He quoted approvingly one patron’s opinion: ‘Anything is good enough for a drunken man, but this is almost too bad for that.’ In the same pub a man singing an air from
Don Giovanni
had the tell-tale pallor and cropped hair of the recently released convict. His efforts, too, were little appreciated.

From this sort of entertainment it was a short step to the first music halls, which were no more than pubs providing entertainment. Even as purpose-built halls became major attractions, the penny-gaff remained a feature of working class areas. For those who preferred a little more excitement, there was plenty on offer. Cock-fighting, though banned in 1849, nevertheless remained popular. Fighting dogs, particularly bull terriers, retained a niche following. As a preliminary to competition, owners cropped their dogs’ ears in ‘sporting trim’, to prevent the opponent from clamping them in his teeth. A less palatable aspect of training involved matching the fighting dog against a tame animal to get it used to killing. The use of dogs against rats was far more popular and for many years William Hamilton’s workshop, next to his Pier Head beerhouse in Albert Street, hosted ‘ratting’. The building conveniently overlooked the Irwell, with its plentiful supply of rats.

These contests between dogs and rodents filled the pubs that hosted them, especially at holiday times, when they were a traditional pastime. The arena consisted of a ring about 6ft across, its wooden walls rising to elbow height. Painted white and brilliantly lit it provided a sharp contrast to the scarlet rats’ blood. On a good night there was plenty of gore, as a properly organised meeting required an enormous number of rats. One London publican, famous for the quality of his ratting, regularly used up to 700 a week and on several occasions as many as 2,000. He claimed that it took twenty families to supply him. Both sewer and water-ditch rats stank – filling the room with the reek of a hot drain.

The publican covered his costs by charging between sixpence and a shilling admission. Spectators, who had spent the early part of the evening drinking, discussing form and betting on the outcome, crowded round the pit, ale and gin in hand. Behind them others balanced on chairs and tables to get a better view. Betting was always brisk.

Rules governed all serious ratting venues. The organisers matched the dogs by weight and measured each animal’s score in relation to its weight. A timekeeper operated the stopwatch and when he shouted ‘Timer!’ the owner lifted out his dog. Apart from the money won on bets, the best animals went away with trophies. But gambling was the heart of it. In the preliminary contests dogs killed a dozen rats while in the latter stages they tackled as many as fifty. The timekeeper, with his stopwatch and the umpire, who ruled on whether a rat was dead, controlled proceedings.