Birmingham Council Minutes, 1839.

Description:Birmingham was not officially ‘incorporated’ as a town until the year 1838. Before this date, there no was official ‘council’, but a ‘Streets and Paving Commissioners Board’ that held limited means of raising charges for improving sanitation and street safety.

It is significant then, that in the year of the first council meetings, David Barnett would be admitted as a member of the new council. This required a breakthrough in Jewish Christian relations; as to be accepted within the institution required swearing an oath as a ‘true Christian’. David Barnet was instead accepted as one of ‘the Hebrew congregation” who did not need to make this part of the oath. This was a symbolic moment in widening of the cultural vision of the town.

The list of names of councillors and alderman present at the meeting shows the important people that he was in contact with. For instance, the name of the alderman ‘Sturge’ refers to Joseph Sturge, who in the previous year had lead the efforts to end the slave apprenticeship in the West Indies (See Campaigning for Social Justice).

Indeed, Sturge and Barnett were two of Birmingham’s most significant nineteenth century campaigners for social rights in Birmingham. Although both held very different religious faiths, in a sense both were settlers within the town (Sturge came from Gloucester, Barnett from Russia). It is fascinating to see both of them here participating at a council meeting which is considering the ‘conditions of the poor’.