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‘Couldn’t resist sharing this from a Tweet by Else Churchill of the Society of Genealogists @SoGGenealogist . Which of these occupations would we like to take up??
14 Sunday Nov 2021
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‘Couldn’t resist sharing this from a Tweet by Else Churchill of the Society of Genealogists @SoGGenealogist . Which of these occupations would we like to take up??
26 Friday Mar 2021
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inWhat will people make of us on the 2021 Census in one hundred years’ time when it is made public?
One wonders if anything will be the same. Today, we live in a time of rapid change. Many of us (of a certain age) remember a time when we had not yet been into space, when an elderly person (my grandmother) might be reluctant to use the landline telephone because it was too alien, and when there was no such thing as a personal computer. When Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon in 1969 the power of the computer on board is said to have been less than that of the mobile phone we have in our pockets and handbags today. Perhaps that is why it ‘crashed’ at the last moment (the computer, mercifully not the LEM) and Armstrong had to pilot it to the Moon’s surface himself.
Oddly, one of the comforting things about studying earlier censuses is what hasn’t changed, although we know, of course, that important social and economic changes have taken place.
What might we find similar if we were transported a century into the future? From early photos, Salisbury city centre looks much the same now as it did a century ago. It is probably cleaner now (despite any concerns about today’s litter) and the vehicles are different, as well as detail such as clothing worn. The shops and market stalls are selling similar products, although, again, there will be differences in detail. Will there still be a market in 2121? Unless there is some untoward change, I would guess yes, there will be.
Despite the convenience of shopping on-line, there are also inconveniences, and I would guess there will still be shops in the future, if only as showrooms. There is a resurgence, today, of ‘locally made’ and ‘locally sourced’ which may find its way into the shop premises, so – new ‘old’ kinds of shops perhaps.
We can see from late nineteenth and early twentieth century censuses (the most recent one to be published is that of 1911, with the 1921 Census due out early next year) that some of the old occupations and crafts were ‘hanging on’ in Salisbury. There were numerous boot and shoe manufacturers (not just cobblers, who repair). However, no-one was calling themselves “cordwainer” any longer. Many manufacturers were, no doubt, still working in their homes or small workshops, but perhaps on early machinery such as the treadle-type cutting and sewing machines in use well before 1900. And by that time, Salisbury had its factories, as highlighted in Alan Clarke’s item this week:
At the turn of the last century, several Salisbury inhabitants described themselves as “tanners”, some of that leather no doubt being used for boots and shoes. The straw plait makers of earlier censuses had disappeared but were possibly directly replaced by the several “Basket Maker”s circa 1900. Leaver Brothers were still making baskets in Salisbury in the 1960s. And not for nothing is part of our city called the Maltings. In Malthouse Lane in 1891 there are….”Malthouse Labourer”s.
Some of the residents in 1891 described themselves as “Cutlers”, and Salisbury razors, knives and scissors, while never produced in the same numbers as from Sheffield, for example, had been favoured for their quality throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 1891 Census, a “Manufacturer” from Sheffield (cutlery capital of the world at that time) was staying at one of the hotels in Salisbury. Presumably on business.
Blacksmiths still traded, and of course, until after the First World War, horses still provided most transport, and still worked the land. There were still “Ostler”s, “Groom”s “Carriage Maker”s and “Carrier”s (a version of ‘white van man’) in the late nineteenth century censuses. There were still “Agricultural Labourers” and at least one “Cattle Drover”. There was still a saddle-maker in Brown Street only fifty years ago – Till’s.
There was even a “Beam Rug Maker” in Salisbury in 1891. The last, perhaps, in a long tradition of weavers who predominated in the Medieval period. A few women described themselves as “Carpet Weaver” and may well have been working at the Wilton factory.
A great many young women, and men, were still described as servants of various types. No doubt when we can look at the 1921 Census, we will see far fewer people employed in that way.
By 1891 all children under the age of 12 were described as “Scholar”. Compulsory education had arrived.
Some occupations in the 1891, 1901 Censuses reflect changing fashions. They appear, then disappear – for example “Mantle Makers” ** are almost as common as “Dressmakers” in these censuses but did not appear earlier, or much later.
Things had already changed, however, and by 1901 the “Horse hair Picker”s, “….Sorter”s, “….Turner”s and “Horse Hair Weaver”s of the 1860s and 1870s no longer appeared in Salisbury censuses. What did they do? Apparently, the long hairs from horses’ tails made, when mixed with cotton or linen, excellent furniture fabrics.* The strong horse hair would be replaced by man-made fibres in the twentieth century.
“Oil Merchant”s and “Gas Fitter”s had appeared by 1901. And there were numbers of people who were described as “Bricklayer”, “Stone Mason”, “Carpenter” , “Cabinet Maker”, “Teacher”, “Police Constable” – not new in themselves by then, of course, but what they had in common circa 1900 was that they were an indication of the growth in Salisbury’s population. More houses, more schools, more crime. “Plumber”s , who hardly appear at all before the 1900s also indicate change. Similarly, the number of those working on the L&SW and Great Western Railways had increased – railway firemen, stokers, porters, ticket clerks, ticket collectors, inspectors, guards, signalmen, engine drivers, brakesmen, telegraph clerks, waiting room attendants and cleaners. In charmingly named Chapel Place (off Fisherton Street) in 1891 were several of these who worked, no doubt, at the main railway station nearby. Chapel Close today is at the back doors and the loading bays of the City Hall and Salisbury Playhouse!
By the way, did we all fill in our census forms correctly? If not, we will drive to distraction all those family historians in 2121!
*With thanks to Newman and Howells in ‘Salisbury Past’
** A mantle was a long or short often sleeveless cloak, jacket or outer garment. In the late Victorian period they were sometimes fitted rather than ‘flowing’. They went out of fashion in favour of more ‘ordinary’ coats at the end of the nineteenth century.
19 Friday Mar 2021
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Volunteer Pompi Parry, an expert, I know, on all things costume, has sent this in response to Part One of our answers to the recent quiz…
“The main straw plait and hat industry in England was in Luton The museum there has a good display and lots of information if you google it. Pompi”
Thank you Pompi! Meanwhile, continuing with answers to the earlier quiz on 19th century occupations…
A Cordwainer? A cordwainer is, to be precise, a shoemaker who makes new shoes from new leather. The cordwainer’s trade can be contrasted with the cobbler’s trade, according to a tradition that restricted cobblers to repairing shoes. The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers in London (one of the oldest livery companies there), says they were “originally highly skilled craftsmen who used the finest goatskin leather from Cordoba in Spain. Originally ‘cordovan’ or ‘cordwain’“.
In Salisbury in 1861 there were numbers of people who described themselves as “Cordwainers”, but also quite a few “Boot Makers” or even “Ladies’ Boot Makers”. And below is Elizabeth White, a “Boot Binder” in Culver street. These were workers who sewed together the upper leathers on a last – usually women, older children and old men.
The analysis of the 1861 census for Britain as a whole shows that there were more people involved in the boot and shoemaking trade than in many other industries, including engineering, mining and the railways.
A Staymaker? ‘Stays’ were the fully boned laced bodices worn under women’s clothes from the early 17th century until the end of the 19th century and which gave a woman’s body the stiff, cone-like shape that was fashionable and which offered great support to the upper body.
Stays from c 1660 (Victoria and Albert Museum). The actual stays are the vertical ribs which hold the garment, and the body, stiffly upright.
The word is sometimes considered synonymous with ‘corset’ but a stay was also the name of the stiffener sewn within the bodice. These were traditionally made from whale bone and stay makers were therefore to be found in sea ports such as Portsmouth and Ipswich. It was women’s work, labouring in factories by the nineteenth century, but still also in their own homes as well. My great grandmother married the overseer at her place of work in Ipswich, travelling back to his home town of Portsmouth and working in a stay factory there. Her daughter, my grandmother, did piece work at home in the early twentieth century, sewing stays on a magnificent old Singer sewing machine.
Despite the coastal connections, I was surprised to find several staymakers in Salisbury in 1861, including one in that same household in Culver Street (above) :
A Hawker? A hawker is a vendor of merchandise that can be easily transported and is often sold from the transport itself, eg a hand cart. The term is roughly synonymous with costermonger or peddlar. Henry Mayhew wrote about these men and women, and children, as he saw them in London in 1851.
“In the first place all the goods they sell are cried or ‘hawked’…”New mackerel, 6 a shilling” “Oysters, a penny a lot” “Wild Hampshire rabbits, 2 a shilling”
Mayhew lists more than fifty different items being sold in the streets of London by hawkers or costermongers – everything from ones we might recognise as ‘street food’ – fried fish, ice cream, sandwiches, baked potatoes, hot wine, coffee, “sherbert and lemonade”, cakes and buns – to the slightly bizarre –“crackers and detonating balls”, cat’s and dog’s meat, “hot green peas”, corn salve, “fly papers and beetle-wafers”, “gutta-percha heads”.
I was wondering how we would know what our Salisbury hawkers were selling when I came across this one, staying at the Kings Arms, in 1861, apparently at the same time as a contingent of the 22nd Foot! He is a “Book Hawker”, all the way from Scotland.
Elsewhere in the city, in Castle Street, we have a “Licensed Hawker ” (but of what?). Both his wife and daughter are listed as “Net Maker”. Is this a clue?
An Ostler? An ostler was a stable boy and some of the larger houses and certainly the hotels, like the White Hart, had an ostler. Some residents in 1861 identified themselves as “Stable Man” however. Whether there was a fine distinction, we don’t know.
A Coalmeter? Mary Crane has given us some information about this . I haven’t yet found a coalmeter in Salisbury, though there are individuals who described themselves as “Coal Heavers”. In the Middle Ages, the area on New Canal (then called ‘The Ditch’), south of Butchers’ Row and where the taxis park opposite the side door of Marks and Spencer, was known as the “Coal Market”. Of coal in other parts, Mary writes…
“Before the advent of the railways, much cargo was carried by barge in areas where there were canals and navigable rivers. The barges would carry grain, timber, bricks, etc, and coal. A coalmeter worked on the quay side checking manifests. ensuring the paperwork was correct. He needed to be literate and numerate at a time when schooling was not universal. He also had to be honest. My great great grandfather was a coalmeter on the River Deben in Suffolk.”
“Coal Heavers” were also , strictly, men whose job was around ships and barges, literally heaving the coal onto and off boats. Quite what they did in Salisbury is thought-provoking.
A Companion?
The nineteenth century was a time when families of all types, rich or poor, enjoyed the support of the wider family. Elderly parents, if not actually living with married children and their offspring, often had one of their grandchildren, perhaps still under the age of ten, living with them. They could be helpful, fetch and carry, run for assistance if someone was ill, and so on. And it eased the burden on the youngster’s own home where there might be a number of children still not earning a living. Unmarried daughters usually remained in the family home and looked after ageing parents or moved in with a married brother, or perhaps two sisters would set up home together. All of these people could be described as ‘companions’.
For others, however, it was an occupation, and they recorded it as such on the census – “Companion”. Women from ‘genteel’ backgrounds took positions as companions if they had no other means of support, as until the late 19th century there were very few other ways in which an upper- or upper-middle-class woman could earn a living which did not result in a complete loss of her class status. To be a companion was a step ‘higher’ than being a governess, offering company, conversation, help with entertaining, etc. Most would have received an ‘allowance’ rather than a wage.
Although the whole business would be regarded as odd, today, and anyway unnecessary as women are, in Western society, free to work as they wish, it is a mistake to think that companions, governesses or even servants were always regarded as somehow ‘lowly’. Evidence – letters, memoirs, novels from the period, even memorials in churches – show they were often much appreciated, even loved.
10 Wednesday Mar 2021
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agricultural labourers, Blind Jack Metcalf, census, chairwomen, perambulators, pupil teachers, strawplaiter, whitesmiths
A Strawplaiter? Fairly obvious, but the challenge was to work out what the plaited straw was for. We have this from Mary Crane:
“This was a cottage industry that grew up in agricultural areas. Women would work at home and look after small children at the same time. It involved weaving damp straw stems (less likely to break) to create braids and selling them to milliners to make the ubiquitous straw hats (some people described themselves as “Straw hat makers” or similar). It was poorly paid work, as most cottage industries were, and my 3 x great grandmother (a young widow with four children) Ann Clark, strawplaiter, born 1811,had to claim parish relief.”
And this is from the Salisbury census, Culver Street 1861…not a straw plaiter, but Eliza Riddle must have been getting her straw plaits from somewhere, in order to make her bonnets.
A Pupil teacher?
From Hansard (a record of Parliamentary discussion) 1898:
“There is a clear distinction between elementary education and secondary instruction, and the confusion which now exists is disastrous to both. It is very desirable that the one should be more distinguished from the other. Elementary education is the training, morally and intellectually, of children for all positions in life. Secondary instruction is required as apprenticeship by that portion of the working class who are going into higher kinds of employment. For instance, Manchester and a Wiltshire village do not require the same educational curriculum. They both require elementary education, but they do not both require the same kind of scientific and technical instruction; yet the recommendations of the Departmental Committee tend to make all education adopt a secondary nature. It is proposed by the Committee that the standard of age, qualification, and pay of all pupil teachers shall be raised to the secondary standard, and that they shall only be taken from secondary schools. As a matter of fact the best pupil teachers we have had have been trained in primary schools. This proposal actually puts pupil teachers out of the reach of the greater number of schools throughout the kingdom. If the age, qualification, and pay of pupil teachers are raised, as this Report proposes, the majority of schools will be unable to use them. The second proposal of the Committee is that no school is to have any pupil teacher which has less than two adult teachers in it. Well, that at once excludes from the employment of pupil teachers almost all the rural schools in the kingdom”
If you would like to read the rest of this argument, it is well worth it! Go here.
The idea of having older pupils assist with teaching the younger is as old as any kind of formal teaching itself. It makes sense, and with the growth of population in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and extension of free education for all, the country was in desperate need of more teachers. The pupil teacher system was formalised in 1846. He or she had to be at east thirteen years old and to have served an ‘apprenticeship’ within a school for five years, learning from observation and practical application, while simultaneously completing their own educations. It was a system clearly being reviewed by the end of the century….(see above).
This is a well-used Victorian illustration (used in many history text books) of pupil teachers (standing) assisting a teacher in educating large numbers of pupils. Not surprisingly this was known as the ‘factory system’ of teaching. It is unlikely any such schools, certainly of this size, existed in Salisbury.
My 2 x great grandfather was a bare-foot pupil in Ireland who became a pupil teacher. Always a Christian, he moved when in his forties, to become a missionary in the East End of London. His clever daughter managed to gain a scholarship and was one of the first women to graduate from the University of London. She, in turn, became head teacher of a large secondary school which still flourishes today. His son became a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army. Education works, if you let it.
An Ag Lab? This is a shortening of the occupation description, “Agricultural Labourer” and it is how it usually appears under the “Occupations” column in the censuses. Geneaologists will have known this straight away! Most of us who have tackled family history will have found at least a few amongst our forebears. In 1861 being an agricultural labourer was the most common occupation in the country. Nearly two million people described themselves as such, although by then, the combined factory and other industrial jobs would have outnumbered those working on farms. There were plenty of Ag Labs in Salisbury in the nineteenth century, including in St Ann’s Street.
Agriculture was still extremely labour-intensive in 1861. Even today, Salisbury sits very much surrounded by farm land, especially meadow. Alfred (above), from St Ann’s Street, could easily have walked to work in West or East Harnham, Churchfields, Laverstock, Britford, even Alderbury where he was born.
The 1861 census is nearly thirty years after the events of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in Dorset but times were still pretty hard. Low wages and unemployment were becoming a problem as the country became industrialised and agricultural labourers had to find work in factory towns instead. Or emigrate.
This photo is from 1874 and shows a family of agricultural workers who have been evicted in Milborne St Andrew, Dorset. You can read more about agricultural unrest in this area here. It was not new!
A Chairwoman? This is not a spelling mistake or typo! I hadn’t met this description of an occupation in my research before, but there were several Chairwomen listed in the Salisbury census in 1861. Casting about (or perhaps I should say ‘surfing’), the first suggestion I came across was that chairwomen pushed the wheelchairs of wealthy elderly women, or even carried sedan chairs. This latter idea seemed very unlikely and there was no evidence offered for either.
As I continued to search, it seemed that “Chairwoman” was probably the same as ‘charwoman’ (a number of family history sites were assuming so). Certainly those listed in the 1861 census were women from humble homes, probably needing to do some work to supplement the husband’s income. But I still couldn’t be sure. Then, after literally some hours of searching, I was pointed in this direction:
‘General Rules for the Pronunciation of the English Language: With Complete Lists of the Exceptions’ by Robert Nares 1792
As in “chare” “chore” or “cere” (OE) – an odd/small/’one off’ job. “a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service.” (wikipedia)
Salisbury at that time would have offered quite a lot of work for char ladies (I always thought it had something to do with their tea drinking!) – in shops, offices and in the wealthier town houses.
A Whitesmith? There are several of these in the 1861 census for Salisbury. It is, as one might guess, to do with certain types of metals a person who works with “white” or light-coloured metals, and is sometimes used as a synonym for tinsmith. He is also a metalworker who does finishing work on iron and steel such as filing, lathing, burnishing or polishing, and might, therefore be working on items originally manufactured by a blacksmith, of which, again, there are several in Salisbury at that time. Pots and pans come to mind….
A Pedestrian? This one is still something of a mystery. It is generally agreed that if someone described themselves as a “perambulator” (which seems equally obscure!) in a nineteenth century census, they were what we would now call a surveyor. The Collins Dictionary tells us it is the name for the wheel-like instrument used by surveyors to measure distances. However, family history websites have suggested that a “Pedestrian” might indeed be a pedestrian – claiming that walking races were very popular at that time….. It seems doubtful, however, that this was a paid occupation.
‘Blind Jack’ Metcalf (statue above) was one of Britain’s first modern road builders. He really was blind, and would judge the quality of the ground on his route by tapping it with a stick and listening carefully to the sound. It is said he checked that his labourers were breaking the stones to the proper size for the surface by popping them in his mouth….
08 Monday Mar 2021
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A different sort of quiz this week, based on some family history which Mary Crane has sent in, and on the census work being undertaken.
What were these nineteenth century occupations?
Mary Crane’s quiz from last week….
06 Saturday Mar 2021
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census, Clewer Sisters, Female Penitentiary, marginalised women, St Mary's Home, The House of Mercy
Near the top of St Ann’s Street was the St Mary’s Home for the Fallen Women of Wilts and Dorset. It had opened in the 1830s.
On this interesting local history website, Lesley Bush writes about the St Mary’s Home which was empty at the time she knew it (1952) but which had been run for some of its existence by nuns*. It was at the end of St Martin’s Lane (now part of St Martin’s Church Street) and its now part of the Technical College, cut off from St Ann’s Street by the city ring road.
Lesley Bush remembered, when interviewed…
“… a vast place with a big courtyard at the back and at the bottom of the garden was the wall that was at the edge of the end of the playground of St Martin’s School and there was this huge drop down behind this wall into the playground and when I started school there my mum use to be able to look over the wall and watch me in the playground. But at one end of this building was this huge sort of muddling laundry where the where the women in this reform home had had to work and at one wall end wall there was a huge treadmill which had obviously been some type of punishment wheel for them to walk round inside. And there were huge big long tables all stacked up with great big laundry baskets full of moth balls and great big mangles, and tubs and boilers and with with dolly pegs for doing the washing. And my mum said there were little sort of cell like rooms round the other side with little scratched messages on the wall like ‘been here eight years’ and things like that. All sorts of little sad messages scratched on the wall.“
Still with the 1861 census (see earlier blog), the Home is listed there as “In the road leading to the Meadows”, which, in some sense, it still is, if you are prepared to risk crossing the new Southampton Road by the College Roundabout and heading out across the Churchill Gardens.
When the census was carried out, it was called the “Wilts and Dorset Female Penitentiary”, and would have been somewhat smaller than the building we see now. The “Lady Superintendant” was Eliza Purdue, from Oxfordshire, living there with her daughter and two servants, a cook and a laundress. With great sensitivity, perhaps, the twelve “Penitents” (as they are described) are listed by initials only and were aged from 17 to 30. By co-incidence or design, a “Police Officer” and his young family were listed as living nearby, perhaps next door. Only one of the young women was from Salisbury, in fact fewer than half of those present came from Wiltshire or Dorset. It was common practice then for pregnant women who were unmarried to disappear from their home area if they could, and start a new life, or return (childless) some months later, perhaps with some ‘cover story’ to allow them to continue life at home.
By 1911, most of the women were aged between 17 and 25, but the youngest was 15, the oldest 45. There were 39 “Inmates” by then, with seven nuns as permanent staff and a small group of “Visitors” and “Matrons” assisting. The growth is a sign of the times, the population of the country as a whole had grown hugely in the intervening fifty years. So had the population of Salisbury, but none of the women came from the city, and all but four came from outside Wiltshire and Dorset. It may be that at this time it had a good reputation and women chose to throw themselves on the mercy of the sisters. It was indeed called “St Mary’s Home. The House of Mercy” in 1911.
*The Community of St John Baptist (CSJB), also known as the Sisters of Mercy, or formerly Clewer Sisters, is an order of Augustinian nuns. The purpose of the order was to help marginalised women – mainly single mothers, the homeless and sex trade workers – by providing them shelter and teaching them a trade. The work of the sisters expanded to include administering and working in orphanages, schools, convalescent hospitals, soup kitchens, and women’s hostels. They ran the St Mary’s Home between 1889-1947.
02 Tuesday Mar 2021
Posted Collections, Salisbury Photographs
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With the census nearly upon us (Sunday 21 March 2021) it has been interesting to focus on some of the earlier censuses for Salisbury.
There has been a census every ten years since 1841 (except 1941) when rapid population growth, resulting in other changes (agricultural and industrial revolutions) forced the government to take note. As the leaflets that are appearing through our letter boxes state, “the census…gathers vital information to help plan services such as transport, education and healthcare.”
These days the amount of information required (by law!) involves several pages. In the early period, it was touch simpler…. This is a short extract from the 1861 census for St Ann’s Street, Salisbury.
This house in St Ann’s Street (South side) is quite a big household in 1861, and a relatively wealthy one, with six servants. Unfortunately the enumerator does not include the house number, instead simply adding the schedule number in the left hand margin. It is tempting to think that it might be the big eighteenth century house which is at the top of St Ann’s St and was, until recently, the St Ann Street Surgery. Certainly it must be similar. The son, Francis Hodding, listed here as an “Articled Clerk” later became a local solicitor himself.
Close by (schedule 2, ie the second house that the enumerator visited) was also the home of a solicitor. Charlotte Cobb, the lady of the house, was apparently 21 years older than her husband. One wonders if there is a mistake somewhere!
Nearby was a Master Tailor, wife and teenage children and at two further addresses nearby, elderly widows, both pensioners receiving “Parochial Relief”.
John Hall and his wife and five sons aged 2 – 14 were also close by. He was a porter to a maltster. The eldest son, 14, was working as an errand boy.
This mixed bunch were followed by homes of a baker, a carpenter, a “Confectioner”, from Bath, a cutler, a “Cordwainer” and a “Whitesmith”. Some of these must have been following their trade or craft at their home, and selling from their shops on St Ann’s Street.
A Curate at St Martin’s Church (at the top of the street) the Rev Edgar Hoskins, MA Oxon, aged 30, unmarried, from Guernsey, was lodging somewhere along the street, as was another, Rev Lloyd B Walland (?), born in the West Indies. There was a railwayman, Edward Cave (possibly Cane), aged 36, who was “Guard on L & SWR”. The railway had reached Salisbury in 1857.
Further along were dwellings which, by 1861, had become a children’s home of sorts, run by the Beckingsales (mother and daughter). In all, 14 “Boarders” aged from 3 to 15 were all “Training for service” The Beckingsales were recorded in later documents as running a mother and baby home in St Ann’s Street. One hundred years later the Beckingsale Home was closed and demolished to make way for the city ring road.
Censuses remain ‘closed’ for one hundred years in order to maintain confidentiality. After that, they are in the public domain and are a boon for family historians, social historians and others. We look forward to the publication of the 1921 census shortly…
This is all new to your blogger. If anyone can add detail, or corrections, please do! More to follow…