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Some Special Interests => Occupation Interests => Topic started by: SteveJW on Wednesday 20 March 19 22:32 GMT (UK)
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Can anyone tell me what the occupation Nailer was, please see attachment
Appears to be a lot of people in Wombourn 1851HO 107/2017 with this as their occupation, possibly ancestors
Thanks
Steve
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http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/n-o.html#N
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Until I saw the history of Wombourn, I would have said your ancestor probably had a furnace, bought different thicknesses of iron bars and his whole family helped him cut and hammer different types of homemade nails into shape.
I now think the family could have worked in a nearby slit mill that specialised in making nails.
Different types of nails would be needed in the industrial revolution and additionally I believe tons of nails were shipped all over the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wombourne
http://www.sedgleymanor.com/trades/nailmakers2.html
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http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/n-o.html#N
Thanks for the link Ruskie.
looks like a great site.
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http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/n-o.html#N
Thanks for the link Ruskie.
looks like a great site.
It often comes in very handy. :)
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In Scotland it was used for a nail-maker. Linlithgow was a centre of boot & shoe making & had many nailers in the town!
Skoosh.
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Ruskie and others thanks for the prompt response
Steve
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My wife was bought up in Wombourn and her ancestors are all from Sedgley, Netherton and around. Lots of nailers in her tree; mostly women and children but occasionally men too. I have always assumed it to be piecework.
It is hard to believe the difference between "then" and "now". I remember taking the overnight train (c1961) from Euston to North Wales through Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It was late evening on a raised embankment outside Wolverhampton when we passed small foundries with the furnaces glowing bright orange and men still working in what looked like Dante's Inferno.
Today there are acres of wasteland, distribution centres and housing estates. Not much evidence of work though!
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http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/n-o.html#N
What a great resource, thanks!
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http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/n-o.html#N
The alternative definition, maintaining teeth (nails) on a carding-machine was unknown to me.
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A Manicurist! ;D
Skoosh.
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A Manicurist! ;D
Skoosh.
Isn't that "nail technician"?
I've read "more information" attached to the link posted by Ruskie. Making a standard nail took about 25 hammer-blows. A nailer could make 4 nails in a minute. Horseshoe-nails required 35 blows of a hammer.
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Generations of nailers in the family in the West Bromwich area in the mid/late 1600s. The occupation is given on some of the baptism transcripts of the time and it would appear it was the family trade across the brothers and their sons.
Later families downstream that some their daughters married into were predominently iron workers (forgemen and puddlers etc, iron works clerks and managers) for the next few generations in the wider Dudley/West Brom/Bilston/Brierley Hill parishes up to the very late 1800s.