industry, environment and health through 200 years in ... environm… · by 1835, 90% of the...

Ecological Economics 41 (2002) 235–255

SPECIAL SECTION: EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY ANDECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

Industry, environment and health through 200 years inManchester

Ian Douglas *, Rob Hodgson, Nigel LawsonSchool of Geography, Uni�ersity of Manchester, Mansfield Cooper Building, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Abstract

The Manchester urban area evolved rapidly in the early 19th century from a series of small towns to a majorindustrial conurbation with huge material flows and worldwide trade connections. A combination of the availabilityof nearby coalfields, canals, and free trade, which encouraged entrepreneurial enterprise, made Manchester into the‘shock’ city of the industrial revolution. Rapid nucleated urban growth associated with industrialisation throughoutthe 19th century involved an exponential growth in materials transfers and in waste flows. The 20th century suburbandispersal of residential and industrial growth led to further increase in the impact of the urban metabolism, especiallyin terms of mass: distance of materials movement. The current post-industrial phase in Greater Manchester has tocope with the environmental and social legacies of its industrial past and with growing per capita materialsconsumption and increases in number of households despite a nearly static population of around 2.5 million. Changesin material flows, land usage and river morphology in Greater Manchester over the past 200 years have reflectedchanging technologies, industry, economics, social expectations and environmental legislation. Manchester had thefirst passenger railway, the first inter-basin domestic water transfer in the UK, the first urban smokeless zones andwas part of a pioneering land reclamation partnership in the 1970s. Even so, the environmental legacy of industrialmaterial flows constantly presents new challenges, from the cost of reclaiming contaminated brownfield sites tofinding destinations for today’s urban waste. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Manchester UK; Environmental history; Housing and health; River pollution; Air pollution

This article is also available online at:www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon

1. Introduction

1.1. The place of Manchester in urbanen�ironmental history

Urban growth is about the occupation of land

and the assimilation and transformation of natu-ral resources. From the earliest urban markets tothe modern world cities, urban development isassociated with the bringing of natural productstogether, their re-distribution, re-combination,and their eventual disposal. Although urban envi-ronments might be those furthest removed fromnature, urbanisation increases the dependence ofour culture on natural resources (Gulick, 1958).From the time of the European mediaeval cities

* Corresponding author. Fax: +44-161-275-7878.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (I. Douglas),

[email protected] (R. Hodgson), [email protected] (N. Lawson).

0921-8009/02/$ - see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PII: S0 921 -8009 (02 )00029 -0

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I. Douglas et al. / Ecological Economics 41 (2002) 235–255236

when great finance houses like the Fuggers andMedicis had their agents everywhere from Milanto Antwerp, goods have been transferred fromdistant sources to the warehouses and tradingfloors of urban centres (Jardine, 1996). Thisturnover of materials can be discussed as trade(Pirenne, 1925), conspicuous consumption (Jar-dine, 1996), urban metabolism (Wolman, 1965),urban ecosystem dynamics (Douglas, 1983) orecological footprints (Rees, 1992). In the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries, the scale of thisturnover increased enormously. Not only did boththe world population and the total urban popula-tion multiply many times, but conspicuous con-sumption became the occupation of a huge newcity-dwelling middle class, transforming distantlandscapes and creating new, more local demandsfor food, water, building materials, and wastedisposal sites. The vision, flexibility and dy-namism of local authorities, urban elites and re-forming and campaigning individuals or groupsoften governed responses to these demands.

Manchester and its surrounding towns joinedthis urban expansion in the second half of the18th century when technological innovation madefactory production of textiles possible. It faced theproblems associated with concentrated industryearlier than most places and has subsequentlyresponded to a great series of issues at the heartof the relationship between society and environ-ment, particularly the unplanned consequences ofmaterials flows. Manchester was an urban proto-type: the first of a new generation of huge indus-trial cities created in the Western world in the twocenturies after 1750 (Rodgers, 1987). Manchesterpioneered many industrial activities, particularlythrough an unfettered, entrepreneurial, commer-cial sector, but also made early progress in healthand environmental improvements (Appendix A).Political action and local campaigning spirit wassuch that a strong social framework developed.Powerful voices of reform, particularly publichealth doctors such as Percival and Ferriar, led tothe worst impacts of uncontrolled industrial wastedischarges being modified and mollified from 1830onwards (Brockington, 1958).

As the place where the rapidly acceleratingprocesses of machine manufacturing and urbani-

sation first converged to create the modern indus-trial city, Manchester was bound to attractwidespread attention. The British establishmentviewed Manchester as a kind of experiment, see-ing the city as both an indication of what eco-nomic progress really was, and as a warning onthe environmental and social problems that wentwith such progress. There was no escaping theparadox of this major experiment with capitalism:great economic wealth amid mounting social andenvironmental problems (a paradox since repli-cated elsewhere many times over). De Tocqueville(1958) succinctly characterised it in 1835 as a fouldrain from which the greatest stream of industryflows to fertilise the whole world. From this filthysewer pure gold flows’. All too often, responses toproblems were short-term expedients, such assome of the early efforts of private water supplycompanies. Even the great infrastructure workson water supply dams, sewers, bridges and hospi-tals between 1850 and 1900 could not last forever,and Greater Manchester has faced a massive re-investment in infrastructure renewal since 1975.With some 2.58 million people living in the 1287km2 of Greater Manchester County in 2001, theheart of the urban core, made up of the innercities of Manchester and Salford and part of theBorough of Trafford, had approximately 0.5 mil-lion inhabitants (Fig. 1). After nearly a century ofincreasing industrial problems, especially thoseassociated with decline of textile trades— the re-sult of foreign competition and technological ob-solescence—Greater Manchester is nowexperiencing an economic regeneration and imagemake-over in an attempt to recapture some of theextraordinary vitality and unique influence thatmade it the ‘shock city’ of the industrial revolu-tion (Briggs, 1968). This paper tests the hypothe-sis that the human consequences of, and responsesto, urban environmental issues are not simplecause, effect and technological fix situations, butthe scene of constant adjustment, re-appraisal,response to changing attitudes and new technolo-gies. Solutions that were once deemed to be inad-equate are re-examined as needs, ideas andtechnologies change. Environmental expenditurerecurs as the chemicals causing pollution alter andland use and land cover changes occur.

I. Douglas et al. / Ecological Economics 41 (2002) 235–255 237

1.2. The growth of the greater Manchester areabefore 1850

Until the second half of the 18th century, thesettlements of Manchester and Salford hadstrayed little from their medieval core at theconfluence of the Irk and Irwell (Fig. 1). Thebeginnings of mechanisation of the long-estab-lished wool and linen textile industry in the late18th century changed all that. International tradedominated by cotton became the business of thecity. Massive imports of cotton, imported mainlyfrom the southeastern USA, were spun and woveninto cloth in the local region and then distributedto an ever expanding market at home and abroad.By 1835, 90% of the British cotton industry wasconcentrated in and around Manchester andgoods manufactured out of cotton amounted to51% of all British exports. By 1853, the Britishcotton industry supplied 45% of the total worldconsumption of cotton cloth (Farnie, 1979). Thehumid climate and soft local river water were

ideal for cotton manufacture. Local coal for thenew steam-driven machinery was supplied by riverand, after 1764, by canal to hundreds of mills.Following the Bridgewater canal, Manchester en-terprise fostered the world’s first passenger rail-way, to Liverpool in 1830. A labour force ofskilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers wasdrawn from a steadily widening area. A complex,ever-changing pattern of residential, industrialand commercial settlement had begun. The paceof exploitation of the surrounding countryside formaterials expanded.

This industrial dynamism led to a remarkablegrowth of population: in Manchester townshipalone, from nearly 77 000 people in 1801 to over316 000 in 1851. Only 45% of the 401 000 inhabi-tants of Manchester–Salford at mid-century hadbeen born locally, barely 1% came from abroad,with the remainder being drawn from other partsof the British Isles (Fig. 2a). Both business andemployment opportunities attracted a wide vari-ety of migrants, from the Sephardi Jews from the

Fig. 1. Growth of the built-up areas of Greater Manchester. (Compiled by Graham Bowden, University of Manchester, from varioussources).


Fig. 2. Migrants in Manchester: (a) the places of origin of the population of Manchester–Salford in 1851, and the Irish-dominatedsettlement of Angel Meadow in Manchester showing (b) the crowding of houses between the river, the railway and factories, with(c) and (d) the fall of the ground towards the River Irk. (Sources: Census Returns 1851; Busteed and Hodgson, 1994).

Middle East and the German industrialists whoengaged in cotton broking, banking and manu-facturing, to the Irish who formed the largestand most exotic element in the population andwhose navvies built the canals and railways.This was paralleled in the mid-20th century bythe arrival of Commonwealth country immi-grants, from the African Asian entrepreneursand Indian professionals to the Bangladeshi tex-tile workers.

1.3. Rapid growth and land use change after 1850

Greater Manchester’s population rose to2 149 000 by 1901. The built-up area expandedgreatly (Fig. 1) following the building of localrailways, such as the Bolton to Salford in 1838and the Manchester South Junction and Altrin-cham in 1849; introduction of horse buses from1850 and horse drawn trams after the passing ofthe Tramways Act in 1870 (Gray, 1996). High


densities were particularly prevalent in inner areassurrounding an increasingly ‘dead heart’ of the city.After 1840, city centre houses were demol-ished tomake way for commercial properties, railway pas-senger and goods stations and warehouse com-plexes. By 1901 the resident population of centralManchester was only 30 000, one-third that of 1851.However, salients of urban growth linkedManchester to a ring of agricultural and industrialvillages, especially to the south and west, and tooften fiercely independent cotton-manufacturingtowns to the north and east, such as Bolton, Bury,Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton and Stockport.

Manchester diversified while continuing, throughits Royal Exchange, to be the commercial andfinancial nucleus of the cotton trade. Machinery ofall types was manufactured and exported, includingtextile machinery, steam engines and locomotives,armaments, and machine tools. The dominance ofcotton in the trade from Manchester fell in the late19th century as the products of manufacturing andengineering grew in importance. Gradually thesourcing of raw materials and food supplies ex-panded to all parts of the world. Apples from NorthAmerica came through Liverpool early in the 19thcentury (Scola, 1992), but by the end of the centuryfood was coming from America, Africa, Asia andAustralasia (Appendix B).

The commercial expansion was not a continuousboom. Both economic downturns and cottonfamines affected the city, but at the end of the 19thcentury, the local economy was given a great boostby the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in1894. The Canal not only dramatically reducedtransport costs, but also transformed Manchesterinto the third port in the country by 1917, with athroughput of 3.84 million tons (Farnie, 1980).Alongside the docks, at Trafford Park, the first andstill the largest industrial estate in Britain wasdeveloped. Ultimately up to 75 000 people workedin factories at Trafford Park. The construction ofthe 57 km long Ship Canal involved total materialsflows of the order of 82 Mt. The gravel for theconcrete used came from the southern end ofWalney Island, some 80 km up the coast fromEllesmere Port, the seaward terminus of the canal(Sherlock, 1922). The 19th century thus witnesseda vast expansion, not merely in the built-up urban

area but also of the impact of Manchester’s activ-ities and demands, both on the adjacent countrysideand on distant ecosystems that supplied food andraw materials and were themselves transformed bythe machinery and other goods exported fromManchester.

1.4. 20th Century changes

Population densities decreased with the outwardmovement of population, but the total number ofpeople in the conurbation changed little. Since 1961the Greater Manchester population has been virtu-ally stable, with the low rate of natural increasebeing entirely offset by net out-migration. Grossout-migration has been partly counterbalanced byin-migrants, the 1991 census showing that 11.9% ofthe City of Manchester population was born outsideUK, compared with 6.1% in Greater Manchesteras a whole.

By the last third of the 20th century, GreaterManchester faced the decaying legacy of the preco-cious growth of its urban fabric a century earlier.Even though there had been extensive rebuilding ofhousing around 1900, further slum clearance hadto be carried out after 1955. Demolition of some90 000 dwellings between 1957 and 1976 in the Cityof Manchester alone involved some 2.16 million m3

of rubble. In addition to the huge expansion ofsuburbs in the 1930s (Fig. 1), smaller householdscreated a demand for yet more housing units, whichwas met both by infill and greenfield site develop-ment. Manchester City Council built 23 500 newdwellings, including multi-storey flats on 22 over-spill sites, the largest of which were Langley (Mid-dleton) (4700 dwellings) and Hattersley (4150dwellings on 1.94 km2).

Modern industrial location shows a contrastbetween the old surviving 19th century industriesand the new early 21st century activities. The oldindustries, including some chemical plants subjectto the EC Seveso directive on high risk chemicalinstallations, are in traditional locations alongsidecanals and former railways, often surrounded byhousing. The new activities are scattered over awide range of industrial estates, some onbrownfield sites, others in greenfield locationsclose to motorways and other major traffic routes.


Economic activity close to the core-city has somestability with a broad range of service industries,financial activities and three higher education in-stitutions. The important service function of thecity centre has been developed and reinforcedsince 1945. Just outside it, however, the inner cityhas become a severely deprived area, containingmany disadvantaged and ethnically mixed com-munities with poor job and health prospects.

In 2001 the conurbation consists of a centralcity area, broadly defined as inner Manchesterand Salford, and an outer girdle of substantialtowns such as Bolton and Altrincham plus numer-ous lesser towns and industrial villages. Whilepatches of green separate parts of the area, thewhole zone has virtually continuous development(Fig. 1), with greenfield sites still being infilled fornew leisure, shopping and road developments.Ten local authorities now separately administertheir own sections of the conurbation (Fig. 3),coming together as the Association of Greater

Manchester Authorities (AGMA) to look at someplanning and environmental concerns. Although,the administrative structure is far less complexthan in 1888, there are still many difficulties indeveloping and carrying out environmental poli-cies covering the whole conurbation.

2. Housing, health and sanitary reform

Despite expectations to the contrary, a sizeableproportion of the immigrant 19th century GreaterManchester workforce often had only casual, lowpaid work and lived in overcrowded, damp,poorly lit and inadequately ventilated accommo-dation (most notoriously back-to-backs, courtdwellings and cellars) with little sanitation (priviesoften shared by 20–30 families, sometimes manymore), an inadequate water supply, and high ratesof disease and mortality. Engels (1845) describedwretchedness of life in Little Ireland, a district of

Fig. 3. Maps of local authority areas in 1888 and 1990 showing the complexity of 19th century local government. Manchester tookover many adjacent local authorities, especially those that wished to be joined to the Longdendale water supply, while new urbanauthorities were created out of the rural districts (the white areas within the modern county boundary on the map). The 10Metropolitan Districts and Greater Manchester County were created in 1974, but the County Council was abolished in 1986.(Compiled from 1888 Sanitary District Boundary Map and 1995 County Boundary Map).


dense Irish settlement in the 1820s and 1830s,thus:

‘‘A horde of ragged women and children swarmabout here, as filthy as the swine that thrive uponthe garbage heaps and in the puddles.’’

The worst conditions were in low-lyingdwellings surrounded by factories, mills, railwaylines and viaducts, and which were also liable toflooding from polluted rivers. Although thesearchetypal, classic slums were not confined toManchester, they were more widespread than inmost other industrialising British towns and citiesof the time. For example, the streets and homes inthe lower levels of the Irish-dominated district ofAngel Meadow (Busteed and Hodgson, 1994)built on sloping ground (Fig. 2b–d) suffered accu-mulations of effluent from the upper levels, andflooding from the Irk, polluted by the dumping ofpersonal and industrial waste. Hence, at a sittingof the Court Leet on 14 April 1837, the owner ofa chemical factory in Angel Meadow was fined forreleasing naphtha into the river.

‘‘By reason of which large quantities of obnox-ious and unwholesome smell, stenches and efflu-via did… issue from said River into and upon thedwelling houses of divers of His Majesty’s liegesubjects’’’ (Court Leet Records, Vol. 12, 1887).

Despite inadequate understanding of the causesand spread of disease, the association betweenill-health and poor living conditions soon becameevident. The first local campaigning group inBritain for health improvements came about in1796, when typhus among cotton-mill employeesled public-spirited Manchester physicians to or-ganise an ad hoc health board (Porter, 1997). This1796 report by The Manchester Board of Healthpointed out that cotton factories were a hot-bedof epidemics and that the lives of children work-ing in them were ruined by the contaminatingsurroundings of their early years (Chapman,1904). The 1831–1832 pandemic of choleraprompted actions such as those of Kay (1832),whose ideas were taken up by Chadwick (1842) inrecommending reform of housing, provision ofclean water and efficient disposal of householdrubbish and sewage. These sanitary reformersskilfully appealed not only to humanitarian con-siderations but also to other growing political and

economic anxieties in the host population. Sani-tary reform was seen as a way both of maintain-ing the efficiency of the labour force and ofquelling the ‘revolutionary’ activities or ‘riotingpropensities’ of the working class people whoformed three-quarters of the population (Love,1842).

Lack of political will, finance, and understand-ing of public health made efforts to improve thehousehold situation patchy in time and space.Even less was done about reducing industrialemissions lest the economic growth of Manchesterbe impaired. The diversity of small local authori-ties (Freeman, 1959) obsessed with keeping localrates (council taxes) low and reluctant to co-oper-ate with their neighbours (Fig. 3) made collabora-tion in reform on such key issues as water supplyand drainage difficult. Efforts concentrated onimproving housing, sanitary arrangements andwater supply, culminating in having taps andwater closets (WCs) in every dwelling. Progresswas relatively slow and uneven. Manchester Bor-ough Council was ahead of national legislation inpassing local acts regulating housing conditions.Most cellar dwellings had gone by 1874 andnearly all the unhealthy, poorly ventilated, back-to-back houses had disappeared by 1915 (McK-echnie, 1915).

Infant mortality in Manchester in 1798 mayhave been as high as 300 per 1000 live births.Smallpox was a major killer of young childrenuntil 1800. Percival introduced vaccination, and inthe 1820s and 1830s whooping cough became themost serious cause of death of infants under 1year. Respiratory diseases amongst cotton work-ers were exacerbated by the dusty and dampconditions in the cotton mills and were the mostsignificant form of death in the 1850s by a fairlysubstantial margin (Fig. 4) (Fleischman, 1985).Not until the beginning of the 20th century was itrealised that dust and particles of cotton, particu-larly prevalent in card rooms, should be extractedwithout first contaminating the atmosphere. Theinjection of steam to facilitate weaving sized warpthreads made from short-staple cotton yarns wascommon, and maximum limits of humidity atgiven temperatures and the maximum proportionof carbon dioxide in humidified weaving sheds


Fig. 4. Deaths from Bronchitis and Diarrhoea in Manchester 1891–1938.

were not imposed until the Cotton Cloth Facto-ries Act of 1889. In 1890, the infantile death ratefor the offspring of cotton workers and labourersin Blackburn was 252 per 1000 births comparedwith 160 for the offspring of all other parents(Cruickshank, 1981).

From the middle of the 19th century until the1910s diarrhoea, which reached its peak duringhot, dry summers, was the greatest single cause ofinfant mortality, showing wide variations in itsimpact from year to year (Fig. 4) (Newsholme,1899). Milk purchased from street vendorsquickly went sour and infants often died throughlack of understanding of the causes of gastricproblems (Pooley and Pooley, 1984). The transferfrom breast-feeding to cows milk was reflected ina shift from a winter to summer peak in infantdeaths (Huck, 1997). In Manchester after 1851 arelatively small proportionate fall in infant mor-tality occurred (Fig. 5) but it rose again in the1890s, due to increased diarrhoea, perhaps be-cause contaminated food, frequently blamed forinfant deaths, was being replaced by equally con-taminated tinned or fresh milk (Beaver, 1973;Pooley and Pooley, 1984).

General improvements of the urban environ-ment in the 19th century made a major contribu-tion to the decline in infant mortality (Fig. 5)(Woods, 1991; Porter 1997), arguing that chang-ing public opinion, the efforts of medical officersof health, better drinking water and sewerage,slum clearance, the success of cleanliness cam-

paigns and many individual small improvements,such as dustbins with lids to keep out flies, lead toa better urban environment. In Manchester, de-spite reforms and public activity, the real reduc-tions in mortality did not occur until the end ofthe 19th century, with infant mortality fallingonly after 1900 and diarrhoea as a cause of deathdeclining significantly after 1916. Pooley andPooley (1984) emphasised that the acute povertyof many Victorian city dwellers inevitably led tomalnutrition and inadequate accommodation thatprogressively reduced resistance and increased ex-posure to disease. This relationship betweenhealth, poverty and living environment was re-echoed in the late 20th century in the 1980 BlackReport, Inequalities in Health, that showed that in1971 the death rate among adult males in socialclass V (unskilled workers) was nearly twice thatof adult men in social class I (professional work-ers) (Porter, 1997). In 1950 a baby in social classIV or V was twice as likely to die before attainingthe age of 12 months than a baby in social class I(Carr-Saunders et al., 1958).

Vigorous Local Authority attempts to improvesanitation were spatially discrete in their coverage.Nearly a third of the houses in the city lackedsanitation in 1868 (Pooley and Pooley, 1984).Earth closets and privies increased the risks ofcholera, typhoid and gastric tract diseases. Else-where, untreated drainage running directly intorivers from suburban WCs aggravated severe riverpollution problems. In the 1870s cesspits in


Manchester began to be replaced with night soilcollection from pail closets (ironically called DollyVardens after a nationally known perfume!). Onlyafter 1890 did a waterborne system of sewagedisposal and treatment come into operation inManchester and start to reduce the incidence oftyphoid.

Collection of night soil and horse manure fromthe city by scavengers in carts created a disposalproblem, and Manchester Corporation purchasedlarge parts of the desolate wet area of Chat Moss,across which Stephenson had such difficultybuilding the Liverpool to Manchester Railway in1829 (Burton, 1980). The drainage and reclama-tion of such mosslands around Manchester(Shimwell, 1985) were seen as providing rich soilfor growing vegetables and potatoes to supply thecity. The organic waste from the city helped toimprove the land (Kear, 1991). It was carried outof town along newly constructed turnpikes, canalsand railways which had sidings into the newlydrained mosslands, bringing the wastes out andtaking farm produce back to town, thus overcom-ing a sanitation and health problem. The disposalof sewage became linked with transportation andfood production for the people and livestock ofthe 19th century city.

With the construction of bye-law housing in thelate 19th century, water-borne sewerage was in-stalled in all new housing areas. Each municipal-ity had its own treatment works until the City ofManchester built the large works at Davyhulme in

1896. This expansion set up a new form of or-ganic waste: sewage sludge. This was originallytaken by barge down the Manchester Ship Canalto be dumped in a defined area of the Irish Sea.When this ceased in 1998, Greater Manchester’speople were producing about 77 500 tonnes of drysewage per annum, of which 45 600 tonnes re-quired disposal. The sewage sludge is now dewa-tered at Davyhulme and piped as a cakecontaining approximately 27% dry solids to a newprocessing plant at Shell Green, Widnes. Thisplant copes with up to 240 000 tonnes of drysludge annually, including that from Merseysideand Warrington. Approximately, 50% of the drymatter is incinerated and 50% is disposed of on toarable land and in reclamation projects, beingmixed with colliery spoil for use in landscapingschemes (Belshaw, 2000). Now, once again,Manchester’s organic wastes are being dumped onfarmland and helping to feed the city’s people.

A reliable pure water supply was critical forpublic health and the WC system. AlthoughManchester Corporation took direct control ofthe city’s supply in 1851, and despite the comple-tion of reservoir schemes in Longdendale in 1850sand Thirlmere in 1890s, distribution of pure waterremained very uneven throughout the 19th cen-tury. Despite exhortations from reformers, mostcentral-city courts and terraces did not have theirown in-house water supply but relied on stand-pipe in yard or end street for most of the 19thcentury. Around 1900, it was not unusual to find

Fig. 5. Infant mortality in England and Wales and in Manchester 1843–1993.


Fig. 6. Location of mills, works and factories close to the River Irwell and its tributaries in 1869, showing the general occurrenceof dyeworks and chemical factories adjacent to rivers, although cotton mills are more widely distributed across the landscape.(Source: Rivers Pollution Commission, 1870).

one tap in a yard supplying 20 or 30 houses(McKechnie, 1915). Standpipe supplies both in-creased the possibility of infection as water fromthem stood around the house in containers forseveral hours, and encouraged the use of less purealternative supplies obtainable closer to hand. De-spite relatively pure water being readily availablein middle-class suburban areas, most working-class districts were forced to endure inadequatesupply. The increased use of water and the expan-sion of the built up areas added to the existingmaterials flows to rivers and to water qualityproblems.

3. River pollution

For 200 years the rivers of Greater Manchesterpresented a sorry record of deterioration in qual-ity. While the major rivers rise on the peat cov-ered moorlands of the plateau of the Pennines,local streams draining the plains around the corecity are now almost buried beneath concrete andbrick. The most intractable pollution stories comefrom the Irwell and its tributaries, the Croal, Irkand Medlock.

During the 19th century increasing industriali-sation led to many mills, works and factories


directly discharging many pollutants, includingashes and cinders, into rivers (Fig. 6). Notablecases were the upper reaches of the Irwell where,before 1870, half the capacity of the channel waslost by dumped coal and furnace deposits andcinders from domestic fireplaces (Fig. 7). The siltin the river below Salford built up so much thatwhereas vessels of 1.5 m draught reached thewharves in 1840, by 1860 vessels of 1 m draughthad difficulties, and at the lowest flows no vesselscould pass (Gray, 1993). Around 1870, Salfordtownship took upstream townships to court fordumping ashes and debris in the river and causingthis problem. Serious flood problems, which be-came increasingly damaging after 1850, led tomany flood alleviation scheme proposals, includ-ing one to build a tunnel from Adelphi, upstreamof the City Centre, to the river near Weaste,downstream of the city.

Drains were developed in phases: (i) culvertingof water courses and street drains to 1820, (ii)local sewerage systems 1792–1880 and (iii) inter-cepting sewers in two stages 1886–1898 (includingDavyhulme Treatment works with treated effluentultimately returned to the recently built ShipCanal) and 1910–1973 (to provide additional ca-pacity with extension of the built-up area). Duringthe 19th century, the drainage system receivedever increasing amounts of varied, and uncon-trolled, discharges; including liquids containing

many dissolved substances and much solid wasteincluding ashes and cinders from houses andfactories.

The consequences of this are evocatively de-scribed by the 1870 Rivers Pollution CommissionReport, a direct response to local and nationalconcerns about the foul rivers:

‘‘When taking samples at Throstlenest Weir,below Manchester, at 05:00 h on July 21, 1869, wesaw the whole water of the River Irwell, there 46yards wide, caked over with a thick scum of dirtyfroth, looking like a solid, sooty crusted surface.Through this scum, here and there, at intervals ofsix and eight yards, heavy bursts of bubbles werecontinually breaking evidently rising from thebottom; and wherever a yard or two of the scumwas cleared away, the whole surface was seensimmering and sparkling with a continual effer-vescence of smaller bubbles rising from variousdepths in the midst of the water, showing that thewhole river was fermenting and generating gas.The air was filled with the stench of this gaseousemanation many yards away. The temperature ofthe water was 76 F, and that of the air 54 F.’’

Even the Manchester Ship Canal became pol-luted virtually as soon as it was completed, bothfrom the already heavily contaminated River Ir-well, the major source of water to the canal, andfrom the 519 out-falls of sewage and industrialeffluent which feed into it (Fan, 1996). As early as

Fig. 7. Mid-19th century changes to river channels due to the dumping of cinders and other wastes, as described by the RoyalCommission on Rivers, 1870. Note particularly how siltation of the Irk at Union Bridge had buried the outlet of the town sewerat least 1 m below a mass of debris. (Source: Rivers Pollution Commission, 1870).


1896, complaints of pollution during summerdroughts led to the creation of a Port SanitaryAuthority (Farnie, 1980).

The Eighth Report of the Royal Commissionon Sewage Disposal (1912) defined the standardsfor sewage works effluents as 20 mg l−1 of BODand 30 mg l−1 suspended solids (Tebbutt, 1992).Limits were imposed on what factories and homescould discharge; licensed discharges were estab-lished, and gradual regulation was imposed. By1940, every local authority had its own sewagetreatment plant on the banks of a river.

Reduction in industrial discharges (through agradual decline in number of sources) and themove from steam to diesel and natural gas powerhelped lower pollutant loads, but these were coun-tered by an expansion in number of residencesand in the per capita use of water and chemicals,such as detergents. Increased water discharges tosewers meant more overflows from combined sew-ers during storm events. In addition, increasingfarm effluent, especially from pig farms whereeffluent from one pig is equivalent to that fromfive humans, led to many small streams beingheavily polluted. In 1985 Manchester had 97 com-bined stormwater sewage overflows discharginginto the Medlock, which means that even in smallrainfall events untreated sewerage entered theriver. Since 1985, the national urban pollutionmanagement programme in which North WestWater, the local water and sewerage company,has taken the lead, has set out to intercept mostof these overflow sources and to create large newstorm water storage tanks from which the effluentduring overflows is far less oxygen demandingthan from the original outfalls.

River water quality management has involvedmajor expense since 1974. Much of the 19th cen-tury sewage system has been rebuilt, treatmentplants have been upgraded, and most smallsewage treatment plants have been eliminated,with interceptor sewers taking wastes to majorstations such as the Davyhulme treatment works.River water quality has improved considerably inthe last decade of the 20th century (Fig. 8a) andlocal fishermen now take edible trout out of theRiver Mersey on the south of the City ofManchester.

4. Air pollution

While water-borne diseases were eased by thesanitary reform measures of 19th century, pro-gress on those related to air pollution, especiallybronchitis and other respiratory ailments, wasvirtually non-existent before 1900. By the 1880sManchester had acquired an unenviable reputa-tion for dirt, smoke and gloom. Many reformistindividuals and groups, such as the Manchesterand Salford Noxious Vapours Abatement Associ-ation (NVAA), warned of the dangers from chem-ical pollutants (from alkali works), and moreespecially smoke from coal burning both at indus-trial sites and in domestic hearths. Nevertheless,the prevailing and often dominant view was thatsmoke pollution was a necessary and harmlesscorollary of ‘progress’. Total freedom from smokepollution was still regarded by many an utopiangoal and those who pressed for abatement wereoften dismissed as irksome, interfering, do-good-ers: ‘amiable and unpractical faddists’. Reformefforts were preoccupied with industrial pollu-tants, but had limited impact. Some tightening ofexisting regulations was achieved by the NVAA,for example, in the Alkali & Works RegulationAct in 1881 (Mosley, 1996). However, these pio-neering efforts paved the way for succeeding gen-erations, which placed Manchester at theforefront of air pollution abatement.

In the first decade of the 20th century, as partof the great expansion of manufacturing in Traf-ford Park, a steelworks, further chemical indus-tries and electric power stations were built,beginning a period of concentrated point-sourceemissions which did not end until the late 1980sand early 1990s with the closure of the last fourpower stations in the county. The other great SO2

source was the railway whose network reached itsgreatest density by 1910.

With new ideas about housing and healthylifestyles, Manchester and Salford pioneeredsmoke control measures. The 1930s saw a cam-paign for clean air and smokeless zones (led byCharles Gandy, a Manchester barrister and chair-man of the National Smoke Abatement Society,whose headquarters were in Manchester). At thistime suburban housing development occurred


Fig. 8. Reductions in air and water pollution: (a) Improvement in the oxygen content of rivers, both upstream of the city at Hydeand downstream of Great Manchester at Warrington since 1960; (b) falls in SO2 and smoke in the air at Manchester Town Hall,deaths from bronchitis; lead in the air at the side of the M56 in Wythenshawe; the recent record of annual average NO2 in the airin Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester City Centre. (Compiled from data supplied by North West Water, The Medical Officer ofHealthand Manchester City Council).

rapidly (Fig. 1), linked to centres of employmentby motor buses. Both private and local govern-ment public housing in ‘garden city style’ estatescovered many km2 of south Lancashire andnorth-east Cheshire farmland around the city.One of the most enterprising ventures wasWythenshawe, Manchester’s own ‘garden town’,described as ‘‘perhaps the most ambitious pro-gramme of civic restructuring that any British cityhas ever undertaken’’ (Kidd, 1993). Nevertheless,in 1959 Manchester still had 68 000 ‘grossly unfit’

houses without the basic amenities, which hadbecome standard in modern private and Corpora-tion homes since 1919. This ‘healthier’ housingstill relied on coal for heating, but the chimneydensity was less than in the older inner city areas.

Permission to establish the first smokeless zonesin the City Centre was obtained just as WorldWar II started in 1939. After the war in 1946,Manchester became the first UK local authorityto obtain powers (under Manchester CorporationAct) to establish ‘smokeless zones’. Salford and


Bolton obtained similar powers soon after, andthe first smokeless zone came into effect in Sal-ford in 1949. Well before the 1956 National CleanAir Act, the local governments of the GreaterManchester area had effectively set the pace bydealing with a local problem which was in realitya national menace, as the great London smog ofDecember 1952 showed to every politician in theHouses of Parliament at Westminster. Over the 25years after 1955 the pollution due to smoke andSO2 declined markedly. From the early 1960sonwards the reduced levels of smoke and SO2 areclearly reflected in the reduction in deaths frombronchitis (Fig. 8b). Between 1945 and 1969, win-ter sunshine increased by about 50% in the citycentre (Wood et al., 1974) with a further 20%improvement between 1969 and 1975 (Tout,1979).

For Greater Manchester as a whole, the processwas virtually completed by 1990, save for a fewmining communities where the traditional right ofminers to receive free coal supplies remained so-cially important. This achievement of cleaner airwas greatly helped by the decline of heavy manu-facturing industry and the substitution of electric-ity, gas and oil for coal burning and steam power.For the whole of Britain it was fortunate thatnatural gas from the North Sea basin becameavailable at the time of implementation of theclean air legislation.

The improvements locally were assisted, notonly by industrial change, but also by the policyrequiring new plants to install tall chimneys toexpel whatever emissions occurred high into theatmosphere. The chimney built at the Shell (nowMontell) petrochemical works in the 1970s atCarrington in the western part of GreaterManchester is a good example of the planningauthority insisting upon a higher chimney thanoriginally proposed (Wood, 1976). Yet thesechimneys only shifted the emission problem else-where. Ejected into the prevailing westerlyairstream, the emissions were carried over thealready abnormally acidic Pennine moors of thecentre of northern England, across Yorkshire andthe North Sea to Scandinavia where they con-tributed to the acidification of lake waters thatcaused such concern in the 1970s.

Furthermore, other new and expanding tech-nologies brought new air pollution problems toGreater Manchester. In the 1960s, high octane‘anti-knock’ petrol was hailed as a revolution inmotor car engine efficiency. A decade later, con-cern was raised about the impacts of lead emis-sions on health, especially that of children inschools close to traffic routes. Once again, publiccampaigning led to political pressure which sawthe introduction of lead-free petrol in 1986 and,later, a differential tax on leaded and lead-freepetrol. The technical adoption of catalytic con-verters was a further step in reducing motor vehi-cle emissions. The data for St. Thomas School,near the M56 motorway in Wythenshawe, show adramatic decline from the high levels prevalent in1986 (Fig. 8b). In the city centre increased trafficcaused a gradual increase in lead in airborne dustthat peaked in 1989. Traffic emissions, as indi-cated by lead in roadside soils and vegetation,tend to be higher where vehicles stand at trafficlights than elsewhere along major roads. In-creased congestion in the future could again leadto more pollution, even though emissions fromindividual vehicles are being reduced.

In 1999, the greatest concern about air pollu-tion in Greater Manchester is over suspendedparticulate matter (SPM) and oxides of nitrogen(NOx). Particulates are associated with dieselpowered vehicles, NOx with both diesel and petrolvehicles. They are of particular concern becauseof their ability to intensify asthmatic conditionsamong those already susceptible to asthma.Severe episodes of high particulate concentrationcan occur locally under still, calm, anticyclonicweather conditions. The annual average NO2 con-centration in the city centre has varied little sincemeasurements began in 1987 (Fig. 8b), but theyexceed the EC Directive’s recommended annualmean of 21 ppb. However, the more serious an-nual 98th percentile of hourly means has re-mained below the Directive’s compulsory limit of105 ppb save in 1992 and 1994 when cold, anticy-clonic conditions caused NO2 levels to exceed theguidelines during two 48 h periods.

Thus air pollution problems have changed overtime. Public pressure and the determination ofkey individuals helped to propel the change, but


technological changes and resource substitutionalso played their part. Now local authorities arerecognising the need to reduce the use of motorvehicles. The re-introduction of trams to the citycentre and their replacement of trains on twosuburban rail routes have taken 2.5 million carjourneys a year off the city streets. Proposals tooperate road charging trials and to charge forworkplace parking are actively being discussed bysome councils. The tramway is being extendedwith new fixed rail lines, but not as rapidly asmany advocates wish. Provision of bicycle lanesand bicycle parking facilities is proceeding, butcyclists find the separation of bicycles and traffictotally inadequate.

The battle against air pollution in Manchesterhas thus seen a combination of campaigning byindividuals and pressure groups, some grassroots,but others combining medical, business and legalexpertise. Conscious of the mistaken perceptionsof some people, both in southern England andbeyond, that Manchester is a grimy unattractivecity, the Manchester and District Chamber ofCommerce and the wider North West Businessleadership have established environment or sus-tainability teams and have projected ideas of a‘Green and Pleasant Region’. Yet, at the sametime, new foci for traffic movements, such asmajor sporting facilities and shopping centres(like Bolton’s Reebok Stadium and the TraffordCentre), have opened on the fringes of the majornuclei of population within Greater Manchester.Despite pollution reduction measures, everythingthat encourages extra vehicle movements adds toatmospheric emissions.

5. Discussion and conclusions

Every effort to make the city more prosperous,healthier and more attractive to residents leads tonew environmental pressures. Some materialsflows have gone almost full circle. In addition tothe return to disposal of organic wastes to theland, there is the use of methane gas from landfillsto generate electricity for the local grid and, inparticular, the highly successful re-introduction in1992 of trams to the city centre streets 43 years

after they last ran there. The modern trams havecut out some 2.5 million car journeys a year. Theinnovation characteristic of Manchester for thelast 200 years is seen in many of its environmentalsolutions, from the technology used to keep thewaters of the redeveloped former docks at SalfordQuays clean, to the efforts being made to ensurethe widespread use of low-floor, easy access,cleaner emission buses throughout the city. Therejuvenation of the city centre has seen formerwarehouses converted to apartments, student resi-dences and office blocks, thus avoiding some ofthe materials flows of bricks and concrete for newbuildings. Elsewhere in the county, muchbrownfield, old industrial land has been re-used,but, in 1999, 3217 ha remain to be tackled. Manyof these brownfield sites still contain the legacy oftheir industrial use, for example, coal gas purifica-tion plants which produced gas that substitutedthe burning of coal and made a major contributedto the reduction in atmospheric SO2. Most ofthese plants closed down as soon as natural gasfrom the North Sea became available in the 1970safter being operative for anything up to 100 yearsor more. Some of the chemical time bombs ofhydrocarbon and heavy metal contaminated landfrom these plants are still requiring remediation.

Yet, innovative initiatives are now starting totackle the regeneration of derelict land and someof the old urban landfills in a manner which willenable them to become a part of urban greenspacecorridors. Within the urbanised areas of GreaterManchester and Liverpool there are some 1060 haof derelict and neglected closed landfill sites(Roome et al., 1999). Initially, these older landfillsites were located at the edge of the cities andtowns, but with urban growth many of these siteswhich were once on the urban fringe have nowclosed and are surrounded by settlements. WithinGreater Manchester alone, there are over 900closed landfill sites and many have the potentialfor re-development as community woodland, butthe availability of soils and soil making materialsis crucial in advancing their regeneration (Rawlin-son et al., 1999). Trials are now taking place onthe suitability as landfill cover of the 120 000–150 000 tonnes per annum of soil-making materialwhich can be produced from domestic and com-


mercial waste by the Greater Manchester WasteAuthority. Thus, an initiative able to close amaterial’s flow circle is starting to evolve—wastewhich would have increased land dereliction isbeing transformed in to a product which poten-tially will enhance land regeneration, environmen-tal regulations permitting.

Containerisation and changing trading patternsled to the closure of the Port of Manchester in1977. Since 1984 this whole area has been in theprocess of being redeveloped as a desirable water-side location for modern offices, housing unitsand leisure pursuits. Following a rigorous riskassessment, the water quality is also being im-proved to a level compatible with these new uses.

The dock areas cut off from the river flowcontain 3–4 m of contaminated sediments, achemical time bomb from 80 years of environ-mental neglect. These sediments are heavily con-taminated and removal would be both costly andunsafe. The solution is the isolation of the docksfrom the flowing water in the canal and treatmentof the largely anoxic water by permanent aerationand by bio-manipulation.

Sediments in the semi-closed turning area andin the upper reaches of the canal also contain highlevels of heavy metals and over 75% organicmaterial which has a BOD value of up to 3000mg/l, and was classified by the NRA (now theEnvironment Agency) as ‘bad’ (Fan, 1996). Oxy-gen injection equipment designed to improve thewater quality to ‘good’ by an improvement inBOD of 75% over the next 20–25 years came onstream in 2001. It is estimated that the quality ofthe water will have returned to ‘poor’ by 2005 andto ‘fair’ by 2010.

Innovation in Manchester continues to evokenew materials flows and environmental impacts.The highly successful international airport hasbuilt a second runway involving the excavationand deposition or disposal on site of 2.36 millionm3 of material, the import, by a temporary rail-way, of 1.3 Mtonnes of stone and a total materi-als shift of the order of 6.3 Mtonnes(AMEC-Tarmac Joint Venture, 1999). The impactof this was felt not only in the stone quarries ofthe Peak District, but will also affect the globalatmosphere, as the contrails of the larger number

of aircraft flying into Manchester each add to thegreenhouse gases.

The aircraft emissions may be seen, along withthe sewage sludge disposal and the emissions fromtall chimneys, as Greater Manchester imposing itswastes from materials flows on other environ-ments, thereby extending its ecological footprint.Even the major part of the solid waste flows goesto sites outside the county boundary. Of arisingsof 7.7 Mtonnes per year, some 1.5 Mtonnes aresent to landfills within Greater Manchester, asmall part is incinerated and the remainder, afterpulverisation and compaction, goes to sites out-side the county (Bell, 1997), 600 tonnes per daybeing sent by rail to old iron ore mines 110 kmaway in Lincolnshire.

These examples show that Manchester has hadto cope with the failures of its past systems andrenew the successes. Managing materials flows ina city like Manchester is not simply a question ofputting in infrastructure and systems and allowingthem to run forever. The message is not just oneof adopting an ecological risk-control strategy(Cantlon and Koenig, 1999), but also one ofconstant renewal and change. Most ofManchester’s Victorian sewers, bridges, dams andhospitals have been renewed, refurbished or re-placed. The engineering costs involved illustratehow sustainable management of materials flowsrequires both infrastructure investment and politi-cal and economic commitment to long-term careand maintenance. Often changes are prompted bya crisis, made possible by the availability of newtechnology, encouraged by subsidies, stimulatedby entrepreneurship or professional and commu-nity pressure groups, and made possible becausethere is some political will. The example of in-frastructure renewal confirms the hypothesis thatresponses to urban environmental issues are notsimple cause, effect and technological fix situa-tions, but the scene of constant adjustment, re-ap-praisal, response to changing attitudes and newtechnologies. Removal of small inefficient wastewater treatment plants and the development oftertiary treatment at the remaining large plants,together with new ways of managing storm seweroverflow, illustrate technological adaptation tonew public values and perceptions of the benefits


of clean rivers and the reduction of health risks.So often, Manchester has led other cities—as thefirst industrial city, the pioneer of free trade, theowner of the first Major British inter-basin trans-fer urban water supply and the initiator of smoke-less zones. These responses to needs and criseshave not been driven by market forces alone, buthave been driven by ideas of social and environ-mental improvement, by the recognition thatthere must be a better way of doing things.Manchester now recognises the need to thinkglobally, but act locally, to create a high qualityliving and working environment with as small anecological footprint on other ecosystems as possi-ble. This is not easy, as consumer demands lead tothe supply of food, goods, and materials fromever widening, more distant sources, and manyrecycling and reuse options for waste and oldindustrial materials are constrained by legislationand perceptions aimed at reducing health hazardsand environmental contamination. One way for-ward, which contains broad-brush estimates formaterials flows for Greater Manchester, has beenset out by Ravetz (2000). This goal of greatersustainability is far from being achieved, butawareness and appreciation of materials flows andtheir impacts will help to get closer to it.

Appendix A. List of key events in the evolutionof modern Manchester

Royal Infirmary established1752Bridgewater Canal, the first industrial1761canal in the UK, opened as far asStretfordConstruction of first steam engine used1789in manufacture of cottonPower looms introduced into1790Manchester

1791 House rented near Salford Bridge for alying-in hospitalBoard of Health established in1796Manchester by Percival and Ferriar (aresult of a typhus epidemic: the first lo-cal health pressure group in Englandand Wales) and House of Recovery setup.

1804 Rochdale Canal completed through cen-tral Manchester

1807 Gas first supplied to the City1809 Manchester and Salford Waterworks

Company foundedManchester Institution for Curing of1814Diseases of the Eye foundedManchester Gas Works established1817Manchester Medical School founded by1825Thomas TurnerAncoats Hospital opened as Ardwick1828and Ancoats Dispensary

1829 General Dispensary for Children estab-lished in Back King Street

1830 Liverpool and Manchester Railwayopened-the world’s first passengerrailwayMajor cholera outbreak1832Manchester Statistical Association1833founded District Provident Societyproviding relief in cases of sickness andconvalescence established in ManchesterNew Poor Law Act1834

1838 Incorporation of the City of ManchesterBolton to Salford Railway openedManchester and Birmingham Railway1842opened

1843 Royal Commission on the Health ofTowns Gas Undertaking becameManchester Corporation Gas WorksMetropolitan Health of Towns Associa-1844tion established Manchester Police Reg-ulation Act (included powers related tosanitation)Common Lodging Houses Act1846First two parks, Philip’s Park andQueen’s Park presented to the CityCity Corporation obtained Act to ac-1847quire the works of the Manchester andSalford Waterworks Corporation and todevelop Longdendale reservoirs

1848 British Public Health Act (required set-ting up of local Boards of Health re-sponsible for sanitary supervision,drainage and water supply among othermatters)Manchester South Junction and Altrin-1849cham Railway opened


1850 Manchester Clinical Hospital established1851 First UK inter-basin water supply trans-

fer from Longdendale to the cityManchester and Salford Sanitary Associ-1852ation foundedWithington hospital built as Withington1854Workhouse (Chorlton Union)The lying-in hospital, after several tem-1856porary locations, moved to Quay Streetas ‘St. Mary’s Hospital and Dispensaryfor the diseases of Women and also forthe diseases of children under 6 years ofage’Local Government Act (permitted com-1858pulsory purchase for sanitary purposes)River Medlock Improvement Committee1863appointed by City CouncilSanitary Act (gave local authorities1866powers to provide clean water suppliesand regulate tenements)Vaccination Act (increased penalties for1867failure to vaccinate infants) ManchesterSouthern and Maternity Hospital forWomen opened in Chorlton-on-MedlockDiseases of the Eye Institution becameManchester Royal Eye HospitalFirst medical officer of health for the1868City of Manchester appointed

1870 Tramways Act1871 Alkali &c Regulated Works Act

Children’s Hospital at Pendlebury1873openedPublic Health Act (required appointment1875of a medical office of health to everysanitary district in England and Wales)

1876 Manchester and Salford NVAA founded

1893 Electricity first supplied to the CitycentreWater supply from Thirlmere in-1894augurated Manchester Ship CanalopenedManchester Southern and Maternity1904Hospital for Women merged with St.Mary’s Hospital

1911 Town Planning Committee appointed byManchester City Council Ford openedfactory in Trafford Park to makeModel-T carsBooth Hall Children’s Hospital opened1915in north ManchesterAir Pollution Advisory Board estab-1912lished by Manchester City CouncilRoyal Manchester Eye Hospital moved1920to Oxford Road

1925 Manchester Committee on CancerformedManchester and District Regional1926Smoke Abatement Committee formedBarton Aerodrome opened-the first mu-1929nicipal airport in the UKRingway Airport (now Manchester In-1938ternational Airport) opened, replacingBarton AerodromeFirst smokeless zone in UK comes into1949effect in Salford

1956 UK Clean Air Act1971 New buildings for St, Mary’s hospital

opened on Hathersage RoadGreater Manchester smokeless zone des-1990ignations virtually completedUpgrading of water quality in River1995Mersey permits return of fish


Appendix B. Manchester’s sources of supply and destinations of exports

Date Trading partner countries Nature of imports Nature of exportsc1800 Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Raw cotton, banking Cotton goods

Germany, Turkish empire, India, and insuranceChina, Japan, South and CentralAmerica, West Indies, Mexico

Cotton goods, machineRaw cotton, livestock,Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Por-1800–1850tools, made-up textilestugal, Italy, Germany, Turkish apples, oranges

empire, India, China, Japan,South and Central America, WestIndies, Mexico, USA

Raw cotton, livestock, Cotton goods, machineIreland, Netherlands, Spain, Italy,1851–1900tools, made-up textiles,apples, oranges, foodGermany, Turkish empire, India,

China, Japan, South and Central locomotives and railwayproducts, industrial rawmaterials, woodAmerica, West Indies, Mexico, carriages

USA, Australia, New Zealand,Canada, South Africa

1901–1915 Cotton goods, woollenRaw cotton, fruit, live-(Regular steamship ser�ices fromgoods, jute, linen, silk,the Port of Manchester to): stock, meat, food prod-

Canada, USA, Brazil, India, Per- steam and gas engines,ucts, industrial rawboiler, textile and electri-materials, wood, grainsian Gulf states, Australia, New

Zealand, Egypt, Syria, Italy, cal and other machinery,chemicals, iron, steel, andSpain, Denmark, Sweden, Russia,

Netherlands and France copper, India rubber andother goods

1929 (Regular steamship ser�ices from Cotton and woollenOil and spirit, timber,goods, yarns, machinery,grain, fruit, cotton,the Port of Manchester to):locomotives, implements,wool, frozen meat, tea,Canada, USA, Brazil, India, Per-tools, hardware, earthen-sian Gulf states, Australia, New sugar, provisions,

starch, glucose, leather, ware, paper-making ma-Zealand, Egypt, Syria, Italy,Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Russia manufactured iron, terials, chemicals, coal,

ores, nitrates, copper, salt and pitchtobacco and woodpulp

Direct airline ser�ices from Through the Ship CanalThrough the Ship Canal2001Manchester Airport to: Canada, upper reaches : bulk upper reaches : scrap

metals, cement products;USA, Egypt, United Arab Emi- chemicals, LPG andrates, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, products; petroleum chemicals

products and chemicals;Singapore, Hong Kong, Mauri-maize, graintius, Ireland, Canary Islands,

Spain, Portugal, Malta, Israel,Turkey, Cyprus, Croatia, Slove-nia, Czech Republic, Italy,France, Switzerland, Austria,Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg,Netherlands, Poland, Finland,Sweden, NorwayRegular shipping links through thePort of Manchester : France,Spain


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