and for fuller particulars the reader must go to the Census Tables for 1881, which may be seen at the Reference Library.  The variety of articles made in this town is simply incalculable, for the old saying that anything, from a needle to a ship’s anchor, could be obtained in Edgbaston Street is really not far from the truth, our manufacturers including the makers of almost everything that human beings require, be it artificial eyes and limbs, ammunition, or armour; beads, buttons, bedsteads, or buckles; cocoa, candlesticks, corkscrews, or coffee-pots; door bolts, dessert forks, dog collars, or dish covers; edge tools, earrings, engines, or eyeglasses; fire irons, fiddle-bows, frying pans, or fishhooks; gold chains, gas fittings, glass toys, or gun barrels; hairpins, harness, handcuffs, or hurdles; ironwork, isinglass, inkstands, or inculators; jewellery, javelins, jews’ harps, or baby jumpers; kettles, kitchen ranges, knife boards, or knuckle dusters; lifting-jacks, leg irons, latches, or lanterns; magnets, mangles, medals, or matches; nails, needles, nickel, or nutcrackers; organ pipes, optics, oilcans, or ornaments; pins, pens, pickle forks, pistols, or boarding-pikes; quart cups, quoits, quadrats, or queerosities; rings, rasps, rifles, or railway cars; spades, spectacles, saddlery, or sealing wax; thermometers, thimbles, toothpicks, or treacle taps; umbrellas or upholstery; ventilators, vices, varnish, or vinegar; watches, wheelbarrows, weighing machines or water closets.  A Londoner who took stock of our manufactories a little while back, received information that led him to say, a week’s work in Birmingham comprises, among its various results, the fabrication of 14,000,000 pens, 6,000 bedsteads, 7,000 guns, 300,000,000 cut nails, 100,000,000 buttons, 1,000 saddles, 5,000,000 copper or bronze coins, 20,000 pairs of spectacles, 6 tons of papier-mache wares, over L20,000 worth of gold and silver jewellery, nearly an equal value of gilt and cheap ornaments, L12,000 worth of electro-plated wares, 4,000 miles of iron and steel wire, 10 tons of pins, 5 tons of hairpins and hooks and eyes, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts and screw-bolts and spikes, 50 tons of wrought iron hinges, 350 miles’ length of wax for vestas, 40 tons of refined metal, 40 tons of German silver, 1,000 dozen of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 800 tons of brass and copper wares.  Several of these items are rather over the mark, but the aggregate only shows about one half a real week’s work, as turned out when trade is good.

Agricultural Implements, such as draining tools, digging and manure forks, hay knives, scythes, shovels, spades, &c., as well as mowing machines, garden and farm rollers, ploughs, harrows, &c., are the specialities of some half-dozen firms, the oldest-established being Messrs. Mapplebeck and Lowe, opposite Smithfield Market.