g for thirty children, in addition to an artisan
and his wife, who act as heads of the family. About twenty acres of land
are at present thus occupied, the cost being at the rate of L140 per
acre, while on the buildings upwards of L20,000 has been spent.

~Public houses.~--The early Closing Act came into operation here,
November 11, 1864; and the eleven o'clock closing hour in 1872; the rule
from 1864 having been to close at one and open at four a.m. Prior to
that date the tipplers could be indulged from the earliest hour on
Monday till the latest on Saturday night. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and his
friends thought so highly of the Gothenburg scheme that they persuaded
the Town Council into passing a resolution (Jan. 2, 1877) that the
Corporation ought to be allowed to buy up all the trade in Birmingham.
There were forty-six who voted for the motion against ten; but, when the
Right Hon. J.C.'s monopolising motion was introduced to the House of
Commons (March 13, 1877), it was negatived by fifty-two votes.

~Pudding Brook.~--This was the sweetly pretty name given to one of the
little streams that ran in connection with the moat round the old
Manorhouse. Possibly it was originally Puddle Brook, but as it became
little more than an open sewer or stinking mud ditch before it was
ultimately done away with, the last given name may not have been
inappropriate.

~Quacks.~--Though we cannot boast of a millionaire pill-maker like the
late Professor Holloway, we have not often been without a local
well-to-do "quack." A medical man, named Richard Aston, about 1815-25,
was universally called so, and if the making of money is proof of
quackery, he deserved the title, as he left a fortune of L60,000. He
also left an only daughter, but she and her husband were left to die in
the Workhouse, as the quack did not approve of their union.

~Quakers.~--Peaceable and quiet as the members of the Society of Friends
are known to be now, they do not appear to have always borne that
character in this neighbourhood, but the punishments inflicted upon them
in the time of the Commonwealth seem to have been brutish in the
extreme. In a history of the diocese of Worcester it is stated that the
Quakers not only refused to pay tithes or take off their hats in courts
of justice, but persisted in carrying on their business on Sundays, and
scarcely suffering a service to be conducted without interruption,
forcing themselves into congregations and proclaimin