Occupations That Have Faded Away

[Higgins]

Started off as a Hawker according to census then opened shop I think in the front room of his house - Baldwin St, Smethwick

 

[Astonian]

CHOCS AND BERNIE ;
Yes they are still very much around today as they was of yester years the managers and licencees are still tapping and stooping the barral of
beers and the wines in our brewerys beleive me its more so out in the out lineing pubs of the midlands alot of people the
true thorough bred beer drinkers and experts prefere the casked ale rather the usal slops of the barral ' you cannot mess with your true english
keg ale ;and you have to tap and stoop your ale off the woods and let it stand stooped long before tou serve it ;
the cooper men of such of these guys ae dying rapidly sadly when these barrels end there life through one thing or another
they will have to turn the steel barrells i,m afraid ;get a good drink from a country pub and old hooky brewers make a good selection of beers ;
old hookys brewers are from oxford ;
best wishes astonian;;

 

[I Am Nico]

Had some wonderful hand pumped beer in Shropshire. Very sort of, I don't know, like beer should taste. Natural, not chemical. Also Cumbria has some tiny breweries at the back of pubs.

 

[brummiemummy]

I have a waterman from Droitwich and those type of watermen lived and worked on canal boats transporting goods.
Took me ages to find out that a cordwainer is a shoe maker. Strangest was an ostler who looked after horses in the mines in The Black country. He was killed by a horse falling down a mine shaft on to the skip that was taking him down. Tragic. No idea of health and safety back then. Had a dairyman/cow keeper lived in Rea Street. Hard to imagine that it was once rural there.

 

[sistersue61]

Hi Brummiemummy, welcome to the site.
Cordwainers were shoemakers of fine quality shoes as opposed to the cobblers who repaired them. They used to use the very soft leather from Cordoba in Spain. There is an area in London called Cordwainers and there is a college there that still specialises in shoemaking, Jimmy Choo trained there, part of the Guild of Worshipful Corwainers.
My ex-husbands families had quite a spat over this, one side of the family were cordwainers, the other side cobblers and it caused a real rift in the family back in the 1900's over who was the best!
Sue

 

[I Am Nico]

Very interesting information as I have a waterman from Worcs a cordwainer, saddle stitcher a watch case maker, a cycle frame builder. Also what looks like a trimmings maker it's hard to read. These all lived in Cov. When one of my Cov gran's got married her occupation was listed as a labourer. Also have an iron heater and a furnace man and 2 engine drivers and a boat builder from Stourbride and Dudley. And an optician from Herefords.

 

[nijinski]

While researching my wife's ancestry I noticed a number of men in her family tree were called puddlers. I had to find out what that was. Puddling is the occupation of making iron. It is the process of turning pig iron into wrought iron with a reverberating furnace. I guess pig iron is another name for cast iron.

 

[I Am Nico]

Pig iron's name come from the way it is made. It resembles a farrowing sow with a row of piglets at her side. We did it in history at shcool.

 

[nijinski]

Thanks for that nico, I'm a little wiser now. Regards nijinski

 

[I Am Nico]

Well I would look it up Nij because that's from the memory of a kid who used to mess about in the history lesson. Our history teacher went long term sick and we had a modern replacement who insisted we called him Steve, he was scruffier than us! Me and my mate (the one that fell in the mud Carolina if you look at this) would buy the false teeth sweets made of the same stuff and the shrimps and wear a set of sweet dentures, for Steve's lesson. And made sure we answered some questions, He just read it out of the book to us. Which we did had anyway.

 

[nijinski]

You are right nico, just to add to that pig iron is high in carbon and this made it brittle. Regards nijinski

 

[I Am Nico]

I have a puddler too. Nan would have known all this but she is not here to ask, she also knew about glass making and many other things. I was lucky to have such knowlegable parents and grandparents. But will they listen these days. They know it all. I sound like Nan now!

 

[brummiemummy]

Thanks Sue,
Watched a TV programme recently clled "Ade in Britain" with Adrian Edmonson. He visited a cordwainer and filmed the various stages in shoe making by hand. It was fascinating.

 

[caggyken]

HI
You never see apoliceman stood at a busy junction directing the traffic stood on a raised plinth. They were always wearing a long
white coat and sported a pair of gauntlets up to the elbow.
KEN

 

[Stephen0002002]

I wonder if that job might prove a bit more risky these days ?

 

[nijinski]

an occupation you dont see these days for obvious reasons is the rentman. i would imagine some of you out there remember hiding behind the sofa or in the pantry on the odd occasion when he was due.

 

[DavidGrain]

Just imagine how much money the rentman used to carry. He probably called at over 100 houses each day

 

[I Am Nico]

HI
You never see apoliceman stood at a busy junction directing the traffic stood on a raised plinth. They were always wearing a long
white coat and sported a pair of gauntlets up to the elbow.
KEN

My cousin has his own lifelike policeman which he puts outside his cottage to deter people speeding. It works. I remember the white gauntlets. Sometimes if the lollipop lady was away a policeman would take over. I saw a policeman doing traffic duty last year. I live by kamakaze corner. When the lights are working properly they still have accidents as strangers see the different sets of light ahead and miss the ones nearest to them. During one of these accidents the policemen had to direct the traffic.

 

[I Am Nico]

an occupation you dont see these days for obvious reasons is the rentman. i would imagine some of you out there remember hiding behind the sofa or in the pantry on the odd occasion when he was due.

Do they still have excise men looking for illicit stills?

 

[DavidGrain]

Do they still have excise men looking for illicit stills?

I think Trading Standards do that these day along with HMRC as the illicit booze can be lethal as well as the revenue loss

 

[nickcc101]

Many years ago, when working at a location that had a laboratory, HMCE, who were based on site, used to regularaly inspect our oil distillation stills for illegal use, never found anything as we used to buy our cheap booze off the ships that used our jetty:fat:

 

[mikejee]

When I was at Bournville, we had a customs & excise inspector having a look around our lab, and he saw me using a rotary evaporator. This was used to remove solvent from a sample under reduced pressure. He was very interested to learn that the solvent being removed was industrial meths, but accepted that we threw away the stuff that came off, and did not use it for any other purpose.

 

[brummiemummy]

Does anybody know what a dairyman/cowkeeper might have been? My 3 x great grand dad was one in Rea Street, Deritend from 1855 - 1884. I expect he was a dairy farmer, although it's hard to imagine that area as rural. What I really want to know is if he would have also delivered the milk to people's homes?

 

[BernardR]

My Grandfather was a dairyman - he worked as a farm hand not a farmer. Looking after the cows and milking them. Later he ran a small dairy round buying milk and selling it from a Milk Float (horse drawn). The round was bought out by Wathes Cattell and Gurden.

 

[BernardR]

From the OED -

[h=1]dairyman[/h]Pronunciation: /ˈdɛːrɪmən/

Definition ofdairyman
[h=3]noun (plural dairymen)[/h]

• a man who is employed in a dairy or sells dairy products.

 

[I Am Nico]

Had a relative who worked in a dairy. They scalded the pails (buckets) and any equipment. I watched the Village on Sunday with interest when the milk was no good as the cows had eaten wild garlic.
Do they still have shoe shine boys? When you ee ths state of peoples' shoes today I think they should. I have seen so many scruffily shod interviewees and sales reps. I always notice peoples' shoes. Not that I am a fetishist!

 

[nijinski]

Here's an interesting one. The lamp lighter. The man who went around lighting all the sreet gas lamps. Must have been a monotonous job. Still it was a job and someone had to do it.

 

[Shortie]

How about the "pure" collector -went round the streets collecting dog excrement for use in Tanning -people actually made a living out of this in Victorian times

 

[Anne Watton]

When I left school, I started at Metro-Cammell as a tracer in the drawing office. The draughtsmen drew the drawing and then we traced it and printed the description, thereby tidying it up before it went to the print room.. My first year was spent practising my printing. 'The old grey fox jumped over the lazy dog' to use all the letters of the alphabet, but looking at it now there are quite a few missing. B,C,I,K,N,Q,S,W. How boring was that?

 

[I Am Nico]

Anne, it was the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. In my mum's day when she learnt to type and did pitman script shorthand too, any rode up. I remember getting up my English teacher's nose when I was 11 with that one as she had given us please packmy box with five dozen jugs. All the class thought mine was better but nobody loves a smart axxxx especially when it's a teacher. My partners' children learned to keep quiet too as they spoke better French than their teacher. I could also play the piano beter than my class teacher. She never picked me to play an instrument. I always felt I was held back.
I believe that tracers have been replaced by computers but am told by former draughtsmen that the computer designes were unworkable and they had to employ a human to work out the correct measurements. That was at Marconi, formerly GEC.