Manchester
Manchester names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Manchester a manufacturing city of England
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a manufacturing city of England. It is situated in the extreme southeastern corner of Lancashire, thirty miles east of Liverpool. It was originally a Roman camp. It became noted early in the fourteenth century for its woolens. It is still the greatest weaving center in England. With its suburbs, it produces more cotton cloth annually than any other city in the world. Six hundred power looms are not an unusual number for a single factory. In connection with the cotton mills there are bleaching works, establishments for printing calico, and dye works on an enormous scale. Cambric, calico, muslin, gingham, ticking, jeans, corduroy, silk, and mixed goods are manufactured. There are over 60,000 employes in the cotton mills alone. There are also manufactures of machinery, chemicals, paper, hardware, and electrical appliances. Large coal fields in the immediate vicinity supply an abundance of fuel. Until recently Liverpool was the seaport of Manchester. In 1894 the Manchester ship canal, connecting the city with the Mersey River, was constructed. Ocean steamers of the larger size now unload provisions and bales of cotton at wharves in the center of the city. The manufactured goods of the city are now shipped at its own wharves. The first railway ever constructed for the carrying of passengers was built from Manchester to Liverpool in 1825. A complete network of canals and railways now connects Manchester with all parts of Great Britain . The rapid growth of Manchester and consequently the large body of citizens who were practically deprived of representation in Parliament, made that city a center of the Chartist agitation. Under the leadership of Cobden and Bright, Manchester made its influence felt on the side of free trade . During the Civil War in America, the supply of raw cotton was cut off. The Manchester mills were idle. The weavers were without employment and much suffering ensued. It was before an audience composed largely of these weavers that Henry Ward Beecher made his noted defense of the cause of the North. The city is celebrated for municipal improvements. The public library is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, free library in Europe. A large public hospital resulted from a movement started by Jenny Lind, who donated the proceeds of two concerts toward the project. The meeting hall of the Royal Exchange is one of the largest rooms in England. The finest public building is the Town Hall, completed in 1877. It is considered one of the most creditable municipal buildings in Europe. It has a tower 260 feet high. It contains a remarkable peal of twenty-one bells. Each bell bears a line from section 105 of Tennyson's In Memoriam, beginning, "Ring out, wild bells." The building cost upward of $5,000,000. Water is brought into the city from a reservoir situated in the hills twenty miles distant. The city owns its own lighting plant and system of street railways. In the matter of municipal ownership , it is one of the most progressive cities in the world. Its educational facilities are excellent. Owen College has an endowment of $2,000,000. A number of other institutions have been consolidated with it to form Victoria University. Preparatory schools and public schools are maintained on a liberal scale. The population of the city in 1900 was 543,872. With its suburbs the city has a population of not far from 700,000 inhabitants.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city in Lancaster co., England; on the Irwell, an affluent of the Mersey, 31 miles E. of Liverpool. Including Salford, a suburban town on the W. bank of the Irwell, it stands in a large plain, covering over 3,000 acres, surrounded with hills except on the W., and is the center of the cotton trade of Great Britain, and one of the principal manufacturing cities in the world. The Irk and the Medlock join the Irwell near the town, and are of the greatest advantage to it. The MANCHESTER SHIP developed the CANAL (q. v.) has greatly dev city's industrial importance. Factories and warehouses are numerous and of gigantic proportions. The principal among its public buildings are the Exchange, built in the Doric style; the Town Hall, an elegant building of Ionic architecture, formed on the model of the Temple of Erectheus at Athens, and the Corn Exchange. It has also several educational institutions, one of which, the college founded by Humphrey Chatham in 1665, contains a large library. There are, besides, several public libraries and a number of associations for promoting literature and science. It is as a manufacturing city that Manchester derives its importance, being the great center of the cotton manufacture of England. Besides the population connected with the factories, which almost absorb the plain goods trade, the principal articles man- 'ufactured are velvets, fustians, dimities, calicoes, checks, tickings, jeans, shirtings, ginghams, quiltings, handkerchiefs, nankeens, diapers, muslinets, muslins, cambrics, and almost every kind of fancy cotton and silk goods. The spinning trade is extensive, and considerable quantities of yarn are annually exported. Manchester derives considerable advantages from the almost inexhaustible coal fields in its neighborhood, and from the canals and railways which connect it with different parts of the country and the E. and W. seaboard. The climate of Manchester is very healthy, despite the disadvantage of the prevalence of smoke arising from the number of factories, Pop. about 775,000.
Manchester a city and one of the county-seats of Hillsboro co.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city and one of the county-seats of Hillsboro co., N. H.; on the Merrimac river and on several branches of the Boston and Maine railroad; 56 miles N. of Boston. It derives water power for manufacturing from the Amoskeag Falls in the Merrimac, by means of a system of canals. There are the Elliott and Sacred Heart Hospitals, the Woman's Aid Home, United States Government Building, public library, high etc. school, and training school. The city has waterworks supplied by gravity from Lake Massabesic, electric light and street railroad plants, several National banks, daily and weekly newspapers, and more than 30 churches. The chief industrial plants are the great Amoskeag, Stark, nd Amory cotton mills. Manchester, and The city also has manufactories of loco motives, fire engines, machinery, hosiery, shoes, etc. Pop. (1910) 70,063; (1920) 78,384.
Manchester a town in Hartford co.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town in Hartford co., Conn.; on the Hockanum river and on the New York, New Haven, and Hartford and South Manchester railroads. There is a public library, high school, electric street railroad, and electric lights, and several newspapers. It has extensive manufacturing plants, including the great Cheney silk mills, paper mills, cotton and woolen mills, electrical supply works, etc. The town was reincorporated in 1907 and has the commission form of government. Pop. (1910) 13,641; (1920) 18,370.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote in 1910 that Manchester's suburbs produced "more cotton cloth annually than any other city in the world" and counted over 60,000 mill hands, it was describing an industry that has since vanished: Lancashire spinning collapsed through the twentieth century, and the Manchester Ship Canal docks the accounts celebrate closed in 1982, their basins reborn as the Salford Quays waterfront with the Lowry and MediaCity. The colleges have also merged upward — Owens College and the Victoria University line ran into the University of Manchester, which absorbed UMIST in 2004; the same institution's physics laboratories saw Rutherford's work on the atom and, in 1948, the first stored-program computer to run software. The smoke that Collier's called a mere "disadvantage" in 1921 was largely legislated away after the Clean Air Act of 1956. The Town Hall of 1877 still stands with its bells, closed for a long restoration, and the city that had 543,872 people in 1900 now anchors a conurbation of roughly 2.8 million.
Written for this edition, 2026.