OLDHAM STREET 7.35AM The previous night I’d begun to read The Manchester Man, written by Mrs Linnaeus Banks and published in 1876. It details the life of Jabez Clegg, who was rescued in his cradle from the flooding River Irk, and adopted by the kind and hard working Simon Clegg, and Bess, his saintly daughter. This act of absolute altruism is set against the conditions of work and life that Mancunians had to exist in during the early 19th Century. […]