Courtyard scene

The Knight family soon found that another nuisance about Needless Alley was using the privy. In Sheldon they had had their own earth closet in the garden and John Knight had built a wooden shed around it so that they always had some privacy. The privy in Needless Alley was next to their house, but it was for everyone who lived in the court and it was in a very bad condition.

The old wooden shed was in was very dilapidated and no longer had a door. As it faced out into the court it meant that everybody could see when anyone went to use the privy. Mary Knight soon decided that she was not going to use the privy at all, as the first time she had done so a group of four men in the court just stood and watched her, calling out rude comments.

After this Mary used a pot in the house which she then emptied in the privy. Most women in the court did the same thing, but some simply threw the contents of their pot into the courtyard, not bothering to put them in the privy. Now Mary understood why the courtyard smelled so much.

Birmingham alley.

A bigger problem with the privy was that too many people used it, and the cess pool below was obviously too small. This meant that it overflowed regularly (especially in winter) into the courtyard, creating a terrible nuisance. When it did this all the people in the court would empty the ashes from their coal fires around the privy and try to dry out the yard. This happened so many times that those who lived in the court were used to it, and the only thing they commented on was how much higher the level of the court must be with so many layers of ashes on it.

Cross-section showing yard, cellars & privy

Unfortunately, John Knight had soon found out the worst part of living so near to the privy. When they had first arrived at Needless Alley he had noticed that the side walls of their two rooms was always wet. He had examined the walls carefully using two candles. What he found made him shudder, for the wall was a dark green colour and a thick liquid was slowly coming through - the cess pit was on the other side of the wall !

Night (soil) men

When the cesspits were full the Nightmen emptied them by hand. They took the sloppy, stinking mess away in carts that dripped and leaked as they made their way through Birmingham. The smell this made was so unpleasant that it was against the law to do it by day. This explains how the name 'nightmen' came to be used.

Only the most desperate would take this job. They were not too careful how they did their job, and if they found a cesspit that was difficult to empty they broke down its walls or ripped out the seat of the privy. The contents of the cesspits were called 'night soil' and made excellent manure for the farmers. The nightmen were usually paid by the ton, as they delivered it to the farms.

Another thing the Knight family had to get used to now they were living in Birmingham was very different food. In Sheldon they had plenty of fresh vegetables from the small garden at the back of their cottage and they always had fresh milk to drink. Here in the town, they found it very difficult to get either milk or fresh vegetables apart from potatoes. It seemed that not enough vegetables were grown in the countryside to supply growing towns like Birmingham.

The Knight's diet became very monotonous, and nearly every day they would eat just bread and potatoes. In a way this was fairly convenient as they did not have a stove to cook on, just the open fire, and it was difficult to cook on that. As it was so smoky they found it hard to see what they were doing.

Sometimes a man would come around selling fish that had not been sold in the market. It was very cheap and Mary Knight could afford to buy it, but she soon found out why it was so cheap - it must have been in the market for weeks !

Occasionally when her husband and sons had a good week of work Mary Knight would have a little extra money and she would then try to get some meat for the family. The trouble was that meat was very expensive, so she could only afford to buy the very tough bits. She would sometimes go down to the market, last thing at night, before the stalls closed, hoping to get some meat cheaply.

At one time she went to a butcher's in Deritend and tried to forget that most of the carcasses of the animals were often strangely swollen and had a peculiar yellowish colour. Then one day Mary heard of some people who had become very ill and died (so it was whispered) through eating infected meat from this shop. That was the last time that Mary went to that butcher's. Even though his meat was cheap it was not worth the risk of eating it.

Many years later Mary Knight still remembered the despair she had felt when she had just moved to Birmingham. She had been horrified at the squalor of Needless Alley, but worse than that had been her fear that John and Will would not be able to find employment.

She did not dare to think what would happen if they had no money to live on and to pay their weekly rent - it would probably mean that they would have to move again or go into the workhouse.

While the Knight family had TWO rooms to live in other families only had ONE. Imagine Father, Mother. plus several children (perhaps as many as 8 or 9) of varying ages living, eating, sleeping and washing in one small room.

It is not really surprising that diseases spread very rapidly in these cramped and dirty conditions and that there was a very high incidence of infant mortality (baby deaths).

Domestic violence was very common as living in such cramped conditions strained the nerves of even the most placid, and the law did not protect women from violent husbands.

People who were even less fortunate slept on the streets and under bridges and arches.

Matthew Boulton

But in 1775 the Knight family was lucky. John Knight quickly found a job at Mr. Boulton's Soho factory in Handsworth village and was well paid. He even talked of taking Tom with him one day to begin work there too. It was quite a long walk each morning and evening. The village of Handsworth was far outside the boundary of Birmingham town.

The Soho Manufactory owned by Matthew Boulton

Will Knight found a different type of employment in Mr. Lanyard's nailmaking workshop. Thus, for a few years, the Knight family lived in Needless Alley resigned to their life and thinking less of Sheldon as the years went by. Mary soon found that she had plenty to keep her occupied when she gave birth to her fifth child, Richard, in 1778.