The Excise (or Inland Revenue) Offices are in Waterloo Street, and are
open daily from 10 to 4.
~Excursions.~--The annual trip to the seaside, or the continent, or some
other attractive spot, which has come to be considered almost an
essential necessary for the due preservation of health and the
sweetening of temper, was a thing altogether unknown to the old folks of
our town, who, if by chance they could get as far as Lichfield,
Worcester, or Coventry once in their lives, never ceased to talk about
it as something wonderful. The "outing" of a lot of factory hands was an
event to be chronicled in _Aris's Gazette_, whose scribes duly noted the
horses and vehicles (not forgetting the master of the band, without whom
the "gipsy party" could not be complete), and the destination was seldom
indeed further than the Lickey, or Marston Green, or at rarer intervals,
Sutton Coldfield or Hagley. Well-to-do tradesmen and employers of labour
were satisfied with a few hours spent at some of the old-style Tea
Gardens, or the Crown and Cushion, at Perry Barr, Aston Cross or Tavern,
Kirby's, or the New Inn, at Handsworth, &c. The Saturday half-holiday
movement, which came soon after the introduction of the railways, may be
reckoned as starting the excursion era proper, and the first Saturday
afternoon trip (in 1854) to the Earl of Bradford's, at Castle Bromwich,
was an eventful episode even in the life of George Dawson, who
accompanied the trippites.
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