We had a very interesting and informative talk from Sophie Kay on the way the occupation can be an identifying tag for our elusive ancestors. She divided the talk into 3 main sections
● General resources
● Urban and 19/20th Centuries
● Rural and pre 19th Century
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● General Resources
Sophie stressed the need to look at context and place rather than just looking for the person.
Valuable resources included the following: The English Dialect Dictionary by Wright and Wright. This is available on the University of Innsbruck website and includes the definition of many occupations and the areas where the term is commonest. Another link was given for those with Scottish ancestors website. Waters (1999) Dictionary of old Trades, Titles and Occupations is a very useful book. Newspapers are an excellent source and one hint was to look for the job rather than our ancestor
A warning was given about the variations in names for the same role depending on locality. In some cases the name might be the same whereas the role was different.
As well as using the more usual search engines it is well worth searching more academic sites such as Jstor; also recommend was Google academic search, and there are of course Google Books and Internet archive.
If you wish to find out more about the employer Graces Guides can be very useful and the National Library of Scotland maps can help with locating exactly where they worked
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● Urban and 19/20th Centuries
There was a lot of change during this period with old jobs dying out and new ones coming into being.
In 1921 the Government published a Dictionary of Occupational terms relating to the census Scrolling to the bottom of the page gives links to sources for the earlier censuses
Books that are recommended as sources for social commentary including interviews with the working poor include Henry Mayhew’s (1851) London Labour and the London Poor and Smith and Thompson’s (1871) Street Life in London can be found via LSE Digital Library.
These are both available as free resources online
The Hisco Project is another online source that is well worth looking at and this contains images of many of the occupations although the project is very much work in progress.
Whittock’s Book of Trades (1842) was used as a “career guide” for lots of young men and included the costs of Apprenticeship and setting up in Business. This is available on Archive.org
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● Rural and pre 19th century
The Museum of English Rural life is an excellent Resource, It produces a bibliography and also has an excellent digital resource
The Tools and Trades History Society is very helpful, as is the Heritage Crafts Association
In all cases Context is vital. Beware of seasonal labour and movement backwards and forwards between various roles
All links in this article are Courtesy of Dr Sophie Kay and she is happy for anyone to get in touch with her via her website. Also visit The Parchment Rustler which is Sophie's blog.
Report by: Sheila Harris