What the Judge Saw: Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester by One Who Has Done It

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

home in the kindergarten race, for which he had been laboriously trained by his elder sisters on a neighbouring lawn.

Of course, it was not to be expected that this sylvan retreat could remain for ever. The builder was bound to steal the fields from the potatoes. The North-Western Railway had obtained powers to make its way across to Parr’s Wood, and bought out the cuckoos that they might not jeer at the engine-drivers and madden them to striking pitch with their call of the summer. But you cannot expect a cuckoo to keep faith, and only last year I heard them again from my bedroom window—​and if you will be hospitable to birds, as Manchester folk can be, and make a feast of fat and cocoanut in the garden, I know no place where birds are more ready to return your call without ceremony. We had many generations of thrushes born in our little garden, and starlings, blackbirds, robins and tomtits would build with us on occasion, and would drop in promiscuous-like all through the day.

Some who know the place of which I write, may think that there is a note of exaggeration in my description. I am ready to agree that at no time was the hinterland of Withington a mere fairyland of milk and honey and green pastures and still waters, but it had certain attributes of homeliness and peace and quiet that make me remember it with the gratitude due from one whose lines had fallen in pleasant places.

It was this retreat of hard-working citizens that

the Corporation sought to destroy without warning or consultation, and if it had not been that I found practically every resident of my own way of thinking and spoiling for a fight, I think they would have successfully ruined the district.

It was a summer morning, and a Sunday at that, when we woke up to the fact that the motor ’buses were careering along our narrow roads back and front of the house. They came hurtling over the setts at the rate of about six an hour, and as you heard them chirruping in the distance and screaming near to you and experienced the trail of stench they left along their way, and saw the pavements and side-walks splattered with mud, it was clear that if they had come to stay, those of us who could afford would have to go.

But why had the motor ’bus invaded us in this way? The answer was easily given. A company, the chairman of which was a powerful town councillor, had obtained licences to run ’buses along these side roads from Levenshulme to Stretford. They were to run by these back ways because the Council had trams on the main route, and did not want the company or competition of the ’buses. No doubt the end of August had been chosen to start the ’buses, because in a residential district like ours everyone was away for the holidays. I was just going off to Grasmere, and telling my solicitor to threaten the company with an action for nuisance, I fired a letter into the papers and went my way. To my delight I found that the whole neighbourhood

was up in arms, and although I grudged the holiday time given up to it, I went into the fight with considerable gusto. There was the usual newspaper correspondence. We dilated on the amenities of Withington and pointed out that the only traffic really catered for was the Sunday bonâ-fide traveller, and asked why one lucky councillor should have these licences given him when the rest of such traffic was run by the Corporation for the ratepayers. The reply was made that we were a lot of selfish people—“carriage people” we were generally called—​who lived luxurious days in glorious country, which we wished to keep to ourselves, and that this company of motor ’buses had been mainly formed in the interest of the working man, who desired to ruralise among us.

In the midst of all this clash of words we organised a petition, and the other side did the same. It was clear that we had the residents, who were nearly all of them workers in the city of various grades, entirely with us. We had a very strong case on these two points alone. First, that the type of ’bus used by the company was undesirable, and secondly, that the roads over which it ran were unsuitable. The other side had a strong case, in that temporary licences were already granted, and the Corporation were not likely to go back on a matter they had just decided. Further, the eminent councillor at the head of the company had many supporters in the Town Council, including the Lord Mayor, and Withington was a district recently added to

Manchester, and not much in touch as yet with Council affairs. Before we carried our petition to the Council, in clubs and places where they wager, the betting was three or four to one against us, but I am conceited enough to chronicle that after the hearing it dropped to evens.