Originally a wholesale and retail wines and spirits merchant, Augustus Applin opened the Scotch Heifer in 1840 on the corner of Canal Street, opposite the Sir Ralph Abercrombie (pretty much where the main entrance to Ancoats Retail Park is now). Mick Burke remembers the last remnants of Ancoats' Scuttlers in here: "Some of the Napoo gangs and Scuttlers went in the Scotch Heifer. The Whizz Gang off Woodward Street also used it. The Scuttlers would dress very smartly with tight cords, flash silk scarves and fancy clogs with sharp irons. The girls would wear maroon silk scarves knotted at one side. They would fight, girls as well, but they never used knives, just the clogs, belts and buckles".
The Napoo were the next generation of gangs in Manchester after the Scuttlers (they had begun to wane in the 1880s, helped in no small part to the efforts of those such as Anna Cornell who set up sports clubs like St Mark's F.C. in nearby West Gorton to divert young men towards more wholesome past-times). Following the Napoo were the Quality Street Gang of the 1960s and even in recent years in Manchester we've had Cheetham Hill, Salford, Longsight, Gooch and Doddington (both Moss Side) making the news.
The Scotch Heifer is pictured above as a Walkers & Homfray house just before it closed in 1955, having been run by City Brewery of Lichfield, Creeses of Hyde and Wilsons before that [1].
1. The Old Pubs of Ancoats, Neil Richardson (1987).
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