not more than the average number to be expected:—Two lives were lost by explosion of fulminating; powder in St. Mary's Square, Aug. 4, 1823.—Oct. 16, same year, there was a gunpowder explosion in Lionel Street.—Two were killed by fireworks at the Rocket Tavern, Little Charles Street, May 2, 1834.—An explosion at Saltley Carriage Works, Dec. 20, 1849.— Two injured at the Proof House, Sept. 23, 1850.—Five by detonating powder in Cheapside, Feb 14, 1852.—Thirty-one were injured by gas explosion at Workhouse, Oct. 30, 1855.—Several from same cause at corner of Hope Street, March 11, 1856.—A cap explosion took place at Ludlow's, Legge Street, July 28, 1859.—Another at Phillips and Pursall's, Whittall Street, Sept. 27, 1852, when twenty-one persons lost their lives.—Another in Graham Street, June 21, 1862, with eight deaths.—Boiler burst at Spring Hill, Nov. 23, 1859, injuring seven.—An explosion in the Magazine at the Barracks, March 8, 1864, killed Quartermaster McBean.—At Kynoch's, Witton, Nov. 17, 1870, resulting in 8 deaths and 28 injured.—At Ludlow's ammunition Factory, Dec. 9, 1870, when 17 were killed and 53 injured, of whom 34 more died before Christmas.—At Witton, July 1, 1872, when Westley Richards' manager was killed.—At Hobb Lane, May 11, 1874.—Of gas, in great Lister Street, Dec. 9, 1874.— Of fulminate, in the Green Lane, May 4, 1876, a youth being killed.—Of gas, at St. James's Hall, Snow Hill, Dec. 4, and at Avery's, Moat Row, Dec. 31, 1878.—At a match manufactory, Phillip Street, Oct. 28, 1879, when Mr. Bermingham and a workman were injured.
Eye Hospital.—See "Hospitals."
Fairs.—The officers of the Court Leet, whose duty it was to walk in procession and "proclaim" the fairs, went through their last performance of the kind at Michaelmas, 1851. It was proposed to abolish the fairs in 1860, but the final order was not given until June 8th, 1875. Of late years there have been fairs held on the open grounds on the Aston outskirts of the borough, but the "fun of the fair" is altogether different now to what it used to be. The original charters for the holding of fairs at Whitsuntide and Michaelmas were granted to William de Bermingham by Henry III. in 1251. These fairs were doubtless at one time of great importance, but the introduction of railways did away with seven-tenths of their utility and the remainder was more nuisance than profit. As a note of the trade done at one time we may just preserve the item that in 1782 there were 56 waggon loads of onions brought into the fair.
Family Fortunes.—Hutton in his "History," with that quaint prolixity which was his peculiar proclivity gives numerous instances of the rise and fall of families connected with Birmingham. Li addition to the original family of De Birmingham, now utterly extinct he traced back many others then and now well-known names. For instance he tells us that a predecessor of the Colmores in Henry VIII.'s reign kept a mercer's shop at No. 1. High Street; that the founder of the Bowyer Adderley family began life in a small way in this his native town in the 14th century; that the Foxalls sprang from a Digbeth tanner some 480 years ago; and so of others. Had he lived till now he might have largely increased his roll of local millionaires with such names as Gillott, Muntz, Mason, Rylands, &c. On the other hand he relates how some of the old families, whose names were as household words among the ancient aristocracy have come to nought; how that he had himself charitably relieved the descendants of the Norman Mountlourds, Middemores and Bracebridges, and how that the sole boast of a descendant of the Saxon Earls of Warwick was in his day the fact of his grandfather having "kept several cows and sold
