Manchester

Bridewater Canal Manchester UK

"Bridewater Canal Manchester UK" by gerry.scappaticci is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Manchester is a city and metropolitan county in Greater Manchester urban county in northwestern England. The city was a main location during the Industrial Revolution and the first canal used to export cheap coal reached Manchester in 1762 and was later used in 1776 to import and export cotton. The first cotton mill was built in the 1780’s and by 1830 there were 99 cotton mills. In 1830 the city held the first railway system and the population grew to 70,000 people by 1801. 

Friedrich Engels lived in, and wrote about Manchester in The Conditions of the Working Class in England, published in 1845, where he outlines the working and living conditions of the lower classes. 

 

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Manchester.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 May. 2025,https://www.britannica.com/place/Manchester-England/Architecture-and-the-face-of-the-city. Accessed 9 May 2025.

Parent Map

Writers and the Voices of the Oppressed - Map, LB

Coordinates

Latitude: 53.480759300000
Longitude: -2.242630500000

Timeline of Events Associated with Manchester

Date Event Manage
circa. 1845

Friedrich Engels: Labor, Oppression, and Uncovering Material Inequality

Friedrich Engels portrait (colored)

By Artistosteles - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88269700

In "The Great Towns" from "The Condition of the Working Class in England," Engels walks through the slums of industrial cities like Manchester, and points out the oppression of poverty. The overcrowded housing, no sanitation, people living on top of each other with no clean air or light. He calls out how the rich avoid these places entirely, and pretend not to see what’s happening. He’s showing how the Industrial Revolution wasn’t just about progress, but it created a system where poor people, especially working families, lived in awful conditions so the wealthy could live more luxuriously, while they were being made invisible. This fits my theme because Engels is using writing to make invisible suffering visible. He saw what was happening and sought to uncover the material consequences of such extreme poverty. He powerfully asserts, "The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not at all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy?" 

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The VIctorian Age. 11th ed., vol. E, W.W. Norton & Company, 2024.