Birmingham is Improved

At the end of New Street was a bookshop owned by Mr. William Hutton. It was one of the houses by the Swine Market which partly blocked the way into High Street. Mr. Hutton's shop was the only one of its kind in the town, for he not only sold books, but bound them and lent them out to people.

Like Will, Mr. Hutton had not been born in Birmingham, but in Derby, a town several miles away. He had come to the town in 1750 and had bought his shop which did very well. William Hutton was now an important and respected man. He was an Overseer of the Poor and a judge in the Court of Requests (a court which recovered debts of forty shillings or less).

William Hutton

A year after this, in 1773, he became one of the Commissioners of the Improvement Act (Lamp Act) which was to make Birmingham a better town. Even though Parliament passed this Act in 1773 it was to be a few years before everything it said was actually done.

Will had often thought that many of the streets in Birmingham were a bit dangerous, and he had stumbled and fallen several times. Perhaps the streets around the markets were the worst, for most of them had no footpaths and were usually wet and slippery with the refuse that lay rotting on the ground.

Some of these streets were so narrow that even during the day scarcely any light reached the ground. People could not see where they were going or what to avoid to prevent themselves falling over.

To walk along these streets at night was asking for trouble (not only from possible thieves and prostitutes) for it was easy to fall and hurt yourself. Steps into houses stuck out into the streets, piles of coal were simply left in the middle of the road, but in Will's view the most dangerous of all were the trapdoors into cellars which had been left open. Someone might kill themselves by falling down through a trapdoor. There was no lighting on any of Birmingham's streets and so many accidents happened in the hours of darkness.

Even the main streets of Birmingham - Snow Hill which led out to Handsworth, New Street, Suffolk Street and Charles Street - were almost as bad. Some parts of these thoroughfares sloped badly from one side of the street to the other just like the decks of a ship at sea, and so one side was several feet higher than the other. Some houses were built many feet lower than the one next door to them and so there were sudden big drops in the level of the street.

The picture shows clearly that even the main streets were very poorly surfaced and quickly churned into mud in bad weather.

The ideas behind the Improvement Act had begun about ten years before the Knight family had moved from Sheldon. A group of leading citizens had decided to present a Bill to Parliament for "Repairing, Cleansing and Enlightening the Streets of this Town". They thought that if some improvements were carried out they would "tend to the Suppression of many Disorders therein", and "to the Preservation of the Persons and Properties of the Inhabitants".

They wanted to do several things. They wanted to light the town with lamps (this is why the act is often called the Lamp Act) and to appoint men to light them every evening. They thought that men called "Scavengers" should keep the streets clear of rubbish. They wanted to keep the streets clear of obstructions, but they also tried to tackle the problem of Birmingham's markets and the congested streets. It was suggested that the houses which blocked the end of New Street and High Street should be pulled down and that the Beast Market should be moved slightly to Dale End.

Both of these sketches are taken from a map dating from the 1750's and they show the narrow market streets of that time.

However sensible this act seemed, it met with opposition, for it would mean money being spent and higher taxes from those who owned houses in the town. As one of Birmingham's newspapers said at the time, " (many seemed) to prefer continuing in darkness and mire without tax, to cleanliness, light and wider streets with eight pence in the pound to pay ".

However the main opponent to the plan was William Hutton. Although he liked most of the suggestions, he was violently against pulling down the houses at the end of New Street to give more room for the markets. The reason was obvious - his shop would be pulled down !

The arguments raged in Aris's Gazette, one of the town's two newspapers, throughout the winter of 1769. Perhaps one of the funniest objections was from a person who argued that having lamps in the town might lead to more robberies :

" Opportunity makes a Thief, so Lamps frequently give a Villain an Opportunity of perpetrating Mischief, which is prevented by Darkness and his fear of being observed prowling about the Streets with a light. This seems to be verified by the City of London, which is watched and lighted at a very great Expense, yet, nevertheless, Robbery and Mischief is very frequent there. "

The same man also feared lighting "Taverns and Ale-houses in dark Nights might lead to an increase of tippling and other vices".

Two Improvement Acts were eventually passed by the Government in 1769 and 1773. They contained everything that had been suggested. William Hutton was much happier, for he had been offered compensation for his shop. Seventy nine Commissioners were appointed to Birmingham to see that all the things were carried out. However, they rarely attended the meetings, so it was many years before some of the improvements were done.

The most obvious result of the acts was the lighting of the streets with oil lamps, but the flames were so weak that the lamps had to be fitted very low on the walls. Many of them were knocked off by accident and it would take a long time for them to be replaced.