Half-Holiday.—Ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, used to be the stint for workpeople here and elsewhere. A Saturday Half-holiday movement was begun in 1851, the first employers to adopt the system being Mr. John Frearson of Gas Street (late of the Waverley Hotel, Crescent), and Mr. Richard Tangye. Wingfields, Brown, Marshall & Co., and many other large firms began with the year 1853, when it may be said the plan became general.
Handsworth.—Till within the last thirty or forty years, Handsworth was little more than a pleasant country village, though now a well-populated suburb of Birmingham. The name is to be found in the "Domesday Book," but the ancient history of the parish is meagre indeed, and confined almost solely to the families of the lords of the manor, the Wyrleys, Stanfords, &c., their marriages and intermarriages, their fancies and feuds, and all those petty trifles chroniclers of old were so fond of recording. Alter the erection of the once world-known, but now vanished Soho Works, by Matthew Boulton, a gradual change came o'er the scene; cultivated enclosures taking the place of the commons, enclosed in 1793; Boulton's park laid out, good roads made, watercourses cleared, and houses and mansions springing up on all sides, and so continuing on until now, when the parish (which includes Birchfield and Perry Barr, an area of 7,680 acres in all) is nearly half covered with streets and houses, churches and chapels, alms-houses and stations, shops, offices, schools, and all the other necessary adjuncts to a populous and thriving community. The Local Board Offices and Free Library, situate on Soho Road, were built in 1878 (first stone laid October 30th, 1877), at a cost of £20,662, and it is a handsome pile of buildings. The library contains about 7,000 volumes. There is talk of erecting public swimming and other baths, and a faint whisper that recreation grounds are not far from view. The 1st Volunteer Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment have their head-quarters here. Old Handsworth Church, which contained several carved effigies and tombs of the old lords, monuments of Matthew Boulton and James Watt, with bust of William Murdoch, &c. , has been rebuilt and enlarged, the first stone of the new building being laid in Aug., 1876. Five of the bells in the tower were cast in 1701, by Joseph Smith, of Edgbaston, and were the first peal sent out of his foundry ; the tenor is much older. The very appropriate inscription on the fourth bell is, "God preserve the Church of England as by law established."
Harboune is another of our near neighbours which a thousand years or so ago had a name if nothing else, but that name has come down to present time with less change than is usual, and, possibly through the Calthorpe estate blocking the way, the parish itself has changed but very slowly, considering its close proximity to busy, bustling Birmingham. This apparent stagnation, however, has endeared it to us Brums not a little, on account of the many pleasant glades and sunny spots in and around it. Harborne gardeners have long been famous for growing gooseberries, the annual dinner of the Gooseberry Growers' Society having been held at the Green Man ever since 1815. But Harborne has plucked up heart latterly, and will not much longer be "out of the running." With its little area of 1,412 acres, and only a population of 6,600, it has built itself an Institute (a miniature model of the Midland), with class rooms and reading rooms, with library and with lecture halls, to seat a thousand, at a cost of £6,500, and got Henry Irving to lay the foundation-stone, in 1879. A Masonic Hall followed in 1880, and a Fire Brigade Station soon after. It has also a local railway as well as a newspaper. In the parish church, which was nearly all rebuilt in 1867, there are
