1900's railway occupations help needed

[wookietoo]

Any body help please ?

I think I've been barking up the wrong tree as I assumed that "Shunter" meant that he drove trains and shunted wagons around.

However, does anybody know if this just referred to somebody who moved parcels around please ?

I have a marriage certificate for 1902 that shows both the fathers and grooms occupations as "shunter"
The son became a father in 1904, and his occupation on the birth certificate is railway porter.

On the censuses I have found two possible contenders where both names/birth years are correct. The father on the 1891 and 1901 censuses is a railway guard, the son in 1901 is a parcel porter.

Now, can a porter and a shunter be the same/similar thing ?

The chap born in 1904 is my grandfather, and so far I have been banging my head against a brick wall.

Any help very gratefully accepted.
Mike

[seahall]

Hi Mike

This link may help.

http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/p.html

Cheers Sandy

[colinjohn]

Hello Mike

I wouldn't place too much reliance on job descriptions in things like census returns and especially marriage certs as, like today, our ancestors were often a little economical with the truth and they would from time to time exaggerate their status.

The fact that they worked on the railway would be good enough for me unless the names were very common (like John Smith)

Colin

[duckweed]

Both jobs are on the railway so I would say it is probably either he had to change jobs or there was a misunderstanding.  I have a relative who had been wrongly listed as a Carter because he obviously was trying to describe his occupation and the enumerator having problems put down the word he understood which was carting i.e carrying something.  He actually carried the molten steel to be poured out.  He should have been down as Teamer.  Likewise my grandfather is down on my mother's birth certificate as a sock knitter as during the depression he did anything to make money and for a short time he knitted socks so they can be disparity for a lot of different reasons.

[tomkin]

Hi Mike,
               The 2 jobs are different. The "shunter" usually worked as part of a team.
It was their job to connect or disconnect wagons from the engines. I suppose that
if a man could no longer do a shunters job he might be given a job at the station
which would be warmer, drier and less arduous.

 Tomkin

    

[wookietoo]

Thanks for all that help !

It "feels" right somehow - but I have had several false hopes.......

Unfortunately the name is George Cooper, and there are millions of them.
Also, family history has it that there is a tie-in with Iver Heath in Bucks, which doesn't fit the two that I have in mind. I can't even identify him well enough to get a birth certificate for my gt-gf, which would really get me started.

I've done really well on other branches, but this one, my fathers and the most important, has gone nowhere for months. I'd love it to be this family, as there are loads of brothers and sisters (one is a signal boy) and the generations before are similar. There are police oficers for instance in the 1850's, which I feel must make interesting research. I just can't make that vital definite connection.....

[wookietoo]

I've just found a very interesting entry on a census - somebody is described as a "points shunter" - now that sounds much more viable.

Did people ever totally drop a middle name ?
I have just found that the son was actually called George Burgess Cooper on one census, but plain George elsewhere

[tomkin]

Hi Mike,
               Railway points are what you use to direct the wagons etc. from one track
to another.    No points, no shunting. therefore no point

  Tomkin

     Sometimes the "middle" name, especially if it isn't an ordinary christian name, can
 point to the surname of the other halves family.

[wookietoo]

Yes I know, and the points were moved manually with a big lever beside the track, as well as from inside signal boxes.
I could understand somebody making the move from a guard to a points shunter, but not to a shunter of wagons i.e. an engine driver...........