took his degree as popular waiter, and from the Acorn also he
took a wife to help him start "The Stores," in Paradise Street. Mr.
Thomas Hanson was not long behind Hillman before he opened up "The
Corner Stores," in Union Passage, following that with the "St. James" in
New Street, and several others in various parts of the town. The "Bars"
are now an "institution" that has become absolutely indispensable, even
for the class who prefer the semi-privacy of the "Restaurants," as the
proprietors of the more select Bars like to call their establishments.

~Magistrates.~--By direction of the Queen's Council, in 1569, all
magistrates had to send up "bonds" that they would subscribe to the then
recently passed Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayers and Services in
the Church, and the Administration of the Sacraments. The local name of
Middlemore appears among the few in this county who objected to do so,
and most likely his descendants would do the same. The first twenty-five
of our borough magistrates were appointed about nine weeks after the
date of the Charter of Incorporation, 1839. In 1841, 1849, 1856, and
1859, other gentlemen were placed on the roll, and in April, 1880, ten
more names were added to the list, having been sent up to the Lord
Chancellor a few days before he vacated office, by some knowing
gentlemen who had conceived a notion that the Conservative element was
hardly strong enough among the occupants of the Bench. There are now 52,
in addition to the Stipendiary Magistrate and the Recorder, and as
politics _must_ enter into every matter connected with public life in
Birmingham, we record the interesting fact that 31 of these gentlemen
are Liberals and 21 Conservatives. Mr. T.C.S. Kynnersley first acted as
Stipendiary, April 19, 1856.

~Magazines.~--See "_Newspapers and Periodicals_."

~Manor House.~--How few of the thousands who pass Smithfield every day
know that they are treading upon ground where once the Barons of
Birmingham kept house in feudal grandeur. Whether the ancient Castle,
destroyed in the time of Stephen, pre-occupied the site of the Manor
House (or, as it was of late years called--the Moat House), is more than
antiquarians have yet found out, any more than they can tell us when the
latter building was erected, or when it was demolished. Hutton says:
"The first certain account we meet of the moat (which surrounded the
island on which the erections were built) is in the reign of Henry the
Se