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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Kennington on Monday 18 September 17 11:46 BST (UK)
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I have a John Stacey (b.1854) who moved from Cornwall to Burnley and became a collier as seen in 1881.
His wife Eliza died and the second Mrs Stacey (Cordelia on 1891 census) was also from the same area of Cornwall. How would they know about jobs up North and how would they have travelled there?
I can't find his parents, only grandparents. on 1871 he was working on a farm. I initially thought he might have been a tin miner, but he wasn't.
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It was quite common for people to move for better jobs, my grandfather and his brothers moved from Somerset to County Durham in the 1870s.
I as understand it the great agricultural depression had set in in the early 1870’s as a result of a series of very wet summers and autumns, with a consequence of very bad harvests. Labour left the land, and the villages and went into the mines, and the industrial areas of the north where there were greater employment prospects.
They would go by train, by the 1870s you could travel almost anywhere by rail.
See http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,503504.msg3603129.html#msg3603129
Stan
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As Stan says, many Cornishmen moved up to County Durham in the late 19th century. People were far more mobile at that time than we give them credit for.
There were so many Cornishmen living in Annfield Plain that a section of the village, Annfield Place, was popularly known as 'Cornwall', and it was entered as such (or to be strictly correct as Cornwell) in the 1881 census.
Added: see
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=405547.msg2738467#msg2738467
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My great great grandmother Ann Hicks (bap 1813) moved from Cornwall to Merseyside before 1833 when she married (in Liverpool) then settled in Wallasey. I have no idea why, (unless this was an earlier depression there) but as to how back then, I would assume by boat.
A friend who has similar odd movements a little later (Cumbria to Chepstow and back) has the explanation - her people were mariners.
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Companies did employ active recruiters & there were also many adverts in newspapers offering jobs, houses (often owned by the collieries) & security & most importantly of all better wages.
For a man working in a depressed industry such as farming where the introduction of machinery was putting men out of work this could be an attractive proposition although many needed tempting as they were reluctant to move away from the Poor Law Union of their home Parish.
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People moved around surprisingly often, whether for better prospects or better pay. Tin miners from Cornwall took up positions in all sorts of places. The coal mines of Burnley would be an easy move. Some went much further afield, mining metal ores in South America.
It was normal to end up somewhere where the skills you already had could be used.
So farm labourers might emigrate to places where they might have land of their own.
Miners could find work in any sort of mine - in Cumberland there were coal mines and iron ore mines, and people shifted between them. Tin miners were used to dealing with hard granite, and would be good prospects for any railway company that had a tunnel to construct.
Labourers could, of course, find work pretty much anywhere, whether in fields, in mines or on building sites.
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Thank you all for your replies.
I didn't realise people were so mobile. Most of mine were stick in the muds ::)
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I noticed quite a few Cornish people in Burnley in 19thC. It was in connection with a query on here a few months ago.
A current query is about a man b. 1830s Lancashire who spent time working in a Scottish coal mine, c1860, then returned to Lancs. An 1842 report on working & living conditions in SW Scotland's heavy industries stated that the majority of workers in an iron-works were from other parts of Britain, mostly English. The author complained about the moral laxity of the non-natives.
Some Welsh miners went to Cumberland slate mines. Some went to Argentina. There was a BBC programme recently about the Welsh Argentinians. My Welsh ancestors arrived in Wigan sometime pre 1800. Possible mining connection? Although my known ancestors weren't miners.
NB. Until late 18thC Scottish miners were bonded labour. Only after the law on bonded labour was abolished was there free movement of labour for Scottish miners.
Before railways there were canals.
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Hi,
My G.Grandfather and brothers also moved from Cornwall to Burnley in the late 1870`s. Apparently the Burnley miners were on strike so the Bosses advertised for miners to work in Burnley. They never mentioned that they wanted them to "break" a strike!! I really don`t know the full details, although the Cornish Tin/Copper mines were in decline so they needed the work. There were loads of miners from Cornwall and Devon in Burnley on the 1881 census.
Regards,
Mo
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Hi,
My G.Grandfather and brothers also moved from Cornwall to Burnley in the late 1870`s. Apparently the Burnley miners were on strike so the Bosses advertised for miners to work in Burnley. They never mentioned that they wanted them to "break" a strike!! I really don`t know the full details, although the Cornish Tin/Copper mines were in decline so they needed the work. There were loads of miners from Cornwall and Devon in Burnley on the 1881 census.
Regards,
Mo
Factory owners in Preston took similar action during The Great Preston Strike & Lockout 1853-4. They took people from workhouses in Manchester and Belfast and possibly other places. The recruits "signed" contracts, the content of which, being mainly illiterate, they had no knowledge. They were then told the contracts were binding. In order to counteract this, the strike organisers arranged reception committees to intercept the groups of new labourers, known as "knobsticks, at ports and Preston station . Members of reception committees invited strike-breakers to inns for meals, explained the justice of their cause and offered to buy their tickets home. A dozen strike organisers were put on trial for conspiring to interfere with the masters' rights. It became a test case in trades union law.
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We have a collier in the family who was born in the Forest of Dean in the 1850s who is in Yorkshire in 1871.
And a couple of brothers from another of our Forest of Dean families who were born in the 1830s emigrated to Maryland. On the US census quite a few of the neighbours are also miners and were born in England or Wales.
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In the 1880s my great-grandmother and her mostly teenage children also moved to Burnley, though from Huntingdonshire, where the family members were mainly ag labs and cobblers. We assume this was to find work, as all of them did, though in various jobs - railway workers, shop assistants (Grandfather, who had just left school, became a draper's apprentice), factory workers, etc. Why Burnley? Well, they already had cousins who had made the same move some years earlier, so my widowed gt-grandmother took her tribe to join them after hearing of job prospects up there.
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I noticed quite a few Cornish people in Burnley in 19thC. It was in connection with a query on here a few months ago.
A current query is about a man b. 1830s Lancashire who spent time working in a Scottish coal mine, c1860, then returned to Lancs. An 1842 report on working & living conditions in SW Scotland's heavy industries stated that the majority of workers in an iron-works were from other parts of Britain, mostly English. The author complained about the moral laxity of the non-natives.
Some Welsh miners went to Cumberland slate mines. Some went to Argentina. There was a BBC programme recently about the Welsh Argentinians. My Welsh ancestors arrived in Wigan sometime pre 1800. Possible mining connection? Although my known ancestors weren't miners.
NB. Until late 18thC Scottish miners were bonded labour. Only after the law on bonded labour was abolished was there free movement of labour for Scottish miners.
Before railways there were canals.
The Welsh folk who went to Patagonia - Argentina went to escape the industrialisation that was occurring in Wales, particularly in the South. (Why they didn't just re-settle in the Brecon Beacons I'm not sure.)
The Welsh language still flourishes there along side Spanish and Patagonians attend the Welsh national Eisteddfod - I think the Patagonian leader one year was one Myfanwy Gonzales!