Where is Brumley?

When I started an Internet research of the city of Brumley in Great Britain, not a single hit was shown to me. On the first page of the book there are also rather little information about the location of the story. It just means that Brumley is an industrial city in the North Midlands of England. But why would the author create a fictional city, instead of choosing a real one?

Industrialization (Wikipedia)

To answer that question, we must look back to the time the story plays. In the year 1912 England had a flourishing economy. Then the UK really has benefited from industrialisation since 1850. But there was also another reason, the Germans were provoking the whole time with a threat of war. It develops to an arms race between the two countries. As a result, the industry was booming and the typical workers city were very busy. Each wanted only his own success and I think it was the author's goal to denounce this. Yet the author could not simply choose any industrial city, because in this case the inhabitants of other, would not feel addressed by the criticism. So the author created with Brumley a city, that linguistically reminded of the big industrial cities like Birmingham, Bradford and Burnley. (Words: 211)