ham alone. Of this sum the brewers paid £9,518, the maltsters £425, beer dealers £2,245, and beer retailers £7,161.
Bells.—There was a bell foundry at Good Knave's End, in 1760, from whence several neighbouring churches were supplied with bells to summon the good knaves of the day to prayers, or to toll the bad knaves to their end. There was also one at Holloway Head, in 1780, but the business must have been hollow enough, for it did not go ahead, and we find no record of church bells being cast here until just a hundred years back (1782), when Messrs. Blews & Son took up the trade. Birmingham bells have, however, made some little noise in the world, and may still be heard on sea or land, near and far, in the shape of door bells, ship bells, call bells, hand bells, railway bells, sleigh bells, sheep bells, fog bells, mounted on rockbound coasts to warn the weary mariner, or silver bells, bound with coral from other coasts, to soothe the toothless babbler. These, and scores of others, are ordered here every year by thousands; but the strangest of all orders must have been that one received by a local firm some fifteen years ago from a West African prince, who desired them to send him 10,000 house bells (each ¾lb, weight), wherewith to adorn his iron "palace."
And he had them! Edgar Poe's bells are nowhere, in comparison with
Such a charm, such a chime,
Out of tune, out of time.
Oh, the jangling and the wrangling
Of ten thousand brazen throats.
Ten bells were put in St. Martin's, in 1786, the total weight being 7 tons, 6cwt. 2lbs.
The peal of ten bells in St. Philip's were first used August 7, 1751, the weight being 9 tons 10cwt. 221bs., the tenor weighs 30 cwt.
A new peal of eight bells were put up in Aston Church, in May, 1776, the tenor weighing 21 cwt. The St. Martin's Society of Change Ringers "opened" them, July 15, by ringing Holt's celebrated peal of 5040 grandsire triples, the performance occupying 3 hours 4 minutes.
Eight bells and a clock were mounted in the tower of Deritend Chapel, in 1776, the first peal being rung July 29.
The eight bells in Bishop Ryder's Church, which weigh 55 cwt., and cost £600, were cast in 1868, by Blews and Sons, and may be reckoned as the first full peal founded in Birmingham.
There are eight bells in Harborne Parish Church, four of them bearing date 1697, two with only the makers' name on, and two put in February, 1877, on the 24th of which month the whole peal were inaugurated by the ringing of a true peal of Stedman triples, composed by the late Thomas Thurstans, and consisting of 5,040 changes, in 2 hours and 52 minutes. The St. Martin's ringers officiated.
The six bells of Northfield Church were cast by Joseph Smith, of Edgbaston, in 1730.
St. Chad's Cathedral has eight bills, five of which were presented in 1848 as a memorial to Dr. Moore; the other three, from the foundry of W. Blews and Sons, were hung in March, 1877 the peculiar ceremony of "blessing the bells" being performed by Bishop Ullathorne on the 22ud of that month. The three cost £110. The bells at Erdington Catholic Church were first used on February 2, 1878.
Bellows to Mend.—Our townspeople bellowed a little over their losses after Prince Rupert's rueful visit, but there was one among them who knew how to "raise the wind," for we find Onions, the bellows-maker, hard at work in 1650; and his descendants keep at the same old game.
Bennett's Hill.—There was a walled-in garden (with an old brick summer-house) running up from Waterloo-street to Colmore-row as late as 1838-9.
Benefit and Benevolent Societies.—See "Friendly Societies."
