Kinship. Community. Carpentry.

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (90) analyses a group of carpenters working in the town during 1871 who came from Hinton Martell, a tiny settlement north of Wimborne. The analysis shows that kinship, occupation, and neighbourly proximity connected these Bournemouth immigrants. The results offer clues to society in their native village and aspects of migration at the time.

Victorian Bournemouth (90): background

Geography

Around 160 men worked with wood according to the 1871 Bournemouth census, the great majority carpenters. They came from all over, almost ninety places named as their origins. Christchurch led the list (9), Wimborne had produced almost the same (8). Study suggests that few ties existed between the Wimborne carpenters, apart from their origin. One place, however, Hinton Martell, despite having a population of less than 400, produced almost as many woodworkers (7) at Bournemouth. The village belongs to the scatter of rural settlements lying between Wimborne and Cranborne. An earlier post reported on the society and economy found there during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Another showed a mobile work force rotating around the area as work opportunities beckoned. Traces of this process appear in the same surnames present in several of the communities.

Demography

During the eighteenth century, the annual level of baptisms at Hinton Martell ran on average about a four. In the 1820s, however, births increased. By the 1850s, they had reached a level of around three times that recorded during the previous century. In 1817, 1862 and 1864 as well as during the 1870s notable burial figures occurred. Nevertheless, the census figures increased each decade from 1801 until, by 1871, they had almost doubled (209, 381). Thus, this change in the population will have made local employment difficult. Several of Hinton Martell’s surnames also appeared at neighbouring Witchampton. Its paper mill stimulated a huge population burst (and resource competition) earlier than Hinton Martell. Many carpenters worked there but few came to Bournemouth. Hence, Hinton Martell’s carpentry exodus may have occurred for reasons other than demographic pressure. 

Victorian Bournemouth (90): woodworking networks

The families

The Hinton Martell group of carpenters recorded present at Bournemouth in 1871 consisted of Edmund Kail (42), Charles Cull (44), Charles Rose (66), Charles Rose (30), James Maidment (47), and John Joy (35). Stephen Joy (44) worked in Bournemouth as a sawyer. Surnames appeared in the baptismal record in this order: Joy, Rose, Kail, Cull, Maidment. The Joys entered the baptisms as early as 1733. This name ranked third in all baptisms there at this period. Within such a small community mutual acquaintance must have created many connections. Examination shows that relationships beyond acquaintance did occur. Marriages had already created linkages in the previous century. The closest connection concerned the two Roses, father and son. Genealogical analysis, however, suggests three sub-groupings, but a loose nexus may have drawn them all together. The group shared three main connections: kinship, carpentry, physical proximity during their lives. For the Joys see here.

Rose-Kail-Cull

Edmund Kail’s surname featured in connections with Charles Cull and the Roses. The linkages took the form of marriages, geographic proximity, and carpentry. All men worked as carpenters in Bournemouth during 1871. The mother-in-law of Charles Cull, sharing the same origin and trade as the others, had the name Kail. Although born in neighbouring Witchampton, kinship linkage seems possible. Charles Rose I’s aunt Elizabeth married an Isaac Kail in Hinton Martell (1816). Their daughter, Elizabeth, later married William Rose, also a carpenter, working in Bournemouth at the same time. Although he came from Poole, he connected with Hinton Martell, for his parents came from near there. These combinations involving the same family names suggest a form of managed, continuous linkage over several generations. These people appear to have preferred linkages that maintained a group of some introversion. They kept in touch and maintained their connections.

Maidment-Rabbetts-Hutchings-Cull

A circuitous trail of proximity, strung over years, connected this group, centred on the name Charles Cull, perhaps Bournemouth’s carpenter of 1871. He had witnessed the wedding of James Maidment, one of the seven woodworkers, born in Hinton Martell, and Martha Kent, held in Witchampton, 1848. In 1851, still in this place, Cull had lived with the brother of a carpenter from Wiltshire, who had married into the Rabbets-Hutchings nexus. George Rabbetts, a carpenter, had married Elizabeth Hutchings, a carpenter’s daughter, all coming from Witchampton. By 1871 Rabbetts and his wife had come to Bournemouth, where they lived adjoining to her father and other siblings. A relative of Martha Kent would also marry a Hutchings. During 1881 and 1891, another neighbour of the Maidments had the name William Kail, a sawyer, born in Hinton Martell. He had familiar parentage: Elizabeth Rose and Isaac Kail (see above).

Victorian Bournemouth (90): discussion

Interconnection

The intense concentration of carpenters within the area containing Hinton Martell and Witchampton requires further study. Here, the emphasis falls on the social and economic connections that beyond little doubt linked together these families into a sub-section of that larger artisan group. Perhaps Charles Cull’s career thus recovered illustrates the fullest aspect of cooperation between these families. Friendship or perhaps professional association might create as many links as kinship. Cull’s apparent movements within this cluster implies that he chose to associate himself with this broader group of linked networks. In turn, this could suggest that active communication lines ran between the groups. If so, then this could explain the relative density of carpenters present in Bournemouth, all natives of a single settlement: Hinton Martell. These men and their wives all formed a single, perhaps fuzzy, family. Their immigration to Bournemouth over the same time indicates a determination to live together. 

Network ties

This group would perhaps qualify as closed network, because it had many strong ties and apparent frequent interactions. This can contribute towards social or economic success. Such a process appears to have drawn these Hinton Martell carpenters together for job opportunities in Bournemouth. Articles here and here have made a connection between networking theory and the concept, found in English local history, of open and closed communities. In simple terms, the latter reflected tight manorial control of population, jobs, and religion, the former the opposite. This group perhaps reflected standard practice at Hinton Martell, thereby identifying it as a closed community, another subject for further study. Close-knit networks can, in the long term, stagnate through resistance to outside influences in the form of new ideas and people. The group may have understood this possibility, for both Charles Rose and his son married women who came from outside Hinton Martell’s neighbourhood.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (90) has concentrated on Hinton Martell’s seven woodworkers found at Bournemouth in 1871. A probable kinship network has emerged from the dense genealogical information. On several occasions they lived nearby each other or shared experiences. This closed network may have reflected their native society. The members may have thrived by continuing their association once arrived in Bournemouth.

References

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