York's hidden history - rag & bone man and our 'lost' jobs

THE son of a friend of mine works as an electric car technician. Another friend’s nephew is a cyber security engineer. They’re very much 21st-century jobs which didn’t exist 20 years ago. But then jobs have always changed as time passes. Who remembers the rag-and-bone man? Or the knocker-upper? Some years ago, the Channel 4 series The Worst Jobs in History featured gong farmers. In the days before flushing toilets, gong farmers, sometimes known as night soil men, were night workers employed to remove what needed to be removed from cesspits. I should add that they were handsomely paid for doing so.

On a recent trip to the York Reference Library, I had the chance to read through two volumes of the York Directory of Trades and Occupations, one from 1781 and another from 1830. In both volumes you can read the names, addresses and occupations of York residents. Some of the jobs are still with us such as gardener, bricklayer and joiner, land surveyor or bank manager. But even these occupations have changed over time with new technology and working practices.

Other jobs have largely disappeared. In the 1781 directory, Thomas Turner, who worked and possibly lived at 40 Goodramgate, listed his occupation as a tallow chandler, an important job in the days before electricity, when candles were widely used for lighting. Nowadays, although some are handmade, a lot of candles are mass-produced in factories. But The Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers still exists in the City of London and is engaged in charity work.

Glassmaking was a part of York's economy until the Redfearn site was demolished in the 1980s

Nobody today would require the services of a sedan chairman nor that of coachmaker Jonathan Cartwright from Blake Street. Sarah Jackson, whose address is given at 83 Walmgate, was a staymaker. Staymakers made stays for underclothing. These were fully-boned lace bodices widely worn by women until the end of the 18th century. Several gave their occupation as whitesmith such as James Haxby of 23 Trinity Lane. Whitesmiths were metal workers who dealt in tin, light metals, and white enamelled goods. Ralf Dodsworth from Skeldergate was a raff merchant or second-hand goods dealer

Many people had more than one job. This is becoming more common nowadays but was quite normal in a bygone age with no social security, when family survival and the precarious world of work could mean starvation and homelessness if you couldn’t offer a skill or sell your products or services. Some of the entries in the directory show people having multiple occupations such as John Spanton at 3 St Helen’s Square, whose business embraced that of bookseller, stationer, printer, and patent medicine vendor.

Some entries in both York directories give the occupation as gentleman. Now I’ve always thought of a gentleman as someone with certain qualities of character. But in Victorian England the word gentleman had several meanings. It could signify that you were a member of the gentry, a social level just below that of the nobility. But it could also mean that you were a member of one of the so-called learned professions such as medicine, the law, the church, or you were an army officer. In the York trade directories I looked at, this use of the term is unlikely since clergy, surgeons and lawyers were all listed as such. But whatever you did as a gentleman, you certainly didn’t have to get your hands dirty.

Gentleman possibly suggested that the person did not need to work for a living but was what was known as ‘a person of independent means.’ In other words, he lived off rents from land that he owned or from investments, a lot easier to do in the late 18th and early 19th centuries than it is nowadays.

Incidentally, I didn’t come across the occupation gentlewoman, but there certainly were women of independent means. What was unfortunately true was that the women who worked, with one or two notable exceptions such as the staymaker, wouldn’t have been listed in the Trades Directories of the time. Working women were at the bottom of the pile and scarcely mentioned by name in official records.

There was always a connection between occupation and social status, and of course there still is. But in the Georgian and Victorian eras this was especially rigid. A gentleman, including a member of the learned professions, was held in higher regard than someone ‘in trade.’ A sizeable number of people worked ‘in service’.

Inside the typesetting room at the Yorkshire Evening Press in Coney Street - those jobs no longer exist as newspapers are produced digitally

On their website Jobs in Victorian York, the Clements Hall Local History Group present the results of their research into mid-19th century poverty in the parish of St Mary Bishophill Junior. This survey covered Dale Street, Dove Street and Swann Street from 1839 to 1841. As well as occupations such as gas lighter, ostler and livery stable keeper, they noted at least one male servant.

Upper-class households had a whole host of servants from butler and valet to scullery maid in a strict hierarchy. You’ve only got to watch a few episodes of Downton Abbey to get the flavour of this world. And until well into the 20th century, upper-middle class households would have employed at least one or two live-in maids-of-all-work.

These days, as automation spreads and new technologies take over many occupations, I imagine our great-great-grandchildren will look open-mouthed at some of the jobs we currently do and ask the same question: What did that job involve exactly?

David Wilson is a community writer for The Press