3-011-508 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cotton Famine: the Society of Friends' soup-kitchen, Ball-street, Lower Moseley-street, Manchester, 1862. Unemployed Lancashire textiles workers queue for food. 'Preparing the soup; The Maze; the distribution...The soup-kitchen...was opened on the 8th of April, and has been in constant operation since...The soup made [in the boiling-house] is of excellent quality, containing 70lb. of beef, 50lb. of barley, 65lb. of peas to the hundred gallons, besides vegetables and seasoning. It is sold at one penny a quart, being less than the cost of the material, without calculating expenses of labour or plant...the maze...[is] the antechamber to the kitchen...the distribution commences at eight o'clock, and a number of the Friends personally superintend the operation...At present 1000 gallons [of soup] a day can be made, and that quantity could be largely increased at a small outlay. The actual quantity delivered last week was 17,246 quarts, and the previous week 16,884. In addition to the amount sunk every week, the soup-committee have made considerable grants in soup-tickets to the Provident Society, the City Mission, Ragged School, and other public bodies'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.