BBC Inside Out North West: Broadside Ballads will be broadcast on Monday 19 September at 19:30 BST on BBC One.

BBC NW Ballads

"There was no telly, there was no radio, and we were even five years off the publication of the first Manchester Guardian," says radio presenter Mark Radcliffe, who has travelled around his native Lancashire to make a film for Inside Out North West about the ballads. "But there was a kind of social media back in the 19th Century - they just didn't call it that."

The subjects covered by the broadsides were wide-ranging, from the Peterloo Massacre and Manchester's Great Flood of 1872 to light-hearted ditties about henpecked spouses and gossipy songs about extramarital affairs.

The themes speak of struggle (The Spinners Lamentation, 1846), poverty (Tinkers Garden, 1837), civic uprisings (The Meeting at Peterloo, 1819) and communal tragedy (The Great Flood, 1872). However, they also recall good nights out (Victoria Bridge on a Saturday Night 1861) and day trips around the region (Johnny Green's Trip fro' Owdhum to see the Manchester Railway, 1832).

"They really are a slice of real life and social history from 19th Century Manchester," says Radcliffe.