A small booklet issued in 1938 specifically aimed at school students and young people in conjunction with the Centenary of Manchester's incorporation as a borough in 1838. One of the 'new' industrial boroughs, like many other such towns, Manchester lacked effective local government until the Reform Act allowed the town to petition for consent to form a Borough council along with the various powers that entailed. Over the coming decades the authority both expanded in terms of size and powers, most notably becoming a City in 1853 only 15 years after incorporation.
The City Council provided and ran a wide range of services for the benefit of its citizens, covering health, welfare, safety, education as well as trading departments that included transport, water, gas and electricity - this being the period prior to nationalisation or amalgamation of such departments. One double page in the booklet looks at "services laid on" and shows both the Gas Department and Electricity Departments.
The Gas undertaking tells of "From Partington to the Fireside", Partington being the Department's newest works, built on a more 'out of town' site than the urban constrained sites that the earlier works at Gaythorn (then just storage), Rochdale Road, Bradford Rd and Droylesden. The Electricity Department are proudly showing the latest extension to the Barton Generating Station, known as Barton "B" that complimented the earlier phase of works there opened in 1923. The two departments were, of course, somewhat in competition - electricity seen as the 'more modern' fuel was being retro-fitted to existing homes and new homes sometimes designed as being 'all-electric'. Certainly for lighting and new appliances electricity was regarded as being very desirable!
Gas however was mostly already 'on tap' and the by-products created by the carbonisation of coal were highly prized and valuable in the days before widespread use of oil feedstocks. Both fuels marketed themselves as being 'clean' in comparison with the then prevelent open hearth burning of coal or the industrial use of coal as primary fuel. Even I recall Mancunian smog!
