The chaplain was formerly strangely elected by household suffrage, both men and women voting. The last election was in 1889, when a fierce contest was waged and continued for over a month in thoroughgoing electioneering style, ultimately thinning out the candidates to two in number, who went to the final poll, which lasted a day.
Roman Catholicism has a strong following in the city, and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, dedicated to St. Chad, a seventh–century Bishop of Lichfield, is a large and handsome though modern building. Erected from designs by A. W. Pugin in 1839–41 in the Decorated style, it forms one of the principal churches of Birmingham. In it are some fine modern stained glass; a sixteenth–century carved oak pulpit brought from Louvain; and the remains of its dedicatory saint, which are traditionally stated to have been removed from Lichfield Cathedral at the time of the Reformation, and more or less miraculously preserved, and ultimately brought here.
The new era of the town’s history, progress, and wealth began in 1875, when the late Joseph Chamberlain was elected Mayor.
It is impossible in so brief a sketch as is possible within the scope of the present volume to deal in detail with the many reforms, the growth and commercial expansion which the last forty years have brought about. Birmingham of to–day, with its magnificent Town Hall, Council House, Museum, and Art Gallery, containing some notable modern as well as older pictures, and a fine collection of the work of the pre–Raphaelite School; Free Library; Mason University College; Great Western Arcade; Midland Institute; Edward VI.’s Grammar School, the ancient foundation nowadays housed in a modern building by Sir Charles Barry, R.A., in the Tudor style; Bluecoat School, founded in 1727 for the education of orphans of both sexes; and many other important commercial, educational, and social institutions, and its fine parks, may be said to represent a modern city of unique convenience and considerable structural beauty.
Birmingham, too, has not been without generous benefactors, to whom it owes a debt not easily repaid. To all who know anything of the city’s history the names of the Rylands, Jaffray, Tangye, Feeny, and Colmore families will at once occur.
About modern Birmingham there is indeed a spaciousness and air of modernity which strikes the visitor almost from the first moment of his introduction to the town; and although essentially a trade centre, there certainly hangs about this city, which has owed in later years so much to the energy, wisdom, and enterprise of such men as John Thackray Bunce, Joseph Chamberlain, Josiah Mason, George Dawson, George Tangye, Samuel Timmins, and Philip Henry Muntz, a certain element of even romantic interest, which, however, is that attaching to modern industry rather than to survivals of ancient greatness.
Naturally so great an industrial centre as Birmingham played a great and even distinguished part in the Great War. Very early in the struggle the city became one of the most important munitions centres in the Kingdom. Situated in the heart of England, and far distant from the sea coast, it seemed peculiarly suited for the site of a great national arsenal, quite irrespective of the fact that for many years the manufacture of guns and other weapons of war had formed a part of its most prosperous industrial life.
Although Zeppelins in several of their wanderings over the face of England, intent upon inflicting injury upon this home of war–time industry, are reported to have hovered over Birmingham, no considerable material damage resulted.
Within a very short time of Mr. Lloyd George assuming the reins of Government and the responsibility for the supply of the vast quantities of munitions which were found necessary for an energetic and successful prosecution of the war to final victory, Birmingham became one immense area of feverish war activity. Factories which in times of peace were employed in the production of agricultural implements for use throughout the world; the making of “Birmingham” jewellery; the provision of “trade” articles for barter with the uncivilised tribes of Central Africa, New Guinea, the South Seas, and elsewhere were speedily adapted for the more sinister purposes of the great conflict in which almost the whole of the civilised world found itself gradually becoming more or less directly involved.