Northeast of Manchester city centre, in an area now known as the ‘Green Quarter’, a place with a particularly gruesome history is there to be discovered; St Michael’s Flags and Angel Meadow. It can be found between Rochdale Road and the River Irk, covering several acres – complete with its own park area, information boards and railings.

Yet there’s so much gloomy past, quite literally buried here. Angel Meadow was formerly home to a housing area of the same name, which although initially started out as affluent, fell into disrepair and neglect in the overcrowding of the 19th century Industrial Revolution.

Writing in Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain’s Most Savage Slum, author Dean Kirby gives an insight into just some of the horrific conditions people faced:

 ‘New arrivals to Angel Meadow were forced to sleep naked with strangers in dingy lodging houses, cockroaches were welcomed because they ate the bed bugs and skulls were kicked around during games of football in a graveyard packed with the bodies of 40,000 paupers’[1]

Of course, these accounts are based on the reports of eye-witnesses, or snippets of conversations had with residents. One of the most famous mentions of the area and its notoriety came from Friedrich Engels, in his seminal socio-economic work, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) – as he observed the city himself at the time.

The name of the place does indeed seem to have a sadness to it; no doubt things were about as far from being angelic as was possible. The cramped conditions and dangerously dirty domestic dwellings will have led to diseases being rife. With so many rats, this will have been an inevitable fact of life for people, contributing to the morose mortality rates. Amongst these were many children. This led to the name Angel Meadows coming into use, as a local legend said that Angels could be seen near the steps, guarding the graves of the young,  likely victims to the abject and dire deprivation.

The conditions became so awful that in 1855 the aforementioned graveyard was covered over and an act of parliament was passed, following a government-led investigation to the levels of squalor. This led to the name of the area becoming known as St Michael’s Flags.

The information boards unveil some surprising details about aspects of life in and around the area, especially when it still existed as Angel Meadows. They appear to confirm that crime was rife, perhaps unsurprisingly.

And where there is crime, there are police. The two go hand in hand, and, in a very gothic way (one could say) they come to rely on one another to operate and have a sense of identity. Think the doppelganger concept in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and duality of Jekyll and Hyde.

Before Sherlock Holmes ever made an appearance in print, Manchester, the city known for so many firsts, had their very own version; Jerome Caminada. This police officer was of Italian and Irish parentage and patrolled from Deansgate to Ancoats, working in the city in the later half of the 19th century. He can’t have been short of work, being so near to Angel Meadow; as sadly, where dire conditions exist, people often turn to desperate measures to survive. One local man did exactly that.

 Bob Horridge, identified by researchers on the http://www.friends-of-angel-meadow.org/page9.htm Friends of Angel Meadow website, was a well-known criminal adversary – and no doubt gave Caminada many a head ache. Horridge was known to be Blacksmith in Angel Meadow by day and apparently a dangerous thief at night. There’s certainly something sinister about this extra aspect to his personality, that only came out under cover of darkness, potentially wielding weaponry forged in the fires.

Image credit: Msrwingfield at English Wikimedia Commons

These examples are just some of the famous (or perhaps better termed as infamous) associations and people that will forever be linked to Angel Meadow; certainly a dark chapter in the socio-economic development of Manchester. What else went on and who may have experienced what, might never be known. What is known, is that when you walk over the grass and nearby streets, you’re treading the same steps as so many of those buried below once did. And that’s certainly something to think about.

- By Ben Cassidy

[1] D.Kirby, Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain’s Most Savage Slum (Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books Limited, 1988),p.xi