Together Trust Archive

  One of the lesser-known services of the first 50 years of the Charity’s history was the Day Nursery in Ancoats which operated for over a decade from 1887. The service was aimed at local working women who could pay two-pence a day for their child to be fed and cared for while she went out to work. An invaluable resource in industrial Manchester and an example of how the Charity operated services to meet a particular need of the times. The Nursery was originally located on Butler Street in Ancoats and it was at the request of the Day Nurseries Association that the Charity took over the service which moved within the first year to a premises a short distance away on the corner of Canning Street and Carruthers Street.  The Day Nursery, Ancoats ref: M189/9/1/5 The Charity magazine refers to the dangers of mothers being obliged to earn a wage and their children being injured after being left either uncared for or with unsuitable carers such as other young children or the very el...

The following blog post has been written by Katie Royle, a student at Manchester Metropolitan University who recently completed her Master's in Public History and Heritage. As part of her course Katie used the Together Trust Archive located at Manchester Central Library to undertake research on some of the young people in the Charity's care who were emigrated. In the spring of 1883, Manchester was hit by evangelical fever when a famous American preacher began a fortnights mission in the city.   Dwight L Moody had achieved fame through a mix of his ‘man of the men’ persona and his ‘peculiarly original style’ of preaching, which gained him a widespread following both in America and throughout the world. Moody, together with hymn singer Ira Sankey, visited Manchester as part of a nationwide tour where, not unlike the celebrity pop stars of today, the sermons attracted thousands. Moody had said he ‘feared the cold formalism which was creeping over Christianity’, and his services we...