The Manchester Christmas miracle

For Christmas dinner he gave them beef, potatoes, a loaf, two ounces of tea, half a pound of butter — and a tin of mustard

The weather was so cold in Manchester on Christmas Eve in 1891 that well-to-do families went ice skating on the lake at Belle Vue Zoo.

At just 2ft-deep, the water was safer than the frozen River Irwell at Salford where crowds of skaters would risk everything as jittery policemen watched from the banks.

The Manchester Courier reported how ironmongers’ shop…