Charles, the Mayor's son

He was to attend, with his father a tour of the new Birmingham Small Arms Company's factory at Small Heath. This had been in Bordesley Manor, in borough since 1838.

Gaily painted train of Oxford Railway Co. steamed in, party boarded. Charles excited - only second train trip. Some consternation when train ran at once into clanging darkness, with few dim oil-lamps only. But soon out of tunnel, crossing River Rea by great blue-brick viaduct. Halted by signal high above river, view over Old Town - close packed alleys and courts, factory chimneys belching black smoke, pall of it overhead. River a sad sight : pleasure boats up to Apollo Gardens, Moseley and down to Vauxhall had given up a few years before. The River Rea was an open sewer, a stinking stagnant pool held back by the Duddeston millweir. All the drains empty into it, and it is choked with rubbish and industrial waste. The weir is now broken down, but the river little improved. There had been cholera epidemic 8 year before, and the death rate was always high in old crowded districts. There is discussion among councillors about the need for laws to make running water, proper drains, making better housing obligatory (first Public Heath Act still 10 years away, Drainage Board not set up until 1877).

Charles looked down on Deritend and he could see the Golden Lion and St. John's Chapel at the back of the Old Crown Inn, looking much the same as in James's time and in fact, apart from the Chapel rebuilt in 1735, the street was much as in early Tudor times a hundred years before at that spot.

Looking back Charles could see St. Martin's, soon to be restored, no longer hemmed in by buildings. The Bull Ring was now clear, for the Market Cross and the Shambles had gone, replaced by the massive stone Market Hall. The pinnacles of Charles's school, the third building on the site, showed above it, and farther up could be seen the spire of Christ Church and the Town Hall roof in Victoria Square - but these and other landmarks were visible only dimly through the thick smoke which always hung over the town.

From the top floor windows Charles - not caring for machines that stood still, and made the same thing endlessly - looked out. North were the spires and chimneys of Birmingham under the smoke pall. To the west were the spreading suburbs of Bordesley and Balsall Heath. South and east were the green valley of the River Cole and the long parish of Yardley in Worcestershire with its several small centres. He could just see the thin spire of the distant church - and nearer was the new factory that had replaced Hay Mill, making wire for the Atlantic Cable. All so green and leafy, it looked like Arden at a distance, though almost all of the woods had gone long ago, only hedgerow trees and small copses left. Charles while thinking of the Rea hoped that the Cole Valley would never become like that.

People were talking of Birmingham having a quarter or even half a million people in 50 years - he would be 61 by then, and hoped he would have been able, not only to help improve the old town, but to make sure the new districts didn't lose all the fresh air and green spaces they had now as arable and pasture.

Charles lived to be a very old man - in fact he died only a few years before your parents were born. He had been a manufacturer like his father, and a City Councillor as well - for Birmingham became a City with a Lord Mayor in 1889. He had seen it growing at a tremendous rate, so that in 1911 it swallowed up its neighbours - Aston, Handsworth, Erdington, Kings Norton and Northfield, and Yardley - and his hope of making life better for people in the old town, and of making a pleasanter place of the new suburbs was achieved.

Sheldon came in too : council estates spread over the fields, the farms were razed - and Birmingham, once worth 20 shillings, had become a city covering 80 square miles and housing more than one million people.

1864 Aston Hall bought by Birmingham Corporation.

1865 Central Library opened. Jewellery Quarter forming north of centre - Gun Quarter in north-east.

1866 Reference Library opened.

1866 Josiah Mason, Joseph Gillott pen nibs.