Introduction

Migrants and their families achieved success by making important contributions to early Victorian Bournemouth’s economy and society. Several kinship groups came from the hinterland framed by the towns of Wimborne and Cranborne and the Allen and Crane rivers. Study of the Joy family, based in Hinton Martel, a village lying at the centre of that area, illustrates this process. It shows perhaps how Bournemouth’s presence modified customs extending back many generations.

Fundamentals of the rural economy

Itinerant work the norm

In early modern England, two locational references defined rural workers, one social, one economic. The former connected them to their birth parish (or parents’ residence if different), the latter to the surrounding area which might include many localities. The wider, economic frame occurred because insufficient work often existed in their home parish. Rural labourers often became permanent migrants since employers tended to offer short-term opportunities. Hence whereas working people – men and women – had a parochial residence, they had to seek work on a regional basis, attending hiring fairs for the purpose. To study rural working people, therefore, defining their geographic work zone becomes important. The hinterland lying between the Allen and Crane rivers provides an example. About a dozen villages lay in the area, amongst them Hinton Martel. A road network facilitated movement between Wimborne and Cranborne and amongst the villages.

Settlement difficult to obtain

As residents, employers had a legal responsibility to fund their parish’s relief fund, for use in cases of impoverishment. The money helped indigent residents. Taxpayers sought to reduce their payments by minimising the numbers of potential claimants. They conceived, enacted, and enforced the concept of settlement. Under this, everyone had lawful settlement in one parish, often his or her birthplace. Residence qualified the impoverished to claim on a parish’s relief fund. Parish officials would deny financial support to an impoverished ‘foreign’ worker, who had settlement elsewhere. In that circumstance, the local Poor Law guardians could transport the pauper to his settlement parish, which had to support him. Very tight rules made ‘foreign’ settlement difficult to obtain. Each settlement candidate attended a magistrates’ examination, affluent men interrogating impoverished labouring people. James Joy, carpenter, born at Hinton Martel, failed his examination to gain settlement at Canford Magna, 1822.

The Joy family, generations of migrant carpenters

The journeys of James Joy

James Joy, born late 1780s at Hinton Martel, left there first at age nine. For the next ten years he acted as a plough boy for various employers elsewhere in the district. When 21, he had taken an apprenticeship with a carpenter resident in Horton, about five miles from Hinton Martell. During the apprenticeship, James slept and lodged in Hinton Martell, not Horton. He would travel some ten miles each day to and from work. The contract ended early when James and his master quarrelled. Later, he hired out as a journeyman to several masters. At 30, he started a family, marrying the probable mother, Mary Cole, in Canford Magna three years later. As mentioned, he failed to obtain settlement for there. They may have lived for a while in nearby Horton, but the 1841 census listed them at Hinton Martel living with his father, 80, also a carpenter.

The further travels of Joy carpenters

The three sons of James and Mary Joy, as had their father and grandfather, made a living as migrants, also from carpentry. William, the middle son, arrived in Bournemouth by 1845. He married a Christchurch butcher’s daughter, a widow and found fortune, for he kept The Royal Arms, perhaps having built it. Before his early death (1864) his two brothers had followed him to Bournemouth. Prior to that, they had moved around Dorset and Hampshire, according to the birthplaces of their children. The two surviving brothers remained in Bournemouth, their children later finding employment in the town. Stephen continued in woodwork, even as a builder in 1881, but later hawked dairy produce. Henry, however, succeeded, becoming one of Bournemouth’s important builders. This grandson of an itinerant carpenter and a pauper achieved notable social mobility, becoming a farmer, later leaving a respectable estate. The Joys had come far from Hinton Martel.

Bournemouth: the crucible of success

An end of the road

Fifty years earlier, perhaps, the Joy brothers would have followed their father’s footsteps looking for carpentry work around the district. Times had perhaps improved in one way since then, because the Napoleonic wars, an economic and social disrupter, had long finished, yet conditions at Hinton Martell remained rugged. Lord Shaftesbury, its absentee proprietor, expressed his shock at the hovels erected there by life-holders, who chose real estate over farming, charging excessive rents for inferior property. He described cottages seen on his estate as ‘filthy, close, indecent, unwholesome’, no incentive to stay, despite the power of custom. Economic necessity or opportunity had pulled James Joy’s sons beyond their ancestral district, further into Dorset, even to Hampshire. Perhaps traces of Bournemouth’s insistent media messages about its economic success had reached William Joy, for he appeared to prioritise its call over any home ties. His brothers soon fluttered to the resort’s flame.

Qualities for success

In 1853, the Manchester Unity of Odd-Fellows came to Bournemouth, establishing a lodge at William Joy’s tavern. Appreciative of his inn becoming the lodge’s meeting-place, William Joy spoke at the celebratory dinner. He forecast success since Bournemouth had no benefit society. The once migrant carpenter’s reported words painted him as a businessman having broad horizons and a sensitivity to social matters. Over the next couple of decades after his arrival, Henry Joy proceeded as builder of success. Nevertheless, the liquidity problems of the late 1860s brought him close to trouble. Henry’s obituary praised his ‘indefatigable energy, indomitable will and the valuable gift of foresight’. Perhaps these qualities had enabled their parents to scratch a living in the customary itinerant world of rural Dorset. Bournemouth’s emergence as a crucible of opportunity enabled at least two of their sons to harness these qualities to achieve financial success and social mobility.

Takeaway

This case study of the Joy family illustrates how Bournemouth’s success could offer opportunities for perpetual migrants, locked into restrictive lifestyles, bounded by custom and geography, to achieve significant social improvement.

References

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