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Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Lanarkshire => Topic started by: paulsplace2009 on Saturday 15 May 10 15:57 BST (UK)
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does anyone have a clue what this is?
cheers
paul
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Good explanation here on wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman
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Hi
there is a posting by Romilly who says
A journeyman is someone still learning their trade and usually apprenticed to a master
so he must have been an apprentice shoemaker
If anyone knows anymore I am sure they will let you know
Carolyn
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A journeyman was and still is, a fully qualified tradesman, having served a fixed term of apprenticeship. He was and still is, entitled to move around from place to place. Apprentices were usually tied to a master for the duration of the apprenticeship, although this practice had long-since ceased by the time I was an apprentice in the 1960s.
The term "master" was only used by the owner of a business, this is still the case today.
No doubt someone else will explain all about "journeyman" and "de jour".
Lodger.
(A journeyman).
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Lots of definitions on the Rootschat Lexicon http://www.rootschat.com/links/08op/
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My G-G-Grandfather, William Kerr spent his whole life in the Boot and Shoe trade in the town of Dumfries. All
the certificates and Census forms plot his life from the age of 14 when he was described as "Apprentice Shoemaker" then later as "Boot Closer" I assume he was working in a large concern where the various parts of making boots and shoes was broken down into various tasks. Then he became "Journeyman Shoemaker" which as has been said above is a qualified Tradesman. Finally he was described as "Master Shoemaker"
All the trades in Dumfries and other towns were strictly controlled by Guilds, or as we know them today, Unions.
Today, anyone can set themselves up in business and call themselves anything they wish, without any formal training or experience. If we stick to the item in question, our shoes are made by children in far off lands, they are repaired here in a Heel Bar, to the best of my knowledge no one outside Bond Street in London has the knowledge to make boots or shoes.
James.
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Hi James
You may not find commercial boot and shoe makers, but you will find them, working for the NHS in orthotic department's throughout the country.
Granted not all hospital orthotic departments have qualified boot and shoe makers but some do.
Yours Aye.
BruceL
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James,
There are lots of people that are still making hand-made shoes & boots - especially those used in re-enactments. I still have a couple of pairs of medieval style from when I used to do war of the roses battles. As far as I'm aware because of the way the shoes where made they can not be made by machine.
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Funnily enough,it was the kerrs in my family tree that were shoemakers!!
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Hello, one of my old relatives, George McArthur, was also a Journeyman shoe maker in the 1841 census. He lived on Calder street in Lochwinnoch. I wish I was able to find out where he worked, or if he worked for him self.I see there were two or three shoe stores on High Street, but he wasnt listed as a proprietor.
Bert
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So Google tells us that a journey man was a skilled worker ( ie not an apprentice) who worked for someone else usually per day.
shume australia
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The shoe-shops may have been shop & workshop combined. Shoes on display in front of shop and shoemakers working behind. A small establishment might have only a few workers. A successful master shoemaker with large premises in a big town might have as many as 20.
Shoemakers might also have been outworkers in their own homes, completing orders for a master-shoemaker.
Wives and daughters of shoemakers were sometimes employed as boot-closers.
Shoemaking was becoming industrialised in mid-19th century.
If you read the rest of the thread and read the link, you will see that a journeyman worked for an employer, not on his own account. He would not have been a proprietor. If he wanted to progress to being a master he was required to create his "masterpiece" to the specification and satisfaction of the local guild. A master-shoemaker also needed to be numerate and literate in order to take measurements and keep records of his customers.
In order to set up on his own, he would have needed money to buy an initial supply of leather and any tools and equipment he didn't already have. Rent for premises might have to be found. He might need a loan for which he would have to provide surety.
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"to the best of my knowledge no one outside Bond Street in London has the knowledge to make boots or shoes."
Really?
https://www.apetogentleman.com/best-british-shoe-brands/
Imber
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No doubt someone else will explain all about "journeyman" and "de jour".
I see no-one else has, so here goes. The basic French word for 'day' is 'jour' but in the sense of duration it is 'journée'. A qualified tradesman working for a master was normally paid by the day, or 'journée'. Adjust the pronunciation to sound a bit like 'journey', and tack on '-man', and you have 'journeyman'.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives as one of the meanings of the word 'journey' "A day's work.
A day's labour; hence, a certain fixed amount of daily labour; a daily spell or turn of work . Obsolete exc. dialect. in journey, at work as a day-labourer (obsolete)". and the earliest recorded use in this sense dates from 1393.
The more common modern usage of the word 'journey' to mean 'travel' is basically the same word, derived from its original sense of distance travelled during one day.
But while a journeyman could, and quite often did, travel around and hire himself out to masters elsewhere, the word journeyman itself does not imply or even hint at travelling.
Oxford English Dictionary again: "Journeyman: One who, having served his apprenticeship to a handicraft or trade, is qualified to work at it for days' wages; a mechanic who has served his apprenticeship or learned a trade or handicraft, and works at it not on his own account but as the servant or employee of another; a qualified mechanic or artisan who works for another. Distinguished on one side from apprentice, on the other from master."
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"to the best of my knowledge no one outside Bond Street in London has the knowledge to make boots or shoes."
Really?
https://www.apetogentleman.com/best-british-shoe-brands/
Imber
Good grief, Imber, where does that come from? Bertie Wooster?
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Back in the day, the trade guilds would not permit a newly-qualified apprentice shoemaker (for example) to set himself up as a master-shoemaker & employ other men. He had to undertake his "Wanderjahre!" as a "Journeyman" & set off to gain experience by working for other masters! In some countries the wanderjahre could be as much as three years.
Skoosh.
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"to the best of my knowledge no one outside Bond Street in London has the knowledge to make boots or shoes."
Really?
https://www.apetogentleman.com/best-british-shoe-brands/
Imber
Good grief, Imber, where does that come from? Bertie Wooster?
A real gentlemen should not have to pose such a question Forfarian but now I recall you are in fact a lady I will humour you and merely comment that it's more James Bond than Bertie Wooster:
https://www.jamesbondlifestyle.com/tags/shoes
Imber
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Thank you. I'm surprised they didn't have a ceremonial burning of that particular title in Northamptonshire.
I have never claimed to be a gentleman :)
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to the best of my knowledge no one outside Bond Street in London has the knowledge to make boots or shoes.
James.
Not quite true James. Until about a couple of decades or so ago, Accrington & Rossendale College, Lancashire, used to teach shoemaking from design to the finished article and at the end of each year the students would exhibit their wares to the public walking along a catwalk modelling the shoes they'd made, usually colourful high heeled leather ones, which obviously needed a knowledge of engineering. At the time there were several shoemaking concerns in the Rossendale Valley (Lancashire). When government policy changed to providing more academic subjects, the tutor moved to another town, opened up his own premises and carried on teaching the skills needed to make shoes.
I'd like to share another memory with you. I'm from a large seaport in east Yorkshire. Back in the 1940s onwards I used to see a man sitting all day long in an ordinary bay windowed terrace house. He was a shoemaker sitting cross legged in his front window handmaking shoes. My brother-in-law was an upwardly mobile person and back in the 1970s he commissioned the shoemaker to make his shoes at a cost of an eye watering £60.00 per pair.
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Re Rena reply #18. One of the towns in the Rossendale Valley is aptly called Waterfoot. ;D
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Back in the day, the trade guilds would not permit a newly-qualified apprentice shoemaker (for example) to set himself up as a master-shoemaker & employ other men. He had to undertake his "Wanderjahre!" as a "Journeyman" & set off to gain experience by working for other masters!
I don't think there was any actual obligation to go very far afield, though many young journeymen did indeed take the opportunity to see a bit of the world.
If the master with whom he served his apprentice wanted to take him on as a journeyman, there was nothing to prevent this. But he did have to work as a journeyman for several years before being accepted as a master and allowed to train apprentices of his own.
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Re Rena reply #18. One of the towns in the Rossendale Valley is aptly called Waterfoot. ;D
;D ;D
Used to chauffeur my old man through it once a week to take him too and from Bacup He was quite capable of driving himself there - but it was the thought of him driving back after a drink that I worried about ;D
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Kerrs in my family were also Master Shoemakers/Journeymen