My great-great-grandfather on my mother's side was Henry Munns. In many censuses, his trade is listed as Lighterman and Waterman. You can find the description of these trades elsewhere on this site.
On the Thames Lighterman site [1] they hypothesise that "the trade for watermen dwindled with the construction of bridges". I wanted to see if Henry's work was affected by the construction, so I have mapped his census entries to the dates that the bridges were constructed.
Henry is shown as "HM". His father was named Charles and shows as "Father C"; Henry's son George is shown as "son G", and his sons Henry and Saxby are shown as "sons H & S". The census entry is the same colour as the bridges that were built just after that census was published.
 |
| Census entries mapped against the building of bridges in London |
It seems that he did not cease to be a waterman in any censuses, so I could conclude that he was not affected. However, the excellent documentary that is provided at [1] states that most people of this trade held licenses for both lighterman and waterman, so it could be that Henry was working as a lighterman but had waterman written into the census.
Again in the excellent documentary at [1], a former lighterman points out that the industry was mostly adversely affected by the advent of containers. Goods are no longer offloaded at docks on the Thames, but are offloaded at Tilbury (further toward the mouth of the river) and loaded onto trucks and trains for transport to other parts of England.
A recent article in The Guardian [2] shows that the way that lightermen and watermen are licensed is changing. Since 1555 they have had to complete a five year apprentice; this is now being replaced with a an apprenticeship of just two years length, plus six months of local knowledge training. The article has quotes from an existing lighterman who is stating that this will undermine safety. I believe this will also allow more people to get a license, and it will no longer be the job for life that it used to be.
[1] http://www.thameslightermen.org.uk/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jan/02/britishidentity.patrickbarkham
No comments:
Post a Comment