The wealthier classes have, from various causes, deteriorated within the last sixty years, while the workmen have improved within that time. Men who have realized fortunes no longer settle down in the neighbourhood of their labours. They depart as far as possible from the smoke of manufactures and the bickerings of middle class cliques, purchase estates, send their sons to the universities, and in a few years subside into country squires. Professional men, as soon as they have displayed eminent talent, emigrate to London; and the habit, now so prevalent in all manufacturing towns, of living in the suburbs, has sapped the prosperity of those literary and philosophical institutions and private reunions, which so much contributed to raise the tone of society during the latter half of the last century. The meetings of an old Literary and Philosophical Society have been discontinued, and the News Room was lately on the brink of dissolution. Instead of meeting to discuss points of art, science, and literature, the middle classes read the Times and Punch, and consult the Penny Cyclopædia. The literary and scientific character which Birmingham acquired in the days when Boulton, Watt, Priestly, Darwin, Murdoch, and their friends, met at the Birmingham Lunarian Society, to discuss, to experiment, and to announce important discoveries, have passed away never to return; and we are not likely to see again any provincial town occupying so distinguished a position in the scientific world. The only sign of Birmingham’s ancient literary pre-eminence is to be found in several weekly newspapers, conducted with talent and spirit far beyond average. It is an amusing fact, that the sect to which Priestly belonged still trade on his reputation, and claim an intellectual superiority over the members of other persuasions, which they may once have possessed, but which has long been levelled up by the universal march of education. The richer members publish little dull books in bad English on abstruse subjects, and, like Consuelo’s prebendary, have quartos in preparation which never reach the press.
In fact, the suburban system of residence and the excessive pretension of superiority by the “pots over the kettles” have almost destroyed society in Birmingham, although people meet occasionally at formal expensive parties, and are drawn together by sympathy in religion and politics.
Nothing would induce an educated gentleman to live in Birmingham except to make a living, yet there are residing there, seldom seen out of their factories, men of the highest scientific and no mean literary attainments.
There are a number of manufactories, which, in addition to their commercial importance, present either in finished articles, or in the process of manufacture, much that will interest an intelligent traveller.
GLASS.—Messrs. F. & C. Oslers, of Broad Street, have attained a very high reputation for their cut and ornamental, as well as the ordinary, articles of flint glass. The have been especially successful in producing fine effects from prismatic arrangements. Their gigantic chandeliers of great size, made for Ibrahim Pacha, and the Nepalese Prince, were the steps by which they achieved the lofty crystal fountain, of an entirely original design, which forms one of the most novel and effective ornaments of the Crystal Palace. The manufactory as well as the show-room is open to the inspection of respectable strangers.
Messrs. Rice and Harris are also extensive manufacturers of cut and coloured glass; and Messrs. Bacchus and Sons have been very successful in their imitations of Bohemian glass, both in form and colour. Messrs. Chance have acquired a world-wide reputation by supplying the largest quantity of crown glass in the shortest space of time for Paxton’s Palace. These works, in which plate and every kind of crown glass is made, are situated at West Bromwich. The proprietors have benevolently and wisely made arrangements for the education of their workmen and their families, which are worthy of imitation in all those great factories where the plan, which originated in Lancashire, has not been already adopted. A letter of introduction will be required in order to view Messrs. Chance’s establishment, of which we shall say more when noting the social state of the Birmingham operatives.
PAPIER MACHÉ.—Messrs. Jennens and Bettridge’s works are so well known that it is only necessary to refer to them for the purpose of saying that in their show-rooms some new application of the art which they have carried to such perfection is constantly to be found. Pianos, cradles, arm-chairs, indeed complete drawing-room suites, cornices, door-plates, and a variety of ornaments are displayed, in addition to the tea-trays and tea-chests in which the art of japanning first became known to us.
Although Messrs. Jennens and Co. have the largest establishment in Birmingham, there are several others who produce capital work; among them may be named Mr. Thomas Lane and Messrs. M’Callum and Hodgson, who both exhibited specimens of great merit at the last Birmingham Exhibition of manufactures.
But metals afford the great staple of employment in Birmingham, and we shall avail ourselves, in describing the leading trades, and touching on the social position of the workmen, of the admirable letters on Labour and the Poor in Birmingham which appeared in the Morning Chronicle in the course of 1850. [{81}]
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