~Hackney Coaches~ were introduced here in 1775. Hutton says the drivers
of the first few earned 30s. per day; those of the present day say they
do not get half the sum now. Hansom Cabs, the invention, in 1836, of the
architect and designer of our Town Hall, were first put on the stands in
1842.
~Half-Holiday.~--Ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, used to be
the stint for workpeople here and elsewhere. A Saturday Half-holiday
movement was begun in 1851, the first employers to adopt the system
being Mr. John Frearson, of Gas Street (late of the Waverley Hotel,
Crescent), and Mr. Richard Tangye. Wingfields, Brown, Marshall & Co.,
and many other large firms began with the year 1853, when it maybe said
the plan became general.
~Handsworth.~--Till within the last thirty or forty years, Handsworth
was little more than a pleasant country village, though now a
well-populated suburb of Birmingham. The name is to be found in the
"Domesday Book," but the ancient history of the parish is meagre indeed,
and confined almost solely to the families of the lords of the manor,
the Wyrleys, Stanfords, &c., their marriages and intermarriages, their
fancies and feuds, and all those petty trifles chroniclers of old were
so fond of recording.
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