Jonathan Schofield takes a wry look at some stories around the region
What’s in a date Mrs Pankhurst?
Tuesday 14 July is like all the others in a calendar year, it’s a commemoration day. In this case it’s Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst’s turn because this was the date of her birthday.
Except it wasn’t.
Pankhurst was a tough, fascinating, and remarkable woman and I love conducting tours featuring her, but she had her quirks. Despite the evidence of her birth certificate and numerous biographies which give her birth date as 15 July she stated she’d been born a day earlier on the 14th. This suited her self-image of course. What better for this campaigning Mancunian to have arrived on the planet on Bastille Day? After all the storming of the Bastille prison and fortress in Paris in 1789 is seen as the trigger that led to the French Revolution and subsequently the first French Republic. As we all know it’s celebrated massively in France.
Pankhurst said in 1908: “I have always thought the fact I was born on that day had some kind of influence over my life.”
The fact that whoever organises Emmeline Pankhurst Day uses the birthday she gave herself rather than that on her birth certificate is curious. Just because you want something false to be true doesn’t ever make it true. This seems a very contemporary retreat from the objective to the subjective.
I’m nit-picking here because when all’s said and done this extraordinary woman is worth commemorating. Meanwhile the Pankhurst Centre in Pankhurst’s former home where the Women’s Social and Political Union (the Suffragettes) was formed is choosing a different celebration date altogether, Sunday 12 July. A weekend day, that makes sense. Here’s the link if you want to attend.
Bee day not bidet
Awareness days always strike me as utterly pointless. And pathetic. There’s hundreds every day of the 365. I did laugh at this one. Manchester City council was making its staff last week aware of Don’t Step on a Bee Day. That was on 10 July. I looked it up and this is an actual ‘day’: click here. Who the hell steps on a bee anyway? Sounds potentially hazardous for both parties. Of course Manchester City Council tied their entreaty to the city symbol of the worker bee. The Manchester Town Hall mosaic bee is shown below, it’s on the floor so you can stand on this one. I can’t help reading this awareness day as Don’t Step on a Bidet, which could be equally hazardous.
The Manchester Town Hall mosaic bee is below. I keep reading this as Don’t Step on a Bidet, which could be equally hazardous.
The First Street People
All is vanity King Soloman said. Still, it’s good to see one’s words decorating the street.
These are panels at First Street, the development centred on HOME. They are mini biographies edited from my research of the people who are commemorated in the streets and squares here. If you want the full copy, then click on this link.
A while ago now Ask Real Estate Estate decided to name several streets and a square after people old and new associated with Manchester. The six people are Tony Wilson (image top of the page), Jack Rosenthal, Isabella Banks, Annie Horniman, James Grigor and Sir Howard Bernstein. In other words the music man and broadcaster, the playwright, the novelist, the woman who helped invent Rep theatre, the unsung hero of the recent Manchester renaissance and one of the key visionaries of this modern city.
Well done to Dave Sedgwick of Studio DBD for the excellent graphics.
Cooke found with hangover
A good friend of mine was puzzling over the date of a picture from the early nineteenth century. It showed a vast Manchester mill on Oxford Road, a real dark Satanic mill from that first phase of totally utilitarian factory construction. The mill was part of the Oxford Road Twist Company and owned by the Cooke family. The church in the background is the now demolished St Peter’s Church the site of which is marked by a cross in St Peter’s Square. Turns out the date of the image was from 1829 and appeared in Lancashire Illustrated. The artist was John Harwood.
Rabbit holes and then some. There’s always a cross-reference somewhere. When I do my Engels and Marx in Manchester tours I quote a letter from Engels to Marx in 1857 which mentions a family and a mill. I’ve never had time to accurately locate the mill. Looking into the background of this picture sorted it.
Engels, as usual, writes this with his usual spiky wit: ‘Today, I heard that the Cookes, owners of a colossal factory on Oxford Road, have sold their hunters, foxhounds, greyhounds, etc, that they’ve sacked their servants, left the palace and put up a ‘To Let’ sign. They’re not yet kaput, but no doubt they soon will be. Another fortnight and the ball will be in full swing. Among the Philistines here, the crisis has had a big effect on drinking habits. No one can bear being alone at home with the family and their worries. The clubs have come to life again, and the consumption of alcohol has risen steeply. The deeper they sink, the more forcefully they attempt to cheer themselves up. Next morning, they’re then prime examples of a moral and physical hangover.’
That last line is fabulously spiteful, although perhaps a bit rich from the author of The Communist Manifesto working as a capitalist in Manchester and a man who loved a drink.
Your Place. Revealed. Want to know more about your property or area?
Shameless plug coming up. Pioneering architect Ric Frankland and I are now offering a service which involves research of a property or area. This will take a deep dive into the maps and the images associated with that property or area. More than that it will dig out the gossip, in other words the human stories behind the life of a site or property. This project is all about colour and context. This is our website and here are some examples of previous projects including Mayfield and Mulligans.
Mayfield and The Poulton
One of my favourite stories from the Mayfield research revolves around the crazy George Poulton.
In 1857 the long demolished baths at MAYFIELD MANCHESTER LIMITED, close to present day Piccadilly Station opened. There’s a picture below.
Early in its history Mayfield Baths was visited by the premier ‘natationist’ of his day. This means an advocate of swimming and the man was the remarkable Professor George Poulton. He first appears on 7 July, 1859 judging a competition after a demonstration of his own talents. Later that year Mayfield Baths gave him a gold watch for his inspirational efforts.
Anyway, back to July 1859, when, although suffering somewhat from a cold, ‘he went through his performance with his usual skill and concluded to the seeming great delight of the numerous spectators, by eating a sponge cake, drinking a bottle of milk and smoking a pipe, whilst totally immersed in water.’ Seven ‘young gentlemen’ then competed to swim 378ft, or six lengths. A silver medal was awarded.
In subsequent visits there is more colour to the descriptions in the reports. Poulton would also ‘give some fine specimens of scientific swimming and floating, illustrating a dead man, ‘The Crucifix’, ‘The Dying Gladiator’, turned eight summersaults in the water without touching the bottom. He drank a bottle of milk, which he did by holding the bottle in his mouth, and with arms extended immersed himself about six inches below the surface and rose after swallowing the contents. He then smoked a pipe while under the water, the bowl only remaining a little above. He was of such an amphibious nature that the water was as much his element as terra firma.’
Poulton subsequently ran classes at the baths and as late as 1883, ‘Poulton and some pupils, male and female, gave an exhibition in the ladies’ swimming bath, and in July he swam twenty-one yards on his back, in one stroke, starting from the shallow end’.
By this time, although still a swimming teacher, he was also running a pub on Medlock Street in Hulme called the Griffin Inn. Aside from regular duties at Mayfield Baths, where in one letter he defends the bath water from being described as ‘murky’ and the attendants from not being able to swim, he runs swimming events all over the country, both indoor and outdoor. In 1864 he was seriously injured in a train crash during a Birmingham excursion. He also ran shooting and fishing competitions. The remarkable man died at 1898.
Fittingly one of the new commercial developments at Mayfield will be called The Poulton.
One off tour: Piccadilly Gardens, 5pm, 29 July 2026
Yeah, yeah, it’s had a lot of stick but with changes round the corner this part of the city centre has a ridiculously rich story to tell.
Presently, there is a consultation out to make it a far better and more amenable space from designs by Planit. Besides the grand designs there are also plans to increase policing and maintenance. This tour takes in some of the best places overground, and indeed underground, in and around Piccadilly Gardens. There is so much to talk about in this area, which has had more dreams and schemes proposed for it than anywhere else in the North West of England.
The tour will be supplemented by images of the many proposals to transform Piccadilly Gardens. Hospitals on stilts, cathedrals (see image below), art galleries, you name it, all have been drawn up for what is the most misunderstood and controversial public space in the United Kingdom. The people associated with the area are extraordinary. The statues and their significance will be explained. This is going to be real voyage of discovery through and around Piccadilly, Manchester.
Book here through the Paypal link. I’m offering this midweek tour at just £10, half price in other words.
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