1838. 1884. Population 170,000 421,000 Parliamentary Elections 7,300 63,718 Burgesses 5,023 74,167 Rateable Value £407,000 £1,563,000 Rated Tenements 39,000 98,787 Death Rate, 1842 to 1851 yearly average, 24.96 ” 1872 ” 1881 ” 23.25 ” 1882 ” 1884 ” 21.6 CHAPTER II. EDUCATION. BY OSMUND AIRY, M.A., H.M. INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS FOR BIRMINGHAM. It can fairly be said that there is probably no town in England which possesses a more complete educational system than Birmingham. This system has been no effect of a pre-conceived design, but has grown up, piece by piece, in the stress of the life of a great manufacturing centre, where people of leisure may be counted on the fingers of one hand. All the more, probably, it has been constantly and definitely adapting itself to the needs of the locality. The boast is at any rate a just one, that in this busy population the road is clear, clear that is of all artificial obstructions, clearer far than in many a more polished and cultivated society, for a boy to rise from the gutter to the University, or to eminence in any science or art. =Foundation of the Grammar School.=--King Edward’s School owes its origin to an institution more than a century and a half older than itself. The Gild of the Holy Cross, the earliest record of which is to be found in a writ of Richard II., July 10, 1392, was a body which concerned itself, not of course with education, but with functions partly religious and partly quasi-municipal. It possessed a Gild Hall, a building of wood and plaster, standing at a distance from the town on the south side of the highway to Hales Owen, now New Street. In 1547 its possessions were seized by the King, and they continued in the Crown until 1552, when Edward VI., upon the petition of the inhabitants, gave them back to the town for the maintenance of a Free Grammar School, for the instruction of children in grammar. The clear yearly value of these lands was then £21,[2] and they were assigned to William Symmons, gent., Richard Smallbrook, Bailiff, and 18 other inhabitants, “to hold by fealty only, in free soccage” on condition of an annual payment at Michaelmas of £1 (apparently commuted in 1810 for £25. 15s. 6d.). These twenty assignees were to hold their position for life, and all vacancies by death or removal were to be filled up by co-optation. In the first instance they were to be inhabitants of the manor of Birmingham, but the restriction was modified in 1830. They were to nominate a Pedagogue and a Sub-pedagogue, to whose support the revenues were to be exclusively employed; and they were permitted to acquire further revenues to an amount not exceeding £20 per annum.