More jobs for needle and thread

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (86) provides an analytical review of the resort’s tailors, some business owners, some employees during 1871. The review sketches the category’s size and structure, the social profile of its members, and reviews the key firms.

Victorian Bournemouth (86): category structure

Overview

According to the 1871 directory, over twenty firms comprised the textiles business category. It included tailors, drapers, milliners, outfitters, as well as a hatter, a hosier, and merchants dealing in silk or lace. On occasion a business might cover both drapery and tailoring. The category had increased almost four times since the late 1850s. Just under half the category consisted of tailors. In total, however, the census listed over thirty people, besides the owners, who recorded their occupation as tailor, tailoress, or outfitter. Furthermore, over ninety women worked as dressmakers. Hence, perhaps around a hundred and twenty individuals worked in the tailoring business, sole traders, employees, and firm owners, the latter numbering just under ten. According to their census listings, the firms perhaps employed most of the town’s tailors, five accounting for over half of the tailors living in the resort.

Changes and events 1857-1870

During Bournemouth’s second period, the number of tailoring firms and tailors recorded by the directories and the census seems to have doubled. The 1861 census recorded about half the number of tailors present ten years later. Firms increased in number also but established enterprises may have experienced organic growth in business, leading them to require greater production capacity. Several of the firms recorded in 1871 had a trading history extending back as much as a decade, others coming to the resort during the 1860s. New firms and the expansion of existing traders appears to have provided work for many more tailors. This business category, therefore, experienced apparent stability during the period, although two bankruptcies occurred. One involved a man trading alone, perhaps, while the other brought down the Bournemouth branch of an established Christchurch business. This required the liquidation of stock, sale of a residence, and, perhaps, imprisonment.

Victorian Bournemouth (86): firms and workers 

Firms 

The tailors of 1871 listed as having firms in Bournemouth had all reached an established age. Some had lost wives and remarried or would do so. Several had fathers as tailors, the others artisans’ sons, except for Charles Garbett (agricultural labourer) and Alfred Gibbs (servant). Most of those without tailoring fathers served an apprenticeship away from home. Gibbs, however, appears to have worked first in London as a policeman. Three men came from distant places (Liverpool, Lewes, and near Hereford), the remainder from Hampshire and Dorset. Although none seem to have married tailor’s daughters, their fathers-in-law worked as artisans or shopkeepers. These men and their wives, therefore, belonged to Bournemouth’s middling community. A couple died during the 1870s, but the rest stayed in the area, continuing for the most part to make clothes. Although mobile before arriving at Bournemouth, thereafter they found enough trade to settle.

Kinship and friendship cooperatives

Some firms lay in a zone comprised of Commercial Road, Poole Hill (a continuation of the latter), and Orchard Street (adjoining the former). Others lay to the east, established in Springbourne, a new sector. In both areas, in the streets behind other tailors clustered, either together in a household, as neighbours, or on the same street. It seems plausible that, given their proximity to the firms, many of these tailors worked for them. On the other hand, in some cases, kinship connections existed amongst these tailors. In Orchard Street, tailor Charles Gear had his brother-in-law as a boarder, working in the same trade. Nearby, Mannington Place a household headed by a cabinetmaker contained his cousin, a tailor, while his wife’s father had the same occupation. Two tailors also boarded. These apparent connections suggest that such households perhaps worked as cooperatives, supplying different customers, not one firm alone. 

Victorian Bournemouth (86): tailors longer term

Tailoring a good occupation

Record linking suggests that having a tailoring skill enabled a lifetime’s income opportunity. The children of tailors would have seen and extended this concept, but others without that starting point also seemed to benefit. Some died between 1871 and the next census, but about half continued in the records for the next two decades. Almost all continued tailoring, whether they remained in Bournemouth or moved away. Michael Hennessey, an Irish migrant, after Bournemouth took his family to New York, recorded there as a tailor. James Grant, 22, one of those living in Mannington Place, found his way to Witney, Oxfordshire, where he settled, marrying a blanket maker, and raising a family, still a tailor. Some of the women tailors later no longer reported their occupation as tailors and some became dressmakers. A few women came and went from the trade, perhaps returning to the skill according to household revenue needs.

Bournemouth good for tailors

Record linking also enables following the later location of tailors working in Bournemouth during 1871. In the resort’s early period, a general pattern of mobility applied. Contributors to the local economy had all migrated there, many of whom continued moving after a while. Many of the tailors registered at the end of the second period stayed at the resort, some settling in the flourishing suburbs of Springbourne or Winton. Robert Hughes, a Huntingdon tailor, brought his wife to Bournemouth by 1871, perhaps working for a retailer. By 1881, however, he had become a master tailor, having his own business running at a level to require an employee. Younger men saw Bournemouth as a positive environment to serve an apprenticeship, though in some cases, for example James Grant, marriage might prompt his departure to live and work in his wife’s native place. Bournemouth offered stable employment for many tailors.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (86) has suggested that by 1871 the resort offered growing and stable opportunities for those who made a living from needle and thread. Numbers of firms and workers had increased in a decade. Many of the tailors settled in the town or its suburbs, contributing stability as the town went through its next development stage.

References

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