Description::The Plan of Birmingham published in the 2nd Edition of James Drake’s The Picture of Birmingham was the first Birmingham plan to be accompanied by an index. Since the book in which the map first appeared was published in 1831 the map must have been produced on or before that date. However, the calligraphy of the date printed beneath the top border of the map causes some confusion if the map is considered as a separate sheet. Several recent publications have interpreted the date as 1832, going so far as to expand the title of the map to include that date.
Plan of Birmingham Surveyor unknown 1831 MAP/384605
PLAN OF BIRMINGHAM with an Alphabetical list of the Streets, Churches, Chapels, Principal Inns, Coach Offices &c Published by James Drake, New Street 1831 first appeared in The Picture of Birmingham. Second edition published by James Drake, in 1831.
The font used for the date, printed beneath the top border of the map has caused some confusion. Taken as an isolated map, the last figure can be read as 1832, but since the book in which the map first appeared was published in 1831 the map must have been produced on or before that date. When dating a map context is everything. A map cannot postdate the publication in which it first appears.
On the same scale as Kempson’s town plans it has 58o west of north at the top and covers a slightly larger area [3.24km wide by 3.8 km high] centred in roughly the same place [between the north-east corner of St Philip’s and Colmore Row]. Like the guide book maps of 1819 and 1825, it has every appearance of being based on Kempson’s town maps, including the tell-tale omission of Sheep Street.
A facsimile version appears in Paul Leslie Line & Adrian Baggett, Maps & Sketches from Georgian & Early Victorian Birmingham, 2013, pp108-115 and as a facsimile sheet map Drake's Street Plan and Index, Birmingham -1832, 2013. [Mag: 1:6269] both are labelled ‘Plan of Birmingham, 1832’
The index printed around the outside of the map’s border lists 267 streets and 60 buildings or features with places of worship predominating, followed by inns. New Streets appear: on the border between Deritend and Bordesley, by the Rea; to the north and south of Ashted; In Hockley and what is to become the Jewellery quarter; Near the New Union Mill, off Islington [Broad Street]; by the Edgbaston border near ‘Dee Bank Road’ [Lee Bank Road]; Between the Rea, Bromsgrove Street and Bristol Street. Sheep Street is still missing.
Two new buildings are shown; the Institution on the corner of Temple Street and Temple Row and the Fever Hospital in Bath Row on the corner of Bishopgate Street which opened in 1828 ‘for the reception and recovery of persons afflicted with fever, contagious or otherwise.’. The General Hospital was not supposed to take fever cases but their records show that a few smallpox cases were treated there.
At 2s 6d, the map, sold separately, though expensive, was just within the reach of a working man [equivalent to approximately £12.50 in 2018]. Sold as Drake’s Cheap Map of Birmingham, perhaps too cheap for in February 1840, three years after publishing his third guide book (indexed map included), James Drake was declared bankrupt.