Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook343 pages4 hours
Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain's Most Savage Slum
By Dean Kirby
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
'It is all free fighting here. Even some of the windows do not open, so it is useless to cry for help. Dampness and misery, violence and wrong, have left their handwriting in perfectly legible characters on the walls.' - Manchester Guardian, 1870
Step into the Victorian underworld of Angel Meadow, the vilest and most dangerous slum of the Industrial Revolution. In the shadow of the world's first cotton mill, 30,000 souls trapped by poverty are fighting for survival as the British Empire is built upon their backs. Thieves and prostitutes keep company with rats in overcrowded lodging houses and deep cellars on the banks of a black river, the Irk. Gangs of 'scuttlers' stalk the streets in pointed, brass-tipped clogs. Those who evade their clutches are hunted down by cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis. Lawless drinking dens and a cold slab in the dead house provide the only relief from a filthy and frightening world.
In this shocking book, journalist Dean Kirby takes readers on a hair-raising journey through the gin palaces, alleyways and underground vaults of this nineteenth century Manchester slum considered so diabolical it was re-christened 'hell upon earth' by Friedrich Engels.
ENTER ANGEL MEADOW IF YOU DARE...
'Dean Kirby has Angel Meadow in his blood' - Joseph O'Neill
Step into the Victorian underworld of Angel Meadow, the vilest and most dangerous slum of the Industrial Revolution. In the shadow of the world's first cotton mill, 30,000 souls trapped by poverty are fighting for survival as the British Empire is built upon their backs. Thieves and prostitutes keep company with rats in overcrowded lodging houses and deep cellars on the banks of a black river, the Irk. Gangs of 'scuttlers' stalk the streets in pointed, brass-tipped clogs. Those who evade their clutches are hunted down by cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis. Lawless drinking dens and a cold slab in the dead house provide the only relief from a filthy and frightening world.
In this shocking book, journalist Dean Kirby takes readers on a hair-raising journey through the gin palaces, alleyways and underground vaults of this nineteenth century Manchester slum considered so diabolical it was re-christened 'hell upon earth' by Friedrich Engels.
ENTER ANGEL MEADOW IF YOU DARE...
'Dean Kirby has Angel Meadow in his blood' - Joseph O'Neill
Unavailable
Related to Angel Meadow
Related ebooks
Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain's Most Savage Slum Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hidden Lives of Jack the Ripper's Victims Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Arthur Machen - A Short Story Collection: 'They were talking about old days and old ways'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret World of the Victorian Lodging House Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Magic Pen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Killing Frost Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Murder at No. 4 Euston Square: The Mystery of the Lady in the Cellar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Lancashire Childhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Final Tales Of Sherlock Holmes - Volume 4: The Kew Gardens Gnomes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCity of Fiends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCorbin Manor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFree Radical: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Funny Little Games Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrim Almanac of Manchester Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHouse of Shadows Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Meg Tyson: Screen Lass Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHaunted Maidstone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Knackerman: A Tale of the Whitechapel Ripper Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Worst Street in London Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Final Tales Of Sherlock Holmes - Volume Three: The Case of the Shepherds Bushman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales from a Famished Land: Including The White Island—A Story of the Dardanelles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUPROAR!: Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDandelions & Snails: A Journey From the Dark Days of War, to the Golden Fields of Peace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChildren of Coal: A Migrant's Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell of Canna Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOctavio's Journey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA CONSEQUENCE OF CAKE: A morsel of sweetness is all that stands between life and death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Untidy Life: What I Saw at the Media Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Duty & Sacrifice: One Hundred years of a Victorian Nottinghamshire family Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBloody London: 20 Walks in London, Taking in its Gruesome and Horrific History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Social Science For You
Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Questions for Couples: 469 Thought-Provoking Conversation Starters for Connecting, Building Trust, and Rekindling Intimacy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Human Condition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women Don't Owe You Pretty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Close Encounters with Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Angel Meadow
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Angel Meadow – The Slum of SlumsAngel Meadow the name alone can conjure up images of a beautiful place, and by all accounts it once was, that was until the Industrial Revolution arrived in Manchester. By the end of the nineteenth century we soon learn that Angel Meadow had lost its beauty and had become the slum that ended all slums. This was a dark, dank, horrible place to be, from the tightly packed slums to the rough ale houses this was not a place to live or the living.Angel Meadow came back to the fore in Manchester recently as the Co-operative Group was building its brand new headquarters on what was Angel Meadow. For nearly fifty years the people had slowly forgotten about Angel Meadow, its history and the horrors that it used to behold. In fact, while they were clearing the site ready for construction a murder victim’s body was found from over forty years before. Like many slums that surrounded Manchester in the early twentieth century was pulled down, cleared and forgotten to the anals of history.Dean Kirby, a former Manchester Evening News Journalist, was attracted to Angel Meadow not just by the story but because it has a place in his own family history. When he discovered that one of his Victorian forebears, William Kirby, left his life as a farm labourer from County Mayo, who had survived the Great Famine, to fight to survive in Manchester.Kirby has researched Angel Meadow through the numerous archives that are held by various institutions across Manchester. He was able to discover William Kirby had loved on Charter Street, one of the main thoroughfares. His ancestors home was discovered back in 2012 and he was able to actually visit the site, see that his house was 10ft square house and that the walls were only half a brick thick, so you would be able to hear the neighbours. To where the privy (toilets) served over 100 residents just does not bare thinking about.Dean Kirby goes on to tell the story of Angel Meadow through the archives and those that lived there, he does not paint a romantic picture of the place, but a very honest picture. All I can say is I am glad I did not live there at that time, especially as there a cholera epidemic there amongst the large Irish population. This being a population that had survived famine to die in a slum in Manchester.Some people talk about the beauty of Victoria Station and the lost Exchange Station, what they forget is that the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway built a viaduct, straight through the slum in 1844. As he notes that those that lived in the lowest Streets of the Meadow were now in a permanent shadow with the addition of the soot of smoke deposits from the trains marking their homes. Kirby also makes the pertinent observation that the safest place to view Angel Meadow was from the trains on the viaduct.Dean Kirby has written and researched one of the best books on Manchester’s social history in years, what makes this so good is that it is readable, uses some excellent illustrations of the people in written form. This a book that those who want to know more about those that worked and somehow survived the Industrial Revolution in Manchester. This is not a romantic vision of history but a stark and an honest account, that sees the place for what it was, the Slum of Slums.