Manchester rich folk, as you needed to be to shoot in that time, got that way as industrialists, mostly in textiles. Unfortunately, the US Waugh of No'the'n Aggresssion created a huge industrial surge in the USA post waugh. Since cotton grew here, not in the UK, it made very good financial sense to invent/import textile equipment and technology to the cotton growing areas. SOoooo, the textile industry left Manchester and moved to the USA South, never to return (does any of this sound familiar?). The Manchester Industrialists would have rather eatten ground glass than traded in London with the aristos. Unfortunately, all those Manchester gunmakers wound up "suckin' air" after the textile industry exodus. Anyway, that is my story and I'm stickin' with it --- unless one of our UK colleagues has a better one.
