Back in autumn, I posted a video making my Nan’s potato hash — or ‘tater ash’ as we call it here in Manchester. It’s a simple, comforting dinner that carries a lot of memories for me.

Anyway, I thought I’d follow it up by showing you how I cook another of my Nan’s simple classics — chicken soup.

It’s the kind of dinner she’d make without any fuss — warming, nourishing and exactly what you need on a cold winter’s day.

Subscribe using the button below to watch the full video and to help me devote more time to my writing.

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You can also read about the Manchester dinner hour and what it means to me in a post I wrote last winter:

Making cookery films isn’t my usual format — I’m no Jamie Oliver obviously — so it’d be good to hear what you think in the comments.

And if you make Nan’s chicken soup, do post a photo of the results too. I hope you enjoy it.

P.S. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can watch my earlier tater ash video below…

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The Northern Quarter is one of Manchester’s trendiest districts today but in the Victorian era it was awash with secret gambling clubs.

Thomas Street was the “headquarters” of the betting nuisance in the city, according to the great Manchester detective Jerome Caminada.

At a place called Tattersall’s, just off the street, a “great concourse” of people gat…

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Mister Plant, the curator of Peel Park in Salford, was in fear for his life.

Awoken in the night by his bedroom door flying open, he seized his gun and began charging round his house hunting the burglars.

Failing to find them, he went back to bed but kept one eye open until the dawn.

It was a pattern being repeated all over Manchester that night.

In Blackl…

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It was said you could buy anything your heart desired on the streets of Victorian Manchester.

Gutter merchants sold their wares in the ginnels — fruit, flowers, toys, ginger beer, icecream, art, literature, toothpicks, bird whistles and combs.

And on the food stalls around Shudehill you would also find trotters and tripe being sold to drunks on their way …

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No story from me this week — just a picture of Manchester in the snow.

The postcard shows Whitworth Park on the south side of the city, but you might not recognise it.

That’s because Whitworth Park doesn’t have a lake.

In 1947, with money for the upkeep of parks in short supply after the Second World War, the water from the lake shown in the picture was d…

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Warning: This story contains references to suicide

The winter of 1813-14 was the coldest ever seen by those who lived through it — so severe the River Irwell in Manchester froze over.

The big freeze began on 16 December — the day that Lavinia Robinson went missing.

The mystery of her disappearance would grip the public imagination for two desperately cold …

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After finishing my second season of history tours in Manchester, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came along this year.

I’m amazed to say I’ve finished the autumn in the top ten tours and activities in Manchester according to TripAdvisor’s current popularity index.

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You can read that story and find the recipe here…

It was so well read that I thought I’d make a short film showing you how I cook it.

As the video took me a while to make, it’s just for paid subscribers, but you can watch it by clic…

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The men and boys who oversaw the spinning mules were as closely knit in their work as the threads they spun.

Moving back and forth throughout their shift in the cotton mills, they always operated in teams of three.

Two lads — a little piecer and a big piecer. The man, known as the minder, made sure they didn’t get trapped by the machines.

The piecers had just seconds to fix the snapped pieces of yarn before the entire mule — a 150ft-wide carriage of 1,000 spindles — lunged forward five feet.

Keeping safe from the obvious danger required real skill and co-ordination amid the noise and heat of the spinning room.

You had to put all your weight on your left foot and throw your right leg out behind.

Then lean in and twist the threads with the thumb and forefinger of your left hand.

Finally, straighten up and step away — a pirouette they performed hundreds of times a day.

But each time the boys leaned over the carriage’s rail and twisted those threads, they were facing a hidden danger.

The mineral oils that were used to lubricate the mule were giving them cancer.

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Mule spinners’ cancer, as it became known, was first identified by doctors here in Manchester in 1887.

By then the oils, usually derived from shale, had been in use for around 35 years — giving cancer to an untold number of boys and men.

While the piecers were working, the mule carriage silently threw out a fine mist of oil at the height of the groin.

And to keep the mules efficent, the mill overseers were dousing the machines with that oil several times a day.

Smaller men and boys who had to stretch and lean more over the rail were at greater risk.

The cancer started as a warty ulcer on the skin of the outside of the left testicle — the side on which the piecers leaned against the mule.

It could be removed with surgery in the early stages. But once it had spread to the internal organs, it was too late.

By 1900 there was a shockingly high number of cases of former mule spinners dying from the cancer.

But, as late as the 1920s, some doctors who worked with the cotton industry denied there was a problem.

Dr Vernon Davies, an MP, wrote: “I was certifying surgeon for Shaw [in Oldham] for 22 years, and have never seen scrotal cancer in spinners.”

Some blamed a lack of cleanliness among the workers.

Others said it was caused by the tightening of their overalls as the piecers stretched over the machines.

A doctor named John Brown, a former medical officer for Bacup in Lancashire, claimed in 1924 he had never heard of a single case in his own district.

“All the information I have been able to collect goes to prove that this [disease] is very infrequently met even at the present day.”

But the factory overlords were worried — less about the health of their workers perhaps than about the potential for mass compensation claims.

At that time there were 20,000 spinners in the region.

The Operative Spinners’ Amalgamation said they already had 80 cancer cases on their books.

At a compensation court in Ashton-under-Lyne, a judge heard that half of the scrotal cancer cases treated at Manchester Royal Infirmary were mule spinners.

The son of one spinner across the Pennines in Yorkshire told an inquest into his death from cancer: “His trousers got oily, but were washed my by mother, and then, when they became dirty again, they were thrown away.

“After work, if he was going out, he would change his trousers, but if not he would keep on his work clothes.”

It was not until 1925 that the Home Office finally launched an inquiry.

The investigation discovered that the mortality rate among cotton spinners aged 25 to 35 was 14 times greater than the general population.

By the ages of 45 to 55, it was sixty times as great and by the ages of 55 to 75 it was a hundred times greater.

In Oldham, which alone had more than 8,000 spinners, 229 cases were found.

A study even worked out that the death rate in the town was rising as the cotton industry boomed in the 1920s as more spinners were being employed.

The Home Office inquiry confirmed that mineral oils were the cause and recommended efforts be made to replace them with non-carcinogens.

Splash guards were also ordered to be placed on the machines to prevent oil from spraying on the workers’ trousers.

Mule spinners over 30 would be required to have medical checks every four months.

But as late as 1941, a doctor named Brockbank wrote in the British Medical Journal how he had seen more than 150 cases including some that were “hopelessly neglected”.

From 1923 to 1939 there were more than 350 deaths and, even as the Second World War was starting, factory inspectors said they had identified another 52 cases.

They included a Dukinfield man named George Harrop, who was just 56 when he died.

He had worked at one of the biggest mills in Ancoats for more than a decade before the cancer forced him to give up work in 1926.

A five-paragraph story in the industry’s newspaper, the Cotton Factory Times, noted that an inquest had recorded a verdict of death from “misadventure”.

“He was an extremely good workman,” a solicitor for Mr Harrop’s employers told the coroner.

“They very much regretted his incapacity and the long illness from which he suffered and resulted in his death.”

But for hard-working Mr Harrop, the regrets of his employers came far too late.

Cotton towns ancestry

I hope you found this story interesting.

I still find it amazing that so little is known about the effects of an industry that dominated people’s lives in our area for well over a century.

If you’re looking to find out more about your cotton industry ancestors, please do check out my professional family history site www.cottontownsancestry.com.

I’ve recently revamped the site to better reflect that my work covers not just Manchester but the mill towns of Greater Manchester and Lancashire.

There’s a link on the site where you can book a free family history consultation with no obligation to commission me for any work.

Have a good weekend.

Like many working people at the turn of the twentieth century, Annie Gledhill was reluctant to tell a doctor she liked a drink.

Admitting she supped four cups of beer before bed to ease her bronchial cough might have left her liable to having her children taken.

So every time she was seen by Mr Allen at Hulme Dispensary about the pains in her legs, Annie …

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Step into Gallery One at the People’s History Museum in Manchester and you will come face-to-face with one of democracy’s greatest heroes.

Known as the father of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine was the British subject who fired up the spirit of US independence against his own country.

In the gallery you’ll find the desk where he wrote one of his def…

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It’s a Saturday morning in July 2024 and I’m leading a group of Angel Meadow descendants on a tour of the district.

These are the same streets that Friedrich Engels walked 180 years ago. The same streets where my Irish ancestors lived.

With its residential towers of steel and glass, modern day Angel Meadow is a different place to the one visited by Engels.

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It’s 1844 and a well-dressed man is walking through the streets of Manchester.

His ears are tuned in to the music of the world’s first industrial city:

The flying shuttles thumping across the cotton looms like a heartbeat.

The click-clack of the clogs on the cobbles.

The man spins left off the street …

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Welcome to the Meander — my new series exclusively for paid subscribers that explores offbeat paths in Manchester and Salford…

If one street could symbolise the different faces of Manchester and Salford, it would have to be Chapel Street on the right bank of the Irwell.

Standing just a stone’s throw from Manchester’s most fashionable shops, much of Salford’s “old chap” awaits the march of the developers.

With a number of abandoned shops and empty pubs, a walk down here feels like wandering into a different era.

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It’s a hot day in May 2025 and the sun is blazing down outside the Home arts venue in Tony Wilson Place.

A group of office workers in short sleeves and white trainers are chatting over lunch at a row of trestle tables.

Nearby, a signboard is advertising a breakfast butty with a hot drink for £6.50 with unselfconscious aplomb.

Friedrich Engels, standing th…

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It’s an overcast day in the autumn of 2012.

Inside the archaeologists’ hut at the bottom of Dantzic Street, I’m picking over the Victorian artefacts that have come up from the trench.

The bowl of a clay pipe that still whiffs of tobacco. The delicate handle o…

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It was a cold Friday morning in November 1814 and a queue was forming in Manchester’s Fountain Street.

Outside the churchwarden’s office, the town’s poor were gathering so they could plead for a few pence to survive another week.

When the door finally opened, a woman limped forward to the desk of the relieving officer and waited for the usual questions ab…

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If you’re looking for something to do over the summer, I’m back on the road with my Angel Meadow tours.

More than 500 people have been on the tour since I started it last year.

Following requests from a few people, I’ve now added the following dates for June and July:

• Saturday, 7 June (sold out)

• Saturday, 21 June

• Friday, 27 June

• Friday, 11 July

• Friday, 25 July (sold out)

• Saturday, 2 August

I don’t like to have large groups where people can’t here, so to keep the tour personal I keep the numbers small, which means that the dates sell out pretty quickly.

🎟️Click on this link to book tickets and find out more information. You can also read reviews here.

The price of your ticket includes:

• A 90 minute guided walk through the streets of Angel Meadow with Dean Kirby, the leading authority on the area’s history.

• Walk alongside the River Irk, through the tree-lined Angel Meadow park and down streets where new apartments stand alongside former ragged schools.

• Regular stops where you’ll hear about the unusual characters who called this place home and historic incidents that took place right where you are standing.

• Small group sizes so you can ask questions and have plenty of time to take photographs.

• If you have bought a copy of my Angel Meadow book, bring it along and I'll sign and dedicate it for you. Or click to buy a signed copy at the ticket checkout.

• Personalise your tour: If your ancestors lived in Angel Meadow, contact me when you buy your ticket with their details and I'll do my best to mention them during the tour.

• New start point for 2025 in Sadler's Yard off Hanover Street with convenient public transport access.

Do come along if you want to find out more about the story of the people who built the world’s first industrial city.

P.S: While you’re here, would you consider subscribing to my Manchester History Club newsletter?

It’s a weekly story I write about the history of my home city and if you subscribe it drops straight into your email inbox.

It’s free, although there’s an option to upgrade to a paid subscription where you get access to extra paywalled content including my full archive. For an overview, visit www.manchesterhistory.uk

You can unsubscribe at any time. Just click on the button below to sign up.

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This is an exclusive post for paid subscribers to the Manchester History Club looking at the documentary evidence behind the story of the Manchester Mulan Sarah Roberts Taylor. Itms best to read it after first reading the original story here:

I first read about Sarah Roberts Taylor, the woman who spent 21 years in the British Army, in book called Storie…

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Ever since I was old enough to start exploring Manchester on my own, I’ve been finding new walking routes through my home city.

Sleek cut-throughs to avoid the commuter traffic on my way to work, a backstreet beeline between Piccadilly and Oxford Road stations to try to beat the train.

And, in my 20s, navigating a direct line for my drinking pals between the islands that were our favourite pubs.

Tacking my way through the crowds of shoppers at the corner of Fountain Street and Market Street the other day, I realised that all of us will have a personal route map of the city in our heads.

Shortcuts, buildings we regularly visit, places we avoid — hidden routes that are not imposed upon us by roadworks and public transport timetables.

They are based instead on a deeply personal and instinctive understanding of the streets we’ve built up over decades.

And they are made up of memories of people we have gone to meet and things we have done and seen.

So I’ve decided to start writing down and mapping my favourite journeys through Manchester in a new series of extra posts for paid subscribers to my newsletter.

I’ve called it The Meander.

In each edition, you’ll find a route through Manchester with photos and a map.

You can find route below — an exploration of the ginnels or passageways off St Ann’s Square.

And you can see my full archive by clicking the tab on the homepage of my website www.manchesterhistory.uk

Click the button below to see your subscription options. I currently have a 30% sale on my standard subscription offer.

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A note before you set off…

I’ve explored these off-beat routes so you can read and enjoy them from the comfort of your own home.

If you do decide to go for a walk in Manchester, please stay aware of your surroundings, especially in quieter or less-travelled areas.

Consider walking with a friend or during busier times of day if that feels safer, and definitely don’t go wandering at night.

There may be obstacles on some of the routes and the walks are not wheelchair friendly.

Trust your instincts, take your time, and enjoy the journey. Just a reminder: you’re responsible for your own safety as you explore.🚶🏻