the House of Mrs. Webb, in the City of Lichfield,
and known by the sign of the Bakers' Arms."

"Spring steel hoops in the neatest fashion
and at the lowest prices," are advertised as
made and sold at Birmingham, just as
crinolines might be advertised now; and does not
this read like a description of the vanishing
bonnets and tumbling ends of wisp-like hair so
much affected at the present day?

Let her Cap be a Butterfly slightly hung on,
Like the Shell of a Lapwing just hatched on her Crown,
Behind with a Coach-horse short dock off your hair,
Stick a Flower before skew wiff with an air.

Certainly if history never repeats itself,
fashions do!

In 1777 the total annual amount paid by
passengers between Birmingham and London,
Sheffield, Coventry, and Bristol, was nineteen
thousand one hundred and forty-one pounds,
and there were three thousand nine hundred
and fifty-two carriages plying in the year. Of
these some were " flying coaches," which
crawled along the bad roads at a pace about
equalled by our drays and waggons; and which
had further the misfortune to be every now and
then stopped by highwaymen, who rifled the
passengers with more or less brutality. Up to
1785 the mails had been brought into Birmingham
by postboys on horseback; but on the
23rd of August, the editor of the Gazette
informs his readers that the "London mail will
be brought to this town by coach for the first
time to-morrow." It was Major Palmer's
project to have the mails conveyed by coaches
instead of by mounted postboys; and it was
thought wonderful when a letter could be sent
from London to Birmingham at the small charge
of ninepence.

The difficulty of communication, and the
defective state of the police, made easy times
for swindlers, though their punishment was
severe enough when caught. There was that
famous affair of Henry Griffin, or Hubbard,
the so-called Duke of Ormond, who began his
career in Birmingham, towards the end of the
year 1791, and who made so good a thing of
his talents for roguery while the game was
warm, but who got behindhand with success
at last, and finished, poor wretch! on the gallows.
His career had been an eventful and an
extraordinary one. A Virginian by birth, and
respectably connected, he had come over to
England, where he had gone through a variety
of disreputable adventures and successes. As
the Duke of Ormond, he had swindled all sorts
of cautious tradesmen and experienced bankers;
he had beguiled more than one lady of rank, and
had got money as well as other things of more
value from his dupes by his fine address and
silvery tongue; he had eloped with a pretty
young woman, the daughter of the landlord of
the Blue Bell in Leicester, who was vastly proud
of her ducal conquest: and when attacked and
taken, he shot at Wallis the constable and just
missed shooting him dead on the spot. The
ball went into his mouth but lodged there,
and was spat out flattened; and the official
got off with his life truly, but at the expense
of a lacerated tongue, the loss of six teeth, and
a piece of his upper lip. Even at the foot of
the scaffold the Duke could not forbear his
old tricks. He sent for a tailor who lived
opposite to Newgate, to measure him for a suit
of mourning. "The taylor thinking his
customer's tricks at an end, immediately made the
clothes, and carried them to the cells, where
Griffin very deliberately put them on, declaring
he was never better fitted, and paid many
compliments on the neatness of the suit, &c. The
taylor, seeing no overtures of payment,
reminded his employer of his charge." Griffin
turning round, replied, "True, Mr. Taylor,
your charge is moderate, and I will put you in
a way of being paid. I know (continued the
malefactor) that you let out your house at
sixpence a head at every hanging bout; now as I
am shortly to be hanged, and you know, Mr.
Taylor, I am no common rascal, I would
advise you to raise your price to half-a-crown. If
that won't do, why you may have your cloaths
again, but I am determined first to be hanged
in them." He was hanged that same day,
having first tried to stab himself, and then it
was said taking poison: but neither means
proved effectual, and so the law took its course.

There are three things which always must
accompany the idea of the Birmingham of the
past—buttons, buckles, and riots. We will take
the buttons first.

By an act, the eighth of Queen Anne, "any
Taylor or other Person convicted of making,
covering, selling, using, or setting on to a
Garment any Buttons covered with cloth, or other
Stuff of which Garments are made, shall Forfeit
Five Pounds, for every Dozen of such Buttons,
or in Proportion for any lesser quantity;" and
by an act of the seventh of George the First,
"any wearer of such unlawful Buttons is liable
to the penalty of Forty Shillings per Dozen, and
in Proportion for any lesser quantity." The
Birmingham button makers were resolved to
protect their rights, and on April 4th, 1791,
Thomas Gem, the solicitor to the committee for
the protection of the button trade, advertised
a reward for any information against the wearers
of the unlawful covered buttons. On the 21st
of March previous, indeed, a tradesman in
London had been fined " nearly twenty-six
pounds," on two informations, for selling the
obnoxious articles; still in spite of penalties
and prosecutions, covered buttons came in, and
metal buttons went out; and for all the agitation
respecting the proper gilding of the true
Birmingham button—for all the encouragement
given by His Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales, who, as the Gazette joyfully says, " Now
always wears, both in his morning and evening
dress, engraved fancy white and yellow metal
buttons," buttons, like buckles, followed the
inexorable and mysterious laws of fashion.

Buckles, too, had a rough time of it when
shoe-strings came in; and a deputation of
buckle manufacturers went to London to
bespeak the favour of the Duke of Clarence,
and through him, of the navy, the court, and
royal family generally. The duke gave the