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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: antiquesam on Tuesday 14 January 25 14:48 GMT (UK)
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Having spent some time going through the 1921 census for anyone in my tree I'm surprised at how many were out of work. I knew of the depression and the Jarrow March as a Geordie but I didn't realise how close it was to home.
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This document from 1921 is quite interesting
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/twenties-britain-part-one/unemployment-situation-1921/
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At one point unemployment in some of the Welsh mining valleys was 70%.
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Thank you Fiddlerslass. Very interesting and quite frightening.
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Having spent some time going through the 1921 census for anyone in my tree I'm surprised at how many were out of work. I knew of the depression and the Jarrow March as a Geordie but I didn't realise how close it was to home.
The whole reason the 1921 census was delayed (taken 19 June rather than original date 24th April) was because of proposed industrial action by striking coal miners, railwaymen and transport workers - dubbed 'Black Friday'. In the end this strike did not go ahead. However there was a large General Strike in 1926.
On the 1921 census people who were unemployed were asked to put their last occupation and place of work and underneath write 'unemployed' .
Yes, if you look carefully at some of the returns the only wage coming in is a pittance from a 13 or 14 years old family member.
CD
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My parents lived through “The Great Depression”.
They were in their thirties before they could afford to get married ,Mum was 41 when I was born.
Dad walking from one work place to another to get at least a stamped mark to show he had asked for work but there was none.
Starving men all having to do that.
Not enough stamps and so no dole money which was a pittance anyway.
Then “ The means test”,whereby people’s assets ( everyday furniture -beds etc “ )were judged and had to be sold before any assistance was given .
Those men had fought for four years ,so many were volunteers in WW1,to get home to starvation ,want and poverty, was an obscenity!
A good account is “ Love on The Dole” by Salford writer Walter Greenwood.
Viktoria.
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My grandfather worked at a Kent coalmine, but wrote "out of work" in the census. I am not sure if they were on strike at that point, or if the colliery had closed. My mother remembered seeing out of work men breaking stones for roadworks.
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My father remembered men going to funerals as recreation. Free of charge, possibly warm in the church and a chance of a bite to eat. No other entertainment available to the unemployed.
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There must have been money made available into the 1930s, for road improvements. Good pieces of road we now take for granted which were there before we were born. I have seen some local authority photos of two places. Scores of men using shovels, creating cuttings, and primitive road rollers.
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The miners did not get a chance to strike. They were 'locked out' of the pits on 1st Apr 1921 when the Miners Federation did not agree to terms. The Government put in place the 'Emergency Powers Act' drafting in soldiers. The Government regarded this dispute so significant it even brought soldiers back from Ireland.
CD
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I was quoting from the Dover Museum website, (which could be more clearly written). It reads as if this only applied to one pit.
"In 1920, the Emergency Powers Bill temporarily increased wages for six months. The result of this was reduced pay for miners and thus in 1921 the Snowdown workers went on strike and the company went into receivership."
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Many skilled workmen were “ laid off “the vacancies filled by apprentices who in turn got their indentures so a full wage but were then also laid off and another set of low paid apprentices were employed,so skilled workmen were idle through no fault if their own.
It was iniquitous .
Youngsters today don’t know they are born.
Not their fault really but that period of history needs to be taught even today.
It was my parents’ real memories and they passed it on to us, as did my
in laws.
Viktoria.
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There must have been money made available into the 1930s, for road improvements. Good pieces of road we now take for granted which were there before we were born.
I think the switchback A-roads linking some of the higher valleys in the south Wales coalfield were built in that period - there were no connections before then, unless you count the railway tunnels. What we call the Refinery Road at Stanlow near Ellesmere Port was built in the mid-30s, but I suspect that was for the new refinery, My in-laws used to drive it when it was new. Before then there were just a few country lanes, now the M56 parallels it. The Northwich by-pass is another.
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The road building was very common in Ireland in the Great Famine especially.
It could not be allowed that unemployed people could get money or food for nothing so useless roads were made from nowhere to nowhere ,employing starving people in heavy manual labour , whilst grain was exported out of Ireland to The Continent thanks to The Corn Laws.
Lord Trevellian!!!
Peterloo was really a call for the repeal of those corn laws and The Chartists
joined in to get proportional representation ,Manchester a fast growing city had no MP. Yet Old Sarum in Wiltshire I think with no population had two MPs !!!
I am running out of exclamation marks .
Gosh how times have changed.
Viktoria.
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I believe the whole of Southsea promenade was built and sea defences added in order to provide work imp the '20s and I came across an estate of smallholdings set up for families from the north.
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Well they were of use,antiquesam weren’t’t they, some pride for the workers -but a road with no real starting place and no end anywhere useful,how soul destroying for people already totally demolished .
Gosh w are lucky really in many ways .
Viktoria.
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Roads and bridges that required a person to pay a Toll was termed a "turnpike".
When my late OH and I travelled home by road in the 1970s we had to pay two pence to cross the bridge at Selby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selby_toll_bri
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The turnpike through Selby ran from Doncaster to York and was one of the last to be built in Yorkshire, around 1830 I think. It passes over some very wet ground south of Selby and connects villages which were isolated on earlier maps. The turnpikes were operated by private trusts until about 1870 when they passed to local authorities, which became responsible for road improvements and the employment which occurred during the Depression. However some bridges remained in private hands, and some recent bridges have been financed by tolls.
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My grandfather is listed as unemployed in the 1921 Scotland Census.
He served in the Navy during WW1 and survived the sinking of HMS Warrior at the Battle of Jutland.
Dorrie
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The road building was very common in Ireland in the Great Famine especially.
I think quite a few small harbours (perhaps more useful) were built as well ?
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On the 1921 census people who were unemployed were asked to put their last occupation and place of work and underneath write 'unemployed'.
In the 1921 census I found a cousin of my grandmother, George Milner. He was an engineering blacksmith who had served his apprenticeship at the Woolwich Arsenal and moved to Sheffield by 1909. In 1921 he was "Temporary out of work" from Vickers Ltd. (Engineers), River Don Works, Sheffield. This was a huge company, which still exists as part of Sheffield Forgemasters. Most of the works must have been involved in war production when 16,000 people were employed there. Amongst many other items they had the capacity to make the longest gun barrels available. At the end of the war government contracts would have dried up very quickly.
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My grandfather worked at a Kent coalmine, but wrote "out of work" in the census. I am not sure if they were on strike at that point, or if the colliery had closed. My mother remembered seeing out of work men breaking stones for roadworks.
My grandfather was a miner (belowground) at the Cambria Colliery Limited, Clydach Vale and he has written in brackets (on strike) but the enumerator has crossed it out and written out of work instead. The family was visiting his parents in North Wales at the time and even though my G Grandfather has written all the places of birth correctly the enumerator has scribbled many of them out and put his own in. For example my grandmother who was born in Penrhyndeudraeth (Ffestiniog Reg Dist) had had written FFestiniog, Merionethshire but the enumerator has crossed it out and put Pwllheli, Merionethshire instead. A mess..........
Nesta