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The Decline of the Family Work Unit in Black Country Nailing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Eric Hopkins
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In his study of the effect of technological change on families working in the Lancashire cotton industry in the first half of the nineteenth century, Smelser has argued that the family as a work unit was disrupted by the introduction of larger mules, which required more child assistants in the spinning mill than one family alone could provide. The result was the disruption of the family work unit, hitherto preserved in the earlier cotton mills, and the decline of the old apprentice-ship system based on kinship.1 It should be instructive, therefore, to attempt a comparative investigation of conditions in the family work unit in Black Country nailing in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the trade faced increasing competition from factory-made nails and died a lingering death similar in some ways to that of handloom weaving.2 For the purposes of this article, the family work team of the nailers of Stourbridge and district will be examined in the light of the quantitative evidence of the 1851 census returns, and then the decline and disintegration of the work unit will be discussed, with particular reference to changes in familial roles. Here of course it will be impossible to separate work roles from social roles within the family, since so much time was spent by all members within the nailshop, and the distinctive life-style of nailers was strongly conditioned by their mode of work. Lastly, some suggestions will be made as to the causes of decline, and the general significance of the changes which took place in the family.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , August 1977 , pp. 184 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1977

References

page 184 note 1 Smelser, Neil J., Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (1969), ch. X, especially pp. 196–99.Google Scholar

page 184 note 2 A useful description of the state of the trade in the 1860's is to be found in Ball, Ephraim, “The Hand Made Nail Trade”, in: Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District, ed. by Timmins, Samuel (1866).Google Scholar General accounts of Black Country nailing are available in Court, W. H. B., The Rise of the Midland Industries 1600–1838 (1938),Google ScholarAllen, H. C., The Industrial Development of Birmingham and the Black Country, 1860–1927 (1966 edition)Google Scholar, and Davies, E. I., “The Hand-made Nail Trade of Birmingham and District” (unpublished Birmingham M.A. thesis, 1933).Google Scholar Methods of making nails are described in Moseley, A. F., “The Nailmakers”, in: West Midland Regional Studies, II (1968).Google Scholar

page 185 note 1 The size of the works in the principal industries in the area throughout the nineteenth century is examined in my article “Changes in the Scale of the Industrial Unit in Stourbridge and District, 1815–1914”, in West Midlands Studies, VIII (1975).

page 185 note 2 For a detailed occupational analysis, see my article “Working Conditions in Victorian Stourbridge”, in: International Review of Social History, XIX (1974).Google Scholar

page 185 note 3 These figures may be compared with Peter Laslett's conclusion that the mean household size in England remained fairly constant at 4.75 or a little under from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Peter Laslett, Household and Family in Past Time (1972), p. 126.

page 185 note 4 For the purpose of the analysis contained in the table, the terms “nuclear family” and “extended family” have been employed in the simplest possible sense to distinguish between separate family units, those on the one hand containing a man and/or woman with or without children, and, on the other hand, families containing kin other than offspring. This classification is open to the objection that one-person families are not in fact “families”, but the number of these in the sample was extremely small, and their inclusion simplified classification. For examples of more refined definitions and categorisation, see Laslett, op. cit., pp. 28–32.

page 187 note 1 The number of middle-class families in Lye and Wollescote was very small; there was not a single doctor, architect, surveyor or solicitor resident there. A count based on the enumerator books gives a figure of 288 for middle-class families out of a total population of 5, 901.

page 187 note 2 On this point generally, see Wrigley, E. A., Population and History (1969), pp. 161–63.Google Scholar

page 188 note 1 Similar conclusions are reached for York in the years 1841 and 1851 in Armstrong, W. A., “The Social Structure of York, 1841–1851: an essay in quantitative history” (unpublished Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, 1967), ch. V.Google Scholar

page 188 note 2 The term “extended family” has been used very loosely in the past, and not always so as to include in-laws. For an interesting attempt at a definition, see Mitchell, G. Duncan, A Dictionary of Sociology (1968), pp. 76–78.Google Scholar

page 189 note 1 The view has been expressed that there was no difference in this connection between a co-residing kinsman and one living next door or up the street. Anderson, Michael, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (1971), pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

page 189 note 2 It is perhaps appropirate to mention the classic study of related working-class families living in the same street in the mid twentieth century: Young, M. and Willmott, P., Family and Kinship in East London (1957).Google Scholar

page 189 note 3 The comparison with Preston in 1851 is very marked, where lodgers were present in 23 per cent of the households, and constituted “a sociologically significant element in the population”. Anderson, op. cit., pp. 46–47.

page 190 note 1 For St Monday in the Stourbridge area, see my “Working Conditions in Victorian Stourbridge”; for the wider context, see Thompson, E. P., “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”, in: Past & Present, No 38 (1967).Google Scholar

page 190 note 2 Children's Employment Commission, Appendix to Second Report [Parliamentary Papers, 1843, XV], pp. 80–81, evidence of Mr Betts, surgeon to the Stourbridge nion; Reports of Inspectors of Factories, April 1875, report of Mr Brewer.

page 190 note 3 Children's Employment Commission, ibid.

page 190 note 4 Ibid.

page 190 note 5 This refers to the larger oliver used to cut cold the largest nails or spikes, which could only be operated by a woman if a man or boy jumped on the treadle behind her. Smaller Olivers could be used by a woman alone.

page 190 note 6 According to Robertson, D., Recollections of Lye Parish, 1866–1875 (1914),Google Scholar there were 53 public houses for a population of about 7,000. In addition, there were numerous beer shops and wobble shops, i.e. unlicensed premises which sold beer.

page 191 note 1 Evidence of Inspector Hoare in the Third Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating System [PP, 1889, XIII].

page 191 note 2 For a general survey of the position of women in the nailing trade in the Black Country in the 1890's, see the report by Eliza Orme on the condition of women in the nail, chain and bolt making industries of the Black Country, in Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, Group A, Vol. II [PP, 1892, XXXVI], pp. 571–75.

page 191 note 3 See the evidence of Mr Betts, the surgeon, noted above.

page 192 note 1 Marriage register of St Mary's, Old Swinford, for 1841. There were 16 brides under age in all from Lye and Wollescote, of whom 9 were nailers, while of the remaining 7 the occupations of 5 were not given. It is quite likely that some of these 5 were nailers.

page 192 note 2 Report by Eliza Orme, loc. cit., p. 573.

page 192 note 3 Figures based on a one-in-ten sample of places of birth in the 1851 enumerator books. In Preston, 53 per cent of the population had been born outside the town's boundaries, Anderson, op. cit., p. 203.

page 192 note 4 See for example Worcestershire Chronicle, 1 February 1860 and 3 April 1861.

page 192 note 5 Noake, J., The Rambler (1854), pp. 253–56.Google Scholar

page 192 note 6 Robertson, op. cit.

page 192 note 7 Home Office Papers 40/48, Disturbances.

page 193 note 1 Stourbridge Observer, 14 January 1874. Commotions were common enough in Lye, where a general free-for-all was known as a Cole's Wake. No doubt family feeling on occasion added an edge to disputes of this kind.

page 193 note 2 Allowances must always bemade for possible errors and omissions by individual enumerators, but there seem to be no significant differences in this respect between the wives of miners, finished-iron workers, brickmakers and glassmakers. On the subject of mistakes in entering women's occupations in enumerator books, see P. M. Tillott, “Sources of inaccuracy in the 1851 and 1861 censuses”, in: Nineteenth Century Society: Essays in the use of quantitative methods for the study of social data, ed. by E. A. Wrigley (1972), pp. 121–22.

page 193 note 3 By way of comparison, most women workers in the new cotton mills also seemed to have stayed in the home after marriage. See Pinchbeck, Ivy, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (1930), pp. 197–99Google Scholar; Hewitt, Margaret, Wives and Mothers in Victorian England (1598), p. 290;Google Scholar Anderson, op. cit., p. 71, who suggests, that in Preston 26 per cent of wives living with their husbands worked, but that probably only 15 per cent of wives with children worked away from home for most of the day. Per contra, it has been estimated that in Oldham and Northampton over one-third of mothers with children aged eleven or under went out to work, Foster, John, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974), pp. 96–97.Google Scholar See also Richards, Eric, “Women in the British Economy since about 1700: An Interpretation”, in: History, LIX (1974), pp. 345–48.Google Scholar

page 194 note 1 There was probably little difference in the aggregate between the hours worked at home and away from home, though the domestic worker could choose his own hours so as to include both St Monday and working all night on Friday.

page 194 note 2 Reports of Inspectors of Factories, April and October 1875.

page 194 note 3 Evidence of Inspector Hoare, loc. cit., p. 457.

page 194 note 4 Evidence of Thomas Cole of Lye Waste, ibid., p. 352.

page 194 note 5 Report by Eliza Orme, loc. cit., pp. 573–74, and evidence of William Price, ibid., pp. 454–62.

page 194 note 6 The Black Country and Its Industries, published by the County Express (1903), see accounts of the firms of J. Skelding and B. Baker.

page 195 note 1 Based on an analysis of the registers of St Mary's, Old Swinford; St James's, Wollaston; Christchurch, Lye; St Thomas's, Stourbridge; St Mark's, Stamber-mill; St John's, Stourbridge; and Holy Trinity, Amblecote. The evidence for the desertion of nailing by the young is confirmed by the Baptismal Register of Lye Waste Primitive Methodist Church, which does not contain a single nailer for the period 1900–14.

page 195 note 2 See marriage registers of Christchurch, Lye, for the years concerned.

page 196 note 1 So many local factors may operate to determine the extent to which relatives may form part of a household – for instance, a shortage of accommodation, or the need for an older person to look after children – that comparisons of one town with another in this respect may not be very meaningful. However, Anderson, in Laslett, op. cit., p. 220, gives the following percentages of households with kin in 1851: York 22; Preston 23; Rural Lancashire parishes 27. Foster, op. cit., p. 99, gives Northampton 14; Oldham 21; South Shields 16.

page 196 note 2 The population in Wollescote rose by 64 per cent from 1,972 in 1871 to 3,060 in 1881, with a further rise to 3,458 in 1891.

page 197 note 1 Ball, “The Hand Made Nail Trade”, loc. cit.

page 197 note 2 Management Committee Minutes of the Lye Branch of Iron Plate Workers Union, 1 January 1897.

page 197 note 3 Stourbridge Advertiser, 2 March, 13 July, 3 August, 12 October and 23 November 1912.