63. John after the Mayoralty: sewage & fires

 

Manchester Town Hall council chamber in 1877

Sewerage for the people of Manchester was the responsibility of the City Corporation and thirteen other authorities covering areas around the city.  A major sewerage scheme was essential but it had proved impossible to carry on with all the authorities working together, so the Corporation had decided to go it alone.  It would build two deep level sewers which would intercept the existing sewers before they discharged sewage into the rivers, and it would build a treatment works at Davyhulme where the first sewer met the Ship Canal.  The treated effluent would then be available to raise the height of water in the Canal.   To do this, it would apply for powers to borrow £490,000.

This plan was vehemently contested – it was too expensive, the proximity of sewage works would ruin people's homes and the property prices – and feelings ran high.  John and fellow Congregationalist Alderman Joseph Thompson (1833-1909) were the promoters of the scheme in the Council and they came in for some vicious attacks.  We can see this in these excerpts from the Manchester Courier of 5 October 1888 reporting the words of the lawyer who represented the Council before the Local Government Board inquiry into the application

What earthly motive had anybody connected with the Corporation to stake their character and honour to win a victory in the matter at all?  What did they gain by it?

John Hopkinson and Joseph Thompson had 

given time and trouble to the scheme, and they had been assisted by the surveyor, Mr Allison.  What earthly interest, save the public good, had those three gentlemen to serve? … The scheme was for the interests of Manchester … It was not an attempt which brought them honour or fame … they had been attacked as if they were pickpockets.  The inspector even had been threatened with all sorts of pains and penalties if he dared to recommend this scheme … It was said the sewers were too large.  Would they have them lessened?  Was it not better to consider all contingencies, and prepare for hundreds of years to come?  The population might increase to a very large extent, and as sewers went under streets and houses it was very desirable that they should be built to last practically for all time …

Meanwhile John was still deep at work on the Manchester Fire Brigade.  On Thursday 17 June 1886, the Manchester Courier reported that on Tuesday evening rumours had spread that the Town Hall was on fire.  Hundreds of people rushed to see the sight, but it was only two steam fire engines undergoing experiments.  They had come from Messrs Merryweather, the celebrated fire engine makers, and the new machine was being tested against the old one while Alderman Hopkinson and hundreds of spectators watched.

And progress on the fire engines was very satisfying.  On 10 October 1891 the Courier reported the latest testing, carried out in front of the Town Hall

Merryweather fire engine of 1896 [H. Zell]

The two new steam fire engines which have just been supplied to the Manchester Fire Brigade were tested on Thursday in Albert-square, in the presence of a number of members of the City Council and a large gathering of the public.  The engines have been built for the Corporation by Messrs Merryweather and Sons, of London, and are very light in proportion to their power, and are specially suited for the work of protecting the numerous mills in the hilly portions of the Manchester Fire Brigade area.  

At a works test, before Superintendent Tozer, each engine raised steam from cold water to 100lb pressure in less than nine minutes (the boilers having a full amount of water at the start and not being filled up as the pressure rose), and single jets were thrown with enormous force 235ft horizontally.  Each engine then threw two jets 200ft., and afterwards four jets were projected 150ft simultaneously.  The machines have all the latest improvements, having been specially built under the supervision of Mr Alderman Hopkinson, C.E. (chairman of the Fire Brigade Committee), Mr Malcolm Wood (Chief Constable), and Mr Tozer (chief of the Fire Brigade).  

Manchester now possesses five 'Greenwich' steamers of a combined pumping capacity equal to 14 of the London Fire Brigade steamers.  The new machines are handsome in appearance, the hose boxes being painted vermilion, fine-lined and varnished with 'Manchester Fire Brigade' in gold and colours written on each side, while the machinery, which is of brass, copper, steel, and gun metal, is highly-polished.  A special box is provided on each engine for a 'Tozer' handpump, and hose and accessories are carried, as well as the driver, engineer, and firemen.  The pumps are guaranteed to deliver 450 gallons per minute; but at the trial each engine delivered over 500 gallons, thus showing that the makers have amply fulfilled their contract.

Photograph of the council chamber is from https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/photos/item/MTH01/01/007

62. "I feel ready to do or enjoy everything that comes to me here": after the Mayoralty

After leaving office John remained as active as ever in civic affairs.  

In the middle of March 1884 he went again to Parliament as a witness for Manchester's case for the Ship Canal, speaking before the House of Lords Committee.  There he gave, quite unwittingly, a good deal of amusement to everyone.  

Punch's view on 7 October 1882:  Manchester-sur-Mer
Manchester is dipping her toes in the canal
while the rivers Irwell, Irk, Medlock and Cornbrook play around her

Sir Bosdin Leech, cotton merchant and the financial director of the Ship Canal, describes the moment in his History of the Manchester Ship Canal. [1]

John was explaining his idea of a main sewer built along the bank of the Ship Canal to take Manchester's sewage out to tidal waters. 

He was telling the Committee the figure he had been given for the number of WCs involved, said that "Eleven thousand was the number of water closets put into his mouth."  

The amusement was, wrote Sir Bosdin, "accentuated by the witness being unconscious of having said anything out of the way."  

Manchester finally succeeded in 1885 against Liverpool's fierce opposition.  Queen Victoria came to open the Ship Canal on 21 May 1894 amid great excitement. [2] 

John was there, riding in the procession in a carriage with Sir Bosdin.  They were nearly in an accident – "one of the horses kicked and got its foot entangled in the front of the carriage, which had to be abandoned" and they had to get out and walk from Platford's Hotel in Stretford Road to the docks, "dodging amongst the crowd as best they could, and arriving only just in time for the ceremony" [3].  Eventually, the Port of Manchester was able to live up to John's hopes and become Britain's third busiest port.

It wasn't only the work in civic improvements that John found fulfilling.  On 17 November 1884 he wrote to Alice

Yesterday and today I have had long conversations with people in great distress or difficulty – one a civil engineer, the other a lady.  The telling of their tales of trouble seemed a marvellous relief to both.  And I was able to send both away in better spirits with very little expenditure beyond time and feeling. The first was, I believe, at the far end of desperation, quite a stranger.  Why he should come to me I don't know.

The same quality of humility and surprise in a talent he had found unexpectedly in himself can be seen too in this comment about his work in connection with the Rusholme Road Chapel.  He was asked by a grandmother to get her grandson admitted to Nicholls Hospital, the boys' refuge in Ardwick (the buildings are now part of Manchester City College)

Today I have a Grandmother from Rusholme Road wanting to get her grandson to Nichols Hosp:  Father dead.  Mother wicked, gone away.  Found it easy to help her.  I am quite satisfied now that Providence was right in not letting me gratify my longing to live in the country.  It would have been every way a more selfish life, and perhaps on that account, in the long run, a less enjoyable one.  I begin to feel that gray hairs, business ways, and a bit of sympathy mixed together, do constitute a sort of talent which it would be criminal to leave unused.  And that being so, I feel ready to do or enjoy everything that comes to me here. [4]

It was in about 1888 that Ellen Ewing notes the appearance "in the Father's accounts of his work a certain slightly aggressive self-assertion, new to him and amusing unless due, as is possible, to declining health".

She quotes a letter he wrote to Alice on 20 October 1888

I could only write you a few lines in the interval of a strong debate in which Barton and myself were against Mr Smith.  I got into a bad temper and was very impatient.  He is the least lucid intellect I have ever met with in a professional man of experience.  To fix a thought or train is like driving a nail into a bag of wool.  However by patience this morning we got to understand each other [5]

I think this argument took place in a work matter and that Barton is a fellow engineer, referred to by John in a letter of 25 November 1884 with details of Mrs Barton's success with her hens [6].  But Ellen Ewing's next example from a letter to Alice in 1888 is definitely from John's rôle as an alderman

We have had a grand fight in Council today, of which I must give you full particulars tomorrow.  I roused myself up towards the end of the debate and got it hot and gave it hot to Mr Clay, to the satisfaction of my friends, some half of whom told me afterwards, that it was the best speech I had made for years.  Some tried hard to shut my mouth but I insisted on being heard and was supported strongly by the majority … I wish you had been in the seat of distinguished strangers.  If you had been at my coat tails I fear you would have exercised a sinister influence and cooled my temperature … Perhaps, after the excitement, I am rather upset internally now [7]

This is very probably connected to the long-running saga of a botched improvement scheme for the Victoria Hotel, in which the Improvement Committee lost control of both project and costs and was slammed by a report in 1886 by the Manchester Ratepayers' Association, which hinted darkly at corruption in the Council.  The Association was very hostile to the Council's habit of electing aldermen for life from among their own number, pointing out that aldermen tended to dominate the council's committees, and claiming that were far too cosy.  

The problem was that committees handling technically involved projects needed experienced and committed men to understand the practical background and to carry them through.  As a result Manchester allowed committees to nominate their own members for re-election each year, so membership of committees often changed very little, and members became fiercely loyal and took criticism badly.  Combined with the changing expectations in standards in business and civic life, this was bound to attract public criticism.  The Victoria Hotel scheme saga ran and ran, acrimoniously . [8]

John was never personally criticised in the saga but he was very touchy when the Improvement Committee was accused and he took very badly any imputation against his character – he couldn't afford not to, as such imputations would be a threat to his professional standing and livelihood.

So in April 1886, we have Councillor Chesters-Thompson moving that the committee should provide a complete inventory of the furniture owned by the Corporation in connection with the Victoria Hotel and passing on a complaint from a tradesman that his lower tender for the work had been rejected before the fixed date for the tenders to be in.  "He wished to know if that statement was true – whether such a thing could be – and if it were true, then there had been no greater scandal in the wide world".

John, the recently appointed chairman of the committee, snapped back that "Mr Thompson had made a charge against the committee of conduct which he called scandalous" and launched into a something of a diatribe.[9] Mr Chesters-Thompson countered that he hadn't said that he believed the allegation.  Finally John accepted the position – but, probably rather grumpily, said he still wanted to know who had made the "scandalous" statement against the committee.

On 5 May 1888 the Manchester Courier reported a meeting at which John went head to head with Councillor George Clay, a builder, over a special report which featured the Victoria Hotel saga.  This time it was Mr Chesters-Thompson who calmed things down.  He said he thought he could throw a little oil on the troubled waters

He would suggest that they should shake hands in the matter – that Alderman Hopkinson should say to Mr Clay, "If you will withdraw your report I will withdraw those aggressive remarks I made and the letters I wrote to the papers on the subject of the improvement".  (Hear, hear)

Alderman Hopkinson said he acceded with pleasure to the appeal made by Mr Thompson (Hear, hear)

Mr Clay said he was also ready to withdraw the report (Hear, hear)

It seems that Council meetings had definitely become more heated and John's forthrightness had become more aggressive.

But there was major work still to do for the Corporation.  Especially in the noisome matter of sewage and the rivers.

Notes

[1] Sir Bosdin Leech, The History of the Manchester Ship Canal from its inception to its completion with personal reminiscences by Sir Bosdin Leech, in two volumes, (1907) pub. Sherratt & Hughes (available online 

https://ia801608.us.archive.org/23/items/historyofmanches01leecuoft/historyofmanches01leecuoft.pdf 

Vol 1 p. 215

[2] History of the Manchester Ship Canal, Vol 2, p. 208 et seq.

https://ia801608.us.archive.org/23/items/historyofmanches01leecuoft/historyofmanches01leecuoft.pdf

[3] ibid., p. 212

[4] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 88

[5] ibid., p. 96

[6] ibid., p. 87

[7] ibid., p. 96

[8]  The Victoria Hotel saga is covered extensively by Pamela Mary Nuttall in Corruption in Municipal Government in the late Victorian Period, (1871 – 1902).  Thesis submitted to University of Huddersfield March 2019

https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/71701519/Nuttall_THESIS.pdf  

[9] Manchester Courier, 15 April 1886

61. "The past year had been one of the happiest of his life": 1883

John had found the Mayoral year exhilarating, writing at one point

I feel rather a contrast between my condition and circumstance this night and last night – now a dirty collier, then an honoured guest.  Tomorrow the wheel turns again.  I shall, under the discipline of life, soon be ready for the Workhouse or a Throne [1]

He had turned down the offer of serving a second year in office, because it cost too much in lost time at work and unavoidable expenses.  When Ellen and her brothers and sisters went home to London after the Christmas holidays, their governess spoke rather disparagingly about how rich their grandfather must be.  Ellen's sister eight year old Alice (a strong-willed girl who was thought "difficult") put her right noisily – Grandfather couldn't be rich because when they offered him the Mayoralty again he had turned it down on account of the expense.[2]  Even children as young as John and Evelyn's had noticed the small household economies of John and Alice's incongruously large and spacious home at Grove House.

The Manchester Evening News of 9 November 1883 reported the Council meeting at which John handed over office to the new mayor, Philip Goldschmidt.  John expressed his thanks for the "loyal support and uniform courtesy" shown him by all the Council members and the help given by the permanent staff, and he spoke movingly of the public of Manchester 

the manifestations of confidence by the citizens of all classes outside the Town Hall had been so constant and so cordial that he might truly say that the past year had been one of the happiest of his life (Applause).  

During that year he had found any old friendships had been strengthened and many new ones made which "it would be his delight to endeavour to render permanent".  His aim in office had been to promote 

true sympathy and co-operation between the City Council and the officers and the citizens themselves, to cultivate among the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the sense of citizenship, and the duty which each owed to the rest.  

He felt there had been some progress in important matters, but not as much as the most hopeful among them had wished.  He thought there were local government reforms that would be well worth considering – making the city and parliamentary borough co-extensive, having one authority for all purposes, with uniform taxation and assessment for education, police and poor law administration.  "Uniformity of rating and unity of authority" within the city "had now come within the range of practical politics (Applause)".

Meanwhile, the gasworks were nearly finished and would certainly be ready for next year's winter, which would enable the council "to deal with the important question of the diminution of smoke and the purity of the atmosphere by the introduction of gas for fuel and gas for power (Applause)"  

It hadn't been the fault of the promoters that the Ship Canal scheme had failed for the moment.   There was a new museum being built in Queen's Park 

to give to the working people of the northern part of the city a place of refreshment both for body and mind (Hear, hear) 

(I believe that now, having been closed for many years, it is used for storage.)  

The Bridgewater Navigation Company had finally recognised its obligation to restore the river to its normal condition in time of flood.  The Art Gallery was a success.   

Despite the depression in trade and the unsatisfactory returns of capitalists, he considered the outlook for the future as bright and hopeful for the city.  Education was growing marvellously, and crime was diminishing.  (Hear, hear).  He was able to say there were no neglected classes in Manchester (Hear, hear).  There was much poverty and hardship, but on the whole it was well borne, and it was well met by the helpfulness of the rich and of the poor; for he knew no class which ministers more to the wants of the poor than those who were nearest the poor (Applause).  

The insight which the past year had given him into the higher life of the city made him more than ever hopeful of the future.  Great riches might not be attained, as formerly, by individuals.  Probably wealth was more evenly diffused, but the accumulation of wealth and the growth of luxury might be a nation's decay.  For 44 years they had been labouring, supported by a noble army of workers outside, that the people of the city should be healthy and happy, wise and good.  Their labours were not without result.  He had the fullest faith that God, the giver of wisdom and lover of concord, who had, beyond all question, blessed their labours in the past, imperfect and fitful as they had been, would still bless them in the future if we pursued them in the spirit of trust in Him and of self-abnegation, if their aims were worthy and their motives pure.  (Applause)

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 82

[2] ibid., p. 86

60. Mayor Hopkinson in 1883: from "municipal energy" to the Grand Nautical Bazaar

Later in July 1883, Manchester held its first Building Trades Exhibition in St James's Hall.  (This was a new public hall on Oxford Street; it was demolished in 1909 and replaced by today's Grade II listed St James' Building.)  Organised by a committee mainly of Manchester architects and civil engineers and intended to be an annual event, the aim of the Exhibition was to showcase the latest and newest in building trades' materials and appliances – in building, sanitation, ventilation, paints and colours, architectural decoration, furniture, appliances for smoke abatement, and so on.  It was expected to draw the general public and its opening was celebrated with a conversazione, with music provided by the band of the 3rd Dragoon Guards.  

John and Alice as Mayor and Mayoress arrived at about half past seven and were given a tour, and then John – "standing at the entrance of the Oriental Court", said the Manchester Evening News of 20 July 1883 – declared the exhibition open.  "Especially would they be struck," he said, "with the facility with which many beautiful objects were now reproduced so as to be placed within the reach of classes of society who years ago could never have dreamed of having such objects"

On Thursday 23 August, John and his daughter Mary went to a very different event – the fourth annual athletic festival of the Manchester City Police and Fire Brigade.  

It was beautiful weather for the several thousand people who had gathered to watch the fun in the Pomona Gardens which lay beside the River Irwell in the fresh air to the west of the city, an island of beautiful gardens and pleasure grounds, now long lost and hardly remembered [1].  There were competitions for putting the shot and throwing the hammer.  There were flat races, three-legged races and bicycle races.  The crowd's favourite were the tugs of war – police and firemen teams against teams of soldiers from the 24th Regiment (South Wales Borderers) and the 3rd Dragoon Guards – in both matches the soldiers won.  There were fire engine drill competitions and a demonstration of a new "steamer" which could throw a stream of water to the height of the highest building in Manchester.[2]

The previous year, the Mosley Street premises and fine art collections of the Royal Manchester Institution had been transferred to the Corporation on the condition that for the next 20 years the council would spend £2,000 a year on art.  This they did enthusiastically – and John was for years on the Art Gallery Committee.

The Mosley Street building, newly renamed the Manchester Art Gallery, had its formal opening on 31 August 1883 by the Liberal politician Lord Carlingford, who was head of the government department with the task of promoting science and art.  It was reported at length in the Manchester Courier of 1 September.

Eminent gentlemen – the high sheriff, bishops, academics, aldermen and councillors – gathered in the Mayor's Parlour of the Town Hall.  Among them was Sir Philip Cunliffe-Owen of the Kensington Museum, who became a friend of the Hopkinson family.  John, Lord Carlingford and the High Sheriff of Lancashire led the procession along Princess Street, past the crowds lining the route, to Mosley Street. 

'The Shadow of Death'
by William Holman Hunt

John gave the history of the art gallery and told of how it had been hoped that valuable pictures would be donated for the public benefit – and that this had indeed already happened.  Sir Joseph Whitworth had presented five important works by William Etty.  Mr William Agnew MP (Liberal member for Lancashire South-East) had indicated that he and his late brother's executors would give Holman Hunt's 'The Shadow of Death'.  Mr W A Turner was to give 'The Golden Gate' by Val Prinsep.  Manchester was showing that 

What had been done in London at the cost of the nation they thought they might do, in their own way, at their own cost, for their own good. (Hear, hear).  

Their aim was for all classes to improve themselves by contemplating and studying beautiful things.  They were convinced that the more they studied 

those forms of beauty which were the common property of all the less selfish they would become, and the more disposed to sink the individual to the citizen.  (Hear, hear)  They were weary of the too costly luxuries of the policemen and the inspecting officer.  They had a strong longing coming over them to have something to see for their money when they had spent it.  Wickedness, ugliness, dirtiness, offended now more than they used to do.  They groaned under the hideousness of these burdens, and were determined to free themselves from the load, and to do it by the united effort of all.

Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen said that he had long been interested in what Manchester was doing and he reminded them "that British art owed a great deal to the munificence of the merchant princes of Manchester (Hear, hear)".

Sir Philip Cunliffe-Owen
(1828-94)

Sir Philip first appears in the Manchester press in January 1874 at the opening of the Society for the Promotion of Scientific Interest in Manchester – the Kensington Museum was active in loans and advice to towns and cities across the country.  Not only did Sir Philip become a friend of the family, but his daughter Olga married John and Alice's son Dr Albert Hopkinson on 22 Oct 1891.  (Readers of Ferdinand Mount's engrossing book Kiss Myself Goodbye: The many lives of Aunt Munca will like to know that the Sir Hugo Cunliffe-Owen who features there was Olga's brother.  So Philippa, Sir Hugo's daughter and wife first of Denis McDuff and then Archie Baring, was Olga's niece).

On the afternoon of Saturday 1 September, John, Alice and Mary went back to the Boys' Refuge in Strangeways in a party of dignitaries including the local landowner and politician Lord Egerton of Tatton and his wife and daughter, to be shown round the new building by Mr Leonard Kilbee Shaw [3] , one of the founders of the refuges and a dedicated campaigner for children's rights.

The last big event of the Mayoral year for Alice seems to have been the Grand Nautical Bazaar held in St George's Hall, Liverpool in aid of Liverpool Homes for Aged Mariners.  From mid-August the Manchester newspapers had been carrying advertisements for the Bazaar, calling for contributions to be brought to the Town Hall with the enticing line "The Mayoress of Manchester has kindly consented to Preside at the City of Manchester Stall". 

St George's Hall, Liverpool,
from the southwest by Dave Root

The Grand Nautical Bazaar "on board a magnificent Atlantic liner in St George's Hall" was indeed a grand affair.  There was music from the band of Scots Guards, the choir of the School for the Blind, the band of the 'Indefatigable' and the band of the Seamen's Orphanage.  There was theatrical entertainment from the actors and singers then performing in Liverpool.  The Great Organ was played, and Mlle. Lottie Adelina de Lara "the marvellous child pianist" performed.  Eleven years old, she had been giving public recitals from the age of six and would go on to become a classical pianist and composer, having trained in Frankfurt, studied with Fanny Davies and Clara Schumann and become a friend of Brahms.  She played for Dame Myra Hess at the famous lunchtime concerts in the National Gallery during World War Two.  

The Bazaar had many patrons, including the Dukes and Duchesses of Westminster and Abercorn and the Earls and Countesses of Derby and Sefton, and it lasted from the 9th to the 12th of October.  The Mayors of Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham and Birkenhead took it in turn to declare proceedings open – John's turn was on Wednesday 10th at 2 o'clock.  As the Manchester Courier of 11 October reported, it was a great success

The bazaar was opened at two o'clock in the afternoon by the Mayor of Manchester, who, speaking from the bridge of the 'St George,' said he was there to simply perform a neighbourly act and to express his sympathy and kindly feeling towards the noble object they had in view … The sale of goods then commenced.  The hall was crowded to an almost excessive degree during the day, and the theatrical entertainments were especially well patronised.

John's sister Ellen Tubbs wrote to Alice during this unique year in her life

You are an astonishment to me.  How you are brought through everything and do honour to your position!  [4]

No wonder Ellen was astonished, if Alice's usual day was spent – as seen by her granddaughter Ellen Ewing at Christmas 1883 – "generally lying on a sofa and carefully protected by her daughters from unwelcome intrusions of any description".  [5]  But perhaps she was then still recovering from all the unaccustomed excitement and socialising and didn't feel strong enough to engage with five young children.  After all, in June 1881 she had been strong enough to go with John on the tour of Norway, and she wasn't yet sixty.

Notes

[1] Life in the Mouse House blog

https://mousehouselife.wordpress.com/2023/10/25/escape-to-pomona-island/ 

[2] Manchester Times, 25 August 1883

[3] for more on Leonard Kilbee Shaw, see the Together Trust Archive website

[4] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 82

[5] ibid., p. 85

59. The "Poor Man's Earl": visit of Lord Shaftesbury in 1883

Early July 1883 brought to Manchester a man whose visit must have meant more to John and Alice and their daughters than any other event of the mayoral year.  This was the 82 year old Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury – the "Poor Man's Earl".  

Burdened by age, frequently intense physical pain, a lifetime of depression and steadily increasing deafness, Shaftesbury drove himself on to meet all invitations.  

He had been asked to come to Manchester to speak to a mass meeting of children and, because of his enormous popularity among the working people, the engagements had multiplied. He had wished his reception to be "as private as possible", wrote the Manchester Times on 14 July.  But this was defeated by his popularity.

John met him on the afternoon of Saturday 7 July at the London Road Station (now Manchester Piccadilly) and drove him northwards to Francis Street in Strangeways, where he laid the corner stone for a major extension to the Central Refuge of the Manchester & Salford Boys' and Girls' Refuges [1].  The building was being enlarged with a swimming bath, workshops and dormitories so that it could take 120 boys.  This was the headquarters of the organisation set up in 1870 by two philanthropist businessmen and Sunday School teachers to provide homes for destitute and homeless children – in 1883 they had 13 homes and looked after over 300 children.

Flags, streamers and a dense crowd met the party in Francis Street, and Lord Shaftesbury spoke to the assembly of how, when he first visited Manchester fifty years before, "there was little or nothing of this description being done".  But now he 

found the inhabitants of this great city more active perhaps than those of any other part of the world in every operation which was for the honour of God and for the welfare of man.

That evening there was a great meeting in the Free Trade Hall so that representatives of some 75,000 Lancashire workpeople could present him with an address in gratitude for his work for them.  It was an audience mostly of working men, and all but one of them were too young to have taken part in the early battles.  He spoke to them, reported the Manchester Courier of 9 July, of the progress that had been made in the 50 years since he had first come to Manchester.  He wouldn't dwell on the miseries of the past 

None of them knew what it was.  They might have heard of it in history, and by narrative, but it passed all description … He remembered the first thing he did when he came to Manchester to examine for himself, was to go to the gates of the mills and see the workpeople and children coming from their labour.  The children came along slowly, with eyes cast to the ground, and looking as if they had just been disinterred 

He had come back ten years later, when the Factory Act was in operation, and "out rushed the children in rivalry as to who could run the swiftest". 

He spoke with pride of one prediction which had been fulfilled, 

The Lancashire men of that day said to him:  "We have been called seditious and disaffected to the Government of the country.  We are not so.  We only seek our rights, and if the Government will only do justice to the operative classes loyalty will be as strong in Lancashire as in the palace at Windsor."  And so it had been.  (Applause)

Lord Shaftesbury stayed that night in the State Apartments of the Town Hall, and in the morning he and John went to the service in the Cathedral – Shaftesbury was an eminent Anglican Evangelical – and he was shown round the restoration work.  

That night he went with John to the poorest quarters of the city to see more evidence of Manchester's improvement, a subject so dear to John's heart.  As the Manchester Evening News of 9 July 1883 reported, John explained at the City Mission on the following afternoon that

For three Sunday nights he had been – and last night he took Lord Shaftesbury with him – on a journey of exploration.  His object was, on those three successive visitations to the humblest parts of Manchester, to see if he could find a drunken man, and he had not yet succeeded.  (Cheers)

On the afternoon of Monday 9 July, John and Alice went with Lord Shaftesbury to Newton Heath, north-east of the city centre.  The Anglican City Mission had arranged for Lord Shaftesbury to speak to the workmen of the Newton Heath carriage works of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company.  They held a weekly mission service there on Wednesdays with an average attendance of 700 but, while the works brass band played to fill the time before Lord Shaftesbury's arrival, it could be seen that there was a much larger crowd than usual and almost of them were workmen.  

John presided at the meeting, and after the service Lord Shaftesbury spoke to the workmen.  He told them that he did not hesitate to say that he had among the working men of England "some of the best, truest, and most beloved friends he had ever had in the whole course of his existence.  (Cheers)."  He praised the railwaymen "on whose sobriety, skill and good conduct the limbs and lives of thousands and hundreds of thousands of the people depended" and he hoped they would keep campaigning for "their perfect rights, times of recreation, the rights of mind and body.  He looked upon them as a most invaluable body of men." 

That evening, the Town Hall was filled with children.  Some 2,000 children from the ragged schools and the Barnes Home Industrial School filled the gallery of the Great Hall.  The bands from the Ardwick Green and Barnes Home Schools played.  There were 1,500 members of the Children's Humane Society in the body of the hall and the general public sat under the galleries and wherever there was space.  An organ recital filled the time before the meeting began.  There was a choir of 500 on the platform, ready to sing hymns.  John, Alice and Mary were all there to see Lord Shaftesbury presented with an address by "Four Little Children".   It was a demonstration of children's gratitude for all that he had done and the huge assembly was there to remember his work for the young chimney sweeps and factory hands and in the cause of the ragged schools.  As Lord Shaftesbury reminded them in his address, these ragged schools were needed to teach them "domestic habits and affections" so that children could reach the stage where they could benefit from the board schools, the schools provided by the state.

There was another section of Manchester society that wanted to express gratitude to the Earl.   William Aronsberg, optician and instrument maker, born in the Russian Empire and Manchester's first Jewish magistrate, had written to Lord Shaftesbury after the visit.  In his letter, printed in the Manchester Courier of 11 July, he wrote of his gratitude for Shaftesbury's "great influence and indomitable perseverance along with the late Archbishop of Canterbury" in relief of suffering Jews in Russia: "it was mainly by your lordship's instrumentality that I was enabled to send such opportune relief to my persecuted brethren".  They owed to Lord Shaftesbury the Saturday half-holiday for Jewish factory operatives.  

Workers in factories, members of co-operative bodies, children whose lot has been rendered more endurable by your foresight and kindness, all assemble to testify what they owe to you. 

The newspapers do not record when Lord Shaftesbury left Manchester for London but before he left we know, from Gerald Hurst's Preface to Ellen Ewing's book, that he presented two of John and Alice's daughters with Bibles [2].  His experience of deafness must have struck such a chord of familiarity in Alice, and perhaps she could discern his tendency to serious depression.  Age and infirmity did not prevent him driving himself on, and on the afternoon of Wednesday 11 July he was to be found hard at work again, presiding over the second annual meeting of the International Arbitration and Peace Society in the Westminster Palace Hotel in London.  

Shaftesbury died two years later, on 1 October 1885.  The nation insisted on his burial in Westminster Abbey and for hours the pavements on the route were filled with the poor, with costermongers, flower-girls, boot-blacks, crossing-sweepers and factory hands, waiting to see his coffin go by.

Notes

[1] For more on the Refuges see 

the Children's Homes website

Architects of Greater Manchester 1800-1940

[2] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. ix

58. Mayor Hopkinson in 1883: Malagasy Envoys and Sir Garnet Wolseley

The New Year opened with a grand and rather exotic occasion, at which John was supported by his sons John, Alfred, Charles and Albert.

This was the visit of the Malagasy Envoys, to which the Manchester Courier devoted a full page of detail on 3 January 1883.  The envoys were the ambassadors of the reforming and Christian Queen Ranavalona II of Madagascar.  (By the way, this is not the Queen Ranavalona of George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman's Lady).  In a vain attempt to keep their country free from European intervention, they had already paid visits to the French and British governments, and would next go on to the USA.

Ranavalona II of Madagascar (1829-1883)

The diplomatic mission consisted of His Excellency Ravoninahitriniarivo, Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and His Excellency Ramaniraka of the Privy Council "both cultivated men of high rank in the State of Madagascar, and the latter an accomplished scholar, who speaks English with considerable fluency".   

They had come to Lancashire with two native secretaries, an English secretary and interpreter, the Madagascar consul in London Samuel Procter, the US consul at Madagascar Colonel Robinson and the missionary the Revd W C Pickersgill.  (Photographs of the envoys can easily be found online by searching for the name Ravoninahitriniarivo, but unfortunately none of them are in the public domain and free to use here).  

The London Missionary Society, whose first mission in Madagascar had begun in 1818, was a largely Congregationalist body and had an East Lancashire Auxiliary in Manchester.  From the 1830s, Mancunian Congregationalists had been hearing from visiting missionaries about their work on the island and in 1840 Malagasy Christian refugees had come to the town.

On the first day of their visit, the envoys came in by train from Alderley Edge where they had stayed the night with Mr F J Jackson, a merchant in the Africa trade, and were driven round the city by John and other officials on a tour of mills and warehouses.  Their second night was spent with Mr Henry Lee, Manchester cotton manufacturer and Liberal MP for Southampton, at Sedgley New Hall (St Gabriel's, Church, Prestwich now stands more or less on the site of Mr Lee's house).  They then attended the reception for 1,500 people that John gave in their honour at the Town Hall.  Bands played, refreshments were offered and speeches were made.  John gave the welcoming address:

You have come hither, ambassadors of the Queen of Madagascar, across the seas, thousands of miles from your own shores upon a message of peace, to make friends with European peoples, and to know more of their arts, commerce, and manufactures. (Applause)  

They had visited Queen Victoria in her own home, met the Royal Princes, inspected the arsenals

You now come to these northern towns of England, the homes of peaceful and highly-organised industries.  (Applause)  We can show you how our sons of labour make calicoes and guns, locomotives, and machines, ships, and railways.  Beyond all these we can show you a people who for years have taken a deep interest in the civilisation and well-being of Madagascar.  (Applause).  

We remember that you are of the same Christian faith with ourselves; that long ago men from our midst, of our own townsfolk, went out in the fervour of a holy zeal, for the conversion of Madagascar from heathendom, and found their graves there.  We remember the terrible persecution that ensued upon the death of your King Radama, when hundreds of your and our fellow Christians sealed their testimony with their blood.  We have seen your fellow countrymen and countrywomen who had escaped with their lives in their hands stand up in our city and thank God that they had found in England, this land of freedom, an asylum from the bitterness and malice of their persecutors.  (Applause)  

Now a better day has dawned upon your land; religious liberty is the law of your country as of our own.  Instead of destitute refugees – driven from their homes by the relentless cruelty of your former rulers, you have come, the accredited and honoured representatives of your enlightened and Christian Queen.  (Applause)  In the name of the citizens of Manchester I offer to you a respectful, sincere, and hearty welcome. 

The Revd Pickersgill then spoke very frankly to the assembled guests, describing the situation in Madagascar – the reforms that the Queen and her government were carrying out, their fears of intervention by European powers and their problems with the British Treaty.  He said

If the representatives of England and France, and if other European countries had done their duty as they ought to have done it, the duty which enlightened people are bound to do to countries like Madagascar, the present difficulties would never have assumed the formidable aspect which they bore at the present moment … 

These people had been willing to make certain reforms; they had been willing to make certain concessions to foreigners.  The foreigners, on the other hand, had not been willing to make reasonable concessions to these people … 

The more the real state of the case was known the more it appeared that a great injustice would be done if any European Power were to take possession of the island at the present time.  (Applause)

He hoped the ambassadors would be able to go home "believing that England practised what she professed".  

In the event, the French and British governments came to an agreement that France could establish a protectorate in Madagascar in exchange for France recognising British claims to Zanzibar.  The Queen and her niece and successor Queen Ravanalona III objected in vain, and in 1897 Ravanalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, was sent by the French into exile.  

But at the beginning of July, John must have been pleased to get a letter from the envoys who were in London and preparing to go home.  They had reported to their Queen the "hospitable reception we received at your hands" and were sending him, as well as her best thanks, a Malagasy lamba – the traditional scarf, heavy with cultural significance and worn by both men and women – as a souvenir.  I wonder what became of it; the lamba presented by Queen Ranavalona III to President Grover Cleveland are in the Smithsonian.

The next excitement was the visit in March of the celebrated soldier Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913).  Most famous at the time for his service in the Crimea and the Siege of Lucknow, he was a favourite with public and press and was now a General and a viscount.  He had been invited to Manchester to open a new Temperance Lodge of Freemasons which was to be named in his honour, but people felt that an appearance by such a distinguished servant of the Empire to a city as important to the Empire as Manchester should not go unnoticed.  It was made a civic occasion and he was to be the guest of the mayor.

Garnet Wolseley

It was a flying visit packed with incident.  He took the 7.30am express from London on Wednesday 28 March, was greeted by a cheering crowd, driven to the consecration ceremony at the new Wolseley Lodge and attended a masons' banquet afterwards at the Free Trade Hall.  (This was built in the 1850s on the site of the Peterloo Massacre; its facade remains, fronting the Edwardian Manchester Hotel).  He stayed in the state apartments of the Town Hall and at 10 o'clock the following morning two carriages arrived to take him for a tour of Sir Joseph Whitworth's engineering, ordnance and ammunition works at Openshaw.  John travelled with the General in the first carriage and his sons Charles and Edward were with the gentlemen in the second carriage.

Whitworths' directors showed them round the works, where the General was able to examine gun barrels, crank shafts for ships and breechloader guns and see the forging of a 100-ton gun being turned out for an Italian ship.  John Hopkinson will have taken pleasure in the precision engineering on display but we know his views on weaponry – that part of the visit will have been a dismal experience for him.  When he visited Sir William Armstrong's armaments works on Tyneside in September 1878, he had written to Alice, "It cuts me to the heart to see so much ingenuity applied to destroying human life."  [1]

As the party left the Whitworth works, the loud cheering of the crowd spooked the horses, which plunged and kicked, damaging the leading carriage so badly that John, the General and the other gentlemen sitting inside – luckily unhurt and apparently not too shaken – had to abandon it for another.  On to the Royal Exchange so that the men of commerce could pay their respects to the General, and then to an evening reception or conversazione hosted by the Mayor and Mayoress.  

This was a full-scale event for people involved in education in Manchester – a subject dear to John's heart and about which he had spoken in his inaugural speech.  He and Alice had sent out a thousand invitations to governors and professors from Owens College, from Manchester Grammar School, the Manchester School Board and, the Manchester Courier said, "all classes of educationists", to meet the Vice-Chancellor and members of the Victoria University Court.  A "spacious awning" was put up over the pavement at the front entrance to the Town Hall, the staircases and lobbies were decorated with plants and flowers, the Police Band was playing for the guests in the Sculpture Hall, and there was tea and coffee in the council chamber and refreshments in the Banqueting Hall.  

John and Alice received their guests for an hour and then the band of the Queen's Bays played for them in the Great Hall, with an interval for short addresses about education, beginning with a speech by John and ending with Lord Wolseley.  There is no report of the speeches themselves.  Wolseley had been forced to leave school at 14 because of family finances.  When he spoke in public on education he used to call for more emphasis on the importance of physical education and fitness, less emphasis on mastering specific subjects and more on encouraging common sense, endurance, courage and manliness.  He may not have felt entirely at home among the professors.

Among the many guests listed in the press reports were Professor Alfred and Mrs Hopkinson, Dr John and Mrs Hopkinson, Dr Edward Hopkinson, and Mr Charles Hopkinson and lady.  John and Evelyn's presence makes me wonder whether this event had been planned long before Lord Wolseley's visit became official and he was an addition to the programme.

The conversazione ended at 10.30pm and Lord Wolseley took the 11pm train back to London.

The next year he would be sent – following public and press outcry and the intervention of Queen Victoria – out to the Sudan in the hope of rescuing the doomed General Gordon, besieged in Khartoum, from the forces of the Mahdi.

On 1 May 1883 John was in London, giving his evidence on the proposed Ship Canal to a Committee of the House of Commons.

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 73

57. Mayor Hopkinson in 1882: A fire & a soirée

There are no details of John's year as Mayor in Ellen Ewing's book because it is a purely personal account of a marriage.  But I will deal with it here at some length because in the newspaper reports of John's activities we see the world outside their home, great names of the age – General Wolseley, the Earl of Shaftesbury – and not only the acute problems of the time but also its great optimism and belief in progress.  How could the Councillors think otherwise, when the Council had already achieved so much?  And we can imagine John and Alice, austere and dignified, in the unlikely and lavish setting of Manchester Town Hall.

The first thing that I notice as I look through the digitised newspapers for John's activities in his year as mayor, is a report of a serious fire in a new building in Princess Street, about five minutes' walk from the Town Hall.  Princess Street had been widened by the corporation only about five years earlier, and between St James's Street and Faulkner Street a fine five-storey building with large cellars had been built, today's Number 34.  The fire broke out on the top floor in the warehouses of Messrs G Hodgkinson and Sons, makers-up and packers, who had let the lower floors to offices.  

Round the corner in Faulkner Street were the Central Telephone Offices of the Lancashire Telephonic Exchange Company.  Alexander Graham Bell had demonstrated his new invention to Queen Victoria on 14 January 1878 and the Faulkner Street telephone exchange had opened the following year.  This amazing new method of talking in complete privacy from your own office had rapidly caught on and on 6 October 1879 the Manchester Courier reported they already had 82 subscribers.  

In the middle of Hodgkinsons' roof was a pole carrying telephone wires – 300 wires converged on this one building, reported the Manchester Courier of 18 November 1882.  There were people who were campaigning for the city's electric wires to be laid underground and this fire will only have fixed them in their belief.  The flames spread from the warehouse floor to the roof and burned through the pole.  The flaming wires all fell onto the roof, the roof fell in, and the fire not only spread to the lower storeys but also destroyed all the telegraphic and telephonic communications for the most important part of the city.

All the fire brigade turned out, two steam fire-engines were soon on the spot, hosepipes were attached to street hydrants and jets of water played on the burning building.  Enormous crowds gathered to watch – but they behaved, according to the newspaper report, in the most orderly fashion.  Among them was their mayor John Hopkinson, completely absorbed in the work of the corporation's Fire Brigade and paying no attention to the fact that his hat and "suit of black" were getting saturated with water:

This anxious interest on the part of the mayor, however, was noticed by many people and called forth numerous expressions favourable to his worship, who will have increased his popularity by his fearless conduct on this occasion

On Tuesday 12 December 1882 John and Alice held a Soirée for some 600 to 700 people in the Town Hall.  It was a gathering of people who cared for others and it was one of John's main aims for his mayoralty; he had spoken of it his inaugural speech.  The Manchester Courier of 16 December 1882 reported it in detail.

The guests made their way up staircases laid with red cloth and decorated with plants to be received by John and Alice in the Mayor's reception room.  From there they moved on to the refreshments set out for them in Banqueting Room and in the corridors.  Meanwhile, below in the Sculpture Hall the Police Band was providing music for the guests.

Manchester Town Hall banqueting room by Michael D Beckwith

At half past eight the guests – council members, corporation department heads, city officials and voluntary workers – took their seats in the Great Hall at half past eight and four men made speeches.  John was in the chair and he was the first.  

He explained that he and his wife had asked their guests to come in the hope that with mutual encouragement and sympathy they might feel their power and unity, and that the voluntary workers might more fully understand the work of the Town Hall.  He wished he had not been limited by numbers.  Outside there were thousands of people working along the same lines, but invitations could only be sent to the staffs of institutions and the committee members of the medical charities.

What were the objects of their numberless committees and officers?  Justice between man and man; just weights, just measures, pure water, pure food, pure drinks, clean streets, clean houses, clean persons.  Nor were their cares confined to those things and the physical condition of the people, for their schools and free libraries provided intellectual culture and their parks furnished some means of recreation.  Outside those walls there were bands of men and women linked together in a multitude of voluntary associations, sometimes on a religious basis, sometimes simply on a secular basis, with the common object of finding out "Who is my neighbour," and doing a neighbour's part; relieving the destitute, ministering to all forms of affliction, and striving to diminish the ills that flesh was heir to. (Applause.)

The Bishop of Manchester was the next to speak.  The Mayor had consulted him some weeks ago and he "had not a moment's hesitation in according his heartiest good wishes that the experiment might be a success."  His suggestion was a system of dividing the city into districts, with volunteers visiting every family to discover their habits and needs

they would then be in a position to deal effectively with the great social problems which were causing so much anxiety, and in which there lay the seeds of so much national peril; and let them organise their philanthropy, and bring it to bear more reasonably.  (Applause.)

(There was a system very like this in operation in a town in Germany, which was being advocated by the Liverpool shipping magnate and philanthropist Alexander Balfour)

Mr John Slagg, a Liberal MP for Manchester, and Dr Thomson spoke in warm support of this hope.  They all listened to a recital on the great organ and then they went home.  The Liberal evening paper, the Manchester Evening News, looking back on 29 December 1882 on the year's events, wrote approvingly

The recently held conference of philanthropic workers summoned by the Mayor may be said to mark a new departure in social reunions.