It's a funny old world

[Megan Roberts]

I wonder when Manchester threw off the shackles of Lancashire and became a city?

Extract from the Lancashire Quarter Session Records for 1831:





Can imagine the reaction today if it was called a township!

[Allan F Sparrow]

Quite a few towns that had grown up during the industrial revolution obtained borough status under the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835. Back then, only places with an Anglican cathedral (preferably long-established) were deemed to be cities.

[wimsey]

I don't know whether I'm being perverse but I generally keep these old county associations in my family tree - so if someone was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, that's how I will enter it - in the same way that I don't change Ceylon to Sri Lanka etc.