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Nailers and nailmaking

F

florna

knowlegable brummie
I have a number of ancestors, male and female, who were nailers in the Bartley Green area in the late 1800's. In fact most of the villagers seemed to be nailers. They worked many hours. With no TV, radio etc and probably unable to read how did they know what was going on in the world? They must surely have known about Parliament, the Monarch etc so where did they get the information to pass on? Did it come from the church that they probably visited on Sundays?One family left for a life in North America.
Suggestions please.
Thanks
Dave
 
There would have been travellers to the village, knife grinders for example, who would pass on information. Any information from the church is likely to have been "sanitized" to what was acceptable news. There used to be a website to the magazine "Birmingham historian",, which had a download of an article "Nailmakers of Harborne". this stated that in the later 19th century there was no longer a local nailmaster in the village who bought the nailmaker's nails, and so the nailers would travel once a week into Birmingham to sell their nails. this would have given then an opportunity to hear the news. Presumably the same happened in Bartley Green
 
Not knowing what is meant by the word nail in those days, I have trouble in visualizing manufacturing process. I suppose a forge might be required for making extremely large nails...maybe rectangular section...for shipbuilding and such but I can't see how individual nail handling would similarly be applied for small nails. Surely drawn steel wire would be delivered to the process which would be cut to length and cold swaged to a point at one end and head at the other. All of which could easily be automated and obviously was by the inventive.
So deliveries of material had to be made. Which would be some contact but I wonder how many of any industry had a view of the world at all. Most ordinary folk would scarcely move beyond a radius of 5 or 10 miles I suspect. Views of the world would be the domain of the aristocracy and politicos (probably the same thing)...merchant seamen...oh and the army and navy who held it all down.
I suppose we had the view of The Blues...hanging on by the 'skin of their teeth', to the second div.
When automation came in, this industry would have been wiped out together with the exploitation. The nail making machinery would be located at the wire drawing mills...why ship to other locations for processing.
 
mikejee said:
There would have been travellers to the village, knife grinders for example, who would pass on information. Any information from the church is likely to have been "sanitized" to what was acceptable news. There used to be a website to the magazine "Birmingham historian",, which had a download of an article "Nailmakers of Harborne". this stated that in the later 19th century there was no longer a local nailmaster in the village who bought the nailmaker's nails, and so the nailers would travel once a week into Birmingham to sell their nails. this would have given then an opportunity to hear the news. Presumably the same happened in Bartley Green
Click to expand...

Thanks mikejee! I think you are right - it would have been 'visitors' to the village who would bring news. No doubt many of the nailers weren't really interested in what was going on outside.
Dave
 
Rupert said:
Not knowing what is meant by the word nail in those days, I have trouble in visualizing manufacturing process. I suppose a forge might be required for making extremely large nails...maybe rectangular section...for shipbuilding and such but I can't see how individual nail handling would similarly be applied for small nails. Surely drawn steel wire would be delivered to the process which would be cut to length and cold swaged to a point at one end and head at the other. All of which could easily be automated and obviously was by the inventive.
So deliveries of material had to be made. Which would be some contact but I wonder how many of any industry had a view of the world at all. Most ordinary folk would scarcely move beyond a radius of 5 or 10 miles I suspect. Views of the world would be the domain of the aristocracy and politicos (probably the same thing)...merchant seamen...oh and the army and navy who held it all down.
I suppose we had the view of The Blues...hanging on by the 'skin of their teeth', to the second div.
When automation came in, this industry would have been wiped out together with the exploitation. The nail making machinery would be located at the wire drawing mills...why ship to other locations for processing.
Click to expand...
Thanks Rupert
Have a look at this website - an interesting account of nailmaking in the Midlands.
https://www.qlhs.org.uk/oracle/poverty-line/poverty-line.html
I think it was probably visitors who brought any glad tidings there were!!
Dave
 
brummie nick
I think you are correct! It was harsh and they were only just surviving so why worry about the outside world. Thanks for the web link.
Dave
 
7/- a week was maybe big money back then. When I started work in 1955, my wage was 10/6 a week. Not much more for doing a heck of a lot more qualified work than simple labour. Fortunately I quickly acquired a knowledge of the world...and left for good.
 
There are plenty of nailers in my family history Bartley Green and also Bromsgrove. When I first started and saw nail cutters I did not realise what it meant thought it was strange so many men cutting nails.
 
Our posts about the wages are off topic so i will edit in a couple of days but!

1955 , Average wage for men £10.17.5d, car workers in Coventry £12.

I was working as a Saturday girl in Woolworths and I got about 12/6d for one day

Bread 7.5 d ( 3p)
Pint milk 7d
bottle of beer 2 shillings (10p)
 
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This is a perfectly amicable conversation and the wages of Nailer's and comparisons to, is not off topic as I see it. I was an apprentice draughtsman in 1955 and 10/6 was the starting wage at General Electric in 1955 for this trade. You can not forget something like that. Sure after 5 years ones stipend rose to the average you quote or a bit above. Ones 'view of the world' is largely affected by what you can afford. As an aside, I have actually designed machinery for nail making about 40 years ago. In this instance a hot dip galvanising line for nails. Hmmm...that factory is gone also.
 
Mention of nailmaking in Harbourne...

'Out work'

My mother had several different out work jobs when we were kids, anything to earn a few bob whilst she was at home looking after us. One job was putting the curls on the end of badge or tie pins, 3d a thousand. They gave her a little tool which meant picking up a pin, putting it in a slot...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
 
mikejee said:
There would have been travellers to the village, knife grinders for example, who would pass on information. Any information from the church is likely to have been "sanitized" to what was acceptable news. There used to be a website to the magazine "Birmingham historian",, which had a download of an article "Nailmakers of Harborne". this stated that in the later 19th century there was no longer a local nailmaster in the village who bought the nailmaker's nails, and so the nailers would travel once a week into Birmingham to sell their nails. this would have given then an opportunity to hear the news. Presumably the same happened in Bartley Green
Click to expand...

strange you mention knife grinders mike as i am just researching the cutler family for my grandson james...from at least 1851 they were living in the bartley green northfield area and down the years all of the family were nailers so there must have been a large nailing industry around those parts

lyn
 
A colorful tirade from the Black Country Muse, on the predations of the nail factors, and the plight of the nail makers they exploited:
https://blackcountrymuse.webs.com/nailmaking

My 3 x great grandfather, Joseph Jukes, was one such nail factor in West Bromwich in the 1840s, and his father James had a nail shop in Dudley some 40 years previous.

A court report from Aris' Birmingham Gazette indicates that Joseph got up to at least some of the nefarious tricks ascribed to the nail factor's trade - in this case a rigged set of weights and scales, used to short-change his workers for the weight of nails they produced.
 
florna said:
I have a number of ancestors, male and female, who were nailers in the Bartley Green area in the late 1800's. In fact most of the villagers seemed to be nailers. They worked many hours. With no TV, radio etc and probably unable to read how did they know what was going on in the world? They must surely have known about Parliament, the Monarch etc so where did they get the information to pass on? Did it come from the church that they probably visited on Sundays?One family left for a life in North America.
Suggestions please.
Thanks
Dave
Click to expand...
I would not have been so sure that they could not read. Male literacy jumped from 69.3% in 1851 to 97.2% in 1900. Female literacy rates went from 54.8% in 1851 to 96.8% in 1900. Not far off the rate today. Lots of this was driven by the "Sunday School" movement of classes on a Sunday. It was also driven by the flourishing of Methodist and other "chapel" religions that encouraged reading, if only so that you could read the Bible. Bartley Green did not have a chapel, but it was surrounded by hamlets that did, - California, and Woodgate for example. The nearby Dudley No 2 canal through the Lapel tunnel would have brought a steady flow of visitors nearby, the horses would have been taken down Clapgate lane while the boats were legged through the tunnel. No doubt you could have picked up the news from the pubs that served the canal. The late 1800s saw the flourishing of local newspapers and by 1900 Bartley Green had a post office that no doubt would have stocked them. The inhabitants would have been much more likely to go to market in Halesowen than Birmingham, and they would have been more likely to read newspapers and news-sheets from Halesowen and the Black Country (it was only in 1911 that Bartley Green left Worcestershire to become part of Birmingham). Halesowen had a railway station from 1878. From what I understand, nail-making in small villages like Bartley Green had become a winter occupation by the late 1800s. Automation had made hand-made nails largely uneconomic so those that remained in the trade worked on farms during the summer (and there were plenty of big farms around Bartley Green) and only returned to nail-making during the winter months or evenings to make extra income, although they were still proud of their trade and gave their profession as nailmaker on the census. With its own pub, post office, school and small posh house (Athol House), by the late 1800s Bartley Green was getting to be a bit more like "Candleford" than "Lark Rise".
 

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Thank you to 3 contributors to very interesting links on Nail Making in West Midlands in 1800's. A few years ago I visited the preserved working Nail Shop at the Black Country Living Museum near Tipton and Dudley . Originally it was sited in Halesowen in West Midlands in 1880.

My maternal great grandmother worked as a Nailer at the age of 13 in Sedgley in 1861 and was one of 13 children . Her father was a Screw Forger in Sedgley in 1851-1861 and her mother was a Tailoress as well as her older sister. The type of nails made in Sedgley were Gate Nails and Rose Head Nails. Small nails were produced at 4 nails per minute or up to 250 per hour and cost 4s 9d per 1000 nails. The nail industries at the time were centred along the Rivers Stour, Tame and Severn including Sedgley Stourbridge Dudley and Birmingham
 
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