Pigot’s and Slater’s Directories, 1843–50

We were delighted to receive four bound copies of some Manchester directories. These are Pigot and Slater’s Directory for 1843; and then Slater’s Directory for 1845, 1848 and 1850.

These are the Yellow Pages and phone book of their time. They list every street name – so this is useful for anyone wanting to measure the expansion of the town. They then list a directory of businesses, ordered alphabetically. The same information is ordered by trade, so you’d know where to find all the fishing-tackle dealers, say. Then the information is ordered by street, so, for instance, on Back Princess Street, we have an attorney, a wine merchant, two coffee dealers and a beer retailer.  

As a result it is abundantly clear that Manchester in the 1840s was a huge trading hub, and not just in cotton goods or heavy engineering as we might tend to think. Every trade was catered for, and there were probably many more below the radar too. 

The first directory published for Manchester was Elizabeth Raffald’s, published in 1772, which set the trend for the dissemination of this kind of business information. Pigot (with Dean at the time) had been publishing annual directories since at least 1821, before teaming up with Slater in the 1840s, at which point the Pigot name, as far as I can tell, disappeared. 

Most interesting of all for us, though, is the advertising at the back of the directories. There are tens of pages of adverts, and here’s a thing – some of the advertisers use imagery to illustrate the products they sell. Hitherto, the earliest illustrated advert that we had was for rubberised raincoats by Cording’s, and this was for 1845. So we have now beaten our record: it’s now 1843. We suspect the earlier volumes of Pigot’s had illustrated adverts too, but we have yet to see those.

I’ve included some snaps of the adverts here – Samuel Hooley, the bird and animal preserver, on Queen Street, caught my eye, while I was taken by William Collinson’s advert for his rocking horses. Truly something for everyone!