Gladstone held a political meeting in November 1888, following Joseph Chamberlain's split from the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule, and spoke for two hours.
They were protesting at women being excluded from a political meeting where the British Prime Minister Asquith was giving a speech.
[5] In the early months after it was raised in 1859, the Birmingham Rifles (later the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment) paraded at Beardsworth's Horse Repository, but as numbers grew it moved at the invitation of the Cattle Show committee to Bingley Hall.
This arrangement was never satisfactory, because the battalion could not use the hall for the duration of the cattle show in November and December each year.
When the show committee also let the hall to a circus for three months in the spring of 1879, the battalion was temporarily housed in Mr Wiley's factory in Graham Street.
[6] The hall was used repeatedly for meetings and conversions by various non-conformist religions, including the Elim Pentecostal Church in 1930, led by George Jeffreys.