Birmingham

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

ber'ming-ham, an English city. It is situated 112 miles northwest of London. It is at the geographical center of England. It lies at the edge of the coal and iron districts, and is one of the great manufacturing cities of the world. It had in 1908, 558, 357 people, rather more than our Pittsburg, which, in point of grime, smoke, and an industrial population, it strongly resembles. Cotton spinning and metal working are the leading lines of industry. Jewelry, silver, and plated ware, hooks and eyes, buttons, pins, screws, steel pens, nails, glassware, guns, ammunition, locomotives, steel rails, and implements are made in enormous quantities, not only for the British market, but for export to the colonies. Birmingham makes a greater variety of metal articles than any other city in the world. Many of the problems of governing a workingmen's city have been studied here. The city owns its own gas and electric works. Water is brought from Wales, eighty miles distant. Public schools, with compulsory attendance, the tearing down of slum districts, sewerage, manual training schools, and public baths have been looked after with a degree of energy and an honesty of management that may well arouse the emulation of Americans accustomed to flatter themselves that theirs is a well governed country. Birmingham is the leading hardware city of the world. It was an Anglo-Saxon town, and became an important industrial city even in the Middle Ages . Its great importance, however, dates from the seventeenth century, in the manufacture of swords and guns. As early as 1727 its hardware manufacturers are said to have employed 50,000 persons. By the end of the century it was known throughout the world. In the industrial revolution of the era of the eighteenth century it became a Liberal center, and in the nineteenth century a leader in reform and chartism. Evils, however, developed, and by 1873 Birmingham's municipal government was considered one of the worst in England. In 1873 came a change. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was elected mayor, and commenced an era of municipal activity. The sum of $10,000,000 was paid for the plant of two gas companies, a large price; yet the profits the first year were $170,000, and they have since doubled. The price, too, since 1875 has been reduced from 75c. to about 50c. per 1,000 feet. Since 1889 the employes have had the eight-hour day. In 1874 the city paid $6,750,000 for the existing waterworks of a private company, and since then the works have been extended, the daily supply doubled, and the cost to consumers much reduced. In 1875 Mr. Chamberlain laid before the council an Improvement Scheme, which has since been adopted, and whereby the city took forty-five acres of the most crowded and most unwholesome portions of the city, covered by 1,368 houses, condemned the whole district, and has opened in its place the finest public thorough-fare of the city, "Corporation Street," lined by fine business blocks. These buildings have not been sold, but leased for seventy-five years. The gross outlay April, 1904, was $8,650,000, but the yearly cost is lessening and the rentals are growing. In fifty years from the time of the investment the debt will all have been paid, and the city will own these structures in clear title. Mr. Chamberlain believes that Birmingham will be the richest municipal corporation in the kingdom. The investment already pays, since the death-rate of this district has been lowered, from 60 to 20 or 25 per 1,000. The city has developed a fine sewerage system and a large sewage farm, a wholesome and agreeable tract of land under high cultivation and with rich crops. Birmingham was the first city in England to establish municipal baths. The first was opened in 1851, at a cost of $120,000, and there are now four, besides swimming-baths, Turkish baths, etc. The city has laid and owns several lines of tramway, within the city limits, but leases them to private companies on favorable terms. It is calculated that in twenty-one years this will pay for the whole investment. As the city can borrow at 3 per cent, it is a profitable investment. The companies have to pay all bills for maintenance and repairs, and are minutely supervised as to the furnishing and lighting of the cars. The city owns her own markets, having bought them of the manorial lord in 1824, and they now yield some $50,000 a year profits. The city owns more than ten parks, for its population of 500,000. Its debt, which before Mr. Chamberlain became mayor was small, is now some $75,000,000, but it has assets of $80,000,000, and the taxes are almost exactly what they were.--Bliss, The Encyclopedia of Social Reform. Birthdays of Famous People. JANUARY BIRTHDAYS. 1 Paul Revere 1735 6 Joan of Arc 1412 17 Benjamin Franklin 1706 18 Daniel Webster 1782 19 James Watt 1736 Robert E. Lee 1807 Edgar A. Poe 1809 22 Lord Byron 1788 Francis Bacon 1561 25 Robert Burns 1759 27 Wolfgang Mozart 1756 FEBRUARY BIRTHDAYS. 3 Horace Greeley 1811 Felix Mendelssohn 1809 Sidney Lanier 1842 7 Charles Dickens 1812 8 John Ruskin 1819 William T. Sherman 1820 10 Charles Lamb 1775 12 Abraham Lincoln 1809 Charles Darwin 1809 15 Galileo 1564 19 Copernicus 1473 22 George Washington 1732 26 James Russell Lowell 1819 Victor Hugo 1802 27 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 28 Michel Montaigne 1533 MARCH BIRTHDAYS. 6 Michelangelo 1475 7 Sir Edwin Landseer 1802 18 John C. Calhoun 1782 21 Robert Bruce 1274 22 Vandyke 1599 28 Raphael 1483 30 John Fiske 1842 APRIL BIRTHDAYS. 2 Thomas Jefferson 1743 Hans Christian Andersen 1805 Charlemagne 742 3 Washington Irving 1783 7 William Wordsworth 1770 12 Henry Clay 1777 20 Marcus Aurelius 121 22 Madame de Stael 1766 23 William Shakespeare 1564 25 Oliver Cromwell 1599 27 S. F. B. Morse 1791 Ulysses S. Grant 1822 MAY BIRTHDAYS. 1 Joseph Addison 1672 4 Horace Mann 1796 John James Audubon 1780 7 Robert Browning 1812 13 Linnaeus 1707 14 Fahrenheit 1686 21 Plato B. C. 429 22 Alexander Pope 1688 22 Richard Wagner 1813 24 Queen Victoria 1819 25 Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 27 Dante 1265 28 Louis Agassiz 1807 29 Patrick Henry 1736 JUNE BIRTHDAYS. 1 Ben Jonson 1573 12 Charles Kingsley 1819 13 Thomas Arnold 1795 14 Harriet Beecher Stowe 1812 17 John Wesley 1703 28 Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712 29 Peter Paul Rubens 1577 JULY BIRTHDAYS. 4 Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804 6 John Huss 1369 12 Julius Caesar B. C. 100 Henry D. Thoreau 1817 15 Rembrandt 1607 18 William M. Thackeray 1811 27 Thomas Campbell 1777 AUGUST BIRTHDAYS. 4 Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 6 Alfred Tennyson 1809 9 John Dryden 1631 Izaak Walton 1593 15 Napoleon Bonaparte 1769 Walter Scott 1771 23 Baron Cuvier 1769 28 Johann Goethe 1749 29 Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809 SEPTEMBER BIRTHDAYS. 6 Lafayette 1757 7 Queen Elizabeth 1533 15 James Fenimore Cooper 1789 18 Samuel Johnson 1709 21 Savonarola 1452 27 Samuel Adams 1722 OCTOBER BIRTHDAYS. 4 Jean Francois Millet 1814 6 Jenny Lind 1820 14 William Penn 1644 16 Noah Webster 1758 21 Samuel T. Coleridge 1772 25 Thomas B. Macaulay 1800 29 John Keats 1795 NOVEMBER BIRTHDAYS. 1 Marie Antoinette 1755 3 William Cullen Bryant 1794 7 Mary, Queen of Scots 1542 10 Martin Luther 1483 Oliver Goldsmith 1728 15 William Cowper 1731 22 George Eliot 1819 29 Wendell Phillips 1811 30 Jonathan Swift 1667 DECEMBER BIRTHDAYS. 4 Thomas Carlyle 1795 9 John Milton 1608 Gustavus Adolphus 1594 13 William Lloyd Garrison 1805 Phillips Brooks 1835 16 Ludwig Beethoven 1770 17 John G. Whittier 1807 25 Isaac Newton 1642 26 Thomas Gray 1716 29 William Ewart Gladstone 1809 2026 Editor's Note: Before its grime, Birmingham was an engine of ideas: the Lunar Society met here by moonlight in the 1700s — Boulton, Watt, Priestley and Erasmus Darwin among them — and between them helped launch the Industrial Revolution. Heavily bombed in the Second World War and much rebuilt, it remains Britain's second city and one of its most diverse. (Ed: BR 2026-07-21)