Tinker, tailor, soldier sailor,
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
(Traditional counting game)
The memory of our forebears’ occupations lingers on in surnames: Butcher, Baker, Thatcher, Potter, Carpenter, Smith, Cooper, Tailor et al are common not only in English, but also elsewhere. Bäcker (baker), Schmidt (smith), Schneider (tailor) in German; Fournier (man of the oven), Boulanger (baker), Lefevre (iron smith) and Chevalier (knight) in France. Tailor has an equivalent in over twenty languages, to name a few: Krawiec/Kravitz in Polish, Darzi in Hindi and Urdu, Kleermaker in Dutch and Sastre in Spanish. Some surnames refer to trades and crafts which no longer exist: Tozer from combing and carding wool and Walker from fulling (cleaning wool for clothmaking). Occupational surnames appear in the fifty most common UK surnames as compiled by Dr Muhammad Adnam and Alistair Leak of University College London from the 2007 Electoral Register. Smith is first, Taylor (Tailor) fifth, Walker and Wright twelfth and thirteenth respectively.
Most, if not all of us, have a trade or craftsman in our ancestry. In medieval times, John might be identified by his occupation; John the carpenter distinguishes him from John the potter or John the thatcher. This was important in the rise of medieval bureaucracy when for centuries John, William and Richard were the three most popular male Christian names, closely followed by Robert and Thomas. If your surname is Smith, it is unlikely you will ever discover the original bearer of the name – a Plymouth smith in 1300 would be unrelated to a Paisley counterpart although working conditions would be similar.
Medieval names were fluid. As a journeyman journeyed, his ‘surname’ could change from his occupation to where he originated; John Baker became John of Norwich. A man’s son might not have the same surname as his father, but by 1400, however, a surname was largely hereditary: your father’s surname was yours too. For anyone interested in where a surname was most prolific in the 1881 census, Public Profiler on the internet (based at University College London) www.publicprofiler.org gives the whereabouts of all but the most uncommon surnames. Steve Archer’s Surname Atlas on CD includes them all.
Street names also reflect trade and crafts. Bread Street, mentioned in London as early as 1302, was a bread market. Ironmonger Lane has existed in the City of London since the twelfth century. Also in the City are Milk Street and Pudding Lane, infamous as the source of the Great Fire of London in September 1666 and responsible for the destruction of virtually every guildhall in the City. What the Great Fire didn’t get, the 1940 Blitz probably did. Incidentally, a ‘simple clock maker’ was hanged for starting the fire. The Monument, built as a permanent memorial to the fire and designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Dr Robert Hooke, rises from the corner of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill. At 202 feet high (61 meters), it is the exact distance from the source of the fire, can still be visited and, for the energetic, climbed. Good luck: there are 311 steps. Gold Streets are found in Northampton, Luddesdown (Kent), Wellingborough, Southsea and Barnsley. Other names relating to craftsmen are common, for instance Cooper’s Bottom in Longbridge Deverill, Wiltshire. For trade, the Haymarket in London is where hay and straw were sold in the seventeenth century.
The importance of trade and craft is reflected in nursery rhymes, such as:
Rub a dub dub three men in a tub
And who do you think they are?
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker...
Bakers are mentioned vicariously in Hot Cross Buns and Do you know the muffin man who lives down Drury Lane? The muffin man rang a bell and ported a tray on his head. An early reference to muffin sellers appears in Poor Robin’s Almanac, from 1733, and the rhyme is thought to date from around 1820 from a handwritten manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Jane Austen’s Persuasion, written in 1818 and pre-dating the Bodleian manuscript, mentions muffin men in Chapter Fourteen. Molly Malone sells her mussels in Dublin’s fair city. Hot Cross Buns is based on a street cry.
Common expressions refer to past trades. ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ is self-explanatory and regarded as derogatory today. ‘Jack’ was the ubiquitous medieval name (a pet name for John), albeit slightly disparaging, but integral to occupations like lumberjack, steeplejack and, indeed, the ordinary seaman, Jack Tar. Jack is used in tools: the bootjack, the jack-file, the jack-screw (and the jackboot beloved by Nazis). ‘Putting your best foot forward’ or the military ‘From the left, quick march’ refer to a man’s left foot being larger than his right. For women, the right foot is usually larger than their left. In the good old days, shoe shops measured both feet, presenting the right shoe first to women and the left to men. Early shoes (like snow boots and cheap slippers) didn’t distinguish between right and left, but eventually shoemakers recognised this and cut lasts and shoes accordingly.
A common feature from Victorian and Edwardian eras was that the aristocracy and professional classes looked down on people who made money ‘in trade’. Nouveau riche has similar connotations today. This snobbery insinuated itself into public schools – Eton, Harrow and Rugby educated sons of nobility and gentlemen, whereas minor public schools taught sons of manufacturers, mill owners and the rest. Rev Nathaniel Woodard (1811–91), founder of eleven schools and author of A Plea for the Middle Classes (https://archive.org/details/pleaformiddlecla00wood) advocated three social classes needing education as well as ‘gentlemen’ catered for in top public schools; ‘gentlemen with small incomes, solicitors, surgeons, unbeneficed clergy and naval and military officers: respectable tradesfolk and second-rate retail shops, publicans, gin-palace keepers’.
So why were tradesmen regarded as inferior? Trade was barter in Neolithic times. You can almost hear a caveman saying, ‘I have two deer and only need one. You’ve got a basket of berries. I’ll swap a venison leg for some fruit.’ Trade is the business of buying and selling goods. Alternatively, it is the purchase of raw materials and, in common parlance, giving it ‘added value’. A shoemaker purchases leather to make into shoes, selling them at a higher price than the original hide. This is the craftsman. A tradesman could be as lofty as a mill owner or as lowly as a pedlar…
Working in trade could be lucrative. Joseph Emm (1814–87), a servant at his marriage in 1847 and the son of a servant, according to his marriage certificate, ran the Black Horse in Wood Street, Chipping Barnet, for over twenty years. By 1881, his son Arthur ran it, although Joseph was still listed as proprietor in Kelly’s 1886 directory. By 1891, Arthur lived on independent means in Barnet and is described as ‘gentleman’ at his daughter’s wedding in 1906. Whether or not the locals agreed is immaterial; in 1903, he left his widow over £5,600. This figure pales into insignificance against the probate of Louisa Ann Martin (1860–1924), a school teacher before her marriage who, after running a public house in Rochdale, left a staggering £13,300 in 1924, enough for all her surviving siblings to buy a house outright. Trade may have been ‘looked down upon’ but it was ‘up there’ as far as money was concerned.
It is important to note that the Establishment, gentry and polite society, were largely Anglican, whereas nouveau riche entrepreneurs, industrialists and working-class folk were commonly Nonconformist – indeed, professions such as medicine and law were barred to Dissenters. Louisa Ann Martin hailed from a Nonconformist family who, although they condemned the ‘demon drink’, weren’t averse to selling it. You only need look at the religious breakdown of towns like Olney and Newport Pagnell in 1600s Buckinghamshire to find that a large proportion of the population were chapel not church, even when not attending church was a criminal offence. Tradesmen ancestors may well be in Nonconformist records.
A craftsman is a skilled manual worker making functional and/or decorative objects; shoes and horse harnesses are both functional and attractive.
Effectively, tradesmen and craftsmen, no matter how wealthy, were shunned as inferior because, basically, they were not gentlemen.
Das Ständebuch (The Book of Trades) was published in 1586 in Germany and features different trades, sycophantically opening with ‘king’. Several English versions of The Book of Trades or Library of Useful Arts from 1806 (free online via Google books) define the trades of woolcomber, spinner, waterman, basket maker, hat maker, jeweller, bricklayer, carpenter, cooper, stonemason, sawyer, smith, shipwright, mariner, currier, apothecary, baker, straw hat maker, soap boiler, plumber, dyer, potter and type-founder, with an illustration for each and description of skills, tools, job and pay. Many might now be classified as craft rather than trade, but the term is often synonymous. An 1818 edition with more trades is found at https://archive.org/stream/bookenglishtrad00soutgoog.
The 1806 version outlines, for instance, how much a journeyman cooper earned, what they produced, and the method and tools required. The entry for stonemason explains types of marble, how it is treated, how much he and his labourer might earn and the fact they are piece workers. This Georgian careers advice manual explains which trades were the more skilful and profitable, which had fewer practitioners and who charged what.
Modern life has been influenced by the economic stability of Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603), during which luxury goods were imported from around the known world. During her reign, the London stock exchange was financed and set up by Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–79). In 1543, he became a liveryman of the Mercers’ Company, importing goods from the Low Countries, mostly Belgium and the Netherlands. In 1565 he set up a bourse, or exchange, at his own expense. In order to do so, he negotiated with the Aldermen of London for the purchase of a suitable piece of land on which to build. Although the land is still owned by the City of London Corporation and the Worshipful Company of Mercers, the original building burnt down in the Great Fire of London. His emblem, the grasshopper, can still be seen on the weathervane at the Royal Exchange and on the coat of arms for Gresham College, founded in 1597 from his bequests.