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Victorian & Edwardian Property Owners

Malc Toy

Malc Toy

The Baggie Man
I have often wondered who built and owned the houses in which my grandparents lived in the late 19th century up until the Great War.

Paternally, my grandfather was born in a back-to-back one up one down terrace home, Prospect Terrace, Louise Road, Handsworth (now demolished) and my maternal grandparents in Benton Road, Sparkhill before moving to Sarehole Road, Springfield.

Anyone got any info on the housing at that time - I suspect it was pre-council housing as one set of GP’s didn’t move into a council property until the 1920’s.
 
Benton Road, Sparkhill would have been built by the Barber Trust.

I know nothing of the Barber Trust other than they were Quakers and did not allow any pubs on the estate. There was an Outdoor on the corner of Medlicott Road and Poplar Road, but as far as I know, no other alcohol outlet.


I worked on the estate in the 70’s and spoke to a lot of the tenants. They said that the Barber Trust was a good landlord, but quite strict. The houses were built without bathrooms, but did have the luxury of an outside toilet best to the coal shed.


I was always changing sash cords and often came across war glass in the windows, evidence of the WWII bombing raids.
 
Some owners will be listed in the Birmingham Rate books up to, I think, 1913. These are on Ancestry - I will try to look later when on computer.
 
A case of putting up the money Pedro, 'speculate to accumulate', at least it gave people, who couldn't afford to buy, roofs over their heads at little immediate cost.
The wealthy bishops/priests instead built huge expensive mansions for themselves and somewhere for a sing song hour once a week for the serfs, on the pretence that it would save their souls.
 
I think that the Church of England has a lot to answer for, but I know nothing about Henry Barber except from referring to the suspect Wikipedia.

Is it a case of Barber providing roofs at little immediate cost? I suspect that for the people renting his accommodation there was no chance whatsoever of buying a property. Did he speculate or was he on to a winner?

He seems to have had a bob or two before he married. By his mid thirties (1893) the couple had retired to Culham Court on the Thames, which of course he rented!

No doubt more about the man can be found, but in the thread...“Sydney Vaughan Barber” it appears that his brother was a black sheep!

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/sydney-vaughan-barber.47269/#post-579922
 
I believe I may have my Trusts mixed up, but it is still in line with the Tread title...“Who built and owned Victorian/Edwardian Workers Rented Homes?”

Morturn mentions the Barber Trust. This is sometimes used as an abbreviation of the Henry Barber Trust, of which the mentioned Sir Henry Barber has a connection. However as Morturn has added that they may have been Quakers I believe the Henry Barber Trust it is quite separate.

At the moment all I can see about the Barber Trust is that, in the mid 60s, Birmingham proposed to buy a number of the Trust’s houses.
 
Yes, that sounds about right, the Barber Trust houses were acquired by Birmingham Housing Department sometime in the mid sixty's
 
I remember my late parents and relatives calling them “The good old days” - not sure how ‘good’ they were!

It seems to me that unlike today, the majority of the population rented their accommodation and possibly at the mercy of the landlord owner. I suppose the alternative was the workhouse, jobs with accommodation included or living with relatives.

How fortunate we are today.
 
Have not yet got to the details of the Barber Trust, but they are certainly nothing to do with the Henry Barber Trust.

In 1961 it seems that the Barber Trust decided to sell 4,224 rented houses and shops in Birmingham and Smethwick. They said they were, in these days, no longer a suitable investment for the Trust. There was a great deal of debate in the Birmingham Council as Labour wanted to buy the houses in the interests of the tenants, but the Conservatives disagreed. There were questions as to whether the Trust was actually a Charity.

Some tenants complained that they were not good landlords, and anything done on the houses were paid for by themselves. A branch of the Association of Engineers and Ship’s Draughtsmen condemned the action of the Trust as...”lack of moral responsibility towards its tenants.
 
Malc Toy, I came out of the RAF in 1956 my Wife and I had spent the last 2 1/2 years in Hong Kong and Singapore 'living it up' - (we were only young in our twenties) and had not saved a penny! so civvy life started in a back to back in Aston, easy to get, no housing shortage then if you were not to fussy, their only advantage was the cheap rent, 17/6 a week (88p in todays monopoly money) so we soon saved a deposit to buy our own house in Erdington, £3400 for a 3 bedroomed semi with garage and very large garden in a quiet residential area - paradise !! To me they were certainly the 'good old days', I feel sorry for the young setting up home today because of the obscenely high prices, both for purchasing or renting and with our escalating population I cannot see it improving. I was born in 1930 and workhouses had long since disappeared. Eric
 
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It an interesting point that what was acceptable hosing conditions then are now seen as not. Our first council house did not have a hot water system. The previous tenant had installed a small Ascot heater at her own expense, but it was only capable of filling the sink for washing.

The house had a bath that was not connected to a hot water supply, we used the wash boiler to heat bath water.

The Bourneville Trust built social housing that normal working people could not afford.
 
Morturn, I recently read that we are one of the few countries who are obsessed with purchasing properties rather than renting, a great deal of our European neighbours prefer to rent, we only bought our house because we had no hope of renting a house of the Council, you needed lots of children to amass the points, they did offer us a 2 bedroomed flat in Telford new town !!! Eric
 
Bringing the discussion back for the period mentioned in Thread title, roughly 1837 to 1910 ish, surely it would be “bad old days” for working class people? The idea of ownership would not have been recognised.

Although Sir Henry Barber had nothing to do with “the Barber Trust” he probably made his money from property and solicitor’s fees before the mid 1890s. This would be long before the push for council housing in a land fit for heros, and as Morturn says, garden towns that the working class could just not afford.

It would be interesting to see what kind of landlord he was.
 
If we could have a name and approximate date then I will look at the rate books but I can't easily search by address. I did find that in 1912 Benton Road houses were owned by Town Properties Corporation Ltd - does this make them council owned?
 
Well it seems I did not have the Trusts mixed up, they are one and the same.

In January 1961 at a Council Health Committee debate, the Barber Trust was criticised for not using grants to have bathrooms and other facilities installed in the houses that they owned. It was stated that there had been a blank refusal. The Trust owned hundreds of houses in the city, particularly in Bordesley Green; “houses without bathrooms could well become the slums of tomorrow.”

Coun. Mrs EM Crosskey, a member of the Council of Birmingham University, said she would pursue the matter with the University. “Many of the charitable trusts in the past have been some of the worst of the slum landlords.”

There is a note added...The Barber Trust finances the Barber Institute of Fine Arts ....Ald JC Burman, one of the trustees, said last night; “I cannot make any comment at the moment.”

So it seems that the “landlord” Henry Barber made a quite a bit of money through his rents, and the tenants, in effect, paid for the setting up by his wife of “The Barber Trust” in 1933. The Institute at the University was built, and it also seems that the tenants continued to pay up to the mid 1960s!
 
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

“Before his death, Sir Henry and Lady Barber had discussed establishing a permanent contribution to Henry’s home city, and Lady Barber ensured that this idea came to fruition, founding the Barber Institute in 1932. She died, childless, four months later, leaving the entire Barber fortune to the Trustees of the Institute to enable the construction of a new building, the development of the art collection and the funding of public concerts.”

https://barber.org.uk/our-founders/
 
pjmburns said:
If we could have a name and approximate date then I will look at the rate books but I can't easily search by address. I did find that in 1912 Benton Road houses were owned by Town Properties Corporation Ltd - does this make them council owned?
Click to expand...

Hi Janice
I can give you two names and addresses.
1) William Buckley. 5 Benton Road, Sparkhill. 17 June 1910
2) John Toy. 2 Prospect Terrace, off Louise Rd, Handsworth. Same date and earlier.
Thanks for your interest and those of all the other contributors.
Malcolm
 
In 1906 John Toy is listed at 1 Prospect Terrace, a shop, someone else is at 2. Both premises are owned by Arthur Shore.
That was on a very quick search - will do another later.
 

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pjmburns said:
If we could have a name and approximate date then I will look at the rate books but I can't easily search by address. I did find that in 1912 Benton Road houses were owned by Town Properties Corporation Ltd - does this make them council owned?
Click to expand...

Well would you Adam and Eve it!

Martha Barber’s estate on her death was about £414,000 and she left £1,000 to a Vernon W Grosvenor who was an employee of Town Properties Investment Corporation Ltd.

So that looks like the Barber connection before the Barber Trust was set up.
 
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Malc Toy said:
Hi Janice
I can give you two names and addresses.
1) William Buckley. 5 Benton Road, Sparkhill. 17 June 1910
2) John Toy. 2 Prospect Terrace, off Louise Rd, Handsworth. Same date and earlier.
Thanks for your interest and those of all the other contributors.
Malcolm
Click to expand...

For interest Gunner F Clissold RFA, of 7 Benton Road, Sparkhill was awarded the MM for gallantry in action (Oct 1918)
 
During the move to take over the Barber Trust houses in the early 1960s, one of the Birmingham councilors stated that the Trust had lost £60,000 on its housing. A statement was issue by a Trustee saying that the Trust had at all times received a large income from its properties in Birmingham and Smethwick and had never even remotely approached a loss.

As Sir Henry Barber made much money from rents of his property development during his lifetime (1860-1927) it doesn’t seem to me that the working class people of Birmingham have been acknowledged for their contributions to the building of the Barber Institute. And afterwards their contribution to the exhibits.
 
In the 1903 Kelly's John Toy is listed as a shopkeeper at 17 Louise Road. He is there on 1901 census as a grocer. At that time Handsworth was in Staffordshire and as such would not have appeared on the rates books - as far as I know.
 
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Pedrocut said:
During the move to take over the Barber Trust houses in the early 1960s, one of the Birmingham councilors stated that the Trust had lost £60,000 on its housing. A statement was issue by a Trustee saying that the Trust had at all times received a large income from its properties in Birmingham and Smethwick and had never even remotely approached a loss.

As Sir Henry Barber made much money from rents of his property development during his lifetime (1860-1927) it doesn’t seem to me that the working class people of Birmingham have been acknowledged for their contributions to the building of the Barber Institute. And afterwards their contribution to the exhibits.
Click to expand...

Well its as you and I know and have discussed on other forums, its the titled and wealthy who write history in a way that glorifies themselves.

It possibly accounts for the reason why I was uneasy with history as taught at school, and was in fact thrown off the history course. I also feel the same unease when visiting stately homes. I marvel at the splendour of the workmanship, and am sickened by the wealth, greed and self-adulation of the elite who pay no homage to the people who hands actually created these things of eminence and beauty.

I am very fortunate in that project I am working on now has the employment records of all of the working people who built South Staffs Water. We can therefore pay a proper homage to the people who got their hands dirty, and give them the voice form the past that was well earned with sheer physical effort.
 
That looks a bit political to me, you must remember that before anyone can do good in a big way they first have to gather the funds together.............become what you would call 'filthy rich' , look at the many estates of houses built in the past by the likes of Cadbury and Fry, couldn't have happened if they weren't involved in plantations and slavery.
In the current years take a look at Microsoft's boss and his wife, Bill and Melinda Gates they set up a foundation that's provided more money and help to poor countries and the defeat of killer diseases like malaria than most of the wealthiest nation's governments.
 
Eric

Apologies if it came across too political.

I am aware of the political connotations of what talking about other social groups can be, that’s why I make the point about it is what “I” personally feel. This is my opinion and not one representing any other individual or group.

No one can really say how this country would have developed with or without “plantations and slavery”, my interest is in how the past is presented and giving the everyday working person a voice so that their story can make history too.

In terms of this tread, I am quite fine with the endeavours of the Barber Trust being challenged and discussed in an open and honest way. Housing is a significant part of Birmingham amazing history
 
I don’t think it is possible to be apolitical when discussing this particular thread. Morturn had noticed that Benton Road was associated with the Barber Trust, the Barber Trust was set up by the wife of William Henry Barber shortly after his death and with respect to his and her wishes. Although he retired from Birmingham around 1893 and went to live on the Thames at Henley, he was knighted in 1924 for “Political Services to Birmingham.”

We have, amongst other things, the Barber Institute and the statue of Queen Victoria, and many would put the man in the class of “great men associated with Birmingham.” His father was a wealthy jeweller, and Henry Barber made money by being associated with property development in the era mentioned.

But surely it is right to question the way the fortune was made? If the fortune is made through the exploitation of others then the truth should be known.

I have a feeling that Henry Barber, as a solicitor, was not directly involved in property development but had big investments in Property Investment Business. I think the question boils down to how good these absentee landlords treat their tenants.
 
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