The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century

by Robert Roberts

Overview

"A vivid, unforgettable picture of the quality—or lack of it—of life in England among 'ordinary' people."—Peter Stansky

Shaw said that poverty is the greatest crime. The Classic Slum provides a grim affirmation of the truth of his remark. In a study which combines personal reminiscences with careful historical research, the myth of the "good old days" is summarily dispensed with; Robert Roberts describes the period of his childhood, when a man could lose his job for belonging to a Union and when a family's best clothes were likely to spend most weekdays at the pawnshop.

The main effect of poverty in Edwardian Salford was degradation, and despite great reserves of human courage, few could escape such a prison. The environment of slum housing and the atmosphere of hunger and insecurity created a culture blighted by ignorance, tedium, repression and a rigorous social stratification.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140136241
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/1990
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.78(h) x 0.66(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Roberts was born in a Salford slum in 1905, the son of corner shopkeepers. After school he was an engineering apprentice for seven years and was then unemployed for three years, during which he studied languages and how to start a revolution. While a teacher he began to write stories, plays, BBC scripts and stories, several of which won him scholarships and awards. After sixteen years of hill farming, Robert Roberts started to teach in prisons and became an acknowledged expert on adult illiteracy. Until his death, he was a well-known lecturer on this subject, both in universities and on the BBC. His other books are Imprisoned Tongues and A Ragged Schooling.

Table of Contents

1 Class Structure
2 Possessions
3 Manners and Morals
4 Governors, Pastors and Masters
5 The Common Scene
6 Food, Drink and Physic
7 Alma Mater
8 Culture
9 The Great Release
10 High Days and After

Appendices
1 Conducted Tour
2 Snuffy
3 Bronze Mushrooms

Select Bibliography
Index

Illustrations
The photographs, which have not been published before, were taken around the early 1900s by a Worsley man, Samuel Coulthurst, who went about Salford dressed as a rag and bone merchant with his camera concealed on a handcart.

1. Corner shop
2. A muffler–white, if possible, for the Lord's day
3. Some were too poor to buy at the old clothes shops
4. General dealer
5. The clothiers
6. Women of the time I
7. Women of the time II
8. Water for the wheel: a knife and scissors grinder
9. Hawkers at rest
10. 'The short way out of Manchester'
11. A barrel organ called Tuesdays and Saturdays
12. Theatre by the market
13. Boys haggling at the hen market