Public Works, Parks, Etc.—The corpo ration is the owner of the waterworks that supply Manchester and Salford and some sur rounding towns and villages. The water comes from Longdendale on the borders of Derby shire and Thirlrnere in Cumberland, and the works have cost over £8,000,000. The average quantity of water supplied per day is 38,000,000 gallons. The gas works have been the property of the corporation since the incorporation of the borough, and have always yielded a profit in aid of the rates. The supply of electricity is also a municipal undertaking. So also the fire brigade, public abattoirs, the foreign animal wharf on the Ship Canal, cold-air stores and the extensive sanitary works. The markets and the electric tramways are under municipal owner ship. The city has many public parks, open spaces and playgrounds. The area of the lar gest (Heaton Park) is 662 acres and its cost was £220,000. The other municipal works in clude baths, cemeteries, workmen s dwellings, infectious diseases hospitals, libraries, art gal leries, technical school and school of arts, The council is also the local education authority for the city. The construction of the Ship Canal involved an outlay of £15,000,000, one-third of which was lent by the corporation, who ap point 11 out of the 21 directors of the Ship Canal Company.
Government.— Since 1838 Manchester has been governed under the Municipal Corpora tions Acts and a long series of local statutes. The council consists of 144 members, 35 of whom are aldermen. The head of the council is styled lord mayor, that title being confered in 1893. The administration of the Poor Law is entrusted to three boards of guardians, for the Central and the North and South townships, and there are separate workhouses and other necessary establishments. There is a court of record for the trial of civil actions, established in 1838 and reconstituted in 1858, and nos amalgamated with the court of record of the hundred of Salford, and since 1839 there has been a separate commission of the peace and separate quarter sessions. The Assize, County, Chancery and other law courts held in the city are not under local control.
Manchester was in prehistoric times occupied by the Britons, as proved by urns and implements that have been unearthed and abundant Roman relics bear evidence to a long period of Roman occupation. Little known of the rule of the English or Saxons, but among other traditions is that of Queen Ethelbega, wife of Ina, king of Wessex, having lived here in 689, and of the Danes sacking the town in 863. In 923 King Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, rebuilt and fortified Manchester. Manchester is mentioned in the Domesday Book, 1086, as possessing two churches, one of which is now conjectured to have been at Ashton-under-Lyne, originally in the parish. The barony of Manchester was held by the Gresleys, 1086 to 1313, and the last as that family granted a charter to his burgesses in 1301, and it was by this charter that the town was governed for over five centuries. manor was afterward held by the De la Warne and the Wests until 1579, when it was sold r. John lLacye, a London mercer, for £3,000, Fx. an turn disposed of it in 1596 for a profit £500 to Sir Nicholas Mosley, a Manchester Int who had become a prosperous London merchar. destined to fill the office of lord mayor thref years after his purchase of the manor. In he family the manor remained until 1845, who the whole of the manorial rights were purchased by the corporation for £200,000. One of dir lords of Manchester, Thomas la Warre, entered the priesthood, became rector of the parish and in 1421 provided the means for collegiatipg the church, and gave his manor-house as a Bence for the clergy of the college. This now known as Chetham's Hospital, is, apart from the church, almost the sole architectural relic of feudal Manchester. After the tion the building was confiscated by the Crown, and in the reign of Edward VI passed byytu." chase to the Earl of Derby. In his farialY remained until the Commonwealth, when it was sequestered by the Parliament, with other sessions of the royalist Earl of Derby. In
1656 it was purchased by the executors of Humphrey Chetham and turned to its present uses. Manchester was visited in 1495 by HenO VII. It is unknown when the town began to be established as a trading and manufactunng centre, hut it is clear from the Act of 1541 that a considerable commercial position had by that time been attained. Manchester holds an important position in the earlier history of the civil wars. At the outset the townsmen took the side of the Parliament, and made an effort to avert the conflict by presenting King Charles. The town was besieged Strange, who was repulsed. Prior to the actual a petition to siege he demanded the delivery of the maga zine, and in an affray which ensued a man was killed. This was on 15 July 1642, and the fatality was one of the first that occurred in the wars. The town was represented in Crom well's first and second parliaments. In 1715 there were many Jacobites among the influential townsmen, and in the rising of 1745 the Young Pretender found numerous adherents here. Some of them, on the failure of the rebellion, were executed for their treason. The Duke of Bridgewater opened his canal from Worsley to Manchester in 1761, and the extension to Run corn was completed in 1795. Distress, caused by the wars and high taxation, was a main cause of the political discontents which marked the first two decades of the 19th century, and are remembered by a weavers' riot in 1808, the Thlanketeers° meetings in 1817 and the disas trous Peterloo affair of 1819, when, at a meet ing to petition Parliament for the redress of grievances, several people were killed and many more injured during a charge of the military, after the reading of the Riot Act. The Man chester and Livermxil Railway was opened en 1830, marling a new era in internal communi cation. Manchester was enfranchised by the Reform Aot of 1832, getting two members. (Under the redistribution of 1917, members are allocated to the city). The Anti-Corn Law League was established in 1839, and prosecuted a vigorous campaign throughout the country, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws an 1846. In 1847 the bishopric of Manchester was created and the collegiate church converted into a cathedral. Queen Victoria paid three visits to Manchester, the first in 1851, the second in 1857 and the last in 1894, when she opened the Ship Canal. The great Art Treasures Exhibi tion was held in 1857 and the Jubilee Exhibition in 1887. Both were remarkably successful, the latter yielding a profit of i43,300, which was devoted to public uses. From 1862 to 1865 there was great distress throughout the cotton manufacturing districts, owing to the American War; a relief fund of over $1,000,000 of money was raised on behalf of the operatives. The Ship Canal was projected in 1882 and opened in 1894. In March 1902 the city was visited by the Prince and Princess of Wales, who came to open the Whitworth Hall at Owens College; in July 1905 King Edward VII opened a new dock at the Ship Canal.
Population.— The population of Manchester is about 714,333. In 1841 it was 242,983; in 1871, 351,189; in 1891, 505,368; in 1901, 644,873. The great increase is partially accounted for by the extensions of the city boundaries which took place in 1885, 1890, 1904 and 1909.
Bibliography.— Axon, 'Annals of Man chester' (1886) ; Bannerman and Sons, 'Mer cantile Manchester, Past and Present' (Man chester 1896); Darhyshire, Booke of Old Manchester and Salford' (ib. 1887) ; Harland, Howells, W. D., 'Seven English Cities' (New York 1909) ; Hudson, 'Manches ter Municipal Code' (6 vols.) ; Perkins, 'Cathedral Church of Manchester) (ib. 1903) ; Proctor, 'Memorials of Bygone Manchester with Glimpses of the Environs' (Manchester 1879) ; Roeder, 'Roman Manchester' (1900) ; Tait, 'Mediaeval Manchester' (1904) ; Ware, 'Foundations in Manchester' (4 vols., 1828) ; Wheeler, 'Manchester' (London 1836) ; Whit aker, • 'History of Manchester' (ib. 1773); 'Manchester Official Handbook,' published an nually; 'Handbook and Guide to Manchester,' edited by J. H. Ray (1902), and the 'Victoria History of Lancashire' (Vols. II, IV, London 1908, 1911).