The water supply is controlled by the corporation. The works at Longdendale, begun in 1848, were completed, with extensions in 1884, at a cost of £3,147,893. The area supplied by Manchester waterworks was about 85 square miles, inhabited by a million people. The increase of trade and population led to the obtaining of a further supply from Lake Thirlmere, at the foot of Helvellyn and 96 miles from Manchester. The watershed is about 11,000 acres. The daily consumption is over 38 million gallons. Manchester supplies in bulk to many local authorities in the district between Thirlmere and the city. The corporation have also established works for the supply of hydraulic and electric power.
The gas lighting of Manchester has been in the hands of the corporation for many years, as also the supply of electricity both for lighting and energy. When the works are complete the electricity committee will supply an area of 45 sq. m.
Sanitary Condition.—Dr John Tatham constructed a Manchester life-table based on the vital statistics of the decennium 1881-1890, from which it appeared that, while in England and Wales of 1000 men aged 25 nearly 800 survived to be 45 and of 1000 aged 45, 569 survived to be 65, in Manchester the survivors were only 732 and 414 respectively. The expectation of life, at 25, was, for England and Wales 36.12 years, and for Manchester 30.69 years. But the death-rate has since rapidly decreased; in 1891 it was 26.0 per thousand living; in 1901 it was 21.6; in 1906 it was 19.0; in 1907 it was 17.9. The deaths of infants under one year old amounted to 169 per 1000. The reports of the medical officer show that whilst the density of the population, the impurity of the atmosphere, and the pollution of the streams are difficult elements in the sanitary problem, great efforts have been made towards improving the health of the people. The birth-rate in 1907 was 28.4, but the population is augmented by immigration as well as by natural increase. The number of persons to the acre is 33.
Administration of Justice.—The city has a stipendiary magistrate who, in conjunction with lay magistrates, tries cases of summary jurisdiction in the police courts. There are also quarter sessions, presided over by a recorder. Separate sessions are held for the Salford hundred. Certain sittings of the Court of Chancery for the duchy of Lancaster are held in Manchester. In addition to the county court, there is an ancient civil court known as the Salford Hundred Court of Record. Assizes have been held since 1866.
Parliamentary Representation.—By the first Reform Bill Manchester received in 1832 two representatives. In 1868 this was increased to three, but each voter had only two votes. In 1885 the city was divided into six divisions, each returning one member. Owing to the extension of the city boundaries there are Manchester voters in the Stretford, Prestwich and Gorton parliamentary divisions.
History.—Very little is known with certainty of the early history of Manchester.[1] A Roman station of some importance existed at Castlefield, and a fragment of the wall still exists. Another, perhaps earlier, was at Hunt’s Bank. In the 18th century considerable evidences of Roman occupation were still visible; and from time to time, in the course of excavation (especially during the making of the Bridgewater Canal), Roman remains have been found. The coins were chiefly those of Vespasian, Antoninus Pius, Trajan, Hadrian, Nero, Domitian, Vitellius and Constantine. Investigations by the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society and the Classical Association have brought to light many relics, chiefly of pottery. The period succeeding the Roman occupation is for some time legendary. As late as the 17th century there was a tradition that Tarquin, an enemy of King Arthur, kept the castle of Manchester, and was killed by Lancelot of the Lake. The references to the town in authentic annals are very few. It was probably one of the scenes of the missionary preaching of Paulinus; and it is said (though by a chronicler of comparatively late date) to have been the residence of Ina, king of Wessex, and his queen Ethelberga, after he had defeated Ivor, somewhere about the year 689. Almost the only point of certainty in its history before the Conquest is that it suffered greatly from the devastations of the Danes, and that in 923 Edward, who was then at Thelwall, near Warrington, sent a number of his Mercian troops to repair and garrison it. In Domesday Book Manchester, Salford, Rochdale and Radcliffe are the only places named in south-east Lancashire, a district now covered by populous towns. Large portions of it were then forest, wood and waste lands. Twenty-one thanes held the manor or hundred of Salford among them. The church of St Mary and the church of St Michael in Manchester are both named in Domesday, and some difficulty has arisen as to their proper identification. Some antiquaries consider that the passage refers to the town only, whilst others think it relates to the parish, and that, while St Mary’s is the present cathedral, St Michael’s would be the present parish church of Ashton-under-Lyne. In 1301 Manchester received a charter of manorial liberties and privileges from its baron, Thomas Gresley, a descendant of one to whom the manor had been given by Roger of Poictou, who was created by William the Conqueror lord of all the land between the rivers Mersey and Ribble. The Gresleys were succeeded by the De la Warrs, the last of whom was educated for the priesthood, and became rector of the town. To avoid the evil of a non-resident clergy, he made considerable additions to the lands of the church, in order that it might be endowed as a collegiate institution. A college of clergy was thus formed, whose fellows were bound to perform the necessary services at the parish church, and to whom the old baronial hall was granted as a place of residence. The manorial rights passed to Sir Reginald West, a descendant of Joan Gresley, who was summoned to parliament as Baron de la Warre. The West family, in 1579, sold the manorial rights for £3000 to John Lacy, who, in 1596, resold them to Sir Nicholas Mosley, whose descendants enjoyed the emoluments derived from them until 1845, when they were purchased by the municipality of Manchester for a sum of £200,000. The lord of the manor had the right to tax and toll all articles brought for sale into the market of the town. But, though the inhabitants were thus to a large extent taxed for the benefit of one individual, they had a far greater amount of local self-government than might have been supposed, and the court leet, which was then the governing body of the town, had, though in a rudimentary form, nearly all the powers now possessed by municipal corporations. This court had not only control over the watching and warding of the town, the regulation of the water supply, and the cleaning of the streets, but also had power, which at times was used freely, of interfering with the private liberty of their fellow-citizens. Thus, no single woman was allowed to be a householder; no person might employ other than the town musicians; and the amount to be spent at wedding feasts and other festivities was carefully settled. Under the protection of the barons the town appears to have steadily increased in prosperity, and it early became an important seat of the textile manufactures. Fulling mills were at work in the district in the 13th century; and documentary evidence exists to show that woollen manufactures were carried on in Ancoats at that period. In 1538 Leland described it as “the fairest, best-builded, quickest, and most populous town in Lancashire.” The right of sanctuary granted to the town in 1540 was found so detrimental to its industrial pursuits that after very brief experience the privilege was taken away. The college of Manchester was dissolved in 1547, but was refounded in Mary’s reign. Under her successor the town became the headquarters of the commission for establishing the Reformed religion. In 1641 we hear of the Manchester people purchasing linen yarn from the Irish, weaving it, and returning it for sale in a finished state. They also brought cotton wool from Smyrna to work into fustians and dimities. An act passed in the reign of Edward VI. regulates the length of cottons called Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire cottons. These, notwithstanding their name, were probably all woollen textures. It is thought that some of the Flemish weavers who were introduced into England by Queen Philippa of Hainault were settled at Manchester; and Fuller has given an exceedingly quaint and picturesque description of the manner in which these artisans were welcomed by the inhabitants of the country they were about to enrich with a new industry. The Flemish weavers were in all probability reinforced by religious refugees from the Low Countries.
In the civil wars, the town was besieged by the Royalists under Lord Strange (better known as earl of Derby—“the great Stanley”); but was successfully defended by the inhabitants under the command of a German soldier of fortune, Colonel Rosworm, who complained with some bitterness of their ingratitude to him. An earlier affray between the Puritans and some of Lord Strange’s followers is said to have occasioned the shedding of the first blood in the struggle between the king and parliament. The year 1694 witnessed the trial of those concerned in the so-called Lancashire plot, which ended in the triumphant acquittal of the supposed Jacobites. That the district really contained many ardent sympathizers with the Stuarts was, however, shown in the rising of 1715, when the clergy ranged themselves to a large extent on the side of the Pretender; and was still more clearly shown in the rebellion of 1745, when the town was occupied by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and a regiment, known afterwards as the Manchester regiment, was formed and placed under the command of Colonel Francis Townley. In the fatal retreat of the Stuart troops the Manchester contingent was left to garrison Carlisle, and surrendered to the duke of Cumberland. The officers were taken to London, where they were tried for high treason and beheaded on Kennington Common.
The variations of political action in Manchester had been exceedingly marked. In the 16th century, although it produced both Roman Catholic and Protestant martyrs, it was earnestly in favour of the Reformed faith, and in the succeeding century it became indeed a stronghold of Puritanism. Yet the successors of the Roundheads who defeated the army of Charles I. were Jacobite in their sympathies, and by the latter half of the 18th century had become imbued with the aggressive form of patriotic sentiment known as anti-Jacobinism, which showed itself chiefly in dislike of reform and reformers of every description. A change, however, was imminent. The distress caused by war and taxation, towards the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, led to bitter discontent, and the anomalies existing in the parliamentary system of representation afforded only too fair an object of attack. While single individuals in some portions of the country had the power to return members of parliament for their pocket boroughs, great towns like Manchester were entirely without representation. The popular discontent was met by a policy of repression, culminating in the affair of Peterloo, which may be regarded as the starting-point of the modern reform agitation. This was in 1819, when an immense crowd assembled on St Peter’s Fields (now covered by the Free Trade Hall and warehouses) to petition parliament for a redress of their grievances. The Riot Act was read by a clerical magistrate; but in such a manner as to be quite unheard by the mass of the people; and drunken yeomanry cavalry were then turned loose upon the unresisting mass of spectators. The yeomanry appear to have used their sabres freely; several people killed and many more injured; and, although the magistrates received the thanks of the prince regent and the ministry, their conduct excited the deepest indignation throughout the entire country. Those who had organized the meeting, including “Orator” Hunt with Samuel Bamford and other working men, were imprisoned.
Naturally enough, the Manchester politicians took an important part in the Reform agitation; when the Act of 1832 was passed, the town sent as its representatives the Right Hon. C. P. Thomson, vice-president of the board of trade, and Mark Philips. With one notable exception, this was the first time that Manchester had been represented in parliament since its barons had seats in the House of Peers in the earlier centuries. In 1654 Charles Worsley and R. Radcliffe were nominated to represent it in Cromwell’s parliament. Worsley was a man of great ability, and has a place in history as the man who carried out the injunction of the Protector to “remove that bauble,” the mace of the House of Commons. The agitation for the repeal of the corn laws had its headquarters at Manchester, and the success which attended it, not less than the active interest taken by its inhabitants in public questions, has made the city the home of other projects of reform. The “United Kingdom Alliance for the Suppression of the Liquor Traffic” was founded there in 1853, and during the continuance of the American War the adherents both of the North and of the South deemed it desirable to have organizations in Manchester to influence public opinion in favour of their respective causes. A charter of incorporation was granted in 1838; a bishop was appointed in 1847; and the town became a city in 1853. The Lancashire cotton famine, caused by the Civil War in America, produced much distress in the Manchester district, and led to a national movement to help the starving operatives. The more recent annals of Manchester are a record of industrial and commercial developments, and of increase in educational opportunities of all kinds. Politically Manchester was Liberal, of one or other shade, under the first Reform Act; a Conservative member was first elected in 1868, and in 1874 two. Under household suffrage in 1885 that party secured five out of six members; in 1886 and 1892, three out of six. In 1895 and 1900 five Unionists were elected, but in 1906 six Liberals were returned, one of whom (Mr Winston Churchill) was defeated at a by-election in 1908. In 1910 three Liberals, two Labour members and one Conservative were elected.