" But alas! there _is_ a dark side to
the picture, indeed, for, according to the Registrar-General's return of
June, 1879 (and the proportionate ratio, we are sorry to say, still
remains the same), Birmingham holds the unenviable position of being the
town where most deaths from violence occur, the annual rate per 1,000
being 1.08 in Birmingham, 0.99 in Liverpool, 0.38in Sheffield, 0.37 in
Portsmouth, the average for the kingdom being even less than that--"the
proportional fatality from violence being almost invariably more than
twice as large in Birmingham as in Sheffield."
~Cross.~--In the Bull Ring, when Hutton first came here, a poor wayfarer
seeking employ, there was a square building standing on arches called
"The Cross," or "Market Cross," the lower part giving a small shelter to
the few countrywomen who brought their butter and eggs to market, while
the chamber above provided accommodation for meetings of a public
character. When the Corn Cheaping, the Shambles, and all the other
heterogeneous collection of tumbledown shanties and domiciles which in
the course of centuries had been allowed to gather round St. Martin's
were cleared away, the Market Cross was demolished, and its exact site
is hardly ascertainable.
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