Other Occupations
Agricultural Labourer
The usual title for a worker on the land was Agricultural Labourer (Ag Lab), but variants were Farm Labourer, Farm Servant, Male Servant (MS) and Day Labourer.
Fifteen of our ancestors and many other family members were Agricultural Labourers, but only in a few cases are we able to see a little beyond the general title. In the 1851 census, Peter Nicholson McLaren Flaws is described as a ploughman. In the 1841 census and at the birth of his 7th child in 1846, Jonathan Jeffries is described as a woodsman and at the marriage of his sixth son in 1873 he is described as a Market Gardener. In the 1861 and 1871 census, James Cooper is described as a Sawyer.
Bookshop Assistant/Manager
Mum worked in the Pioneer Bookshop in New Road, Woolwich for several years until 1974. In this photo one of the tram crew is standing with his hands behind his back looking into the window of the bookshop. The photo was taken before July 1952, but the frontage is much the same as when Mum worked there. At the time Mum worked there the shop was owned by Mr Eric Norris and Mr Sedgwick and run by Mr Norris. Mr Norris was something of an eccentric and his obituary
in the Daily Telegraph is an interesting read.
In 1974, WH Smith opened a new store in Powis Street, Woolwich and Mum was taken on as the part-time manager of the book section. She stayed there until she retired in 1980, although about a year before then she gave up the managerial job and worked as an assistant. The shop was on two floors of Kent House, which had previously been occupied by Garret's Department Store, where I had worked on Saturdays and in school holidays, first in the hardware department and then in the carpet department. (My first pay packet for a Saturday was 19s7d - £1 less 5p National Insurance.)
This is Mum in the book department sometime in the 1970's
This is at the leaving party for the general manager, Mr Haynes, on the left. The woman on the right is Joyce.
This is probably Mum's leaving do in 1980.
Mum's Union Card.
Engineer / Maintenance Fitter
These two photos are of the Indenture document showing that Dad commenced his apprenticeship in Practical Engineering with Charles Westwood of Catford, London on 12 June 1924 and completed it successfully on 12 June 1929. It is not known whether the business was in Catford or whether that was Mr Westwood's home address. In the bottom corner of the Indenture, there is the signature of the witness Frederick George Wooley, said to be a director of a limited company Napier (.....) of E14. E14
would have been closer to where Dad
was living at the time.
This is Dad's union card showing that he was enrolled into Section 1 of the Millwall Branch of the Amalgamated Engineering Union on 17 June 1929.
By the mid-1930s, Dad was working for the Cooperative Wholesale Society in Silvertown. His father was the foreman, so perhaps he used his influence to get Dad a job once his apprenticeship was completed. In 1940, the factory was destroyed in a bombing raid and he was relocated to Luton. After a year or so, he was sent to the Coop's factory in Leman Street, London, where he remained until his retirement.
Mum thinks that this photo may have been taken during Dad's apprenticeship. Dad is second from the left, wearing a flat cap and facing away from the camera.
These three photos are of an explanation of how to backflush a laundry boiler. They are in Dad's handwriting and are on headed paper from the CWS, perhaps from the 1940s. I found them tucked into A Grammar of the English Language by Willam Cobbett, published by Ward, Lock & Co., Limited as part of their series of Useful Books. The author is the William Cobbett of Rural Rides fame. The edition is not dated
so I do not know whether it was a school book or whether it was for a liberal studies part to the apprenticeship. The book was originally published in December 1819 with the subtitle especially for the Use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices and Plough-Boys, selling 100,000 copies in the first ten years. The back of the
papers are blank daily time sheets from the Engineering Department.
CWS works, Leman St, Silvertown, London on a date unknown - Dad is 4th from left at back. The panelling at the back has been patched up with a cardboard box for Co-op pure butter.
CWS Works Cricket Team. Dad is 3rd from right in back row.
Retirement Presentation at the CWS works, Leman St, Silvertown, London in 1972.
Domestic Servant
Clara Abbott, née Catlin (Scarlett?)
Clara is shown as being a Domestic Servant in the 1871 census at the age of 15, whilst living at the Royal Standard Public House, Mount Street, Ipswich. It is not known whether she was a servant for the pub or was just lodging there. In the 1881 census she is shown as a cook and domestic servant at 1 Paget Road, Ipswich, the home of Mr William Curling, a Seed Merchant. Clara was one of four servants. From 1881 to 1883 she was a parlour maid at Torwood, Wimbledon Park
Road, which was used by F Battery 1st Brigade Royal
Artillery. This is her reference on leaving Torwood to marry.
Rose Ellen Treacher
Mum thinks that Gran had to leave school at the age of 13 to look after her brothers, presumably because her mother, Clara, was an alcoholic. By the age of 15, in the 1901 census, she is shown as being a Domestic Servant but living at home. In 1908 we know from the postcards, which Granddad sent to her from the Royal Tournament, that she was in service at Ferndale, Westcombe Park Road. The 1908 electoral register shows the voter's name as Frank William Lucas. The house is one of about thirty in the road with no house number. Ferndale is listed as the twentieth house after number 190 and the seventeenth after Christ Church Vicarage. It seems as though the house has now gone, as much of the even numbered side of the road has been rebuilt and the numbers do not now go up to 190. There is a block of flats called Ferndale Court, which seems to be in about the right place to be on the site of Ferndale. In the 1901 census Mr Lucas is said to be the headmaster of a grammar school, and the roads which are included in the same ward as Ferndale suggest this area too. Mum thinks that it may have had army connections, but there is nothing in the censuses to support this. Ferndale also appears in the 1891 census when a Banker's Clerk and his family is in residence. It is not in the 1881 census and Westcombe Park Road does not seem to have existed in the 1871 census. It is not in the 1911 census.
Nothing is known for certain about this Money Order, or even whether the envelope is the one in which it originally came. If it is the correct envelope, then the address would date it to about 1901 to 1904. The date on the order seems to be the 1 October. The order is from the Army, so is presumably something to do with her father, Samuel. Now Samuel died on the 1 October 1904, so the order may have been pension owing to him or perhaps a death gratuity, although it
seems
unlikely that it would have been issued on the day of death. £5 2s 9d would have been a lot of money then, so it seems strange that it was not cashed. Perhaps this was his regular pension and could not be cashed because of his death.
Others
Others who have worked as a domestic servant are Mary Coooper (née Inwood), Margaret Ann Jeffries (née Fisher), Susan Jeffries (née Cooper), Janet Chalmers, Agnes Flaws (née Riddoch), Isabella Flaws (née Laughton), Jessie Treacher (née Flaws), Emma Scarlett (née Catlin).
The Sea
I must go down to the sea again,
To the lonely sea and sky.
I left my vest and socks there,
I wonder if they're dry.
Frederick Treacher
Granddad's career in the Royal Navy is dealt with elsewhere in the Occupation Section.
James Carpenter
James Carpenter is described as a mariner in the 1851 census. He is not shown in the 1841 census, so he was probably at sea; his wife is shown with her parents. By the time of his daughter, Margaret Ann's, christening on 17 July 1853, he was working as a Dock Labourer, a job that he was also doing in the 1861 census. No occupation is shown in the 1871 census.
In the 1881 census James is shown as being a Shipkeeper on the SS Castlemaine in Poplar. I thought at first that SS Castlemaine might be the steamer owned at some time by the Black Ball Line of Australian Packets, which sailed between the UK and Australia and New Zealand. However, the Assistant Curator of the Liverpool Maritime Museum says in an e-mail that this ship sank in a storm off Ireland in 1881 before the census. He said that the Lloyd's register shows another Castlemaine
(Ship number 77002) built in 1877, belonging to J & E Wilson of London and registered with the Port of London.
The photograph, taken about the time of the 1881 census, is of sailing ships moored in East India Docks, which was only a mile or two from the Poplar Dock.
John Flaws
There are three documents showing that John Flaws was a sailor. They are the birth, marriage and death registrations of his son, Peter. The death registration also shows that he later became a crofter.
Isaac Turner
The 1841 census is the only document showing his employment.
William Fisher, John Fisher (Snr) and John Fisher (Jnr)
Three generations who worked as shipwrights in the London Docks.