[Report 1904] / Medical Officer of Health, Stockport County Borough.

  • Stockport (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1904] / Medical Officer of Health, Stockport County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    market place ; these are collected into a reservoir behind St. Peter’s Church, and from thence carried by pipes to different parts of the town, as well as into the houses on the rocks in the market place. We shall now say something on the progress of trade to which this town owes its flourishing condition. In Stockport were erected the first mills for winding and throwing silk, on a plan procured from I aly ; and the persons concerned in the silk factories were reckoned the pr ncipal people in the place ; but on the decline of this trade the machinery was applied to cotton spinning, and the different branches of the cotton manufacture are now the chief staple of the town. The people of Stockport first engaged in the spinning of reeled weft, then in weaving checks, and lastly in fustians ; and they were so ingenious as to attempt muslins, which vvere introduced about ten years since upon the invention of the machines called mules, whereby the thread was drawn finer and spun softer than that for weft. The manufacturers here, with this advantage, produced i species ol flowered muslin with bordeis for aprons and handkerchiefs, by casting a coar e shoot for the figures, and trimming of the float by scissors neatly before bleaching ; so that the figure was a good imitation of needlework. Weaving fustians has extended from thence over Cheadle, Gatley, and Northenden, where a few checks or furnitures had been woven before. The cotton trade at Stockport is now so considerable, that besides a large number of cotton spinning shops, there are twenty-three large cotton factories, four of them worked by steam engines. The making of hats is likewise a considerable branch of employment. The weekly market of Stockport is on Friday. A great quantity of corn and oat meal are sold at it, and it is accounted the best market for cheese in the county. There are four yearly fa’rs, viz., two in March, one on M ty day and one on the 25th of October. The police of the town is conducted by one residing justice of the peace, two constables, four churchwardens, and three overseers of the poor. The population has of late years been amazingly on the increase, so that before the war, houses could not be built fast enough for the demand. The only documents we have for its present state are the following :—In the year 1791, there were, at the old church, 149 marriages, 415 christenings, and 600 burials ; the latter number is probably nearly that of all the deaths in the town ; and, even upon the supposition of the year being an unhealthy one, would imply a population of about 15,000 persons. In the late assessment of men for the navy, Stockport raised twenty men, its rated houses being estimated at 1,35S. We have before observed how difficult it is to eslablish a proportion between the taxed and excused houses ; but from the manner in which Stockport is peopled, it is probable that the allowance for non- rated houses should be as high as in almost any manufacturing town — perhaps an equality with the rated houses. Into tins account are not taken the hamlets of Heaton Non is and Portwood on the Lancashire side of the river, of which the former is reckoned to contain 170 houses, the latter about 100. The extension of the town is very great, as well on tlie Macclesfield and Cheadle sides, as on the Manchester. The hill to the west, on which St. Peter’s Church is built, is now almost covered with buddings.