Prologue.
The present century has seen the rise and development
of many towns in various parts of the country, and
among them Birmingham is entitled to take a front
place. If Thomas Attwood or George Frederick Muntz
could now revisit the town they once represented in
Parliament they would probably stare with amazement
at the changes that have taken place in Birmingham,
and would require a guide to show them their way about
the town—now a city—they once
knew so well. The material history of Birmingham
was for a series of years a story of steady progress
and prosperity, but of late years the city has in
a political, social, and municipal sense advanced
by leaps and bounds. It is no longer “Brummagem”
or the “Hardware Village,” it is now recognised
as the centre of activity and influence in Mid-England;
it is the Mecca of surrounding populous districts,
that attracts an increasing number of pilgrims who
love life, pleasure, and shopping.
Birmingham, indeed, has recently been styled “the
best governed city in the world”—a
title that is, perhaps, a trifle too full and panegyrical
to find ready and general acceptance. If, however,
by this very lofty and eulogistic description is meant
a city that has been exceptionally prosperous, is
well looked after, that has among its inhabitants many
energetic, public-spirited men, that has a good solid
debt on its books, also that has municipal officials
of high capabilities with fairly high salaries to
match—then Birmingham is not altogether
undeserving of the high-sounding appellation.
Many of those who only know Birmingham from an outside
point of view, and who have only lately begun to notice
its external developments, doubtless attribute all
the improvements to Mr. Chamberlain’s great
scheme, and the adoption of the Artisans’ Dwellings
Act in 1878. The utilisation of this Act has certainly
resulted in the making of one fine street, a fine
large debt, and the erection of a handful of artisans’
dwellings. The changes, however, that culminated
in Mr. Chamberlain’s great project began years
before the Artisans’ Dwellings Act became law.
The construction of the London and North Western Railway
station—which, with the Midland Railway
adjunct, now covers some thirteen acres of land—cleared
away a large area of slums that were scarcely fit for
those who lived in them—which is saying
very much. A region sacred to squalor and low
drinking shops, a paradise of marine store dealers,
a hotbed of filthy courts tenanted by a low and degraded
class, was swept away to make room for the large station
now used by the London and North Western and Midland
Railway Companies.
