The Skilled Compositor, 1850–1914 by Patrick Duffy

Author:Patrick Duffy [Duffy, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351881838
Google: Qd9ADgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-02T16:20:50+00:00

Railway inspector

Poor Law official

Mining engineer

Draughtsman

Chief constable

Insurance clerk

Inspector, NSPCC

Clerk

Broker

Solicitors clerk

Mercantile clerk

Civil service clerk

Schoolmaster

Schoolmaster

Station master

Bank clerk

Bookstall manager

Dentist

Merchant

Professor of history

Solicitor

Barrister at law

Civil engineer

Jeweller

Source: As for Table 3.7.

General conditions of living

Hobsbawm’s fifth indicator of membership of the labour aristocracy relates to general living conditions. Locality and quality of housing occupied by workers provide broad clues to their status in the community, where patterns of residence were seen as important social indicators.144 Style, appearance and location of property were significant contributory factors to notions of respectability, distancing ‘good’ districts from multi-occupancy slum dwellings and tumbledown properties which were associated with overcrowding, unhealthy living conditions and moral decay.145 Geoffrey Crossick, in his study of living conditions, looked at the number of rooms in homes occupied by workers in specific trades. His findings indicated that 74 per cent of printers lived in houses with three or more rooms, compared with 31.7 per cent of dock labourers and 59.6 per cent of smiths and tin workers. Both skilled engineers and shipwrights were close to printers, with 73.1 per cent and 77.7 per cent respectively. This can only be taken as a crude measure, of course, as it didn’t take into account family size or indeed the size of the rooms; nevertheless it does suggest that printers avoided the worst kind of housing.

In the nineteenth century workers in many trades lived in close proximity to their place of work, forming relatively close-knit communities; this was especially true in the case of miners and textile operatives. In the case of printing, men were scattered throughout districts, mainly because they worked in small firms, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the living standards of compositors as they inevitably experienced a similar lifestyle to their neighbours.

Table 3.10 represents the results of a limited survey of printers living in the Hazel Grove urban district of Stockport in 1907, the aim being to establish what kind of housing printers occupied and, importantly, who lived alongside them.

All printers listed in Table 3.10 were resident in a network of streets comprised mainly of modest two-up, two-down terraced houses typical of houses built after 1860, when municipal by-laws were introduced. Economy and convenience appear to have been all-important considerations as all the properties were located within a quarter of a mile of the English Sewing Cotton Printing and Box Making Company where most, if not all, the printers worked. The neighbourhood, while clearly ‘respectable’, was not ‘mixed’. Middle-class housing in Hazel Grove was located on the opposite side of the main London Road, where houses were detached or semi-detached with gardens, providing homes for managers, solicitors and owners of small businesses.

Table 3.10 Addresses and near neighbours of skilled printers living in Hazel Grove, 1907

Name and address of printers

Neighbours

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