A Tale of One City: the New Birmingham / Papers Reprinted from the Midland Counties Herald""

t place. If Thomas Attwood or George Frederick Muntz could now revisit the town they once represented in Parliament they would probably stare with amazem

and municipal sense advanced by leaps and bounds. It is no longer "Brummagem" or the "Hardware Village," it is now recognised as the centre of activity and inf

that has a good solid debt on its books, also that has municipal officials of high capabilities with fairly high salaries to match-then Birmingham is not altogether undeserving of the high-sounding appellation. Many of those who only know Birmingham from an outside point of view, and who have only lately begun to notice its external developments, doubtless attribute all the improve

ums that were scarcely fit for those who lived in them-which is saying very much. A region sacred to squalor and low drinking shops, a paradise of marine store dealers, a hotbe

entral district naturally tended to increase the number of visitors to the growing Midland capital, and this, of course, brought into existence a better class of shops and more extended trading. Then the suburbs of Birmingham, which for some years had been stretching out north, south, east, and west, have lately become to a

" Also how he saw a "brooke," which was doubtless in his time a pretty little river, but which is now a sewery looking stream that tries to atone for its shallowness and narrowness by its thickness. They have lik

on Hall (which had given hospitality to Charles I.) making a breakage-still unrepaired!-in the great staircase of that grand old Eliza

AL STAG

thing like big schemes, even if desirable, were postponed or rejected. Birmingham, indeed, some thirty years ago, was considerably under the influence of men of the unprogressive tradesmen class-many of them worthy men in their way but of limited ideas. In their private businesses they were not accustomed to deal with

offices and municipal buildings before land in the centre of the town became so very costly; the gas and water interests might have been purchased, probably at a price that would have saved the town thousands of pounds. It is also understood that they might have purchased Aston Hall, with its 170 acres close to the town,

e growing traffic in the principal streets called for better and more durable roadways, and Macadamised and granite paved streets no longer answered the purposes required. The latter were heavy, noisy, and lumbering; the former were not sufficiently durable. Moreover, "Macadam" consisted of sharply-cut pieces of metal put upon the streets, which were left for cart and carriage wheels to break up and press down int

ig as a good-sized potato, very durable but extremely unpleasant to walk upon. Little or nothing was done to improve the slummy and dirty parts of the

been no health in us. It may, however, be admitted that Birmingham was no worse governed than many other large towns in the comparatively unprogressive days of which I speak, but a new race of more advanced and energetic men