Charles Bowyer Adderley (1814-1905) inherited vast landed estates from his great uncle in 1826. These included most of the land on which Saltley was built and so naturally he profited immensely from mid-Victorian urbanisation.

Charles Adderley endowed Saltley Parish Church (Saint Saviour's) in 1850 and donated ten acres of land for the creation of Adderley Park in Saltley in 1856. He also built a library and reading room in Adderley Park which were demolished in 1965.

Charles Adderley became the MP for North Staffordshire in 1841 and held several ministerial positions under Lord Derby. He was also President of the Board of Trade under Benjamin Disraeli but retired from the House of Commons in 1878 upon being created first Baron Norton.

One of Adderley's younger sons, James, became the vicar of Saltley. His oldest son inherited the barony which has been passed down the generations to James Adderley, the 8th and current baron, who was born in 1947.

Thomas Attwood (1783-1859) was an economist and political activist who founded the Birmingham Political Union in 1830. The Union campaigned for universal male suffrage and the reform of parliamentary constituencies.

At the time Birmingham had a population of around 70,000 but could not return a single MP to the House of Commons whereas numerous Rotten Boroughs, such as Old Sarum in Wiltshire, were virtually uninhabited but could return two MP's.

Moreover, Birmingham could not elect its own town council but was governed by an unelected Board of Street Commissioners until 1838.

Thomas Attwood addressed huge crowds in his efforts to obtain political representation for Birmingham and other industrial towns. He held several open-air meetings in May 1832, some of which attracted over 200,000 supporters.

This type of political pressure resulted in the Reform Act of 1832 which abolished the rotten boroughs and granted political representation to new industrial towns. In particular, Birmingham won the right to elect two MP's to the House of Commons. Thomas Attwood was one of the first two MP's elected by Birmingham voters; he represented the town until 1839.

In 1894, Wolseley opened a factory on Broad Street in Birmingham that was managed by Hebert Austin. It manufactured bicycles and automobiles in addition to sheep-shearing machines.

Wolseley subsequently sold the automobile side of the business to Vickers who transferred production to Adderley Park in east Birmingham. Herbert Austin worked for Vickers until 1905 when he opened his own car plant at Longbridge. By 1908, his factory was producing 17 different models.

Austin made his fortune manufacturing military vehicles, munitions and aircraft during the First World War but his business tottered on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 1920's.

These financial problems coincided with a short-lived political career during which he was Conservative MP for Kings Norton from 1918 until 1924. In this context, Herbert Austin is best-remembered as the MP who never made a speech in the House of Commons.

After leaving Parliament, Austin retrieved his fortunes with two new models - the Austin Seven and Baby Austin - which brought motoring to the masses and his Longbridge factory remained profitable during his lifetime. He was created Baron Austin in 1936.

John Baskerville (1706-1775) was a printer and typographer who devised new printing methods by creating a smooth white paper and darker black type. He also introduced wider margins and line spacing.

Baskerville was a member of the Royal Society of Arts at the same time as Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin later adopted Baskerville's fonts for US federal publishing.

Baskerville, an atheist, was buried in the grounds of his house which stood on what is now Centenary Square in the Westside area of central Birmingham. His corpse was exhumed after the house was demolished and a canal basin was dug on the site.

Despite being buried for over 30 years, Baskerville's corpse was in almost perfect condition and was displayed in a warehouse until interred in Warstone Lane Cemetery. The canal basin was backfilled in the 1930's and an office block known as Baskerville House was built on the vacant plot.

Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, exploited the supernatural association of the Baskerville name by naming one of his fictional characters, the heir to a supposedly cursed family estate, Henry Baskerville.

Upon qualifying, he opened a shop on Bull Street where he sold experimental products including an egg-free custard mix. He also invented baking powder that releases carbon dioxide gas in order to create bubbles which leaven the dough.

Alfred Bird thought he could sell these products to customers suffering from yeast and egg allergies, but quickly realised there was a far broader market and so formed the Bird Custard Company which his son Alfred Frederick Bird inherited in 1878.

Alfred Frederick Bird (1849-1922) modernised and expanded his father's factory in Digbeth, introducing new products such as jelly crystals, tablet jellies and powdered egg substitute.

After retiring from business, Alfred was elected as Conservative MP for Wolverhampton West in 1910. He was created a baronet in January 1922 but was killed in a road accident one month later in February 1922.

His son Robert (1876-1960), the Blancmange Baronet, inherited the baronetcy, the family business and the Conservative nomination for his father's parliamentary seat which he won at a subsequent bye-election.

Mathew Boulton (1728-1809) was the son of a Birmingham button manufacturer who devised a method of mass-producing complex decorative metal objects through the manufacture of interchangeable parts by assembly line.

In 1763 he opened the Soho Manufactory, arguably the world's first modern factory, which employed a workforce of skilled craftsmen in exceptionally good conditions.

By reducing production costs without any appreciable lost of quality he could make luxury items, such as crystal chandeliers, at affordable prices.

He also established the Soho Mint and mass-produced standardized counterfeit-proof coinage for the British government.

Mathew Boulton was also instrumental in the development of the steam engine. He sponsored the Scottish inventor James Watt with whom he manufactured the world's first commercially-viable industrial steam engines at the Soho Foundry in Smethwick.

Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) was born on Bennett's Hill in the Business Quarter of central Birmingham.

He was the son of a prosperous Welsh frame-maker who financed his studies at the Birmingham School of Art and Oxford University where he met the craftsman William Morris.

Instead of entering the church as originally planned, Burne-Jones became an artist but struggled until the mid-1870's when his brilliantly-coloured canvasses suddenly became fashionable and were reproduced by the thousand, earning a fortune in royalties.

Burne-Jones became a close friend of the future Edward VII and was made a baronet in 1894. In addition to painting on canvass, he also designed ceramic tiles, jewellery and tapestries - often in partnership with William Morris.

Burne-Jones also made woodcuts for book illustrations and revived the art of making stained glass. He designed several windows in Birmingham Cathedral.

Thomas Bray (1658-1730) was the rector of Saint Giles in Sheldon, then a small village in Warwickshire but now a suburb in south-east Birmingham. In the 1690's, he wrote the Catechetical Lectures which explained the Gospels in simple language.

This work was enormously popular and as a result of its publication Bray was appointed commissary of the Church of England in Maryland. He re-organized the church there, establishing a network of thirty-nine parish libraries and built numerous church schools.

Upon his return to England, Thomas Bray campaigned for prison reform and the rights of enslaved Africans and dispossessed native Indians. He was also appointed rector of a second parish: Saint Botolph's in Aldgate London.

George Cadbury (1839-1922) was the third son of Quaker John Cadbury who manufactured drinking chocolate and cocoa on Bridge Street in what is now the Westside area of central Birmingham

George and his brother Richard took over the business in 1861 and relocated their factory to Bournville in 1879, building a model village for their workforce which they named Bournville.

After Richard died in 1889, George extended the village and equipped it with sports, social and educational facilities. He also introduced health insurance and retirement schemes and concerned himself with the wider public welfare, helping to establish the Birmingham Civic Society and donating land in the Lickey Hills for use as a country park.

George Cadbury lived at Woodbrooke Manor on the Bristol Road in Selly Oak, which is now a Quaker study centre, and later moved to the Manor in Northfield which was bequeathed to the University of Birmingham by his widow Dame Elizabeth Cadbury who died in 1951.