The Mysteries of the Manchester Alphabet

12th December 2024

Browsing through some of the library’s blogs recently, I came across one from May 2016 which featured a new acquisition of an old book – Roger Oldham’s Manchester Alphabet, published in 1906. The blog described how the book had been bought to ‘fill a gap’ in the collection, which had been spotted by the librarian when, in 2015, the library acquired a copy of the New Manchester Alphabet. The New Alphabet was a collaboration between students on the creative writing and illustration courses at Manchester Metropolitan University, edited by poet Jean Sprackland, which had been inspired by a copy of Roger Oldham’s book in the university’s Special Collections library.

I had first encountered images from the Alphabet a few years ago, on the Manchester Art Gallery website. I was researching representations of mill girls in the gallery’s collections and found an image which seemed to be an illustration from a children’s book. ‘A is for Ancoats’ features a little girl, draped in a red shawl and wearing clogs, standing with another small child in what is obviously a very rainy Victorian Manchester, complete with a background of red brick mills and chimneys.

Image 2: A is for Ancoats, copyright Manchester Art Gallery.

The image was from what is described on the website as ‘a complete set of hand-tinted printer’s proofs for the book [by Roger Oldham], coloured by the artist himself…’ I was enchanted by the witty verses and mischievous images featuring local landmarks. It seemed obvious that these were aimed at both children and their parents. Once I realised that Chetham’s had a copy of the original book, I went to the library stacks to retrieve it. However, I was surprised and rather disappointed to find that the illustrations, although delightful, were all black and white drawings, with no colour images at all. 

Image 3: A is for Ancoats B&W Chetham’s Library copy.

A little research revealed that Roger had been an architect and, from Manchester Victorian Society’s Biographical Dictionary of the Architects of Greater Manchester, I discovered that he had practised in Manchester and had lived in Sale. Sale Library is home to Trafford Local Studies and I found that they had a collection of material relating to Roger, including a significant number of hand coloured images for the Alphabet. The Oldham family had moved from Lincoln to Sale in 1874 when he was 3 years old. His father is described on the 1881 census as a ‘Manchester Goods merchant’ and at this time the household included his wife, six sons, one daughter and 3 servants. 

Roger’s early school days were at Mr Lloyd’s school also known as the Manchester Grammar School Preparatory School on Poplar Grove in Sale; he then attended Manchester Grammar School. His friend I.H.Swallow later wrote that ‘the impression which Roger made on his schoolfellows was that of high spirits combined with cleverness.’ His memories of MGS were clearly happy – the October 1906 edition of ‘Ulula’, the magazine of MGS, informs its readers that: ‘The amusing “ Manchester A B C ,” which was published some weeks ago by the firm of John Heywood, is the work of an Old Mancunian, Mr. Roger Oldham, who has kindly consented to allow the picture accompanying the letter O to appear on a souvenir Postcard, which will be on sale at the Receiver’s office shortly. The Proceeds will be devoted to the Hugh Oldham Lads’ Club.’ Hugh Oldham had founded Manchester Grammar School in the sixteenth century, and Roger’s family believed that he was an ancestor.

Image 4: O is for Owl from Ulula.

In 1891 the Census records Roger as ‘Architects Articled Pupil.’ He had been articled to the Manchester architect Charles Henry Heathcote who also happened to live in Sale. From the age of sixteen and then, from January 1893 to February 1896, he studied architecture at the Royal Academy Schools in London. By 1901 the Census records him as an architect, 30 years old, with an office in Brazenose Street but still living in the family home at Washway Road in Sale. He formed a partnership with David Bird in 1910. It seems that much of his work was for smaller local projects and private homes as very few examples of his work are recorded. The partnership was responsible for the new bell tower for St Paul’s parish church in Sale and also a new physics room and toilet block for Roger’s old school on Poplar Grove.

In 1904 Roger married Dorothy Scorer in Lincoln. He was a committed Christian and was actively involved with his local church – first St Pauls in Sale and then at St Albans Church in Broadheath, where he and Dorothy seem to have settled after their marriage. They had no children but he helped with Sunday School and with young people’s activities at both churches. His ‘art stall’ was apparently a ‘well known‘ feature of many bazaars and ‘Sales of Work’ at St Pauls!

The December 1972 edition of the ‘North Cheshire Family Historian’ includes an article written by Joan Bower called ‘Roger Oldham, Artist of Sale.’ Her neighbour, James Bramley Pye, had worked as a clerk in Roger’s Brasenose Street office and recalled that ‘One of his main interests was art and his office was also his studio where he turned out many drawings such as those that illustrated Picturesque Cheshire…’ Indeed Roger’s obituary records that in 1913 ‘he held an exhibition of ‘typical examples of his work’ at his studio in Temple Chambers, Brasenose Street.

Image 5: Picturesque Cheshire.

Mrs Bower had also made contact with Roger’s niece who told her that he and his brother Spencer, the young woman’s father, had loved to write and draw and had between them created two books of Rhymed Alphabets … Roger’s was a Manchester Alphabet and Spencer’s a Sale and Ashton-on-Mersey Alphabet. A copy of the Sale Alphabet is held in Trafford Archives; however, it isn’t illustrated.

Roger was a passionate believer in the importance of art for all . After his death his wife, together with his close friend I.H. Swallow, published a collection of his writings called The Art of Englishmen. The title is taken from a lecture which Roger gave to the Manchester Society of Architects in November 1914. His wife records that he was an enthusiastic and popular public speaker to students, to the ‘Manchester Corporation’, to architectural and literary societies, and to working men’s associations. Most of his lectures consisted of a detailed account, illustrated by lantern slides and drawings on the blackboard of ‘the history and associations and meaning of some local building or the life and work of some local artist…. ‘

Dorothy’s introduction tells us that ‘He held that Art is not a thing apart, a matter of schools and academies alone, but that it is, or should be, part of the real life of the people, and that for those who will only look there is often beauty in what seems to be commonplace and trivial’

These beliefs clearly inform his delightful Alphabet book:

M is for Manchester- the book

Roger’s representations of wet, foggy Manchester and its landmarks, people and buildings are often humorous, but always affectionate. He shows us the dark sooty mill buildings in ‘A is for Ancoats’ and the murky river in ‘I is for Irwell’ but also the leafy suburbs of Heaton Park, Chorlton and Bowdon. The city’s architecture is, unsurprisingly, accurately observed – the towering Royal Exchange, the elegant interiors of the art gallery and the town hall. Roger also enjoys what we might describe today as ‘cartoon violence.’ In ‘M is for Motor Car’ horses buck and rear and people dangle from windows as a new fangled car billows smoke. In ‘T is for Tram’ bodies fly through the air due to overcrowded vehicles or are trampled underfoot in the rush hour in ‘X is for Exodus’.

Although he suggests the reality of poverty, from the pawn shop in A is for Ancoats, to the shawl-wrapped women checking cabbages in the market at Shudehill, his images of Manchester people show warmth and humour. Children are always getting into mischief – climbing on the bridge over the Irwell, wandering across the path of the elephant in Belle Vue zoo. There are also a number of jokes based on his local knowledge. There had been ongoing problems with the commission for the Town Hall frescoes (started in 1879 but not finished until 1893). The top-hatted gents, clearly Manchester dignitaries, in deep conversation in F is for Fresco, take no notice of the artist or his work. The image is of Ford Madox Brown and is based on a very distinctive self portrait which Roger must have known. It was originally painted for Brown’s lawyer, Theodore Watts Dunton, and owned for many years by Dunton’s widow, although it is now in America.

Image 6a: F is for Fresco.

Image 6b: F is for Fresco.

There is also a joke for the erudite adult reader in ‘Q for de Quincey’. The boy is engrossed in ‘Arabian Nights’ whilst a book by Mrs Barbauld lies discarded on the ground. Anna Laetitia Barbauld had been a ‘blue stocking’ poet, critic and author of children’s literature – a character in an early nineteenth-century novel by Sarah Burney actually remarks, ‘… you know fairy-tales are forbidden pleasures in all modern school-rooms. Mrs. Barbauld….and a hundred others, have written good books for children, which have thrown poor Mother Goose, and the Arabian Nights, quite out of favour, at least, with papas and mamas..’

Image 7: Q is for De Quincey copyright Manchester Art Gallery.

Penny plain or Twopence Coloured?

In addition to the images owned by Manchester Art Gallery and described as ‘a complete set of hand-tinted printer’s proofs for the book by Roger Oldham, coloured by the artist himself’, Trafford Local Studies also have two boxes of miscellaneous material relating to Roger and his work, including two sets of coloured, card-framed images for the Alphabet. A number of the alphabet images are not in good condition, and some are missing so it is difficult to compare them with those on the gallery website which seem much lighter and brighter. Some of the Trafford images have received conservation treatment, but the cost is high. Manchester Art Gallery were fortunate in being able to fund extensive conservation on their set.

Image 8: S for Shudehill, copyright Trafford Local Studies.

However, the really curious aspect to this is that despite the website notes accompanying the Manchester Art Gallery images, I have found no evidence at all that a coloured version of the book was ever published. Chetham’s copy of the ‘Manchester Alphabet’ has black and white drawings. The catalogue entry for the John Rylands Library copy states that it was printed by George Falkner & Sons, London & Manchester and published by George Heywood Ltd in 1906. It is described as having 55 pages and ‘b&w ills.’ The British Library copy also has b&w illustrations.

Hannah Williamson, Curator in Fine Art at Manchester Art Gallery, suggests that a coloured edition of this kind of small, locally themed book would have been a very expensive and unlikely publishing venture and speculates that perhaps Roger was simply provided with surplus paper copies of the unbound images. Perhaps the reason for the missing images from the Trafford sets is that Roger coloured them and gave them as gifts to friends (adults or children) or perhaps he sold them to raise money at his ‘church art stalls’. As mentioned earlier, we know that he had ‘O is for Owl’ postcards printed to sell for the MGS Hugh Oldham Charity. 

My recent visit to Manchester Art Gallery revealed some intriguing additional information in a folder relating to the Alphabet. An enquiry had been received in 1982 from a gentleman whose mother, a resident of Sale, had left him three ‘pictures’ which she told him had been given to her by the artist. His descriptions indicate that they were X, M and G, although he doesn’t mention whether they were coloured. Sandra Martin, then Assistant Keeper of the Rutherston Collection, replied and mentioned that ‘several of Roger’s drawings both buildings and humorous were published as postcards….’

Then in 2012, a letter was received by the gallery from someone who had bought at auction four hand-coloured Manchester Alphabet images on postcards. One of them, ‘I is for Irwell’, had the verse handwritten on the back and was signed ‘Roger Oldham’. Roger died in 1916 at the age of 45 – he had apparently been unwell for some time. He is buried in Brooklands cemetery and there is also a plaque to his memory on the wall of St Albans church, Broadheath which says ‘This tablet is given by his wife Dorothy and the congregation in gratitude for his useful and happy life.’ In 1917 Dorothy, assisted by some of Roger’s close friends, published a memoir celebrating his life called The Art of Englishmen which includes the text of several of his talks and lectures and an affectionate biographical note. His friend I.H. Swallow records that ‘His capacity for interesting others in the things in which he was himself interested was, in fact, very remarkable’ and that ‘in his company nothing seemed ordinary.’

Copies of ‘A Manchester Alphabet’ are now rare and desirable, selling for several hundred pounds at auction. One imagines that Roger would be delighted but very amused.

By Patti Collins

With thanks to the team at Trafford Local Studies, to Peter Johnson of St Albans Church and to Hannah Williamson at Manchester Art Gallery