‘Let us have a cult of Manchester…’

The 103-year-old article in the Manchester Evening News that shows we’ve always been a cult city. Plus, a sea monster, rabid dogs in King Street and a teenage cult with a language of their own.  

Manchester is full of bizarre characters and incidents - you only have to walk down Market Street to realise that. It’s what makes us THE cult city. In fact, the notion of a Mancunian ‘cult’ has been around for a rather long time. In 1923, an article appeared in the Manchester Evening News, written by an anonymous author clearly fuelled by a cultural fatigue of the capital:

I am tired of hearing what is the shortest street in London; where its smallest house is; of reading bygone memories of the Fleet…and what Seven Dials looked like in Dickens’s time.

This is not enough. As a lover of this old city, I think it must have just as many memories and oddities and eccentricities as ever London had. Many of them may not be world topics, but then, are London’s? It has been said, and at times rather sneeringly, that there is a cult of London. The idea is excellent, but the reasons are foolish. Let us have a cult of Manchester.

So, in celebration of this declaration from over a hundred years ago, historian and curator of the strange, Scott Nolan (Northern Historia), has collated five oddities, eccentricities and just downright strange stuff from Manchester’s past.

  1.    The Whalley Range Sea Monster (1874)

Who knew you could take a trip to an aquarium in Manchester a century and a half ago? Let alone see a ‘real life’ monster. On Alexandra Street in Whalley Range, Manchester’s very first aquarium was built. A series of valves could open or close to control water levels, simulating the ebb and flow of the tide. Impressive tech for the time.

When it opened in 1874, the aquarium had another impressive announcement. They had their very own sea monster lurking in their tanks along with the conger eels, octopuses and salmon.

The great beast had been captured off the coast at Colywn, measuring almost six feet in length and weighing one hundred pounds. It was transported from North Wales to Manchester and personally accompanied all the way to ensure that the water was kept aerated. Eventually it could be seen prowling its new lair - a large tank at the west end of the aquarium.

And what was this denizen of the depths that had come all the way from Wales?

It was an angelshark - a big but harmless fish that spends most of its time lying motionless on the seabed. Not particularly riveting.

The aquarium only lasted for three years and St Bede’s College now stands on the same spot. No one knows what happened to the Whalley Range Sea Monster…

2.    Blood Sports at the National Football Museum (1749)

In the middle of one of Manchester’s main roads, a peculiar and cruel practise took place - the blood sport called bear baiting. And it occurred right outside where the National Football Museum now stands. A captured bear was muzzled and chained to a post in the ground (so it stood no real chance of escape), before a crowd of people moved in. Traditionally the bear would face down hordes of dogs, sent in to do battle like gladiators. However, in Manchester the abuse took a different form.

Spectators took turns whacking the bear over the head with bags on sticks (which were actually inflated bladders) or ramming it with wheelbarrows to antagonise it. It's nearly unthinkable that this happened right in the middle of what is now Corporation Street.

It wasn’t long before Manchester decided this kind of animal abuse wasn’t to be tolerated in the town centre anymore. In 1824, a petition was presented to Parliament (signed by over 700 Mancunians) that demanded the abolition of ‘bear-baiting, badger-baiting, dog-fighting and monkey-fighting’.

3.    Old Chopping Block and the Onstage Duel (1751)

Apart from outside The Haçienda in the 90s, who could ever say they saw a real sword fight in the centre of Manchester?

An eight-year-old boy, Thomas Barritt (above), had this claim to fame and his memories were recorded for posterity – he saw one of the last duels ever fought in Manchester.

In the mid-18th century, a prize fighter named ‘Old Chopping Block’ came to Manchester (so named for his cut and scarred face) to teach the art of self-defence. While in town he also challenged strangers to prove their skills, which culminated in an onstage duel. This being Manchester, it’s unlikely a shout of en garde would have gone up, but Chopping Block and his adversary ‘whirled about with surprising dexterity’, leaving their ‘faces almost covered with blood’.

Eventually the prize fighter seized an opening, and cut the other man in the side, which was considered unfair play and ended the show for good. The eight-year-old boy who witnessed this (Barritt) grew up to be one of Manchester’s most famous antiquarians. He also produced the bear baiting drawing that you’ve already seen.

 4.    Cock Eye and the Mad Dogs of Manchester (circa 1817)

When the term ‘Regency era’ is banded around, the popular imagination thinks of Sense and Sensibility, Mr Darcy’s wet shirt, or Bridgerton. The reality for people in Regency-period Manchester wasn’t quite as saucy.

Joseph Nadin (above), a corrupt bully and the deputy constable of Manchester, ran the streets of the town with his teams of runners and special constables. But during Regency times, a problem was sprinting through town on all fours and foaming at the mouth: rabid dogs.

Nadin’s men were armed with sturdy flintlock muskets to deal with these crazed canines. One of these men was pushing seventy, half blind, and nicknamed ‘Cock Eye’ - and yet someone still handed him a musket to wave about the place.

The inevitable happened when the old man took aim at a hapless dog on King Street and missed. Instead, the wife of an army sergeant was nearly hit, and Cock Eye found himself shoved up against a wall by two soldiers. A bayonet was pointed at his chest until it was clear no real harm had been done. In the meantime, the dog saw his opportunity and took off down King Street, possibly in the direction of House of Fraser.

 5.    The Secret Society of Teenage Mancunians (1909)

Teenagers running amok in the city of Manchester with a secret language all of their own… it could never happen today. Obviously.

At the turn of the last century, police constables discovered two 17-year-olds breaking and entering an office in Portland Street. Their names were Thomas Haworth and Thomas Lowe, and at first glance their only crime was the theft of a few shillings.

But once they were searched properly, a bizarre book emerged, titled ‘Society of the Scarlet Circle’. It revealed the boys had started this sect the previous year and went by the codenames of two famous highwaymen (Dick Turpin and Tom King). Portions of the book were written in cipher, but a passage in English revealed they were due to meet another member named ‘Blue’ before their arrest.

Various safe keys were found on them - what treasure they unlocked is unknown - and a booklet about another society, the ‘Scarlet Heart’. Possibly the teenagers thought of themselves as dandy Edwardian romantics - stealing like their highwaymen heroes and colluding in underground clubs. The father of Thomas King took another view - that his son had been corrupted by reading sensational stories in ‘penny dreadful’ publications.

While the two boys were ordered to break up the society, other members like ‘Blue’ were never traced. Perhaps even today, the Scarlet Circle still operates in quiet corners of the city.

You could say it was Manchester’s first ever cult. But not the last.

For more bizarre tales of Northern history go to Scott Nolan’s Substack - the link is here.