[1] The information in this section, up to the close of 1884, is taken from the very accurate and interesting “History of the Corporation of Birmingham,” by J. Thackray Bunce. Two vols., 1878 and 1885.

[2] In 1795 it had risen to £1,200; in 1818 to £3,000; in 1861 to £11,000; in 1880 to £21,983; and it is reckoned that at the end of the century the revenue of the School will be £50,000.

[3] This barn and croft were taken away in 1738 from both chief master and usher, and their salaries raised in lieu to £88. 15s. 0d. and £60.

[4] In all these provisions boys from the manor had the preference.

[5] An alternative plan, apparently not adopted, was to have two exhibitions of £5 each, at Catherine Hall, Cambridge; and two fellowships of £30 a year each at the same college.

[6] The first exhibitioners were William Milner and Bartholomew Baldwin, in 1677. Up to 1817, eighty-two exhibitioners had been elected. In 1723, however, a chancery commission declared it a manifest breach of trust on the Governors’ part that no exhibition had been granted for twenty years; while on January 18, 1734, the chief master, having no scholars under his care, William Spilsbury, jun., a scholar in the usher’s school, was elected exhibitioner at Oxford, no other boy being qualified or likely to be qualified for some years.

[7] See the illustrations in Hutton’s Birmingham.

[8] The first appointed were in 1752, as follows: William Latham, in Dudley Street; Thomas Wilson, near the Old Cross; Mary Ankers, wife of Noel Ankers, in Freeman Street; another Widow Austin, in London Prentice Street.

[9] For some reason not very clear, the branch school in Shutt Lane, as also a drawing school established by the Governors, were in 1829 declared by a decree in Chancery to be unauthorised by the charter, and were then discontinued.

[10] This was the original intention. But one of these two large apartments was taken by the Governors, and the room designed for the library was given to the commercial school in its place. The latter is now the assembly room of the Girls High School.

[11] It should be added that Mr. Green’s report also declares that “it is universally admitted that the present Board has discharged its duties with all care and conscientiousness.”

[12] The present bailiff.

[13] See the development of 1883.

[14] The imposition of fees has ever been a sore point. The first report of the new Town Council Governors was issued on January 7th, 1879, and stated that they had endeavoured to reduce these fees; and in 1880 they expressed their regret at their imposition.

[15] In 1800, there were 120 boys: in 1850, 250 boys; in 1860, 456 boys in Grammar School, and 1080 children in the Elementary Schools: there are now 343 boys and 195 girls in the High School: 849 boys and 644 girls in the Grammar Schools. Grand total, 1493.

[16] The number of Masters in the Grammar School was, in 1878, 26; in the Elementary Schools there were 20 teachers and 21 monitors.

[17] Existing rights reserved; in 1878 the Head Master had 17, and the second Master, 5 boarders.

[18] These amounts have been greatly exceeded. The annual expenditure on exhibitions is, Boys’ High School, £690; Girls, £200; Boys’ Grammar School, £270; Girls, £360. There is only one James Exhibition.

[19] Opened September, 1883.

[20] Five sums of £1,000 each for Scholarships, Prize Essays, Chaplaincy, Divinity Lectureship, and Medical Tutorship.

[21] e.g., Law, which was shortly added.

[22] The arts department being henceforward regarded as preparatory to the other two.

[23] In that year the present Warden, the Rev. W. H. Poulton, came into office, and the number immediately increased to 22.

[24] The purchase value of the property was £110,000, yielding an annual rent of £3,700. £60,000 was spent upon the building and furnishing. The total amount of the benefaction will, in the end, approach £200,000. As early as 1882, however, we find that the Council “view with regret the narrow margin that is likely to exist unless the present endowment is supplemented by other gifts,”—[Report, p. 11.]—and this anxiety is again forcibly expressed in 1885. It was relieved in that year, however, by an “Additional Endowment Fund,” the subscriptions to which reached £4,855.

[25] In 1882, it was ordered that wives and children of Professors, Lecturers, and Secretaries, who died during their term of office, be admitted to all classes without payment.

[26] Two exhibitions of £15 each, increased next year to four, awarded by the Governors of King Edward’s Schools, and a Science Scholarship of £20 a year, created by the Trustees of Piddock’s Charity, are also tenable at the College.

[27] Various other societies have been formed within the college, e.g., Physical, Chemical, Botanical, Poesy, and French Debating Societies.

[28] The Libraries and Fine Art Gallery were shortly undertaken by the town, and have never formed part of the work of the Institute.

[29] Paid Teachers were substituted in 1860.

[30] The Perry Barr and Harborne Institutes had been opened previously.

[31] M. Achille AlbitÈs.

[32] Now covered by the Schools of the Society of Friends, and where Wyatt and Paul’s first spinning of cotton by rollers was tried.

[33] The principal object of this part is to shew the development of the parochial system, and readers will therefore kindly notice—

1.—All architectural details are omitted, and will be found under the head, “Architecture,” where there is anything special to notice.

2.—Particulars as to patronage, annual value of livings, number of sittings, are, in order to economise space and prevent repetition, relegated to a table at the end of this section, in which table all the churches in the Borough are arranged alphabetically, irrespective of whether they are in the parish of Birmingham, Edgbaston, or that part of Aston parish which is within the Borough.

[34] For the records of these sales see a valuable paper by Mr. J. R. Holliday on St. Martin’s Church, in the Transactions for 1873 of the ArchÆological Section of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.

[35] See the excellent monograph, “Old St. Martin’s,” by J. T. Bunce, 1875.

[36] A copy and translation of this interesting document will be found in Toulmin Smith’s Memorials of Old Birmingham, 1864.

[37] The materials for the historical facts are to be found in the “Sketch of the History of Protestant Non-Conformity in Birmingham,” by the Rev. J. R. Wreford, formerly minister of the New Meeting House, Birmingham, 1832, and “Protestant Non-Conformity in Birmingham,” by the Rev. J. A. James, Birmingham, 1849.

[38] See the interesting volume, “Memorials of the Old Meeting House and Burial Ground.” by Catherine Hutton Beale. Printed for subscribers by White and Pike, Birmingham.

[39] In the order of time there was an intermediate meeting house in Livery Street, originally a circus, and used by the congregations of the Old and New Meetings, whilst those meeting houses were being rebuilt after the riots of 1791. It was afterwards occupied by a part of the Carr’s Lane congregation, on Mr. Brewer’s resignation of the pastorate there in 1802, and, it becoming too small, it was resolved to build Ebenezer Chapel. The chapel in Livery Street was pulled down in 1853, and the printing establishment of M. Billing, Sons, and Co., is built on the site.

[40] An excellent paper on the Old Church may be found in the third vol. of the Transactions of the ArchÆological Section of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.

[41] The principal chemicals manufactured on a large scale are:—Sulphuric, Sulphurous, Hydrochloric, Nitric, Crude Carbolic, Hydrocyanic, and Hydrofluoric Acids; Washing Soda, Bicarbonate of Soda, Rochelle Salt, Glauber’s Salt, Carbonate of Potash, Bicarbonate of Potash, Chlorate of Potash, Cyanide of Potassium, Iodide of Potassium, Oxalate of Potash, Bleaching Powder, Ammonia, Sulphate of Ammonia, Sal Ammoniac, Carbonate of Ammonia, Precipitated Chalk, Bisulphite of Lime, Citrate of Magnesia, Fluid Magnesia, Nitrates of Barium and Strontium, Sulphate of Copper, Phosphorus, Milk of Sulphur, Tin Crystals, Benzol, Toluene, Xylene, Phenol, Naphthalene, Crude Anthracene, and other Tar Products, Fruit Essences.

[42] Mungo consists of tailors’ scraps of cloth torn up into shreds, and rendered suitable for working up afresh. Shoddy is a similar material, but made from old garments instead of new material.

[43] A heavy knife used for cutting down sugar cane.

[44] Among goldbeaters Gypsum goes by the name of talc

[45] I am indebted to my colleague Mr. A. H. Hiorns for these particulars.

[46] Sometimes “the process is simply performed by rubbing two pieces of bone quite flat on a smooth stone, and then cutting in one of the pieces the shape required, leaving a hole through to the edge by which to pour in the metal.”—Mr. C. B. Bragg.

[47] For these particulars I am indebted to my colleague, Mr. A. H. Irons.

[48] “Birmingham and Midland Hardware District,” edited by Samuel Timmins, London, Hardwicke, 1866.

[49] The screw hand-press so generally used in Birmingham trades was the first great means of cheapening the making of steel pens, which had previously been made by hand, in Sheffield and London. Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Joseph Gillott, and Sir Josiah Mason, were the first to make steel pens by press work.—Ed.

[50] This mechanism was first used by James Watt, for copying medallions and busts, and his machines are still preserved at Heathfield Hall, Handsworth.—Ed.

[51] For the Enfield-Martini of 0·4 bore, the thickness is 0·130 inch, and the disc cut out is 1·205 in diameter.

[52] I am indebted to Mr. J. W. Davis for these particulars.

[53] In these cases the value of the gold is trifling as compared with the labour expended, hence there is every confidence in the value of the metal.

[54] The statistics given have been supplied by Messrs. Crawley, Parsons and Co.

[55] I have been surprised to note Birmingham made pearl buttons put on cards headed NouveautÉ, Paris. I understand that many of these buttons are sent to the United States.—C. J. W.

[56] Sir William Thomson has proposed intervals corresponding to the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet in order to distinguish lighthouses. C. J. W.

[57] It is interesting to know that Mr. Edward White Benson, father of the present Archbishop of Canterbury, was associated with Mr. Askin in the early experiments on extraction of nickel.

[58] Mr. Henry Bore, who has been connected with the Perryan Pen Works for nearly thirty years, has in the press a work dealing principally with the origin of pen making. Mr. Bore’s investigation points to Mr. John Mitchell as the first to introduce the making of pens by means of tools principally if not entirely his invention, but there is little doubt that the use of steel pens by the writing public is due in the first instance to the energy of Mr. James Perry, who was assisted in this work by the late Sir Josiah Mason.

[59] An amalgam of gold is spread on the work to be gilt. The article is then put in an oven and heated till the mercury escapes, leaving the gold behind. Military buttons and ornaments are gilt in this manner.—C. J. W.

[60] Ramsay. Quart. Journal Geol. Society, 1855, p. 191, &c.

[61] Jukes, South Staffordshire Coalfield, 2nd Edition, p. 15.

[62] For a Note by the writer on the distribution of this species in Britain, see Midland Naturalist, Vol. 1, 1878, p. 323.

[63] Those who are interested in the Embryology of these lowly creatures will find a paper upon the subject by Professor E. Ray Lankester, in the “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.” Part I. 1875.

[64] A paper by Professor E. Ray Lankester on the Invaginate planula, or Diploblastic phase of Paludina vivipara, may be found in the “Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science.” New Series. No. 58. April, 1875.

[65] For a paper by the writer on this habit in the Mollusca, see “Conchological Journal,” Vol. I., p. 401, et seq. 1874-8.

[66] See the “Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science,” New Series, No. 56, October, 1875, for the Embryology of L. stagnalis, by Professor E. Ray Lankester.

[67] For detailed description see “On a group of minerals from Lilleshall, Salop, by C. J. Woodward.” “Quarterly Journal Geological Society,” August, 1883, p. 466.

[68] For particulars relating to this mine, I am indebted to Mr. W. Yelland.

[69] Professor Maskelyne in Report of the British Association Committee on Luminous Meteors, 1876, p. 166, quoted in a paper by Townshend. Mr. Hall on “Contributions towards a History of British Meteorites,” in the “Mineralogical Magazine,” 1879.