MYTHS ABOUT BIRMINGHAM: CITY OF ENLIGHTENMENT
- ‘Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice’
Although often disputed and spoken about as though it’s just a wild claim, this turns out to be true. Venice has 26 miles of canal while Birmingham runs ahead with 35 miles.
And the entire Birmingham Canal Navigations system-a network of waterways connecting Birmingham, Wolverhampton and the eastern part of the Black Country – has 114 miles of navigable water. Even that is less than the 174 miles it had at its peak in the 18th century.
However, Birmingham is far larger than Venice so, based on the concentration of canals, Venice comes out in front on that score.
But looking at water volume and depth measurements, more cubic metres of water pass through Birmingham’s canals than any other city in the world.
- ‘Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit while he was living in Birmingham’
Not quite. The acclaimed author JRR Tolkien spent his childhood in the city and found much inspiration for the books while here, including Moseley Bog which was the basis for the Old Forest where Tom Bombadil lived in The Fellowship of the Ring.
Perrott’s Folly – a 30m tower built by John Perrott in 1758 – and the brick chimney at Edgbaston Waterworks are thought to have inspired the Two Towers that gave their name to the second book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
His harrowing experiences during the First World War, including the loss of friends he had made at Birmingham’s King Edward’s School, were the main influence behind the battle scenes in Lord of the Rings.
But he never wrote the books while here in Birmingham. It was during his time at Pembroke College,Oxford that he penned The Hobbit and the first two volumes of Lord of the Rings, while living at 20 Northmoor Road in north Oxford (where a blue plaque was placed in 2002). He had moved on to Merton College, Oxford, when he completed the third volume.
- ‘Charlie Chaplin was born in a gipsy caravan in Smethwick’
As unlikely as it might seem, silent movie legend Charlie Chaplin was born in a gipsy caravan in Smethwick according to a radio documentary broadcast in 2011.
It was said that Chaplin’s daughter Victoria found a letter making the bizarre claim that he was born in a caravan belonging to the gipsy queen on the Black Patch in Smethwick, on the border of Birmingham.
There is no official record of the comic actor’s birth, although he believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in south London.
When Chaplin’s alleged communist sympathies were investigated by M15, they could not find a birth certificate for Charlie or his supposed alias Israel Thornstein. The investigation concluded that “Chaplin was either not born in this country or that his name at birth was other than those mentioned.” So this remains a mystery.
- ‘Birmingham has more trees than Paris’
Cynics might scoff at a comparison of Birmingham and Paris, but the assertion has been made.
It could be tough to prove, though – has anyone ever counted all the trees in both cities?
However, the Paris tourist office tells us: “With more than 400 parks and gardens, Paris is the most wooded capital in Europe”. But Wikipedia lists a more modest number of green spaces for the French capital: two woodlands, 16 parks and 21 gardens.
So how does Birmingham compare? According to the city council’s website, there are nearly 600 parks and other public open spaces in the city.
However, there’s no clue to tree coverage in the two cities and we can’t see anyone rushing around counting them any time soon. Either way, this story sounds like it’s quite possible.
- ‘There was a red-light area at the back of Rackhams’
Preserved in the local sayings of Birmingham is the tale of a red-light spot at the back of the city centre’s Rackham’s store, now House of Fraser, before the area was pedestrianised.
‘She’ll be round the back o’Rackhams’ might be said of someone accused of being promiscuous. ‘I’ll end up round the back o ‘Rackhams’ might be heard if a woman jokingly felt she would be forced into prostitution to pay all the bills. The Two Towers Birmingham brewery even named a real ale Bhacker Ackhams after the infamous location.
It seems to be universally accepted that there was such a place behind the store. But does anyone want to come forward and admit to knowing for sure that it was there?
- ‘West Bromwich Albion’s ground is the highest stadium in England’
Locals have often declared that West Bromwich Albion’s ground The Hawthorns is the highest football stadium in England.
And this is true. At an altitude of 551 feet (168 m) above sea level, it is the highest ground of all the Premier League and Football League clubs.
- ‘Birmingham is named after the Ingas of Birm’
At first this sounds too daft to be true. Ingas sounds like a Brummie version of the Incas, a sun-worshipping civilisation that once lived in south America, and it has the whiff of a made-up explanation.
But, in fact, it’s on the right track. Historians say an Anglo-Saxon tribe called the Beormingas (meaning ‘Beorma’s people’) settled in the area in the 6th or early 7th century.
Beorma was a Saxon leader, inga is a Saxon word for “a group of people” and ham means village so Birmingham thus translates as “home of the people of Beorma.”
- ‘Birmingham has the most lap dancing clubs of any UK city’
A dubious honour, but is it true?
We reported in January how a fourth club planned on the city’s Golden Mile sparked outcry.
And by the latest count there’s a total of seven lap dancing venues in the city at present, including one on the Hagley Road operated by Spearmint Rhino, the world-famous chain of strip clubs.
There’s no way of knowing for sure, but seven in one city does sound like it’s enough to be a winner.
- ‘Birmingham once had a Gun Quarter’
Yes, and it still does, though in a much smaller form. While the neighbouring Jewellery Quarter has more than 100 shops and the Chinese Quarter has an array of restaurants and the colourful Chinese New Year celebrations, The Gun Quarter is now a small hub of manufacturers and dealers so it has a much lower profile.
Birmingham had for many years been at the centre of the world’s gun-manufacturing industry, specialising in the production of military firearms and sporting guns. The quarter developed around St Mary’s Church in the late 1700s and early 1800s and made millions of weapons that were used in the Napoleonic Wars, Crimean War, American Civil War and the First and Second World Wars.
In the 1960s, a large part of The Gun Quarter was demolished by city planners, with the area split in two by the Birmingham Inner Ring Road.
Today only a handful of gun manufacturers and traders remain in the Gun Quarter. The last remaining large gun and rifle manufacturer in the area is Westley Richards.
In 2011, Birmingham City Council caused an outcry when it planned to the rename the area as St George & St Chad’s Quarter, apparently because residents wanted to distance the area from gun crime. The plan never went ahead.
Gunsmiths in Birmingham’s Gun Quarter round 1900 at the factory of WW Greener in St Marys Row
- ‘Birmingham once had a group who met at full moon and were called lunatics’
Some of you might be tempted to joke that this must refer to the city council or some other public authority in the area. But we have to go back a bit further in time for the answer to this one.
Prominent industrialists, inventors, scientists and philosophers used to meet in the region, between 1765 and 1813, and called themselves firstly the Lunar Circle and then the Lunar Society of Birmingham.
This dinner club of distinguished intellectuals gathered at venues including Birmingham’s Soho House, home of industrialist Matthew Boulton; Great Barr House in Walsall, home of arms manufacturer Samuel Galton Jr; and the Lichfield home of physician and philosopher Erasmus Darwin, whose grandson Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution.
They did indeed get together when there was a full moon and this was because the extra light from the moon made their night-time journey home safer and easier, in the days before street lamps.
Because of this the members did jokingly refer to themselves as ‘Lunarticks’. The word lunatics already existed and had been coined more than 1,000 years earlier when the moon was believed to be a trigger for mental disorders.
Membership of the society does not seem to have been fixed and historians disagree on who was in the group while some doubt it actually existed. But one document has claimed: “All the world came to Soho to meet Boulton, Watt (inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt) or Small (physician and natural philosopher William Small), who were acquainted with the leading men of science throughout Europe and America.”
- ‘There was a gipsy curse on Birmingham City Football Club ground’
It’s claimed that in 1906 a 100-year gipsy curse was placed on St Andrew’s, the ground of Birmingham City Football Club, by Romany people who were angry at being evicted from the site so that the new stadium could be built. Generations of struggle did indeed follow.
Ron Saunders painted the bottom of players’ boots red and hung crucifixes on the floodlights and Barry Fry claimed he urinated in all four corner quadrants in bids to rid the curse, but such measures had little impact.
The curse was due to end on Boxing Day in 2006 and indeed Blues won their home fixture against Queens Park Rangers that day. Promotion to the Premier League followed and then there was the 2011 Carling Cup win – Blues first major piece of silverware for 48 years.
One must wonder whether that curse really did ever go away, though. One look at their current situation and you certainly wouldn’t think so.
- ‘Brummie and Black Country accents are the same’
While no one in Birmingham and the Black Country would say this, it’s a commonly held belief outside the region.
The latest example of the stereotype over the accents and dialects in the Midlands was in the Hotels4U advert, which provoked a furious response from people in the region.
Brummies labelled the ad offensive but others say the accent is more Black Country.
And that highlights a wider myth that the Brummie and Black Country accents are the same. However, the differences aren’t as obvious today – because of the breakdown of clearly separated local cultures through urban growth, population mobility and the more diverse nature of the city. Many of the same words and phrases are used in both dialects these days.
Actor Rod Fox dressed as Gandalf at Moseley Bog
- ‘Birmingham is the birthplace of custard’
This is true. Although custard made by mixing milk and eggs and thickening it over heat had been invented in the Middle Ages, it was Alfred Bird who developed the modern egg-free version in 1837 because his wife was allergic to eggs.
Bird instead used a cornflour-based powder added to milk. After he discovered his custard was popular, Bird formed Alfred Bird and Sons Ltd in Birmingham.
The original factory is long gone but a larger manufacturing operation that he established in Gibb Street, to meet demand for the yellow dessert, is still there and was turned into the Custard Factory arts centre.
As the Custard Factory website states: “The Custard Factory is set in 15 acres of beautifully renovated riverside factories, built more than 100 years ago by Alfred Bird to manufacture and market his famous invention, eggless custard.
“At one time he had a thousand people making the stuff and was exporting it across the globe. However, following the rationing and production limits imposed by World War Two, the company was taken over and in 1964 production relocated to Banbury and the factories fell derelict.”
So next time you pour custard on your pudding, you can be proud that you are tucking into a piece of Birmingham’s past.
- ‘Was Birmingham once the capital of England?’
We have no idea where this notion originated, but we know for a fact that this question was recently among the top Google searches relating to Birmingham.
We’re wondering if there had been a quiz somewhere that prompted schoolchildren or TV viewers to take to the internet and search for information on this.
Just to be clear, Birmingham has never been a capital of England. Alongside London, only Colchester and Winchester have ever been national capitals as far as we can tell.
- ‘Birmingham is officially the most congested city in the UK’
It might feel like it when you are stuck for ages on the city’s roads. But the claim isn’t true according to experts.
Sat-nav manufacturers Tom Tom revealed in November 2013 that Birmingham comes 12th on the league table of congested UK cities, with congestion about the same as in a similar study in 2012.
In 2010, Birmingham came fifth, suggesting that congestion is easing in the city rather than getting worse. So this is not true.
- ‘Dozens of Spitfire planes built in Birmingham were buried in Burma’
It has been claimed that Lord Louis Mountbatten – Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia Command during the Second World War – had ordered the burial of at least 36 Castle Bromwich-built Spitfires that had been shipped to Burma in 1945.
The fighter planes were never needed because the Second World War ended the same year they arrived and it’s said they were buried to avoid the effort and expense of sending them back to the UK.
Attempts to find the hoard of unused aircraft have proved fruitless and it’s now thought to be just a myth. But others believe the planes are just well hidden and so the search continues.
17.’ Birmingham is the most landlocked city in the UK’
By our reckoning, this is not true.
Birmingham’s nearest beach is 105 miles away at Weston-super-Mare.
Coventry also claims to be further from the sea than any other city in the UK, and it’s been calculated that Coventry’s nearest beach is 116 miles away at Hunstanton. That greater distance makes it more landlocked than Birmingham.
Cluedo inventor Anthony Pratt, from Kings Heath
- ‘Cluedo was invented in Birmingham’
Yes, it’s true. The murder mystery board game was invented in 1944 by Anthony E. Pratt, a solicitor’s clerk from Birmingham. He originally called the game ‘Murder!’
Pratt was born at 13 Brighton Road, Balsall Heath, and educated at St Philip’s School in Edgbaston.
While employed in a Birmingham engineering factory during the Second World War, he was so bored with his drilling job that he started to daydream about inventing a new game.
During the war, evenings were spent huddled indoors behind blackout curtains and Pratt wanted to come up with something interesting for people to do.
Before the war, he had worked as a musician playing piano recitals in country houses, where murder mystery games were also held, and that gave him the idea for the whodunnit format.
Pratt and his wife presented the invention to games manufacturer Waddingtons, who snapped it up and renamed it Cluedo. It was patented in 1947 and went on sale in 1949.
- ‘Clint Eastwood once visited Birmingham’
Another story that’s true. The famous actor and director Clint Eastwood was photographed on Smallbrook Queensway in 1967.
The five-time Oscar-winning actor, famous for roles in The Good, Bad and the Ugly, Dirty Harry and Gran Torino was in Birmingham promoting one of his films.
He was pictured looking over the railings of the city ring road, which had begun to take shape a decade earlier in 1957.
And he’s not the only star to have visited Birmingham.
Brad Pitt visited an old friend at a law firm in Hall Green, Lady Gaga bought everyone drinks in a Birmingham pub, Michael Buble went to see a movie at the New Street Odeon, and George Clooney turned up at Star City.
Among other celebrity sightings in Birmingham, Katy Perry went to watch the Ghostbusters movie at the city’s Electric Cinema, Colin Farrell had a night out at the Gatecrasher club, and Robbie Williams enjoyed a balti in Sutton Coldfield.
- ‘The Peaky Blinders gang didn’t really exist’
As the BBC’s new family crime drama Peaky Blinders came to our TV screens in 2013 and showed a gang who supposedly roamed the streets of Birmingham in the years after the First World War, we looked at the fact and the fiction behind the series.
It didn’t all happen as depicted in the programme.
On April 9, 1890, a letter in a newspaper said an attack had been carried out by members of the “Small Heath Peaky Blinders”. So we know at least the name of the gang was real.
This seems to be the first mention of the gangs who operated in 1890s Birmingham and which were infamous for their violence and fighting with metal-tipped boots, stones, belt buckles and sometimes knives.
Although they disappeared before the First World War and apparently did not exist in the 1920s – a contrast to the setting of the TV series – their reputation ensured they would not be forgotten.
Doubt has been cast on the claim that they stitched cut-throat razors into the peak of their caps and used them as weapons. Nothing of the kind is mentioned in contemporary newspaper reports and this may have been an embellishment that arose from John Douglas’s novel, A Walk Down Summer Lane, set in the inter-war years.
So the Peaky Blinders did exist but it seems they were not around in the 1920s and 1930s and probably didn’t put razors in their caps.
- ‘There was once a vampire stalking the streets of Birmingham’
In December 2004, there were stories of an attacker – described as black and in his 20s – who bit another man walking along a street in the Ward End area of Birmingham and then pounced on neighbours who came to the victim’s aid. One woman was said to have had a chunk of flesh bitten out of her hand.
In the following weeks, the media were contacted by people in Saltley, Small Heath and Alum Rock who had heard of similar attacks in their areas, including residents being bitten as they answered their doors.
There were claims that the nocturnal predator had red eyes, could become invisible, could transform into a dog and also that he had actually bitten a dog. Some claimed he had contracted rabies from a dog bite and wanted to transmit it to others in the same way.
The story spread across the internet in January 2005 where one commenter wrote, seemingly in all seriousness: “Anyone know if the bitten people also transform into vampires? As a safety measure, if you see anyone coming towards you with a Brummie accent, run ’em over or run for your life.”
Father Anthony Rohan of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Small Heath wasn’t taking any chances, saying: “I heard the story in the barber’s. They asked me if I believed in vampires and I said no. I’m not worried, though. I’ve got a lot of crucifixes in the house.”
But police debunked the blood-curdling claims as the story spread and fear started to grow in the city.
“To date we have not received any reports from people stating they have been bitten. This appears to be an urban myth,” a spokesman told the Birmingham Mail at the time.
Keith Bracey the Brummie Bard Birmingham & Black Country poet & writer 