The Classic Slum

Description

“A vivid, unforgettable picture of the quality—or lack of it—of life in England among ‘ordinary’ people.”—Peter Stansky.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

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.GB