fund the balance in hand reached £14,000, while over £13,000 had been paid into the building societies. There are a dozen other "adult schools" in the town which have sprung from Severn Street.
Spring Hill College.—For the education and training of Independent ministers, was first opened in 1838, in the mansion of Mr. George Storer Mansfield, at Spring Hill, that gentleman giving certain landed property towards its future support. The present edifice, near Moseley, to which the old name was given, was opened in June, 1857, the cost of the building, &c., nearly £18,000, being raised by voluntary contributions. It has room for 36 students.
Sunday Schools.—Sunday classes for the teaching of the Catechism, &c., date from a very early period of Church history, hut Sunday Schools as they are now known seem to have been locally organised about a hundred years ago, the Sunday after Michaelmas Day in 1784 being marked as a red-letter-day on account of there being twenty-four schools then opened, though the course of instruction went no further than teaching the children to read. In 1789 some young men formed the "Sunday Society" as an addition thereto, the object being to teach writing and arithmetic to boys and youths of the artisan class. In 1796 the society was extended, other classes being formed, lectures delivered, &c., and it was then called the "Brotherly Society." Mr. James Luckcock and Mr. Thos. Carpenter were the leaders, and this is claimed to have been the origin of Mechanics' Institutes. The Unitarians date their Sunday Schools from: the Baptists and Methodists from 1795. Deritend Sunday School was opened by Mr. Palmer in 1808, with but six scholars; in a month they were so numerous that part had to be taught in the street. The first prizes given to the children were new Boulton pennies. On Emancipation Day (August 1, 1838) there was a procession of over 3,000 scholars from the Baptist Sunday Schools. In 1812 the Birmingham Sunday School Union was organised. The medallists of this town sent out about 800,000 commemoration medals in 1880, when the Sunday School Centenary was kept. Nearly 2,000 teachers attend the Church schools and about 2,500 attend Dissenting and other schools, the number of children on the books of Sunday Schools in Birmingham being estimated at—
| 14 years and over. | Under 14 years. | Total. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Church of England schools | 5,500 | 16,500 | 22,000 |
| Sunday School Union | 7,312 | 13,660 | 20,972 |
| Wesleyan and others | 2,745 | 6,627 | 9,372 |
| Roman Catholic | 1,200 | 1,950 | 3,150 |
| Unitarian | 692 | 1,359 | 1,961 |
| Other schools | 500 | 750 | 1,250 |
| 17,859 | 40,846 | 58,705 |
Wesleyan College.—The five memorial stones of a College for training Wesleyan ministers, at the corner of Priory and College Roads, Handsworth, were laid June 8, 1880. The site includes 17½ acres, and cost over £7,000, the total cost of the College when completed and furnished being estimated at £40,000. About fifty students are accommodated at present, but there is room for thirty more.
Scraps of Local History.—A foreign visitor here in the reign of James II., wrote that our tradesmen were in the habit of spending their evenings in public-houses, and were getting into lazy habits, so that their shops were often not opened before 7 a.m.
Another intelligent foreigner (temp Charles II.) has left it on record that not only was smoking common among women here, but that the lads took a pipe and tobacco with them to school, instead of breakfast, the schoolmaster teaching them at the proper hour how to hold their pipes and puff genteely.
Hutton believed that the scythe-blades attached to the wheels of Queen
