The Navvies Who Dug Manchester a Road to the Sea

Up to 17,000 navvies dug the Manchester Ship Canal between 1887 and 1894. Their contractor built them huts, schools and three hospitals, and still nobody could agree how many of them it killed. We read the company's history, the 1889 British Medical Journal report and the 1892 Royal Commission on Labour, where the company's 130 dead met the union's 1,000. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:48 1887: A field at Eastham 5:01 1888: Huts, hospitals and American devils 10:14 1889–1890: The contractor dies, the rivers rise 13:47 1891: Frost, strike and the Ince cutting 18:03 1892: Counting the dead 21:47 1893–1894: The water comes in SOURCES B. Leech, History of the Manchester Ship Canal (1907), vol. I: https://archive.org/details/historyof... · vol. II: https://archive.org/details/historyof... Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, Group C vol. III (C.6894-IX, 1893), Q.32,139–32,147 (S. G. Bird, 22 Nov 1892): https://archive.org/details/royalcomm... British Medical Journal, 3 Aug 1889, p.288, 'The Hospitals of the Manchester Ship Canal': https://archive.org/details/sim_briti... The Lancet, 21 Apr 1888, p.807 (R. Jones appointed): https://archive.org/details/sim_the-l... Official Report of the Church Congress, Hull, 1890, pp.465–467 (R. Grimston, 'Contractors and Navvies'): https://archive.org/details/officialr... J. Burns, Labour's Death Roll (1899), p.10: https://archive.org/details/b22385915 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 18 Jul 1891 (the Ince accident by cable): https://archive.org/details/per_st-lo... F. Watson, The Life of Sir Robert Jones (1934), quoting the Provincial Medical Journal, 1 Dec 1893; The Illustrated London News, 10 Aug 1889, 30 Dec 1893, 26 May 1894 IMAGES (all public domain or CC0; each is credited on screen; full list in the pinned comment) Photographs from B. Leech, History of the Manchester Ship Canal (1907) (Birtles of Warrington, Barningham, Birch-Killon, Ambler, Valentine of Dundee); The Illustrated London News (1889–94); The Lancet; the BMJ; Library of Congress; Wikimedia Commons Music: "Singularity" and "False Vacuum Decay" by The Grey Room / Density & Time (YouTube Audio Library; no attribution required) ABOUT THIS VIDEO Archival images are public domain or used under the licences listed above. Builder's Plate tells the stories of the forgotten machines, materials, methods and people that built the modern world, from the original drawings, patents and reports. Spotted an error? Leave a comment with a source and we will pin the correction. #ManchesterShipCanal #EngineeringHistory #VictorianEngineering