My friend Eddie Cass, who has died aged 77, made successful careers in coal mining, banking and academia. Eddie was born in Manchester and lived there nearly all his life. It was his favourite city. His first job was as a coal miner in Bradford Colliery in east Manchester, where he formed an attachment to the NUM (though not always its leadership) and became friends with Jim Allen, the future playwright. Later, he turned to banking, beginning as a clerk at Williams Deacons (now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland). He studied part-time at the College of Commerce, where his abilities were obvious, and he was to become manager of one the banks main Manchester branches.
Eddie had a thirst for knowledge and an insatiable curiosity for a variety of subjects which coalesced around the history of his home town, but also encompassed industrial archaeology, architecture, canals, food and art history. Book collecting became a passion. He studied part-time for an MA in the history of the Manchester region at Manchester Polytechnic, before going on to complete a PhD at the University of Lancaster that provided new insights into the Cotton Factory Times, a newspaper that historians had regarded as little more than a trade union newssheet.
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