I've recently been transcribing some census sheets from the 1861 Census of England and Wales for an internet genealogy project. I do this most of the time but have a had a break over the summer and have taken up again in earnest over the last week or so. What interesting things I find out. Today I had a family of 8 living in the same house and three of the children aged 11, 9 and 8 were working as Nail Strikers. Now my eldest Grandson is 8 and I just can't believe that children of this age worked. Well I know that they did, we have long had all the historical evidence to support it, but I just can't conceive of the sort of life they had. Grandson would be hard pushed to leave his play station for 10 minutes let alone do a days work!!
Another family was somewhat extended with an elder son, his wife and toddler in the one house. I then realised that the married son had a younger brother who was younger than his own son. It was not unusual to find families of 10, 11 or even more offspring all living together. The poor mothers must have been exhausted after all those years of child bearing. I go down through the lists of children and they are regularly spaced at generally 2 years apart. If a bigger gap appears you can be almost sure that a child had died, or else had gone to work in service somewhere else. Some of the families have widowers and widows in their twenties, such things we feel are catastrophic nowadays but quite common place then.
Occupations are interesting too, today I had a striker, in an iron works no doubt, a lot of steel makers, and a new one on me: a gas pumper. Blacksmiths, whitesmiths and brass founders abound, after all I am studying the City of 1000 trades. As for the wives they are often occupation-less unless they happen to be washerwomen, greengrocers, knitters or dressmakers. Sometimes they are identified by their husband's work, baker's wife, bedstead painter's wife, coalman's wife, as though it were an occupation in itself. It probably was!
Another family was somewhat extended with an elder son, his wife and toddler in the one house. I then realised that the married son had a younger brother who was younger than his own son. It was not unusual to find families of 10, 11 or even more offspring all living together. The poor mothers must have been exhausted after all those years of child bearing. I go down through the lists of children and they are regularly spaced at generally 2 years apart. If a bigger gap appears you can be almost sure that a child had died, or else had gone to work in service somewhere else. Some of the families have widowers and widows in their twenties, such things we feel are catastrophic nowadays but quite common place then.
Occupations are interesting too, today I had a striker, in an iron works no doubt, a lot of steel makers, and a new one on me: a gas pumper. Blacksmiths, whitesmiths and brass founders abound, after all I am studying the City of 1000 trades. As for the wives they are often occupation-less unless they happen to be washerwomen, greengrocers, knitters or dressmakers. Sometimes they are identified by their husband's work, baker's wife, bedstead painter's wife, coalman's wife, as though it were an occupation in itself. It probably was!
All this has reminded me today rather graphically that however much we think times are hard now and problems beset us which are hard to solve, we have an incredibly easy life now compared with our ancestors. it's about time we started being grateful.
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