like this:-
Taken from an article in
www.mymanchesteronline.co.uk"Close by the centre of Manchester a new 'Green Oasis' is being created. The advertising extols the virtues of life so close to the amenities of our wonderful, modern, Manchester.
But 100 years ago life in 'The Green Quarter' was anything but idyllic.
Bounded by Cheetham Hill Road and Red Bank and lying between Lord Street and the oddly-named 'Scotland' and encompassing Fernie Street, Verdon Street, Adeline Street and several smaller streets and alleys, the area now designated for development was a crowded mixture of tiny back-to-back terraced houses, small 'sweatshop' businesses, a couple of pubs and a number of places of worship all crammed together cheek by jowel and with little daylight penetrating between them.
Sixty years earlier, in 1844, Friedrich Engels in his 'Condition of the Working Classes in England' had written as follows about this area:
'Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main streets into numerous courts and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime the equal of which is not to be found....
At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow,
coal-black, foul-smelling stream full of debris and refuse which it deposits on the shallower right bank.
Above the bridge are tanneries, bone-mills and gas works from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk which receives further the contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies.'
By 1892 when his book first appeared in an English edition he wrote in the preface;
The most crying abuse described in this book have either disappeared or have been made less conspicuous. But what of that? Whole districts which in 1844 I could describe as almost idyllic (Chorlton-on Medlock, Ardwick, Cheetham Hill and Pendleton) have now, with the growth of the towns, fallen into the same state of dilapidation, discomfort and misery.'
So in 60 years the only difference was that the expansion of the city had created larger areas with similar problems and thoe particular deprivation of the Red Bank area was no longer so worthy of mention! "
I have to wonder, if Engels came back now what would he think?
