Life at Booth Street in the 1830s

Crossley lived at Booth Street, Piccadilly, from 1820 to 1869 (see the Railway Menace post below), and during that long period he entertained a distinguished party of literary guests, including his lifelong friend William Harrison Ainsworth, Charles Dickens and Dickens's first biographer, John Forster. For a fuller description of this, see chapter 5 of James Crossley: A Manchester Man of Letters, where the cramped conditions of Crossley's accommodation are noted by Dickens after his visit in January, 1839. Despite this, our hero managed to live very comfortably, as the housekeeping accounts for 1836-8 show. These are among the Crossley MSS in Chetham's Library (ref: A.2.59), and below is a selection of entries which, judging by the hand and spelling, were probably written by the housekeeper:

Beef and Stake (sic)  4/4d, Wine glass 11d, Pies 1/3d, Beer [recurs many times] 2d - 2/2d, Shoes cleaning 8/-, A Fowl 2/-, A Rabbit 1/3d, Tea and Sugar 5/9d, Eggs 3d, Beef and Mutton 9/8d, Candles 2/-, Mending 1/3d, Bread and Milk 4d, Veal and Stake (sic) 5/3d, Pies and Puddings 1/6d, Butter, Potatoes etc., 3/11d, Lamb 3/6d, Nurce (sic) £1-4s-0d, Cook 6/0d, Waiter 5/0d [the last two probably for a special occasion such as Dickens's visit], Chickens 7/6d, Sugar and Tea 5/9d, Coffee 6d, Cowcum beer [cucumber?] 10d, Almonds and Raisins 1/6d, Strawberrys (sic) 1/4d, Porter 4d, Night coates (sic) 2/6d, Pepper and Mustard 1/-, Pork and Stake (sic) 4/3d, Apples and Onions 3d, Veal Pies 1/3d, Celery 6d, Ribbon shoe ties 1/3d, 16 weeks Lodging £16/16s/0d, Oysters 1/9d, Fowls 3/9d, lemons 2d, Coco (sic) 6d.

Crossley's signature

In response to a query by Kate (see below under 'The Railway Menace' post), I'm attaching a scan of Crossley's signature. This is from a copy of The Boeotian, an extremely rare and short-lived journal by William Harrison Ainsworth, which is now in the archive of the Manchester Central Library. You will see that Crossley signs himself 'Jas Crossley' and uses the long first 's', in the eighteenth-century manner.

Incidentally, if you have any questions about James Crossley and his works, please feel free to contact me by email at stevecollins009@gmail.com