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.