Engels 'took liberties' with reporting on class divides

Friedrich Engels may have overplayed the extent of social segregation in Manchester in the middle of the 19th century, a study has found.

- Mark Brown North of England correspondent

The German philosopher, who published The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx in 1848, lived in the city and was appalled by its squalor and inequality.

His observations were published in his 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, a blistering polemic seen as the defining text of the British industrial experience.

He described shocking segregation and swathes of “unmixed working-people’s quarters” stretching “like a girdle”. Beyond them were the middle bourgeoisie in their townhouses and further off - “in remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick” were the upper bourgeoise, also to be found in the “breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton and Pendleton”.