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Outside of living memory my research was just very dry births/marriages/deaths/census - interesting but very little in the way information about the actual people and their lives. If your ancestors were just the normal working poor then its pretty amazing when you stumble across a gem. In my case I came across an ancestor's testimony in an 1844 Royal Commission so can see him talking about his life and hardships - copied below a couple of the questions put to him and his answers for some colour, Are the charges exacted in full in cases of sickness or stint work? Exactly the same. I can speak for myself; I am in a friendly Society, and have been for four or five and forty and forty years, and I have found it a very beneficial thing to me indeed. I was ill of the typhus fever some years back, and I lay ill for weeks, and I had my children working in the shop, and they used to do the work and send it in on the Saturday; and my frame-rent was taken the same as if I was at work all that six weeks, my frame never worked a course. When I went in, my master said I looked very poorly; how did I get on? I said” As well as I could.” “How did I provide victuals?” I provided in health and strength for a time of affliction. The society afforded me 10s. a-week. This I did very well with my children’s work. Nothing more was said. I have had 10 children and I have been obliged to learn them all to be stockinger’s; I could do nothing else with them. What do you consider, as an old hand in the trade, to have caused your difficulties? – I have always considered that the battle of Waterloo which was the finishing of the French war, was the first swamping of our business. The hands came flocking in, in all directions, and they made the masters difficult to please; they made it so that we, who called ourselves good old hands, could not please at all. Then, at the back of that, they passed the Corn Law. I was making, at that very time when the Corn Bill was passed, hose at 18s. a-dozen in a 32 gauge frame. The battle of Waterloo was fought the 18th of June, and just before the next spring, in 1816. I was docked 5s. a-dozen in those very hose. Wages got down to nearly half, in many cases. What are the present prices for the same description of hose? – I can hardly tell you; they have shifted us about so. They have lost us in our sizes, our gauges, and everything that belongs to it. They have lost us, and bewildered us, in such a manor, that we are like a garden without a fence; we have no protection at all; we are obliged to sit down with all insults, and take any sort of work to keep us out of the workhouse, grievous as it is. (The Witness withdrew)
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Jul 15, 2016 15:31
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 01:23 |
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