Middlesbrough, Christmas 1858

[redcarbob]

Nothing changed much then!!!

Evidence from the official statistics (from 1855 onwards) and the local press paint a dismal picture. Drunkenness, especially during holiday periods, disfigured the town and aroused the ire of the local opinion formers. The festivities of Christmas 1858 and New Year 1859 gave rise to "men in a beastly state of beer ... half-puddled walking about in their every-day toggery and black faces ... half-idiotic imbeciles, as they reeled along 'in all their glory'" while "there were assembled as vile a crew of 'roughs' as ever escaped the inside of Deptford hulks." As a consequence, parts of the town were "bespattered with filthy ejections from overburdened stomachs" and "bestial refuse met the eye at every turn, bearing the distinct testimony to the dregs of humanity which had been thereabouts." The emotiveness of the press is not contradicted by the dispassionate statistics of the criminal returns. In the five years centred on 1861 the drunkenness rate in the town was 1990 per 100,000, compared with a national average of c.400 and a national peak of c.850 in 1875.

 

[NorthumberlandBoro]

It must have been like the wild west with hordes of young immigrant men (many Irish) spending their hard earned pennies in the pubs after a week working like dogs.

 

[Trug]

Read at the works by Lady Bell, wife of Hugh Bell, owner of an iron works in Middlesbrough in the 19th century . The description of poverty witnessed at first hand is soul destroying.

 

[redcarbob]

It must have been like the wild west with hordes of young immigrant men (many Irish) spending their hard earned pennies in the pubs after a week working like dogs.

Probably fairly lawless as well, just checked to find that Middlesbrough constabulary was only formed a few years earlier in 1853.

 

[redcarbob]

Read at the works by Lady Bell, wife of Hugh Bell, owner of an iron works in Middlesbrough in the 19th century . The description of poverty witnessed at first hand is soul destroying.

Thanks, just found a copy I can get

 

[Trug]

Thanks, just found a copy I can get

The bit about drowning new born babies in a bucket of water because the parents could not afford to keep them.

 

[Expat Smoggie]

Traditions eh lol

 

[Redwurzel]

The Lady Bell book was based around 1900 by then the Town had settled down and was more prosperous. She might have been upset by the poverty, but it didn't stop her husband buying a fireplace for £900 (900 weeks wages of a labourer) in 1909 from William Morris & Co.