Of fulminate, in the Green Lane, May 4, 1876, a youth being killed.--
Of
gas, at St. James's Hall, Snow Hill, Dec. 4, and at Avery's, Moat Row,
Dec. 31, 1878.--At a match manufactory, Phillip Street, Oct. 28, 1879,
when Mr. Bermingham and a workman were injured.

~Eye Hospital.~--See "_Hospitals_."

~Fairs.~--The officers of the Court Leet, whose duty it was to walk in
procession and "proclaim" the fairs, went through their last performance
of the kind at Michaelmas, 1851. It was proposed to abolish the fairs in
1860, but the final order was not given until June 8th, 1875. Of late
years there have been fairs held on the open grounds on the Aston
outskirts of the borough, but the "fun of the fair" is altogether
different now to what it used to be. The original charters for the
holding of fairs at Whitsuntide and Michaelmas were granted to William
de Bermingham by Henry III. in 1251. These fairs were doubtless at one
time of great importance, but the introduction of railways did away with
seven-tenths of their utility and the remainder was more nuisance than
profit. As a note of the trade done at one time we may just preserve the
item that in 1782 there were 56 waggon loads of onions brought into the
fair.

~Family Fortunes.~--Hutton in his "History," with that quaint prolixity
which was his peculiar proclivity gives numerous instances of the rise
and fall of families connected with Birmingham. In addition to the
original family of De Birmingham, now utterly extinct he traced back
many others then and now well-known names. For instance he tells us that
a predecessor of the Colmores in Henry VIII.'s reign kept a mercer's
shop at No. 1, High Street; that the founder of the Bowyer Adderley
family began life in a small way in this his native town in the 14th
century; that the Foxalls sprang from a Digbeth tanner some 480 years
ago; and so of others. Had he lived till now he might have largely
increased his roll of local millionaires with such names as Gillott,
Muntz, Mason, Rylands, &c. On the other hand he relates how some of the
old families, whose names were as household words among the ancient
aristocracy, have come to nought; how that he had himself charitably
relieved the descendants of the Norman Mountfourds, Middemores and
Bracebridges, and how that the sole boast of a descendant of the Saxon
Earls of Warwick was in his day the fact of his grandfather having "kept
several cows and sold milk." It is but a few years