ABSTRACT
During the three years after our first return from the West Indies, my mother and I used every year to make a tour together in the ‘Long’. The first year (1839) crossing over to Ostend, we went to Belgium, and did the Rhine, returning by Brussels and Paris… In the following year (1841) our tour was a home one. We went to Ireland, stopping on our way at Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, with letters of introduction from my Uncle, Mr. F.C.Brown, or from his agents, Messrs Forbes, Forbes & Company, to the heads of important commercial establishments. Thus at Birmingham we saw the nail-factory of Joshua Scholefield, then M.P., vast and airy, with an engine of 36 horse-power. We saw the iron cut as if it were paper by immense shears, then made straight off into nails, the head at first being quite brittle. The workers were mostly men, the rest boys of from 8 to 12. We went next to the Button factory of Hammond and Turner, where everything was done by hand, the workers being mostly women, fairly young, though one or two quite old, with a few young men and children. From thence we went to Collis and Sons, metal workers generally, and to Jenners and Betteridge, the papier maché manufacturers, winding up with a copper tube factory worked by a 90 horse-power engine. I found the Birmingham working people, whether men, women or children, fine looking and healthy, and in general most cleanly; the young girls often quite roguishly dressed, with pretty pink frocks, often coral necklaces, ear-rings almost always.
