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Source: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (London:
Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892), pp. 45, 48-53.
Accessed online on 12/17/2019 at
Industrial Manchester, 1844
Friederich Engels
Friedrich Engels’ father was a German manufacturer and Engels worked as his agent in his
father’s Manchester factory. As a result, he combined both real experience of the city, with a
strong social conscience. The result was his The Condition of the Working-Class in England in
1844.
[…] The town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years, and go in and out
daily without coming into contact with a working-people’s quarter or even with workers, that is,
so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks. This arises chiefly from the
fact, that by unconscious tacit agreement, as well as with outspoken conscious determination, the
working people’s quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the
middle-class; […]
I may mention just here that the mills almost all adjoin the rivers or the different canals that
ramify throughout the city, before I proceed at once to describe the labouring quarters. First of
all, there is the old town of Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the
commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as
Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and Shude Hill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-
down, and the construction of the side streets utterly horrible. Going from the Old Church to
Long Millgate, the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned houses at the right, of which not
one has kept its original level; these are remnants of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester,
whose former inhabitants have removed with their descendants into better built districts, and
have left the houses, which were not good enough for them, to a population strongly mixed with
Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working-men’s quarter, for even the shops and
beer houses hardly take the trouble to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is
nothing in comparison with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which access can be gained
only through covered passages, in which no two human beings can pass at the same time. Of the
irregular cramming together of dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in
which they are crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey an idea. And it is
not the buildings surviving from the old times of Manchester which are to blame for this; the
confusion has only recently reached its height when every scrap of space left by the old way of
building has been filled up and patched over until not a foot of land is left to be further occupied.
The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet high. On this
declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of
the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate.
Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of construction is as crowded and
disorderly here as in the lower part of Long Millgate. Right and left a multitude of covered
passages lead from the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a
filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found – especially in the courts which
lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have
yet beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered
passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court
only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on the
Irk above Ducie Bridge – in case any one should care to look into it. Below it on the river there
are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction.
Below Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs
and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen’s Court,
was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept,
and disinfected with chloride of lime. Dr. Kay gives a terrible description of the state of this
court at that time. Since then, it seems to have been partially torn away and rebuilt; at least
looking down from Ducie Bridge, the passer-by sees several ruined walls and heaps of debris
with some newer houses. The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed from mortals of small
stature by a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows,
or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse,
which it deposits on the shallower right bank.
In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green, slime pools are left standing
on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a
stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But
besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime and
refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are tanneries, bone mills, and
gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the
contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined, therefore, what
sort of residue the stream deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of debris, the
refuse, filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here each house is packed close
behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black, smoky, crumbling, ancient, with
broken panes and window frames. The background is furnished by old barrack-like factory
buildings. On the lower right bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being
a ruin without a roof, piled with debris; the third stands so low that the lowest floor is
uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors. Here the background embraces the
pauper burial-ground, the station of the Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the
Workhouse, the “Poor-Law Bastille” of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks threateningly
down from behind its high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working-people’s quarter
below.
Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank steeper, but the condition
of the dwellings on both banks grows worse rather than better. He who turns to the left here from
the main street, Long Millgate, is lost; he wanders from one court to another, turns countless
corners, passes nothing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys, until after a few minutes he has lost
all clue, and knows not whither to turn. Everywhere half or wholly ruined buildings, some of
them actually uninhabited, which means a great deal here; rarely a wooden or stone floor to be
seen in the houses, almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting windows and doors, and a state of filth!
Everywhere heaps of debris, refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which
alone would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised to live in such a
district. The newly-built extension of the Leeds railway, which crosses the Irk here, has swept
away some of these courts and lanes, laying others completely open to view. Immediately under
the railway bridge there stands a court, the filth and horrors of which surpass all the others by far,
just because it was hitherto so shut off, so secluded that the way to it could not be found without
a good deal of trouble. I should never have discovered it myself, without the breaks made by the
railway, though I thought I knew this whole region thoroughly. Passing along a rough bank,
among stakes and washing-lines, one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed
huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living and sleeping-room all in one. In
such a hole, scarcely five feet long by six broad, I found two beds – and such bedsteads and beds!
– which, with a staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the room. In several others I found
absolutely nothing, while the door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned against it. Everywhere
before the doors refuse and offal; that any sort of pavement lay underneath could not be seen but
only felt, here and there, with the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds for human beings
was surrounded on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the third by the river, and besides
the narrow stair up the bank, a narrow doorway alone led out into another almost equally ill-
built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings….
If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on the opposite side from Long Millgate into the
midst of the working-men’s dwellings, we shall come into a somewhat newer quarter, which
stretches from St. Michael’s Church to Withy Grove and Shude Hill. Here there is somewhat
better order. In place of the chaos of buildings, we find at least long straight lanes and alleys or
courts, built according to a plan and usually square. But if, in the former case, every house was
built according to caprice, here each lane and court is so built, without reference to the situation
of the adjoining ones….
. . . Here, as in most of the working-men’s quarters of Manchester, the pork-raisers rent the courts
and build pig-pens in them. In almost every court one or even several such pens may be found,
into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal, whence the swine grow fat; and
the atmosphere, confined on all four sides, is utterly corrupted by putrefying animal and
vegetable substances….
Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that
instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth,
ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and
health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to
thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England,
the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space a human
being can move, how little air – and such air! – he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may
share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this is the Old Town, and the people
of Manchester emphasise the fact whenever any one mentions to them the frightful condition of
this Hell upon Earth; but what does that prove? Everything which here arouses horror and
indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the industrial epoch.
