Union Provident Sick Society.—Founded 1802, enrolled in 1826 and certified in 1871, had then 3,519 members and a reserve fund of £8,269. At end of 1883 the reserve fund stood at £15,310 16s. 9d., there having been paid during the year £4,768 17s. 2d. for sick pay and funerals, besides 15s. dividend to each member.
There are 15,379 Friendly Societies or branches in the kingdom, numbering 4,593,175 members, and their funds amounted to (by last return) £12,148,602.
Friends (The Society of).—Quakerism was publicly professed here in 1654, George Fox visiting the town the following year and in 1657. The triends held their first "meetings" in Monmouth Street in 1659. The meeting-house in Bull Street was built in 1703, and was enlarged several times prior to 1856, when it was replaced by the present edifice which will seat about 800 persons. The re-opening took place January 25, 1857. The burial-ground in Monmouth Street, where the Arcade is now, was taken by the Great Western Railway Co. in 1851, the remains of over 300 departed Friends being removed to the yard of the meeting-house in Bull Street.
Froggery.—Before the New Street Railway Station was built, a fair slice of old Birmingham had to be cleared away, and fortunately it happened to be one of the unsavoury portions, including the spot known as "The Froggery." As there was a Duck Lane close by, the place most likely was originally so christened from its lowlying and watery position, the connection between ducks and frogs being self-apparent.
Frosts.—Writing on Jan. 27, 1881, the late Mr. Plant said that in 88 years there had been only four instances of great cold approaching comparison with the intense frost then ended; the first was in January, 1795; the next in December and January, 1813-14; then followed that of January, 1820. The fourth was in December and January, 1860-61; and, lastly, January, 1881. In 1795 the mean temperature of the twenty-one days ending January 31st was 24.27 degrees; in 1813-14, December 29th to January 18th, exclusively, 24.9 degrees; in 1820, January 1st to 21st, inclusively, 23.7 degrees; in 1860-61, December 20th to January 9th, inclusively, 24.5 degrees; and in 1881, January 7th to 27th, inclusively, 23.2 degrees. Thus the very coldest three weeks on record in this district, in 88 years, is January, 1881. With the exception of the long frost of 1813-4, which commenced on the 24th December and lasted three months, although so intense in their character, none of the above seasons were remarkable for protracted duration. The longest frosts recorded in the present century were as follows:—1813-14, December to March. 13 weeks; 1829-30, December, January, February, 10 weeks; 1838, January, February, 8 weeks; 1855, January, February, 7 weeks; 1878-79, December, January, February, 10 weeks.
Funny Notions.—The earliest existing statutes governing our Free Grammar of King Edward VI. bear the date of 1676. One of these rules forbids the assistant masters to marry.—In 1663 (temp. Charles II.) Sir Robert Holte, of Aston, received a commission from Lord Northampton, "Master of His Majesty's leash," to take and seize greyhounds, and certain other dogs, for the use of His Majesty!—The "Dancing Assembly," which was to meet on the 30th January, 1783, loyally postponed their light fantastic toeing, "in consequence of that being the anniversary of the martyrdom of Charles I."—In 1829, when the Act was passed appointing Commissioners for Duddeston and Nechells, power was given for erecting gasworks, provided they did not extend over more than one acre, and that no gas was sent into the adjoining parish of Birmingham.—A writer in Mechanics' Magazine for 1829, who signed his name as "A. Taydhill, Birmingham," suggested that floor carpets should be utilized as maps where with to teach children geography. The same individual proposed that the inhabitants of each street should join together to buy a long pole, or mast, with a rope and pulley, for use as a fireescape, and recommended them to convey their furniture in or out of the windows with it, as "good practice."—A patent was taken out by Eliezer Edwards, in 1853, for a bedstead fitted with a wheel and handle, that it might be used as a wheelbarrow.—Sergeant Bates, of America, invaded Birmingham, Nov. 21, 1872, carrying the "stars and stripes," as a test of our love for our Yankee cousins.
Funeral Reform.—An association for doing away with the expensive customs so long connected with the burying of the dead, was organised in 1875, and slowly, but surely, are accomplishing the task then entered upon. At present there are about 700 enrolled members, but very many more families now limit the trappings of woe to a more reasonable as well as economical exhibit of tailors' and milliners' black.
Furniture.—Judging from some old records appertaining to the history of a very ancient family, who, until the town swallowed it up, farmed a considerable portion of the district known as the Lozells, or Lowcells, as it was once called, even our well-to-do neighbours would appear to have been rather short of what we think necessary household furniture. As to chairs in bedrooms, there were often none; and if they had chimnies, only movable grates, formed of a few bars resting on "dogs." Window-curtains, drawers, carpets, and washing-stands, are not, according to our recollection, anywhere specified; and a warming-pan does not occur till 1604, and then was kept in the bed-room. Tongs appear as annexations of grates, without poker or shovel; and the family plate-chest was part of bed-room furniture. Stools were the substitutes for chairs in the principal sitting-room, in the proportion of even twenty of the former to two of the latter, which were evidently intended, par distinction, for the husband and wife.
Galton.—The family name of a once well-known firm of gun, sword, and bayonet makers, whose town-house was in Steelhouse Lane, opposite the Upper Priory. Their works were close by in Weaman Street, but the mill for grinding and polishing the barrels and blades was at Duddeston, near to Duddeston Hall, the Galton's country-house. It was this firm's manufactury that Lady Selbourne refers to in her "Diary," wherein she states that in 1765 she went to a Quaker's "to see the making of guns." The strange feature of members of the peace-loving Society of Friends being concerned in the manufacture of such death-dealing implements was so contrary to their profession, that in 1796, the Friends strongly remonstrated with the Galtons, leading to the retirement of the senior partner from the trade, and the expulsion of the junior from the body. The mansion in Steelhouse Lane was afterwards converted into a banking-house; then used for the purposes of the Polytechnic Institution; next, after a period of dreary emptiness, fitted up as the Children's Hospital, after the removal of which to Broad Street, the old house has reverted to its original use, as the private abode of Dr. Clay.
Gambetta.—The eminent French patriot was fined 2,000 francs for upholding the freedom of speech and the rights of the press, two things ever dear to Liberal Birmingham, and it was proposed to send him the money from here as a mark of esteem and sympathy. The Daily Post took the matter in hand, and, after appealing to its 40,000 readers every day for some weeks, forwarded (November 10, 1877) a draft for £80 17s. 6d.