M - Milliner

Hat makers - right ? 

Wrong.

My 2 x great grandmother doesn't appear on many census' or other official documents. Only one includes an occupation. Mary James was born at Broadward Bridge in Shropshire on 18 April 1848 and baptised two days later at the parish church in Clungunford.

At the 1851 census she, her parents and elder sister were staying/living with her aunt and uncle in High Street in the centre of Dudley. Her uncle was a tailor employing two men, so business must have been good for him. In 1857 Mary's aunt Mary died from breast cancer. The family were still living in Dudley as Mary's mother Ann was the informant on her sister's death certificate. At some time between September 1857 and the 1871 census, Mary's mother died, possibly in 1865. They are missing from the 1861 census to be able to narrow down the timeframe further.

The 1871 census taken on 2nd April is the next document where Mary (known as Polly) appears. She is aged 22 now, living with her father and elder sister in Paradise. Nowadays this is adjacent to Buffery Park, in 1871 it was surrounded by gasworks, collieries and pits. Mary's sister Elizabeth (Bessie) is 24 and a Dressmaker while Mary is a Milliner. Perfect, I thought. One sews dresses, the other makes hats.

Well no. In my research for these occupation blogs, I have discovered that until the late 1800's millinery and dressmaking were much of a muchness. It seems that dressmakers sewed dresses, mostly, working with pre-cut pieces of fabric. Milliners on the other hand were more likely to be designing and creating hats for women as well as sewing mantles, capes, cloaks, gloves and petticoats.

Most girls were taught to sew and stitch from an early age, some were apprenticed. Apprenticeships though could be long (up to 7 years for a milliner) and expensive. Girls who were apprenticed earned no wages so their parents would have been required to support them during this time. Mary's father was a widower, so I doubt he had any extra money at his disposal. Perhaps they trained with their uncle, the tailor, for a time or found opportunities elsewhere in their community, since they don't appear to have had any female relatives living nearby.

The clothing industry, which dressmaking and millinery were part of, was the second largest employer of women (the largest being domestic service). In 1871 there are estimated to have been just under a million women employed in the clothing industry in England, the majority being dressmakers and milliners.

Four years after this census on 23 August 1875 Mary married Thomas Kelsey, a Railway Guard, and most likely left the millinery world behind. Just short of another four years on Mary died in May 1879 aged 31 leaving her husband with two children 21 months & 9 months. 

The children lived with their grandfather and Aunt, who remained a dressmaker for the rest of her life, until at least 1885.

L - Labourer

Talk to anyone researching their family history and if they tell you they don't have a tree filled with Ag Labs - they are probably fibbing. 

We all hope to find someone illustrious in our trees, but most of us come from good working class stock. Farm labourers, miners, tradespeople, domestic servants. Most of us read church records and see Labourer as the occupation given on baptismal and marriage records. Sometimes a trade or a specific type of labourer appears to give a clue about the type of work that ancestor carried out. When we scour the pages of census', especially earlier ones, we see family after family listed as Ag Labs or Farm Labourers.

So what did an Agricultural Labourer do ?

Pretty much anything and everything that a farm hand might do today. The more skills they had, the more wages they might earn. These ancestors of ours weren't no hopers doing menial unskilled work because it was all that they were fit to do. They were capable, fit and knowledgeable about all things agricultural; they came from generations in the same role and familiar with working with animals and cropping. They followed this career path because it was what their families had done for generations and most probably it was the only choice in rural England. Some boys might have become blacksmiths, farriers, bakers, cheesemongers, butchers, coachmen or millers - but many of those trades were passed through families too. Some agricultural workers may have found they had stronger skills in one area compared to another and seen an opportunity to improve their status in society.

Their skills included ploughing, harrowing, rolling, sowing seed, tending and weeding a variety of crops, harvesting with a scythe, sickle and spade as well as laying up and threshing during the winter. There were animals to be milked, herded and shorn. Some would have needed to assist shepherds with lambing and calving. They would have also been required to assist with farm maintenance, tree trimming, building drystone walls, trimming and laying hedges, cutting, drying and stacking hay, fencing and making gates, making or mending roofs which might be slate, tile or thatch and pointing brickwork. Farm roads, tracks and paths all need to be maintained as well as ditches, culverts and ponds. They would need to have good meteorological skills too, recognising the changes in the weather and the benefits or dangers that might bring for their crops and animals. That's quite a job description. 

Some moved around the country with or without their families following the different harvests and cycles in the farming year. Others stayed for generations in one parish.

Usually gaining a subsistence living require the efforts of the whole family. A labourer's wife would be responsible for their own poultry, often a house cow as well her day to day domestic duties. Often, she might accept paid work of this nature, or for weeding vegetables, fruit picking, binding sheaves and stooking at harvest time or picking stones.

Children contributed as well, scaring birds, picking stones, weeding fields and plaiting straw. Older girls would help with domestic chores and handcrafts, boys from about the age of seven worked alongside their fathers in the fields. School for the children of labourers was almost unheard of until at least 1870. They might have been spared for an hour each week to attend Sunday School, but even if there was a charity school near to where they lived, they couldn't be spared from the farm work to attend.

So next time you see Ag Lab next to your ancestor's name, don't roll your eyes and think "another one", be proud. See if you can find out what types of things they might have been skilled in. Did a son or grandson become a threshing machine operator, a sawyer, a thatcher or a miller ? Perhaps the skills required to branch out on their own were skills they learned working alongside their father or grandfather.

K - Knight

What does a boy born in Wellington, who grew up in Woodland Road Johnsonville, attended Johnsonville Primary School and then Wellington College have in common with "blue babies" ?

What even is a blue baby ? It is not a term heard so much these days but was given to those infants born with congenital heart defects. Hole-in-the-heart babies. Atrial Septal Defect, Atrioventricular Septal Defect and Ventricular Septal Defect are three of the congenital heart defects caused when the wall between the ventricles in the heart do not close completely before birth. Today there are about 1800 babies born each year in the US with this condition. 

Who is this boy from the northern suburbs of Wellington ? 

His name was Brian Boyes. After leaving Wellington College he went on to enrol in a medical intermediate year at Victoria University before studying medicine at Otago University in Dunedin. While at Otago he changed his name by deed-poll following his mother's wishes and possibly coinciding with the loss of his father. For the remainder of his life, he was known as Brian Barratt-Boyes.

He graduated from Otago in 1946 with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery, later a Master of Surgery in 1962. He lectured at Otago after his graduation and spent a year as a house surgeon at Wellington Hospital. He was appointed as a registrar at Palmerston North Hospital in 1950 and became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1952.

The senior surgeon at Palmerston North had connections with the Mayo Clinic in the United States, and it was through those connections that Brian obtained his first overseas fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery from 1953-1955. While at the Mayo he became interested in heart and lung bypass machines. In 1956 on a Nuffield Travelling Scholarship, he spent a year in Bristol, England. While there he had the opportunity to further develop the British designed Melrose bypass machine.

In 1957 he was recruited back to New Zealand by the surgeon-in-charge at Greenlane Hospital in Auckland as senior cardiothoracic surgeon with a remit to set up open-heart surgery. By this time Greenlane had been designated the sole cardiac surgical centre for the entire country. Brian would remain at Greenlane for the rest of his career despite receiving many offers from overseas through that time.

A heart-lung bypass machine had been imported from Britain by the Auckland Hospital Board in 1957 at his urging. It cost £3000. When it arrived, some parts were missing, and some Kiwi ingenuity was employed to manufacture and modify the missing pieces.

Brian Barratt-Boyes performed the first hole-in-the-heart surgery on a 10 year old on 3 September 1958 and made history in New Zealand. He was involved in the development of an external pacemaker that enabled the heart to be restarted after bypass surgery. The first permanent pacemaker was implanted in 1961.

He didn't rest here though, going on to claim long-term international achievement in the field of heart valve replacements by pioneering homograft (human donor) replacement valves as opposed to artificial valves.

In 1965 he organised a conference of overseas cardiac surgeons in Auckland, enhancing Greenlane's standing as an international cardiac centre of repute. His former mentor from the Mayo Clinic was guest of honour and amongst the attendees was a young unknown heart surgeon from Cape Town, South Africa; Christiaan Barnard who would perform the world's first heart transplant in 1967,

In 1969 by using the technique of deep hypothermia, introduced in Japan, but perfected in New Zealand by himself, Brian Barratt-Boyes was able to perform open-heart surgery on neonates. Before this, only palliative operations had been performed on small babies, in the hope they could be kept alive until they were able to withstand major surgery.

He was made a Commander of the Order of the Bristish Empire (CBE) in 1966 and knighted in 1971. He received many awards and honours within New Zealand and from overseas. He was a talented pianist (several other cardiac surgeons I have known seem to share this skill) and carpenter.

Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes died in Cleveland, Ohio on 8 March 2006 from complications following a cardiac surgery.

He was a 3rd cousin to my father, their great grandparents Mary and Henry John Barratt being siblings. Mary, the eldest of the family who will have carried memories of London in the 1830s with her, and Henry the youngest, born in Wellington in this new land of opportunity.

Sources: Te Ara, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography  & New Zealand History

J - Jeweller

Henry Davys was the youngest son of Thomas Davys and Marianne nee Norman, and was a first cousin of my great grandfather Francis. He was baptised at St Michael's Church in the parish of Raddington, Somerset 160 years ago on 11 August 1861. St Michael's was a short walk up Church Hill from his childhood home Kingston Farm.

Henry had five older sisters, two older brothers and one younger sister. As the youngest son, carrying on running the farm was most likely not an option he ever considered. Besides the lease for three lifetimes was coming to an end. Both of his elder brothers died, one aged eight years and the other as a young man.

In 1871, when his family were recorded on the census living in Bedminster he was still at school. His eldest sister and brother were employed as Draper's Assistants and two other sisters were Draper's Apprentices. It is unclear when the family returned to Raddington or whether they all returned for a time. But at the next census in 1881 Henry was in Bristol and his sister Mary Ann was living in Westbury-on-Trym, to the north of Bristol working as a Draper's Assistant.

Henry was living at 22 High Street, Bristol, on the north side of the River just across the bridge. He was living with John Hooper, a Jeweller. Henry was a Jeweller's Assistant. Their immediate neighbours on High Street were Confectioners, Watchmakers, Accountants, Tailors and Outfitters, Draper's Assistants and another Jeweller.

Ten years later at the 1891 census, Henry was lodging with Edward Wyatt and was still working as Jeweller's Assistant but it is unknown who he was employed by. On the 2nd of September 1896 he married Mary Liddiard in Knowle, Somerset, which is now a suburb of Bristol. Interestingly although they were married in Bristol, Henry gave his residence as the parish of St Paul, Truro, Cornwall and his occupation was Watchmaker.

He had obviously relocated to Truro at some point between 1891 and 1896 and this was where he would spend the rest of his life. In 1901 he is recorded on the cenus at 10 & 11 Cathedral Lane in Truro. A lease document found indexed at National Archives, undigitised and held at the Archives and Cornish Studies Service reveals that a 14 year lease was signed in June or September 1896 (tricky when you haven't seen the actual document) for this address and included Henry Davys, jeweller and Theophilus Lutey Dorrington, watchmaker and jeweller. They were to keep in repair the shop and shutters, and paint two coats of paint on the exterior every four years and the interior every seven years, They were not permitted to make structural alterations.

Theophilus had been a watchmaker in Church Lane since the 1860s. Perhaps he  had advertised for an Assistant and that was how Henry came to move there. They formed a partnership - Dorrington and Davys which operated at least until the death of Theophilus in 1911. He was a member of the United Grand Lodge of England and perhaps it was this lodge which Henry also became a member of.

Henry and Mary only had one son. At the 1911 census the family were living at 22 Lemon Lane and Henry's sister Emma was visiting or living with them. Mary died in 1912 and Henry in 1916. A great account of Henry's funeral and information about his life appeared in The West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser on 28 December 1916.

Theophilus and Henry provided cups, and trophies to many local events documented in the newspapers through the years, and advertised a wide range of jewellery, watches and spectacles.

Christmas Supplement to The West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser 18 December 1902

A 19th century wall clock with painted circular dial by Dorrington & Davys of Truro sold by Truro Auction Centre in 2015.

I - Icecream Vendor

Thomas Morrison was born in Wellington in 1846. His father, Daniel, was a sea captain and died from injuries sustained in a shipwreck when Thomas was 12. His mother, Elizabeth Cooper,  was a younger sister of my great great graandfather. Thomas was the eldest child with five younger siblings. His mother remarried the following year and had another six or seven children before she and her husband relocated to the West Coast of the South Island.

Thomas' sister married in Kaikoura in 1870, but it is unclear where Thomas lived as a young man. In 1880 he appears on the electoral in Christchurch, living in Montreal Street and working as a fish hawker. By this time he was also married, although there doesn't seem to be a record of a marriage, with two young daughters.

On 28 March 1882, he and his family sailed from Auckland on the City of Sydney, part of a group of Mormons making their way to Utah. They arrived in San Francisco about three weeks later and made their way over land to Salt Lake City. Shortly after arriving their youngest daughter died aged 19 months.

Eighteen months later, Thomas married a second time, two months before his first son was born. He went on to have nine more children with Emily and four with Susanna. Thomas started a business in 1883 selling hot pies from a box cart with hot coals in Temple Square. This business, Morrison's Meat Pies, was taken over by his sons and operated for over 100 years. He also had an icecream cart business which he operated with his sons.

One of his sons, George, got into a skirmish with a customer, a disagreement over change tendered for icecream in July 1901. The customer threw an apple at his head and threatened him with a whip, the boy drew gun, loaded with blanks and fired it. Was the business so prone to those type of encounters that a 16 year old boy was compelled to carry a gun ? Maybe it was the heat of midsummer and the late hour of the day. 

I wonder what Thomas thought when he was told his son had been arrested and conveyed to the Police Station. 

Deseret News, Salt Lake City, 8 July 1901, Page 2

H - Housewife

 Housewife.

Such a misnomer for an occupation. For many, for many years, it was much maligned. Undervalued and misunderstood with a multi-faceted, often changing, job description and unpaid.

I remember when I was growing up hearing discussions about changing the title, working out what the financial value of the role would be - if you could ever find anyone or anyway to pay. Home Duties, Domestic Engineer, Manager - Home Operations etc.

We have progressed a little in the last four or five decades. The work carried out at home, caring for children, budgeting and planning for meals, cooking and cleaning has gained some recognition. Still no monetary gain though. Additional duties include chauffeur; ferrying children to a multitude of extracurricular activities, to and from school, and social engagements (birthday parties and play dates), IT guru, homework supervisor. Housewives (and Househusbands) seem to be able to turn their hand to anything.

Many of them hold down full, or part-time PAID roles as well.

Not too long ago women had no place in the paid workforce. In some countries it is still so. But women have always pulled their weight. Managed big houses, supervising staff, helping on the farm, milking, looking after poultry, doing laundry, minding children. It is nothing new.

What has changed slightly in society is the way we have begun to acknowledge this work and value the contribution it makes to the future.

I have read many census', church records, electoral rolls over many years in my family history research. On so many documents women's occupations are not acknowledged. The exception seemingly those occupations generating a little income; milliners, dressmakers, glovers, lace workers etc. Mostly women's occupations are just not recorded. Sometimes they are there initially on a census form; farmer's wife, farmer's daughter, housewife and later crossed out as if they just don't matter. In 1939 at the beginning of World War Two when the United Kingdom recorded the names, birthdates and occupations of its citizens in readiness for rationing once more women seemed invisible, their contribution to society meaningless. 

"Unpaid domestic duties" summed it all up really.

Are you one of these superwomen ? Juggling a paid job and a busy at home job ? Caring for children, or elderly family members and making sure they are all fed, clothed, warm and clean ?

What title are you going to use for yourself when you complete that next application form, registration form or census ?

G - Green Grocer

Henry James was baptised in Leintwardine, Herefordshire on 17 August 1819. His mother Elizabeth was unmarried, and his father is not mentioned. Elizabeth married John Richards a few years later and had at least 6 children.

On the 1841 census Henry is recorded as a servant for Thomas Hall in Buckton a tiny hamlet just a few miles from Leintwardine. In 1846 he married Ann Thomas, who in 1841 had been a servant at Jay House in the adjacent parish. When their two daughters were baptised at Clungunford their place of residence was given as Broadward, and Henry was a labourer.

By 1851 they had left rural Herefordshire and were recorded as visitors staying with Ann's sister and her family in Dudley. Henry still recorded his occupation as a labourer but by 1871 he had moved into a new line of work. He was living in Paradise Street and recorded as a Gardener. This area of Dudley, Red Hill, Paradise and Dixon's Green had brickworks, a gas works, and a lot of collieries and mine shafts. It doesn't seem like the ideal environment for a garden, but it seems to have been a fairly profitable venture because in subsequent census' he was recorded as a Green Grocer and later a Retired Green Grocer.

Did being a Green Grocer mean he had a store ? Or did he simply grow vegetables and take them to market ?

One of Henry's half-brothers was a Gardener. He took a bit of tracking down late one night when I was trying to work out just how the niece listed on the 1881 census fitted in to the family. John Richards was about 12 years younger than Henry. He wasn't a small time gardener selling his crops at a local market. Instead, he seems to have been gardening on a much larger scale.

In 1851 he was lodging with a family of agricultural labourers, but his occupation was Gardener, which could have been the same as his elder brother. His work led him to many locations which can be traced through the baptisms of his children. He was married in Aston, Warwickshire and his first child baptised in Stoke, Worcestershire. In 1861 he was employed at Coton Hall, Alveley in Worcstershire and living with his young family in the Gardeners Cottage. They remained there for about four years before relocating to Nercwys in Wales where a daughter was baptised. This child turned out to be the niece living with her Uncle Henry in 1881. 

Sadly, John's wife died shortly after this birth in 1865 and he appears to have quickly left the area. Understandable with four young children and no family close by. He didn't waste time though and married again in November 1867 in Shrewbury, Shropshire. He and his second wife had seven more children at various places in Herefordshire; Leintwardine, Ludlow and Downton. There were several large properties in these areas where a Gardener might be gainfully employed. 

In 1871, John isn't on the census with his family in Ludlow, but his wife is recorded as "Gardener's wife (absent)". By 1881 none of the children from the first marriage are with Jane at their home in which by now was Newark in Nottingham, and Jane was a widow. Of those older children, one remained in Ludlow and on the census was living in a lodging house and recorded as an Under Gardener, following in his father's footsteps perhaps. Another was in Dudley with her uncle and the other two like their father haven't left any obvious clues as to their whereabouts.

One day I might unearth them.