RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: joboy on Wednesday 06 October 10 06:52 BST (UK)
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In the early 1800's the Industrial Revolution attracted thousands of folk from the countryside to London and 'aglabs' took on better paid and more constant work than they were getting than they were with unreliablity of farm work.
It is said that at the start of the 19th century 1/5 of Britain's population lived in London.
Five branches in my family tree have been found to have moved there at that period and they came from Ireland, Somerset,Wiltshire,Yorkshire and Berkshire.
Has anybody noted similar situations?
joboy
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Yes, and the work was not just industrial. More wealth in the big cities meant more demand for domestic servants, who were both male and female.
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None of my ancestors moved to London, although g.grandad moved from London to Hull.
Lizzie
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Both my fathers family and my husbands family moved to London in the 1800s. My fathers moved from Suffolk, my husbands fathers family from Ireland, his mothers family from Devon.
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None of my ancestors moved to London, although g.grandad moved from London to Hull.
Lizzie
You must have an interesting family tree if your great grandfather moved from London in the early 1800s.
I also have ancestors who moved away from London but that was in the 17th century to avoid the plague.
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Most of the young women in my Hunts village family became domestic servants in London in the late 1800s. One of them went on to marry one of Queen Victoria's footmen! My gt-grandfather moved to London to become a policeman, but returned to his Hunts village and took up his old job as a shoemaker after around 5 years. By 1880 there were no more ag labs in the family. However, life in the capital was pretty hard, too, especially for poor families, who lived in dreadful cramped and dirty conditions.
Gillg
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Seven out of my eight great-grandparents converged on London between 1871 and 1891 from Sussex, Dorset, Durham, Hampshire & Berkshire. Two sets of young married couples, two as young teenagers with their widowed mothers and younger siblings only and one with both parents and all siblings when the Rector who employed his father as a footman died. All no doubt looking for a better life and a new start, but not always finding it, alas.
Ermy
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All my ancestors started off, as far as I can trace them, in rural villages.
One of my gt x 2 grandfathers, John Smoothy, moved from Essex to London, his wife Ann Chowns from Buckinghamshire to London, both domestic servants.
My Cornish gt grandmother Emma Broad moved to London to work in domestic service [all except one of her sisters followed, and 2 of her brothers emigrated to New Zealand].
My Norfolk grandfather Jeuel Gray and 4 of his brothers came to London. The brothers all joined the police [one in the City and the others in the Met]. Grandfather wasn't able to join as he wasn't tall enough, so he worked in a brewery then a distillers, before opening a picture framer's shop in Stoke Newington. Jeuel's wife Annie was born in London but her father came from a village in Warwickshire and her mother from Cambridge.
By the 1911 census none of my ancestors were ag labs. The agricultural depression, coupled with better transport through the railways and more educational opportunities meant they no longer relied on poorly paid seasonal work. The women were still domestic, but able to travel further afield to find employment.
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My Sussex born ancestor moved to London in 1864 with her Kent born husband. Their baby was just a few months old and she was the firstborn and my ancestor.
My Essex born 3xgreat grandfather and my Oxfordshire born 3xgreat gran wed in London in 1866.
I have a Norfolk branch who moved to London in the 1780s and French Huguenot. Plus I believe some West Country ancestors George and Sarah Coombs born about 1790 moved to London. Sarah is on 1841 but she died before 1851 and George died in 1831.
My Durham born great grandad was in the army and stationed in London during WW1 and met my London born great gran there and he whisked her off to Durham once he left the army.
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I have had several of mine move to London from various counties.
Clark from Somerset about 1806
Flashman from Devon about 1855
Parcell and Muncey from Cambridgeshire about 1895
and Moore from Norfolk about 1850
:)
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Even though my great grandad was in the army I still consider his time in London as an official move there so I have ancestors who moved from Durham, Norfolk, Sussex and the West Country and Essex and Oxon to the Smoke.
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Yes, lots. Stone Masons from Bristol area, ag labs from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire and Devon. I can't help but think they would have had a much better quality of life if they'd stayed in the country though.
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I don't know about quality of life in the country.
When you read that ag labs were often just not paid enough to support their families, let alone the unreliable supply of work, the cold and the necessity of working all day and every day in sickness and in health......I don't think any of the ancestors had a good time, did they, in country or city.
I am endlessly gratefuly for their strengh and resilience without which none of us would be here.
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One of the problems which people had not considered when moving from country to town, was that in the country they had gardens. This meant that they could grow their own fruit and vegetables, keep chickens and a pig, and they could also gather free food such as hazelnuts and blackberries in the autumn.
The stories of 'high wages' in the big cities did lure many people from the depressed country areas, but as Igor said, neither had a particularly good time. In the city the living accommodation was invariably grim, with shared toilets, yards, few washing facilities, and certainly nowhere to grow beans or keep hens. Whilst in the countryside, families were being thrown off their little pieces of land and forced to share cottages.
It must have been so difficult to make that decision - whether to say or go. But at least with the railways it meant that people were mobile and they did have the opportunity to try their luck elsewhere. The Industrial Revolution certainly changed the character of the working class in Britain for ever.
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I don't know about quality of life in the country.
When you read that ag labs were often just not paid enough to support their families, let alone the unreliable supply of work, the cold and the necessity of working all day and every day in sickness and in health......I don't think any of the ancestors had a good time, did they, in country or city.
I am endlessly gratefuly for their strengh and resilience without which none of us would be here.
I think they probably did have quite a lot of happiness in their lives, but I think that their definition of happiness may be different to ours in these modern times :)
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Elizabeth Gaskill's novel "North and South" describes rural and city conditions at that time. They both were tough for working people, in different ways.
meles
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My widowed great-grandmother went in the opposite direction, choosing to move from rural Huntingdonshire to Burnley in industrial Lancashire in the 1880s. Her children, mostly by that time in their teens, soon found work in the factories and other businesses. My grandfather was apprenticed to a draper and some of his other brothers worked on the railways. I think Granddad must have been a bit more delicate than his older brothers!
Gillg
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Also rural dwellers had to work in all kinds of weathers to feed the family and their lives were ruled by daylight at darkness. Pretty much in the city but at least after 1807 there were gas street lamps.
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Hello all, this is my first post on RootsChat so I'll plunge straight in here! I have ancestors who made the move to London from Wells-next-Sea in Norfolk around the beginning of the 18th Century. The culture shock must have been pretty huge I think. Like others have suggested here, it might well have been a case of going from the frying pan into the fire in terms of quality of life. I'm currently comparing the lives of those who moved to London and those in the family who remained in Norfolk. Interesting.
Janet :)
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Sorry folks, that should have read 'the beginning of the 19th Century' - oops! Well, it was my first post!
Janet
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Don't worry, Janet, we've all done something like that. ;D
You can modify your post to correct mistakes. Click on "modify" and amend it, and no-one will be any the wiser! ;)
meles
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Also some people moved to London temporarily or for just a few years. I have come across families in Suffolk and Norfolk in the census where the parents were from there but one or two of their children were born in London then the youngest back in Suffolk. That indicates they moved to London then back to East Anglia after a year or two.
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Apart from one g,g,g,g grandfather (who was German), all my family were already in London by 1800. I haven't been able to go further back except on one line who were Hugenots and arrived in the 1650s.
I don't have a single ag lab in my tree.
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My Suffolk ancestors in the 1500s were quite affluent, being yeoman farmers, and I have obtained the Will of one from TNA which shows ownership of quite considerable tracts of land. Sadly though, my family line goes from the eldest son who made the mistake of dying comparatively young. His father then left everything to the two surviving brothers, and made no provision for his orphaned grandchildren. Thus two branches of the family went from strength to strength, whilst my line all became Ag Labs, until the coming of the railways liberated them!
I keep finding this time and time again in my research - incidents of almost touching greatness ;D
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Just starting on this topic, as one side of family (POYSER) in London back to 1851 when they came from Hull, and am interested in what prompted it. Looking forward to discussions with you all
NAMES:
Lewis, Burton,
Poyser, Burgum, Halestrap, Blackmore,Wilmot, Hodgkinson
PLACES:
1851 to 1950's Plaistow/Canning Town in West Ham district of London
now moving backwards to Hull, and Blore Staffordshire
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It is too simple an answer that people went to the towns, London especially for work/financial gain. The enclosures acts, especially the enclosure of commons act caused great hardship . Also many of the "cottages" that village people lived in were rented and many had miniscule or no garden, the ability to grow ones own food had been erioded by the acts. There are other factors involved of course, such has the end of the Napolionic wars, introduction of machinery and famine.
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In the early 1800's the Industrial Revolution attracted thousands of folk from the countryside to London
This is the traditional account of the Industrial Revolution; but the more I learn the more I think it confuses cause and effect.
In the 1700s, the Agrarian Revolution enabled a much greater amount of food to be produced with a smaller number of labourers; so the population could be fed by far fewer ag labs. It was thus not a case of the Industrial Revolution attracting people into London and the other great cities; it was a case of the Agrarian Revolution driving them off the land, where there was no work for them (or rather, no longer enough work for all of them). Once in the cities, they were an available workforce which the Industrial Revolution eagerly sucked up to service the new industry ...
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None of my ancestors went to London either, direct line anyway, I've not finished with collateral lines.
A lot went to Glasgow however and one moved from Rothiemurchus to Tyneside. I guess the drivers for the moves would be similar.
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Thanks, and yes, that is a def point to consider, as it's very true