History of Birmingham
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This website contains information about famous events in the history of Birmingham, an historical timeline and the following directory of famous Brummies from the past:
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 naturally, he profited immensely from the urbanisation of the mid-19th century.
Charles Adderley endowed Saltley parish church, Saint Saviour's (circa 1850), and donated ten acres of land for the creation of Adderley Park in 1856. He also built a library and reading room in the park which were demolished in 1965.
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 baronage 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. One rally in May 1832 was attended by over 200,000 people and so unnerved the House of Lords that it decided not to veto the Reform Act.
As a result, Birmingham won the right to elect two MP's to the House of Commons. One of them was Thomas Attwood who represented the town until 1839.
Herbert Austin (1866-1941) was the son of a farm bailiff who emigrated to Australia at the age of 18. He became an employee of the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company in Sydney and patented several improvements to their shearing machines. He later assigned these patents to his employers in return for shares in their company.
In 1894, Wolseley opened a factory on Broad Street that manufactured bicycles and automobiles in addition to sheep-shearing machines. Vickers bought the automobile side of the business and transferred production to Adderley Park.
Herbert Austin worked for Vickers until 1905 when he opened his own car plant at Longbridge. By 1908, the factory was producing 17 different models.
Austin manufactured military vehicles, munitions and aircraft during the First World War but the business tottered on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 1920's.
These problems coincided with a short-lived political career during which Austin was Conservative MP for Kings Norton from 1918 until 1924. In this context, he is best-remembered as the member who never made a speech.
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 factory remained profitable during his own 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 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 Convention Quarter.
His corpse was exhumed after the house was demolished and a canal basin was dug on the site. It 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 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.
Alfred Bird (1811-1878) was born in the Gloucestershire village of Nympsfield, but moved to Birmingham in order to serve an apprenticeship as a chemist.
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 that creates 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 he retired from business, Alfred was elected as Conservative MP for Wolverhampton West in 1910. He was created a baronet in January 1922, one month before he was run over and killed in February 1922.
His son Robert - the Blancmange Baronet - inherited the baronetcy, the family business and the Conservative nomination for his father's parliamentary seat which he won at the 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 dedicated assembly lines.
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, that the new middle-class could afford.
He also established the Soho Mint and devised methods of mass-producing standardized counterfeit-proof coinage.
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 industrail engines at the Soho Foundry in Smethwick.
Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) was born on Bennett's Hill in the Business Quarter. He was the son of a prosperous Welsh frame-maker and was a student at the Birmingham School of Art and Oxford University where he met the craftsman William Morris.
Instead of entering the church, 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. 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 building numerous church schools.
Upon his return to England, he campaigned for prison reform and the rights of enslaved Africans and dispossessed native Indians. He was also appointed rector of a second parish: Saint Botolphs 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 Convention Quarter.
George and his brother Richard, who took over the business in 1861, relocated their factory to open countryside four miles south-west of Birmingham, where they built 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 Woodbroke Manor on the Selly Oak campus of Birmingham University; his former home is now a Quaker study centre.
He 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.
Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) was born the son of a shoemaker in Camberwell London. At sixteen, he was apprenticed to Nettlefold's, his uncle's screw making business in Birmingham.
He was later made a partner in the firm which became the world's largest manufacturer of metal screws under his management.
Chamberlain retired from business in November 1873 upon being elected Mayor of Birmingham; an office that he held until May 1876. As mayor he took public control of the gas, water and sewage supply.
Thanks to his efforts, ordinary people received a continuous supply of piped water and did not have to draw polluted water from contaminated wells. This greatly reduced the incidence of contagious disease and, in particular, the infant mortality rate.
Chamberlain was fiercely opposed by vested interests, but showed resolute courage, risking personal bankruptcy by guaranteeing the debts incurred by the council in the acquisition of waterworks, drainage systems and other such assets.
In 1876, he was elected as Liberal MP for Birmingham and began a parliamentary career during which he became Colonial Secretary and President of the Board of Trade.
As such, he became a major international statesman of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His career was effectively by a stroke in 1906.
However, his second son from his first marriage, Austen, and his only son from his second marriage, Neville, both became successful politicians.
Austen was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for India; Neville was Minister of Health; Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister.
George Elkington (1801-1865) was the son of a Birmingham spectacle manufacturer. After serving an apprenticeship in his uncle's silver plating business, he entered into partnership with his cousin Henry Elkington.
In 1840, the Elkingtons purchased Joseph Wright's electroplating patent. Wright had discovered how to coat a metal object with a thin layer of silver by submerging it in an electrified chemical solution.
The Elkingtons opened an electro silver-plating works on Newhall Street in 1841. Shortly afterwards Josiah Mason, the Birmingham pen-maker, bought a 33% stake in the business. He persuaded the Elkingtons to concentrate on plating small affordable items such as jewellery and cutlery.
The factory prospered and by 1880 the Elkingtons owned a further six works, employing a total workforce of around four thousand.
Joseph Gillot
Joseph Gillot (1799-1873) served an apprenticeship as a cutler in Sheffield but came to Birmingham in 1821 where he manufactured steel buckles and chains.
He subsequently invented mechanised procedures for the mass productions of pens and improved the design of the steel pen nib by making it more pliable through the insertion of slits.
He entered into partnership with Willliam Mitchell in 1859 and together the pair, who owned the Victoria Works in the Jewellery Quarter, cornered two-thirds of the global pen market.
Gillot, who became immensely wealthy, owned the Perrot Estate in the Rotton Park area of Edgbaston which he developed as a middle-class suburb. He also patronised the arts, and was a close friend of the painter Turner.
The family home was the Grove Westbourne Road in the Chad Valley.
The Gough's were one of the wealthiest families in the West Midlands. Their ancestors owned vast estates in and around Birmingham, including most of Edgbaston, Ladywood, Perry Barr and parts of the Bullring.
The Gough's acquired their wealth through a combination of shrewd husbandry, carefully-arranged marriages and their profitable activities as politicians and statesmen.
Sir Henry Gough-Calthorpe (1749-1798) inherited the baronetcy of Edgbaston from his father, also Sir Henry, who had married into the landed Calthorpe family of Norfolk.
The family seat was Edgbaston Hall; Edgbaston Manor having been purchased by Sir Henry's grandfather Sir Richard Gough.
Sir Henry Gough-Calthorpe created a Georgian suburb on his Edgbaston estate, most of which has survived as the Edgbaston Conservation Area. The area became known as Calthorpe after Sir Henry was created Baron Calthorpe in 1796.
His sons, the second and third Barons Calthorpe, refused to allowed industrial development or high-density terraced housing on their estate and preserved a belt of green spaces, part of which was subsequently developed as the campus of Birmingham University.
The Calthorpe title became extinct upon the death of the tenth baron in 1997. However, the Calthorpe Estate still owns 1,500 acres in Edgbaston and Ladywood.
Thomas Hall (1610 - 1665) was the rector of Saint Nicholas' in Kings Norton and the headmaster of the Old Grammar School on the Green.
Under his management, the school's academic standards were improved, many local boys won scholarships to Oxford, and the school accumulated an impressive book collection, now in Birmingham Central Library.
Thomas Hall was a puritan who wrote an influential pamphlet: "On the Loathsomeness of Long Hair". He also argued that the right to govern was derived from personal merit and could not be justified by the "Divine Right of Kings".
His influence was so great that Kings Norton, part of the royal estate of Bromsgrove, declared for Parliament during the English Civil War. After the monarchy was restored in 1660, Thomas Hall was sacked from all his posts and exiled.
Ralph Heaton II (1794-1862), was the son of a moderately successful Birmingham businessman, who manufactured brassware on Shadwell Street in the Gun Quarter.
Ralph Heaton set up his own business as a die sinker and manufacturer of brass chandeliers on Bath Street. In 1850, the Soho Mint closed and Ralph Heaton II bought four of its steam-powered screw presses at auction.
Since these presses had been designed in the 1780's, when Mathew Boulton had first established the Soho Mint, many believed that they were obsolete and would constantly break down without expensive maintenance. However, they continued to operate efficiently until the early 1900's.
Using these presses, Ralph Heaton II established the Birmingham Mint and manufactured coinage for the British, foreign and colonial governments. Indeed, a large percentage of the world's coinage was minted in Birmingham during the mid-19th century.
For example, between 1853 and 1857, Ralph Heaton II produced 55 tons of finished copper coins for the Royal Mint and 750 tons of bronze Napoleon III coins for the French Second Empire. The four 18th century presses produced around 110,000 coins daily throughout the 1850's.
In 1860, the Birmingham Mint moved to larger premises on Icknield Street in the Jewellery Quarter. Shortly afterwards it won a contract to manufacture most of the bronze coinage for the newly unified Kingdom of Italy. Ralph Heaton II died two years later in 1860.
The Holte's were shrewd yeoman farmers who made a fortune by buying monastic lands at bargain prices during the Reformation. They were also clever enough to retain their estates during the subsequent reign of Mary I who tried to restore monastic property.
Thomas Holte inherited the family fortune in 1592. He supported James I when the latter claimed the English throne in 1603 and received a knighthood in return.
He subsequently purchased a baronetcy so that his son Edward would also be a knight and built Aston Hall, an impressive ancestral home, where he entertained Charles I in 1642.
Sir Thomas remained loyal to the King during the English Civil War when Aston Hall was attacked by militia from Birmingham, a parliamentary town. His loyalty was rewarded when the monarchy was restored in 1660 and his son Edward was appointed to the royal household.
Edward married without his father's permission and was disinherited although Sir Thomas was persuaded to bequeath Aston Hall to Edward's son, his grandson, Sir Robert Holte.
It is said that Sir Thomas starved his daughter to death because she too refused an arranged marriage. However, this may have been slanderous gossip and she most probably died from a chronic wasting disease.
James Horsfall was a Digbeth wire drawer who invented high tensile steel wire. In 1853, he patented a heat treatment process that strengthened the wire. At around the same time he purchased Hay Mill, a disused water mill on the River Cole which he converted to steam, and built a factory village with a church and school.
The high-strength wire manufactured at Hay Mill was used in the production of needles, fish hooks and umbrella frames. The entire global supply of piano wire was also manufactured in Hay Mill in the mid-19th century.
In 1855, Horsfall entered into partnership with Joseph Webster of Penns Hall in Walmley. The new firm of Webster and Horsfall manufactured 30,000 miles of armoured wire for the first Transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866.
Webster and Horsfall still trades today, manufacturing wire and strip products from the original factory site off the Coventry Road in Hay Mills.
Sampson Lloyd II (1699-1779) was the son of a Welsh Quaker farmer who moved to Birmingham in 1698. After his father's death in 1725, Sampson went into business with his brother Charles.
The pair became successful ironmasters but Charles died prematurely in 1741 whereupon Sampson II took sole control of the business. He subsequently bought a farm in Sparkbrook, then still open countryside, where he built a splendid neoclassical mansion, now a grade II listed building.
However, Sampson II is best known as the founder of Lloyds Bank which he established in 1765, at the age of 66, in partnership with his son Charles Lloyd, and the button manufacturer John Taylor. The first branch of the bank, originally known as Taylor's and Lloyds, opened at 7 Dale End.
Josiah Mason (1795-1881), the son of a carpet weaver, was born a pauper in Kidderminster. In his youth, he was at various times a street hawker, shoemaker, carpet weaver, baker, carpenter, painter and blacksmith.
He eventually achieved success as a manufacturer of split rings which he mass-produced at lower prices than his competitors by introducing new stamping machinery.
Once established in business, he designed a new range of steel pens with detachable nibs that could be cheaply mass-produced.
As a result, he cornered around 20% of the global pen trade and became a millionaire. He also bought a 33% share in the Elkington Works which used new electro-plating technology to cheaply coat metal objects with thin layers of silver.
Having become one of the wealthiest men in England, Josiah Mason built an orphanage and almshouses at Erdington and established Mason Science College, the forerunner of the University of Birmingham.
William Murdoch (1754-1839) was the son of a Scottish millwright who excelled in mathematics as a child. As a young man, he walked 300 miles to Birmingham in order to ask James Watt for a job.
After serving his apprenticeship, Murdoch made several improvements to Watt's engines. He also created the first working model of a steam carriage, designed some of the world's first marine steam engines, invented iron cement for hard durable seals and developed British isingglass, a compound used to purify beer. However, he is best known as the inventor of the gaslight.
William Murdoch became a partner in the firm of Boulton & Watt but, despite his inventive genius, he could not save the company from commercial decline after the death of its founding members.
Alexander Parkes (1813-1890) worked for the Elkington Silver Electro-plating Works on Newhall Street in the Jewellery Quarter.
He patented electroplating processes for coating fragile objects with thin layers of precious metals, thus revolutionising the jewellery trade by enabling the mass production of gold and silver plated trinkets.
He also patented a process for the economically viable extraction of silver from lead and invented Parkesine, the world's first thermoplastic and the forerunner of celluloid.
Parkes established his own factory manufacturing Parkesine at Hackney Wick in London. However, the venture failed because Parkesine was highly inflammable, too expensive to produce on a large scale, and prone to cracking.
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) was a scientist, natural philosopher, religious and political theorist. He conducted early electrical experiments and is credited with the discovery of oxygen and soda water.
Priestley believed that Christianity should not be taught as a dogmatic creed dependent on formulaic ritual and blind faith but should be viewed in the context of the natural world and in a manner consistent with scientific and rational thought.
He established Unitarianism in England and attacked the error and superstition that he believed were inherent in the Church of England.
Priestley lived in Birmingham from 1780 until 1791. He was a member of the Lunar Society and a close friend of Mathew Boulton and other leading dissenters.
He was forced to flee Birmingham during the Priestley Riots of 1791 after he had publicly celebrated the anniversary of the French Revolution. His mansion, which stood on what is now Priestley Road in Sparkbrook, was razed to the ground.
Joseph Sturge (1793-1859) was a Quaker corn merchant from Edgbaston who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and for voting rights for the English working classes.
Although the slave trade had been outlawed in 1807, slavery was not abolished in the British Empire until 1834 when it was replaced by a scheme of twelve-yearly indentured apprenticeships.
Joseph Sturge established the Anti-Slavery Society and led the campaign against bonded labour. He also helped to establish Free Villages, including Sturge Town in Jamaica, so that ex-slaves could live independently of their former masters.
As a result of his efforts, the indentured apprenticeship scheme was abolished on 1 August 1838.
Bishop John Vesey (1462-1555) was born in Sutton Coldfield. He was the son of yeoman farmer who trained as a lawyer and then entered the church.
In 1519 he was appointed Bishop of Exeter by his mentor Cardinal Wolsey. The bishopric came with annual church revenues of around £1,500 - a vast sum in the Tudor period.
Vesey built a large mansion known as Moor Hall near Sutton Coldfield. He also invested heavily in his hometown, rebuilding the aisles of Holy Trinity Church, reviving the markets, paving the streets, building two stone bridges and fifty one stone houses and establishing a grammar school.
He also persuaded King Henry VIII to give Sutton Park, then a royal hunting ground, to the people of Sutton Coldfield.
Bishop Vesey survived the fall of Cardinal Wolsley in 1529 and skilfully negotiated a substantial pension in return for surrendering his bishopric to Thomas Cromwell. His remains are interred in Holy Trinity Church.
James Watt (1736-1819) trained as an instrument maker and
set up a workshop in Glasgow University.
He experimented with steam engines and made the critical breakthrough of separating the condenser and cylinder so that the cold water which condensed the steam would not also diminish the heat that created it. He also worked out how to transfer steam from the cylinder to the condenser by means of a vacuum.
The process of building prototypes and patenting the invention was too expensive for Watt's first sponsor, John Roebuck, so he moved to Birmingham and entered into partnership with Mathew Boulton.
Once there, he made a series of improvements, most notably by inventing the "sun and planet gear", so that his engine could generate rotational power for grinding, weaving and milling.
Boulton & Watt manufactured industrial steam engines at the Soho Foundry in Smethwick from the 1790's onwards whereupon steam rapidly replaced water as the power behind the industrial revolution.
The Webster's had operated blade mills in and around Sutton Coldfield for a century before Joseph Webster IV was born in 1815. His great-grandfather had acquired Penns Hall in Walmley in 1750 and established a wire-drawing business there, building mills and workers' cottages alongside Plants Brook.
By 1815, Penns Hall was a substantial mansion and the Webster's were one of the leading families in Sutton Coldfield. Joseph Webster IV inherited the wire-drawing business and entered into partnership with James Horsfall, another wire drawer who had established an industrial village at Hay Mills.
Horsfall had patented a form of high tensile steel wire that enabled Horsfall & Webster to corner the world market in products such as piano wire whilst providing the heavy-duty wire required by large-scale engineering projects such as the first Transatlantic Cable.
Production was concentrated at Hay Mills, resulting in the closure of mills at Penns Hall, which caused hardship in Walmley.
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