Mount Misery.—­At the close of the great war, which culminated at Waterloo, it was long before the blessings of peace brought comfort to the homes of the poor.  The first effects of the sheathing of the sword was a collapse in prices of all kinds, and a general stagnation of trade, of which Birmingham, made prosperous through the demand for its guns, &c., felt the full force.  Bad trade was followed by bad harvests, and the commercial history of the next dozen years is but one huge chronicle of disaster, shops and mills closing fast, and poverty following faster.  How to employ the hundreds of able-bodied men dependent on the rates was a continual puzzle to the Overseers, until someone, wise in his generation, hit upon the plan of paying the unfortunates to wheel sand from the bank then in front of Key Hill House up to the canal side, a distance of 1-1/2 miles, the payment being at the rate of one penny per barrow load.  This fearful “labour test” was continued for a long time, and when we reckon that each man would have to wheel his barrow backwards and forwards for nearly 20 miles to earn a shilling, moving more than a ton of sand in the process we cannot wonder at the place receiving such a woeful name as Mount Misery.

M.P.’s for Borough.—­See “Parliamentary.”

Mules.-These animals are not often seen about town now, but in the politically-exciting days of 1815 they apparently were not strangers in our streets, as Mr. Richard Spooner (who, like our genial Alderman Avery, was fond of “tooling” his own cattle), was in the habit of driving his own mail-drag into town, to which four mules were harnessed.  With Mr. Thomas Potts, a well-to-do merchant, a “bigoted Baptist,” and ultra-Radical, Mr. Spooner and Mr. T. Attwood took part in a deputation to London, giving occasion to one of the street-songs of the day:—­

“Tommy Potts has gone to town
To join the deputation;
He is a man of great renown,
And fit to save the nation. 
Yankee doodle do,
Yankee doodle dandy.

Dicky Spooner’s also there,
And Tom the Banker, too;
If in glory they should share,
We’ll sing them ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo.’ 
Yankee doodle do,
Yankee doodle dandy.

Dicky Spooner is Dicky Mule,
Tom Attwood is Tom Fool;
And Potts an empty kettle,
With lots of bosh and rattle. 
Yankee doodle do,
Yankee doodle dandy.”

Another of the doggerel verses, alluding to Mr. Spooner’s mules, ran—­

“Tommy Potts went up to town,
Bright Tom, who all surpasses,
Was drawn by horses out of town,
And in again by asses. 
With their Yankee doodle do,
Yankee doodle dandy.”

Municipal Expenditure.—­Fortunately the population of Birmingham is going ahead rapidly, and the more the children multiply the more “heads of families” we may naturally hope there will be noted down as ratepayers by the heads of the gather-the-tin office.  The cost of governing our little town is not at all heavy, and when divided out at per head of the inhabitants it seems but a mere bagatelle.  Mr. J. Powell Williams, who takes credit for being a financier and man of figures, said in 1884 that the totals of our municipal expenditure for the past few years were as follows:—­