ent out
about 800,000 commemoration medals in 1880, when the Sunday School
Centenary was kept. Nearly 2,000 teachers attend the Church schools and
about 2,500 attend Dissenting and other schools, the number of children
on the books of Sunday Schools in Birmingham being estimated at--

14 years and Under 14
over. years. Total.
Church of England
schools 5,500 16,500 22,000
Sunday School
Union 7,312 13,660 20,972
Wesleyan and others 2,745 6,627 9,372
Roman Catholic 1,200 1,950 3,150
Unitarian 692 1,359 1,961
Other schools 550 750 1,250
------- ------- -------
17,859 40,846 58,705

_Wesleyan College_.--The five memorial stones of a College for training
Wesleyan ministers, at the corner of Priory and College Roads,
Handsworth, were laid June 8, 1880. The site includes 17-1/2 acres, and
cost over L7,000, the total cost of the College when completed and
furnished being estimated at L40,000. About fifty students are
accommodated at present, but there is room for thirty more.

~Scraps of Local History.~--A foreign visitor here in the reign of James
II., wrote that our tradesmen were in the habit of spending their
evenings in public-houses, and were getting into lazy habits, so that
their shops were often not opened before 7 a.m.

Another intelligent foreigner (_temp_ Charles II.) has left it on record
that not only was smoking common among women here, but that the lads
took a pipe and tobacco with them to school, instead of breakfast, the
schoolmaster teaching them at the proper hour how to hold their pipes
and puff genteelly.

Hutton believed that the scythe-blades attached to the wheels of Queen
Boadicea's war chariots (A.D. 61), as well as the Britons' swords, were
made in this neighbourhood.

When escaping from Boscobel, in the guise of Miss Lane's servant,
Charles II. had to appeal to a blacksmith at Erdington to re-shoe his
horse. The knight of the hammer was a republican, and his majesty chimed
in with the man's views so readily, that the latter complimented his
customer on "speaking like an honest man." Miss Lane afterwards married
Sir Clement Fisher, of Packington, and her portrait may be still seen at
the Hal