Cities of Birmingham (England) and Birmingham (Alabama)

I feel silly that I never made a connection between Birmingham England and Birmingham Alabama.  As you know, Birmingham has been in the news lately because of all damage locally because the tornadoes.  Birmingham England was one of the centers in England of the Industrial Revolution.  Ezra Riley moved there to work in the Iron industry there.  Birmingham Alabama was also a center of the iron and steel industry in the United States.  The Alabama city was named after the English city for obvious reasons.  The following information is from the following web site: http://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/4671

According to an 1889 article found in the Chautauquan, a popular weekly news magazine, Birmingham, Alabama was the future of the iron and steel industry in America. Seated in Jefferson County, which is located in central Alabama, Birmingham was named after the industrious steel city of Birmingham, England. Also known as the “Magic City” and “Pittsburgh of the South”, Birmingham had earned these titles after its immense industrial growth. Birmingham’s steel productivity was made possible by its twenty-five local blast furnaces. These twenty-five blast furnaces were used in the smelting process. Smelting is the process in steel making that removes the iron metal away from its ore.  Birmingham’s extreme industrial success was due to the locality of iron, which was found on nearby Red Mountain.  Red Mountain’s ridge runs southeast along the Magic City’s southern border and was named “red” after the color of the iron that was found there.

    Bertha Bendall Norton, a Birmingham historian writes, “If in early 1900 you had stood on Red Mountain where Vulcan, the largest iron statue in the world stands today, and gazed out upon this once sacred valley of Indians, you would, perhaps, have had a strange feeling of wonder, excitement and pride.”  The Pittsburgh of the South was exactly that, exciting and wonderful. New jobs were being created by the arrival of the steel and iron industries such as Sloss furnaces and Tennessee Iron and Coal Company, which opened in 1886.  Birmingham’s industry became self- sustaining and that began to concern northern industrialist who, at first, were not involved. Much of the United States was still oblivious to the Magic City’s capabilities of becoming the leading iron producer in the  industry. Birmingham was a city that worked around the clock in hopes for maximum production of steel.  Birmingham, Alabama of yesterday had proven itself worthy in the late nineteenth century and had indeed become the future of the iron and steel industry in America

Eureka Furnace, Birmingham, AL

Focus on 1851 Census

Since we've been talking about Amelia Harris of late, I thought we'd show you the actual copy of the 1851 census:

Harris Thomas 38 Head Snuffer Maker Birmingham, -
Harris Ann 39 Wife         Burnisher Birmingham, -
Harris Amelia 15 Daughter         Burnisher Birmingham, -
Harris Emma  6 Daughter         - Birmingham, -
Harris Eliza          1 Daughter -         Birmingham, -
Gill         Joseph  61 Widower         Snuffer Maker Wolverhampton,




I don't know if the widower, Joseph Gill was a boarder or Ann Harris' father.  It appears that all may have been involved in a cottage industry, working at home at their trade.  A burnisher is someone who polishes metal.  Birmingham at that time had a large brass industry.  I couldn't find any information if a snuffer maker was a work at home occupation or a factory type job.  

Thomas and Ann Harris had one more child, a son, in 1853.

More info on Amelia Harris Maybury's home

The wonderful Birmingham history forum has produced more info for us on the exact location of Amelia Harris' home in 1851.

One of the members kindly marked the exact home.  This map is from 1889 but he assured me that there probably wouldn't have been any changes during the 30+ years since she lived there.  Remember, you can click on the map to look at it bigger.  The smaller buildings would have been common areas that the residents of the court would have shared (loo, laundry, etc.).

Amelia Harris Map of Area in Birmingham

I have been having a hard time locating historic maps of Birmingham. There is a Birmingham history forum that has the most generous members.  I posted for help in locating the address mentioned in yesterday's post.  Within an hour I got this map.  We cannot identify which court that the Harris family lived in but I think the map is very illustrative of the concept of Back-to-Back houses.

Remember to right click on the picture to make it bigger.  This is a map from 1890 but the forum contributor said it was the same throughout the 19th century and didn't change until the 1960s when they were mostly torn down.  It is was a densely pack block like the whole area.

Amelia Harris 1851 Birmingham: How she may have lived

Amelia Harris was Elizabeth Maybury Riley's mother, born in 1835.  In the 1851 census, she was 15 years old and living with her parents.  She was listed on the census as a Brass Burnisher.  Their address was:
St Georges Street, Court 6, House 2.  I thought that was an odd address and found the following:


Written by Brian Robert Marshall, describing houses like the Harris' lived in:

Following the mass migration of the rural population into the urban conurbations in the years of the Industrial revolution, there was a need for what today would be called affordable housing. Back-to-back houses provided a significant proportion of that housing for workers and their families in the great industrial cities in the Midlands and north of England in the 19th and well into the 20th centuries. From the point of view of those who built and rented them out they were cheap to build and buy and they made the most of small plots of land. Things weren’t quite so rosy for those who had to live in them.

Back-to-backs are houses where the back of one house joined the back of another. Typically the houses were arranged so that that there was a cellar, a ground floor room and first and second floor rooms stacked vertically. When built there would have been no indoor sanitation or water supply. But the fundamental defect was there was no way of obtaining through ventilation of the dwellings.


Most of these houses were concentrated in inner-city areas such as Ladywood, Handsworth, Aston, Small Heath and Highgate.  One section of this type of housing was preserved in Birmingham, Inge Court 15.  It is likely that the Harris family lived in similar housing.  Tough conditions since three of the four walls were common so there was very little ventilation.


From Wikipedia:  Throughout the 19th century, the court was occupied by workers who worked in such industries as button making, glasswork, woodwork, leatherwork, tailoring and were also skilled craftsmen in the jewellery and small metal trades. Many of such workers worked from home. Over 500 families have lived in Court 15.

From the 1830s to the 1930s, the Mitchells, a family of locksmiths and bellhangers, lived in the court. At one time, they were occupying both No. 55 Hurst Street and No. 54 Inge Street/3 Court 15. The family also worked at the workshop in the court for over 70 years.

In 1851, Joseph Barnett, a travelling Jeweller, lived at number 35 Inge Street, with his wife Hanna, and four children, Samuel, Eli Louis, Rebecca and Henry.

Other people who lived there highlight the crowded conditions of the houses, which were usually occupied by single families. In 1851, for example Sophia Hudson, a widow who worked as a pearl button driller, probably from home, lived at No. 1 Court 15 with her five children and her mother who also a widow. In 1861, Herbert Oldfield, a glass eye maker, occupied the same address with his wife and their eight children. At the same time, the Mitchell family had an apprentice who lived with them. Despite the cramped conditions, some families, such as the one who occupied 61 Hurst Street in 1851, were able to afford a servant.

By 1900, the ground floors had been converted into shops. Services offered from the buildings were a cycle maker, a hairdresser, a ticket writer, a fruiterer and a furniture dealer. The upper floors of No. 55 and No. 59 Hurst Street, the cycle maker's and the ticket writer's properties respectively, were converted into workshops as opposed to residential.

The Harris family occupations fit within those listed above.  Her father was listed a Snuffer Maker and both Amelia and her mother were listed as Burnishers.

The restored buildings are set in different time periods.  Here are the pictures from the 1850 house:

Click here to get 360 degree view of the courtyard.  You will get a much better feeling for the layout of these courtyards.

1850s house: downstairs room. It's set for dinner, with the Hebrew prayer book ready to be read from before the meal

the pantry where fresh foods would be stored and prepared.

 main bedroom where mum and dad slept in the double bed and their daughter in the single bed.

 hands for clocks on the workshop table. The top floor of the house also functioned as a workshop.

there are steep stairs in all the houses

The toilet in the courtyard, share by all families. I don't know the vintage.