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Unless you are over sixty years old, you have probably never used pre-decimal coins. When money was decimalised in 1971 there was some public resistance to the new money, but  Looking back, would we really want to return to this complicated, heavy and, frankly, worn-out coinage?

We have published nearly fifty blog articles since we first opened the Manchester Ancestors blog section, but can you be bothered searching through all the pages to see what you may have missed - thought not, me neither! Here is a quick summary of the blogs we have published to date.

Manchester street names have changed on many occasions. Sometimes it is to remove the ambiguity of having two streets with the same name within a district and sometimes it can be the result of streets being extended through lesser thoroughfares (for example Pool Fold in the city centre becoming part of Cross Street). Then there is Anita Street...

By 1831 Henry Liverseege had made three visits to London, where he received some instruction and made connections with some prominent artists. His work was now gaining wider attention and was generally well-received. His failing health, however, would cut this promising career short.

At the end of the last blog we left Henry Liverseege at the point where he had abandoned portrait painting and turned to "dramatic" subjects. His first paintings, exhibited at the Royal Manchester Institution, had been well-received, even if slow to sell. Henry now saw the next step in his artistic development would mean spending time in London.

Even if you are interested in art, it is unlikely you will have heard the name Henry Liverseege; yet in his day he was well-known in artistic circles and spoken of alongside artists such as Bonington, Girtin and Wilkie. In this three part blog, we will look at his upbringing, his career and his early death and subsequent drift into obscurity.

Recently I was watching my youngest daughter perform in the musical Oliver! at her local am-dram society.  As I watched the troop belt out ‘Food Glorious Food’ I realised that my current family history research had already brought me right into this Dickens novel.

How old were you when you started your first job? Fifteen? Eighteen? Twenty-one? Older? If you were working in a cotton mill in 1819 your answer would more likely be "about seven".

Child labour was widely accepted, but 1819 would be a pivotal year the year in which the first moves would be made towards removing children from the workforce.