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Some Special Interests => Occupation Interests => Topic started by: wookietoo on Saturday 24 February 07 17:33 GMT (UK)
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Any body help please ?
I think I've been barking up the wrong tree as I assumed that "Shunter" meant that he drove trains and shunted wagons around.
However, does anybody know if this just referred to somebody who moved parcels around please ?
I have a marriage certificate for 1902 that shows both the fathers and grooms occupations as "shunter"
The son became a father in 1904, and his occupation on the birth certificate is railway porter.
On the censuses I have found two possible contenders where both names/birth years are correct. The father on the 1891 and 1901 censuses is a railway guard, the son in 1901 is a parcel porter.
Now, can a porter and a shunter be the same/similar thing ?
The chap born in 1904 is my grandfather, and so far I have been banging my head against a brick wall.
Any help very gratefully accepted.
Mike
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Hi Mike
This link may help.
http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/p.html
Cheers Sandy
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Hello Mike
I wouldn't place too much reliance on job descriptions in things like census returns and especially marriage certs as, like today, our ancestors were often a little economical with the truth and they would from time to time exaggerate their status.
The fact that they worked on the railway would be good enough for me unless the names were very common (like John Smith)
Colin
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Both jobs are on the railway so I would say it is probably either he had to change jobs or there was a misunderstanding. I have a relative who had been wrongly listed as a Carter because he obviously was trying to describe his occupation and the enumerator having problems put down the word he understood which was carting i.e carrying something. He actually carried the molten steel to be poured out. He should have been down as Teamer. Likewise my grandfather is down on my mother's birth certificate as a sock knitter as during the depression he did anything to make money and for a short time he knitted socks so they can be disparity for a lot of different reasons.
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Hi Mike,
The 2 jobs are different. The "shunter" usually worked as part of a team.
It was their job to connect or disconnect wagons from the engines. I suppose that
if a man could no longer do a shunters job he might be given a job at the station
which would be warmer, drier and less arduous.
Tomkin
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Thanks for all that help !
It "feels" right somehow - but I have had several false hopes.......
Unfortunately the name is George Cooper, and there are millions of them.
Also, family history has it that there is a tie-in with Iver Heath in Bucks, which doesn't fit the two that I have in mind. I can't even identify him well enough to get a birth certificate for my gt-gf, which would really get me started.
I've done really well on other branches, but this one, my fathers and the most important, has gone nowhere for months. I'd love it to be this family, as there are loads of brothers and sisters (one is a signal boy) and the generations before are similar. There are police oficers for instance in the 1850's, which I feel must make interesting research. I just can't make that vital definite connection.....
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I've just found a very interesting entry on a census - somebody is described as a "points shunter" - now that sounds much more viable.
Did people ever totally drop a middle name ?
I have just found that the son was actually called George Burgess Cooper on one census, but plain George elsewhere
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Hi Mike,
Railway points are what you use to direct the wagons etc. from one track
to another. No points, no shunting. ;D therefore no point ;D ;D ;D ;D
Tomkin
Sometimes the "middle" name, especially if it isn't an ordinary christian name, can
point to the surname of the other halves family.
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Yes I know, and the points were moved manually with a big lever beside the track, as well as from inside signal boxes.
I could understand somebody making the move from a guard to a points shunter, but not to a shunter of wagons i.e. an engine driver...........
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But may be he wasn't the engine driver but the man who coupled and uncoupled the trucks as required during the shunting operation. I can see him now, with his long hooked pole, lifting the chain off the coupling hook.
Colin
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Hi Wookietoo
They also used horses for shunting
When wagons needed to be moved and no locomotive was shunting the yard it was common practice to use horses to pull the stock about. The horses wore a special harness with trailing lengths of chain fitted with hooks on the end. The hooks on the shunting harness were attached to metal loops (on wooden chassis) or hooked into holes in the solebars (on metal chassis), these loops and holes were all referred to as 'horse hooks' although the hook was actually on the chain not the wagon. These horses worked either singly or in pairs (one ahead of the other).
Horse shunting required two men, one to handle the horse, the other to deal with attaching the chains to the wagons. To get round the problem of building a working horse you could have the men fitting the harness to the horse in a corner of the yard close to the stables (if any).
ricky
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Now that is very very interesting ricky.
The family legend is that the older George came from a farm in Iver Heath...so may well have been familiar with horses.
It casts doubt on the two Georges though as the elder was a railway guard for 30 years.......
I'm beginning to think I will never get to the bottom of this.
I was up until 2am trawling through every George Cooper in the country on the 1901 census..... :-\
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there were many, many grades on the railway but you would usualy get a job if your father worked there and went to the right church, you would normaly start doing the most lowly job that was available, either a lamp boy call out boy etc etc but a shunter would have directed the shunting movements of train wagons in yards and sidings, he would normaly progress from this job to a guard or yard forman or even a guards inspector, he would not progress to driver as this was an entirly different line of promotion i.e. cleaner, fireman, driver. that is if a driver died or retired and made a vacancy for you, and then possibly a drivers inspector(http://) the shunter would travel around with the engine driver and fireman picking up wagons and shunting them into the sidings required. kali.
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So somebody wouldn't be a guard for 30 years and then drop back to being a shunter then, or be a parcel porter, then a shunter, then a railway porter all within 3 years.
I didn't think so. That's that possibility thrown out of the window then.
I've got a horrible feeling that my two Georges were living seperately in the 1901 census, and that I am not going to be able to pick them out...........
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i would think not, but there is a small possibility that this could happen through illness or disiplinary proceedures, kali.
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I'm still struggling with this one, although the 1911 census has turned up some interesting possibilities.
I realise that this is now off-topic, so please tell me if I need to re-post it elsewhere.
I am fairly certain that I have found the 1904 birth that I was looking for, living with grandparents as his mother is in hospital.
I still haven't found his father or sister in 1911.
However, going back to the 1901 census I found him as an 18 year old with his parents.
My dilemma is that he is too young for the wedding certificate that I have just one year later which says he is 21.
Nowadays we have to supply a birth certificate to get married.... Could anybody tell me whether he could have lied about his age in 1902?
I know that you could lie about your age to join the army at that time, and even in WW2
Occupation-wise 1901 is general labourer, 1902 shunter, 1904 railway porter.
Father is butcher 1901, shunter 1902, unemployed butcher 1911 - stretching things I know but would he have wanted to put father unemployed on his marriage certificate?
Any help appreciated as I have very little hair left to tear out..
P.S. His father hasn't signed the marriage cert as a witness, it is some unknown name, possibly best man. Her mother has signed
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They don't seem to have had to supply birth certificate or anything from my experience. One of my Ancestors never had his birth registered as far as I can tell even though they should have legally done so. In any case if you were marrying without your parents consent you would have to persuade Clergyman you were 21 or above or he would seek their consent. Was the marriage by special licence by any chance or away from where his parents lived? Were any of his family witnesses? If yes to first 2 questions and No to third, chances are he eloped.
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I can't see anything on my copy marriage cert that says special licence, and it says after Banns.
None of his family have signed or witnessed, and it is not her parents but a relative who has witnessed her signature.
Both bride and groom gave the same address. ;)
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My guess is that he was marrying without parental consent. If he was not iving with his relatives. The same address implies that he was marrying out of his parish and so gave his brides address.
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Usual promotional progression on the railway would be as follows: 1) Starting grade Porter, or labourer etc. 2) Shunter 3) Freight Guard 4) If available Passenger Guard. Further promotion wopuld be into a salaried grade job as Station or Yard Inspector, and then possibly Station Master.
A person could and sometimes was demoted as part of a discipline process, so it is possible a person could be in a higher graded job in 1901 than in 1904. What is not usually possible is for a man to move from this line of promotion to a footplate job, and certainly impossible in this era if he was over 25.
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ok, many thanks.
This branch of my family were a right bunch of ne'erdowells, so demotion is a distinct possibility ;D
The latest birth cert that arrived today is even more mystifying, as he is a munitions worker in 1917......
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I believe that a shunter was a protected job, immune from call up, so he obviously wasn't a shunter in WW1. Had he left the railway or called up into the munitions industry, obviously he was not fit for military service for some reason
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He might have been working on the railways moving munitions in the ammunition factory.
meles