As society is transformed by our technological advancements it is important to not forget the foundations forged by our ancestors.
Bournheath pub
PURE BRED IN THE CRADLE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION were my Dad’s Granny Hannah’s ‘Black Country’ folks:
Southall, English (chiefly West Midlands): habitational name from any of the various places so called, from Old English suð ‘south’ + halh ‘nook’, ‘recess’. The distribution of the surname in Britain makes a Midlands origin likely: places called Southall in Doverdale, Worcestershire, and Billingsley, Shropshire, are possible sources.(ancestry.com)
Artist Louise Rayner visiting Dudley 1870
DUDLEY – HOME OF THE SWEATED LABOUR OF THE SOUTHALL/MARTIN CLAN – WHERE THE LONGEVITY GENES APPROVED OF THE HOME FORGE & FURNACES BURNING, KEEPING WARM and FIT IN THE BLACK COUNTRY CLIMATE – LOTS OF SOUPS AND STEWS PROVIDED ENOUGH NUTRITION, FOR A LONG LIFE, OR AM I ROMANTICISING WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE BORN AND BRED IN THE CRADLE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?
SOUTHALL FEMALES ALWAYS WORKED AND LABOURED FOR THE WHOLE FAMILIES BREAD AND DRIPPING.
MY 4TH GREAT GRANDPARENTS; in the 1851 Census RICHARD SOUTHALL was a retired Iron Master on King Street, Dudley, with his wife ELIZABETH (born WHITEHOUSE ).
Richard died age 75years and Elizabeth age 81years.
THE TERM IRON MASTER SUGGESTS HE WAS A ‘MIDDLE MAN’ TRADING BETWEEN NAILERS AND IRON SUPPLIERS. I’m guessing he was a fair business man and not unjustly exploitative as the reputations of many were. Why? They were Quakers, members at the Dudley Meeting of Religious Society of Friends.
I have Quaker kin on my Londoners branch, they too being ‘the Middling sort’ or what we today call the ‘aspirational’ classes.George Fox, the founder appealed to their independent Spirit. http://www.cockneyclarkclan.blogspot.com.au
5th Great Grandparents RICHARD SOUTHALL & MARY GRANGER of Netherton, Dudley were Nail Ironmongers.
- Iron Monger of Netherton
- Horse Nail makers
SOUTHALLS OF DUDLEY
1600-1900
Like working-class homing pigeons and with the aid of Long Service Leave of 3 months, (thanks to the Australian Workers Union), my husband and I travelled back to our Mother and Father country to see where our Anglo-Celtic DNA travelled to.
In June 2010 we two ‘poms’ now Australian citizens appreciated the benefits of collective bargaining in our Queensland worker’s paradise. With internet tools and the world wide web we worked back from from our birth places in Birmingham and Leeds, discovering we both had ancestors from the Black Country-West Midlands!
The coal-dust must be in our blood and smell like pheromones!
JWTurner painted watercolours on his visit to Dudley (Castle ruins on hill.
IN THE THE EARLDOM OF DUDLEY My Grt Great Joseph William Southall and Agnes Martin lived and worked: ‘Josh’ was 5years old in
1861 Salop Street, Eve Hill, Dudley.
- St. James Terrace, Dudley
Nailmakers – 3rd Grt Grandparents Richard and Elizabeth Southall(neeChambers) 2nd GF Joseph age 5yrs
“Nailmaking was described as the most God forsaken trade in the country and nailmakers lived in abject poverty. Throughout the 19th century there were strikes as the nailmakers tried to obtain a living wage whilst the employers constantly looked to reduce wages.
How successful the employers were can be demonstrated by the fact that by 1887 weekly wages had fallen from a peak of around 30s (£1.50) to between 9s (45p) and 13s (65p). It was reported that hobnail makers could not earn more than 6s (30p)per week.
One of the later most damaging strikes was in 1893. Dudley nailmakers went on strike around May 1893 when some masters again tried to reduce wages. By December the nailmakers were still on strike. The strikers had been supported by the Midland Counties Trades Federation but by December the Federation had come to the conclusion that the strikers were not going to be able to achieve their aims and that the only way they were going to achieve a living wage was through legislation. The strike payments were having an adverse impact on other parts of the Federation and they believed that the strike money would be better spent on trying to influence legislation. They therefore voted to discontinue strike payments. Therefore after seven months on strike the nailmakers had achieved nothing. By this time many nailmakers had either left the area or taken up other employment (many nailmakers became chainmakers). “(Thanks Paul, WDYTYAforum)
Baptisms, Marriages and Burials here at ST JAMES CHURCH, EVE HILL, DUDLEY NR HOME ON SALOP ST.
Down the direct line 8th Great Grandfather Thomas Southall a “NAYLOR”, was born during the English Republic, baptised on July 28th 1655, married Anne Hancox Sept.1685 and buried on 4th January 1708 at ST.THOMAS,’TOP’ CHURCH, DUDLEY.
1841 census for Josh’s parents and my 3rd Great Grandparents at Shavers End.
Dudley Nailers
Brave Dudley Boys http://youtu.be/PwMsINT4yaA
In the days of good queen Bess
Yah boys, ho
In the days of good queen Bess
Yah boys, ho
In the days of good queen Bess
Coventry out done their best
Yah boys, ho boys, oh the brave Dudley boys
But in the times a be,
We’ve outdone Coventry
Tipp’n lads, they did us join
And we fought the strong combine
We marched into town
Resolved to burn the ‘ousen down
Times, they was mighty queer
Vittles, they was powerful dear
So we fought to make corn cheap
We burned them all, of a heap
But the work was scarce begun
When the soldiers came and spoilt the fun
We all run down our pits
Scared almost out of our wits
God bless Lord Dudley Ward
He knowed the times been hard
He called back the sodgermen,
Ya, boys, O!
He called back the sodgermen,
Ya, boys, O!
He called back the sodgermen,
And we’ll never riot again.
Na boys, no boys, no the brave Dudley boys!
Notes
This song is said to have come from William Ryland of West Bromwich in the 1840’s. It originated in the Corn Laws and the Reform Bill of the early 18th century, though other researchers believe it is later.
Good Queen Bess: Elizabeth I of England (1533 – 1603).
Dudley is a town between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, part of the Black Country. Its boundaries are now indistinguishable from the other parts of the West Midlands conurbation.
sodgers = soldiers
Lord Dudley Ward: Ward is the family name of Lord Dudley. The then Lord Dudley was able to calm the rioters and prevent the soldiers from firing on them.
Roy Palmer, Songs of the Midlands (1972)
CIVIL UNREST IN THE BLACK COUNTRY 1750 – 1837
(Part One: The ‘Bread And Butter Riots’ of 1766)
by David Cox
http://www.blackcountrysociety.co.uk/…
Pre-industrialised England is often represented as a golden age of prosperity and plenty, with well-fed peasants happy with their lot in life, knowing their place in a benevolent and paternalistic society. Reality, as is so often the case, was somewhat different from the myth. This is the first of two articles looking at civil unrest in the Black Country during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
With half of a man’s wage and no vote, women laboured long and hard at the hearth and having babies, grieving regularly.
Among the nailers and their children – The Guardian archive 4 Jan 1865
Hales Owen, says J. E. White, reporting to the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children and Young Persons the evidence collected by him, as assistant commissioner, on the metal manufactures of the Birmingham district – “Hales Owen is the only town on the direct road from Birmingham to Stourbridge.
“The principal employment of the place is the wrought-nail manufacture, carried on in small forges adjoining the homes of the greater part of the cottagers, and to a great extent by women and children.
“While I was in a cottage where I found a boy with a bare foot bandaged up, lamed by a burn, a sound of many voices singing swelled gradually near.
“The boy, limping on his stick to the door, cried, ‘Oh, mother! there’s the nailers coming.’ And there passed by a crowd of several hundred men, women, and children.
“They were coming from the villages near Dudley to hold a meeting in Hales Owen, to see if they could get out the nailers who were working against them there, their strike having already lasted eleven weeks.
” ‘It’s heartbreaking work,’ said the woman. Among the many children in the crowd were two little boys, apparently six years old or not much more, dragged along by the hand by a woman, probably their mother, footsore and lame from their march.
“A nailer at Hales Owen said to me, ‘The parents carry them on into the night as long as their strength lasts when the work is wanted quick; it’s no use beyond, but, as far as they can, they are partly obligated to work.
” ‘I should not like my little boy there, now five, to begin before nine, and he shan’t if I can help it, but if I am any ways obligated he must. He is but a little mossel [sic], and if I were to get that little creature to work I should have to get a scaffold for him to stand on to reach, and with that it would be like murder-work, as you may say.
” ‘It don’t agree with children at first, the work being always hot. In summer the little ones, being afore the fire all the time, sweat so till it runs down their faces like anything. Then the young ones often burn themselves. My boy got two wounds big as a crown piece.
” ‘My son, now 14, has to work hard from six am to eight pm to make 8½ to 9d. It’s many hours to be stiving up [stewing] in a hot shop’.
“The son can read. His sister, aged 17, who works as a nailer, can read but little.
This picture could be Great Great Gran Agnes at the “Oliver” so called because it was tough and hard like Cromwell! It was an ideal mate who could be useful in the nailing business and delivering babies and keep them alive in perilous, starving times.
Named after Oliver Cromwell for being tough and hard.
9 MILES SOUTH TO SELLY OAK 1900
High St. Selly Oak – Grandad Higgins born at 104 then brother Harold. Their father died of TB age 27. Always say, we were going down the village.
On the street where we lived. Exeter Rd.1900-1978
The new century arrived. It must have seemed like luxury in their new terrace house in Exeter Road. It only took 9 miles migrating south to Selly Oak to have their lives transformed! Did they keep in touch with the Cradley chain makers industrial campaign in 1910? Send money to support the women ‘sweat’ workers in solidarity?
The cause of the Cradley Heath chain makers was championed by the influential George Cadbury(who also owned a newspaper), and prominent feminist women like Mary MacArthur, a Union activist who worked to attract funds so the women chain-makers could keep up the strike for a living wage.
Mary Macarthur
13 August 1880 – 1 January 1921
British trade unionist and feminist.
Women are badly paid and badly treated because they are not organised and they are not organised because they are badly paid and badly treated.
Quoted in Soldon, Women in British Trade Unions AND WITH EVERY RESISTANCE BY THE EMPLOYERS THEY WON THE FIRST MINIMUM WAGE FOR WOMEN IN BRITAIN.
A different and more learned Higgins had become a hero in the new Federation of former colony: Melbourne, Australia, 1907 High Court. Judge Higgins made a famous judgement. The case involved one of Australia’s largest employers, Hugh McKay, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery.
Higgins ruled that McKay was obliged to pay his employees a wage that guaranteed them a standard of living that was reasonable for “a human being in a civilised community,” regardless of his capacity to pay. This gave rise to the legal requirement for a basic wage, which dominated Australian economic life for the next 80 years.
DAWLISH RD SELLY OAK 1910 Part of the Developer/Builder, Dibble’s Estate.
Grandad Albert Higgins and Nan Elsie would moved around the corner to Dawlish Rd in 1965, from Exeter Rd. when they sold it to my parents.
NO MORE NAIL MAKING! The turn of the 20th century. I wonder if when they settled into their new terraced houses in Selly Oak, they wished they had left sooner?
The Industrial suburb was a model of progress.
Exeter Rd – Beautiful Bricks, Co-operative
Dirty, heavy labour was what they had been born and bred for…but at least families could now make themselves clean at the Public Baths.
Ariel Cycle Co
Dale Rd Selly Oak c 1899
Fortune and Municipal responsibility smiled on Selly Oak labourers and their children. The Southall’s would have witnessed the opening of many a community investment, like learn to swim, learn to read and write, and of course go to Church on Sundays(expected but not compulsory anymore).
George Cadbury provided free passes to the Tiverton pool to local children – so they could work off the chocolate!
“These baths were erected by the Kings Norton and Northfield District Council and opened on the 29th September 1906. It contained two swimming baths, one with a gallery for spectators and one designed for the use of children.
Taken over by the Baths Committee on 3rd June 1911 following Royal Assent when Handsworth, Aston Manor, Erdington, Yardley, Moseley, Kings Heath and Selly Oak became part of Greater Birmingham.”
opened 1906
There were jobs for all the family and regular wages at the Ariel Cycles factory a walk away from home in Exeter Rd. Then there was a wider pool of eligible spinsters and bachelors! This is how I imagine the Southall-Higgins alliance came about:
Dale Rd Selly Oak
In the 1901 Census Joseph and Agnes rented 76 Exeter Rd. and were employed at the Ariel Cycles Works as labourers and saddle spring makers. It didn’t take long for daughter Hannah to meet Albert Edward Higgins who lived around the corner in Hubert Road with his brother Ernest’s family.
I suggest they made eye contact at the corner shop on the way to work…
1901 Census – 76 Exeter Rd Southall family from Dudley, now University student housing.
ON HIS DEATH CERTIFICATE Great Grandfather Albert Edward Higgins worked as a bicycle sand blaster.
ALBERT & HANNAH married at the Church of England, St.Mary’s Church in 1901 (St.Wulstan’s on Exeter Rd wasn’t quite finished).
In common with his wife Hannah was the fact both of their parents had been Nailers from Worcestershire and had to migrate due to the death of the ancient industry to machinery and loss of overseas markets.
Corner shop – for all your home needs, cnr Hubert and Exeter Rd Selly Oak. Grt x 2 Grand folks live 33 Exeter Rd in 1901. Most likely Hannah and Albert made eyes at each other on the morning walk to Ariel….
Albert’s family had migrated from Belbroughton in the district of Bromsgrove, first stopping at Harborne where the death of his mother Fanny, from childbirth gave impetus to travel further down the Bristol Rd to Selly Oak thriving with manufacturing and bricky’s labouring.
Visiting Holy Trinity ancient grounds where generations of Davenport and Waldron et al were baptised, wed and buried.
Home of the nailmaking
Davenports/Waldrons.
Belbroughton, Chaddesley Corbett, Bell Heath on Farley Lane, Bourneheath, Catshill.
ALBERT HIGGINS would have a shortened life too, dying of TB (tuberculosis), aged 28yrs. Hannah was widowed with 2 sons under 5years so moved back home to her parents now at 33 Exeter Rd…
33 Exeter Rd – the home of Joseph and Agnes Southall from 1910.
The Edwardian generation was my Grandad’s, who received a decent secular primary education for the first time. Nobody seemed concerned to educate the plebeians before then, but when the factory owners realised they would need a more literate workforce their lobbying made the dictum ‘knowledge is power’ bear fruit and became Tiverton Rd Primary school’s motto – tres revolutionary!
Being a man in a man’s world of boxing, snooker, horse racing and beeret suited Grandad’s style and skill. He worked a tram ride away for the visionary Herbert Austin at Longbridge factory.
Somehow this distilled itself into him becoming a paid up, active member of the Conservative Party in the Selly Oak electoral ward.
Winning a scholarship to King Edward Grammar may have distorted his political sense! Either way brothers Albert and Harold Southall/Higgins were the first to sign birth, marriage, and death certificates with their name and not an X
Equality of the sexes was part of the creed of the Quakers from the 1600’s… but British women had to really push the limits before they would be given an equal vote to men. Thanks to the Suffragette’s, inch by inch and a few smashed windows and imprisonment later Hannah age 43yr could vote next to her sons.
The first begrudging concession was to allow women the vote if they were over 30, and owners of property! Thus Hannah and her mother Agnes age 70, were the first women to vote.
All women over 21yrs could vote in 1927. As the Tories feared, the electorate trebled, bringing in the first government under the Labour party to represent the views of the working class.
1920 Electoral register – Hannah & Agnes
FIRST VOTE FOR GRT GRANNY PRIME
1920 Kings Norton division in Selly Oak ward
Exeter Rd.
Consistent philanthropy of the Quaker Cadbury’s with their principles of social justice, supported progressive early childhood learning in Selly Oak.
Tiverton Rd. the first kindergarten in Birmingham thanks to the efforts of the Cadbury family.
BRISTOL RD SELLY OAK
On the road to social mobility:
Knowledge is Power – the motto for our public school on Tiverton Rd.
Hannah remarried Thomas Prime a metal worker at Brass Casting. The newly built Church of St. Wulstan was on the street corner. Albert and Harold Higgins would gain two half-sisters.
As first home owners in the family, Hannah and Thomas Prime of no.26 must have felt satisfied with their lot and labours in life and leaving an Inheritance – unheard of!
Great Nan Hannah was a widow for the second time in 1928. Oldest son Albert married Elsie Brothwood in 1935. It seems there was an agreement for Hannah and her daughters to buy a house somewhere else and Harold moved to 18 Exeter Rd – giving room for the newly weds to start a new family of Higgins. CALL THE MIDWIFE!
My return trip to childhood home 2010 – the front room bedroom where Higgins babies came into the world, with or without the local Midwife on her bike!
Notes for further reflection: a family thrives – improved labour and living conditions – Dad tells me Grandad used to get the kids to put Tory pamphlets in the letterboxes! My Grandad was a paid-up member of the Conservative Party! – Revelation – I am the black sheep of the family!
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