I have just come across this book,
"A century of Birmingham life: or, A chronicle of local events, from 1741 to 1841"
readable online (if you can cope with some slightly wonky characters resulting from the scanning). It looks to have a wealth of stories.
You can find it at
https://archive.org/stream/centuryofbirming02lang/centuryofbirming02lang_djvu.txt
Angela
"A century of Birmingham life: or, A chronicle of local events, from 1741 to 1841"
readable online (if you can cope with some slightly wonky characters resulting from the scanning). It looks to have a wealth of stories.
You can find it at
https://archive.org/stream/centuryofbirming02lang/centuryofbirming02lang_djvu.txt
Angela