Page:A century of Birmingham life- or, A chronicle of local events, from 1741 to 1841 (IA centuryofbirming02lang).pdf/26

 April 14, 1794.—To be Sold or Let, all that large and commodious Dwelling House, containing six Rooms on a Floor, with a Garden behind the same, all entire, situate in Cherry Street, in Birmingham, late the Residence of James Moore, Esq., deceased, since fitted up and used as a Bank. For further Particulars enquire of the Printer.

The following account of a fatal accident, shows the condition of an old friend of ours:—

June 9. 1794.—On Monday the wife of James Davenport, pocket-book maker, unfortunately falling into the place called "Pudding Brook," near this Town, was suffocated by the mud.

The active speculation in building which was now going on raised the fears of the timid, and we did not fail in our predictors of evil there-from. On January 26, 1795, the editor thus expressed the feeling of one of these anxious souls. The passage is valuable to us as affording some further reliable evidence of the great changes which were then being made in the appearance of the town and its more immediate neighbourhood.

"We are desired," says the editor, "by a Correspondent to remark that, although there is now supposed to be a thousand houses untenanted in the parish of Birmingham, yet such is the passion for speculations in building, that, (according to his information) upwards of sixty acres of the common land, lately enclosed in the parish of Handsworth, under an act of parliament, is already taken or purchased, and intended to be built upon, and that some of the building clubs have made a beginning upon a scale of twenty houses and gardens to an acre of land.

"How so great an additional population as may result therefrom is to be supported, doth not to our correspondent appear, as many of the native inhabitants of the parish are out of employment, and whose situation at this inclement season would be truly miserable, had it not been mitigated by their benevolent neighbours."

Such Jeremiads never did, and never will, stop the evil complained of. The restless activity of men resolved to "get on," is not to be calmed down by the terrors of anticipated and prospective evils. Thus, in spite of the "correspondent's" fearful picture of a "thousand houses untenanted," we have such advertisements as the following, still offering for use:—

September 28, 1795—To be Let, on Building Leases, some valuable Lots of Land in the New Part of Cherry Street. This Situation is in the Centre of the Town, and rendered, by its communication with the principal Streets, particularly advantageous for genteel Retail Trades. The Depth of 1 and is equal to the opposite Side, on which an