3-011-525 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cotton Famine: dwellings of Manchester operatives, 1862. Starvation and destitution among unemployed Lancashire textiles workers. 'No. 18, Back Queen-street, Deansgate; 3, Tickle-street, Deansgate; No. 4, Thornton-court, Tickle-street; 13, Southern-street, Liverpool-road...The poor people cannot maintain themselves. They have exhausted all they had before ever a signal of distress was displayed. From comfortable dwellings most of them have removed to lodgings and lower-rented houses, where, divested of every scrap of furniture or bedding, they have been found, in many cases, too reduced to grasp the hand held out to relieve them. All parties here are doing their duty, saving and excepting - and we mention it only by way of a kindly stimulus - the great landowners, who, considering the small amount which can be levied upon them for the support of the poor and the immense advantage which they have derived from the labours of the same, may certainly be expected to exhibit a generosity equal to the occasion'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.