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Seasonal work and welfare in an early industrial town: Newcastle upon Tyne, 1600–1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2017

ANDY BURN
ANDY BURN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Durham University.
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Abstract

The port of Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England was transformed in the seventeenth century by the rapid expansion of its coal trade, which demanded an influx of industrial transport workers known as ‘keelmen’. This article assesses wages, perks and the seasonal distribution of income for this growing group of workers, estimating that their real income rose until about 1680, before tailing off again. They were comparatively well paid, but their work was inconsistent and seasonal. The number of days' work available was crucial to welfare in Newcastle, as were a series of formal and informal measures intended to relieve winter poverty and maintain a year-round workforce. Combining quantitative and qualitative evidence, this article offers a north-eastern industrial perspective on English living standards debates that still tend to be dominated by south-eastern building and agricultural labourers.

Travail saisonnier et assistance sociale dans une ville préindustrielle: newcastle-upon-tyne, 1600–1700

Le port de Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dans le nord-est de l'Angleterre, a été transformé au dix-septième siècle par l'expansion rapide de son commerce de charbon. Les travailleurs affluèrent pour répondre à la demande croissante de keelmen, ces ouvriers spécialisés dans le transport massif de cette matière première sur les bateaux charbonniers locaux (ou keels). Cet article évalue les salaires, avantages et la répartition saisonnière des revenus pour ce groupe croissant de travailleurs, estimant que leur revenu réel a augmenté jusqu’à 1680 environ, avant de s’éteindre. Ils étaient relativement bien payés, mais leur travail était incohérent et saisonnier. Le nombre de jours de travail réellement effectués était crucial pour que chacun puisse accéder à l'aide sociale à Newcastle. Il en était de même pour bénéficier d'une série de mesures formelles et informelles visant à la fois à soulager la pauvreté hivernale des ouvriers et à maintenir une main-d’œuvre disponible toute l'année. Contribuant aux discussions sur les niveaux de vie en Angleterre, lesquelles tendent toujours à mettre l'accent sur les travailleurs du bâtiment et les agriculteurs du sud-est du pays, l'article propose une perspective neuve sur la région du nord-est industriel, combinant sources quantitatives et qualitatives.

Saisonale arbeit und wohlfahrt in einer frühindustriellen stadt: newcastle upon tyne, 1600–1700

Die Hafenstadt Newcastle upon Tyne im nordöstlichen England wurde im 17. Jahrhundert durch die rapide Expansion des Kohlehandels und den dadurch erforderlichen Zustrom industrieller Transportarbeiter, die als ‚keelmen’ bekannt waren, grundlegend umgestaltet. Der Beitrag untersucht Löhne, Sondervergünstigungen und saisonale Einkommensverteilung dieser wachsenden Gruppe von Arbeitern und gelangt zu der Einschätzung, dass ihr Realeinkommen bis etwa 1680 anstieg, dann aber abflaute. Sie waren vergleichsweise gut bezahlt, aber ihre Arbeit war unbeständig und saisonalen Schwankungen unterworfen. Entscheidend für das Wohlergehen in Newcastle war die Anzahl der verfügbaren Arbeitstage sowie eine Reihe formeller und informeller Maßnahmen zur Linderung der winterlichen Armut, um eine Stammarbeiterschaft über das ganze Jahr hinweg zu sichern. Der Beitrag kombiniert quantitative und qualitative Daten und bietet eine nordöstliche und industrielle Perspektive auf die Debatte über englische Lebensstandards, die ansonsten noch immer von südöstlichen Arbeitern im Baugewerbe und in der Landwirtschaft dominiert wird.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , August 2017 , pp. 157 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

Endnotes

1 Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections (hereafter DUL), DPR/I/1/1694/H3/3.

2 He seems to have baptised his first daughter, Anne, in May 1627, which suggests he was one of the four Thomas Halls baptised in 1601–1605. All Saints’ Parish Register: Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle upon Tyne (hereafter TWA), MF 249.

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27 See, for example, The National Archives, UK (hereafter TNA), HCA 13/71, fos. 345r, fos. 371v, 447r. Transcribed online by the ‘Marine Lives’ project at www.marinelives.org. I am grateful to Colin Greenstreet for these references.

28 In reality, of course, there would have been some deviation from the standard: because coal was measured into the keels, not the ships, shipmasters often thought they were being defrauded (see, for example, TNA, PC 2/27, fo. 30); conversely there was an incentive for vendors to entice buyers and evade customs charges by giving over-measures. For more discussion of chaldron size, see Hatcher, John, The history of the British coal industry, Volume I, before 1700: towards the age of coal (Oxford, 1993), 469, 566–7Google Scholar.

29 Keel estimates from TNA, E 134/2Chas1/Mich4 and E 126/3, fo. 103 (c. 1625); Gardiner, England's Grievance, 98 (c. 1655); Bourne, History, 161 (c. 1700). See also Nef, J. U., The rise of the British coal industry, 2 vols. (London, 1932), I, 389Google Scholar; Hatcher, Coal, 466–7; Wright, Life on the Tyne, 56–9. Note that the periods in between individual observations have been regulated by taking the average of the observations either side to simulate the manufacture of boats.

30 Dendy, Hostmen, 54, n. 44.

31 Hatcher, Coal, 467, citing Northumberland Archives, Cookson ZCO/IV/47/1-33.

32 Hatcher, Coal, 469.

33 This does not include additional pay for ‘lying tides’ (when bad conditions forced keelmen to extend their period of work and they received 2s 6d), nor earnings from carrying other goods, which was not uncommon. Fewster, Keelmen, 15. For carrying other goods: Wright, Life on the Tyne, ch. 6.

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36 2,850 calories per day was the level at which half a group of late Victorian male prisoners started to gain weight. David Meredith and Deborah Oxley see 3,000 calories as ‘a very credible minimum’ for men: ‘Food and fodder: feeding England, 1700–1900’, Past and Present 222 (2014), 194Google Scholar. Craig Muldrew gives much higher estimates for eighteenth-century labourers (declining by the nineteenth), mostly in excess of 4,000: Food, energy and the creation of industriousness: work and material culture in agrarian England, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2011), 130–40Google Scholar.

37 United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, Human energy requirements, Food and Nutrition Technical Report Series 1 (Rome, 2005), Annex 5.

38 By this reckoning, keelmen would have required an additional 3.6xBMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) for each minute shovelling coal. If that was 42 per cent of a 24-hour period, an additional 1.5xBMR on average over the whole day would be needed. Using the BMR given by Meredith and Oxley (2,008 calories) gives an additional requirement of 3,010 calories per working day above the 2,850 minimum already required in the diet, or 5,950 in total. See Meredith and Oxley, ‘Food and fodder’, 192–3, based on men arriving in Wandsworth prison in the eighteenth century (TNA, PCOM 2/230-89) and the formula in Schofield, W. N., ‘Predicting basal metabolic rate: new standards and review of previous work’, Human Nutrition, Clinical Nutrition 39, suppl. 1 (1985)Google Scholar.

39 See Table 1, col. 8.

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45 The ale price (12d per gallon) is from Newcastle, the beer price (4½–6d) is from Hull. Woodward, Men at Work, 286–7.

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47 Probate inventories suggest at least two fitters (from a sample size of five) who clearly had commercial-scale breweries in their households: DUL, DPR/I/1/1641/B2/5; DPR/I/1/1661/L5/3-5.

48 Waddell, Brodie, God, duty and community in English economic life, 1660–1720 (Woodbridge, 2012), 206Google Scholar; Page, W. ed., The Victoria history of the county of Kent, 3 vols. (1908), II, 347, 358, 386Google Scholar; Levine, David and Wrightson, Keith, The making of an industrial society: Whickham, 1560–1765 (Oxford, 1991), 270–1Google Scholar; Woodward, Men at work, 143.

49 Dendy, Hostmen, 36–7.

50 Ibid., 97.

51 Ibid., 41, 61, 97, 116, 121, 189–90.

52 DUL, DPR/I/1/1608/E2/2; DPR/I/1/1636/D3/3; Dendy, Hostmen, xlvii.

53 Woodward, Men at work, 144.

54 ‘To deet signifies to wipe or make clean’: Brand, John, The history and antiquities of the town and county of Newcastle upon Tyne… (Newcastle, 1789), I, 261–2n Google Scholar.

55 Fewster, Keelmen, chs. 5–7.

56 TWA, Acc. 394/7.

57 Dendy, Hostmen, 154.

58 TWA, Acc. 394, passim; TNA, SP 18/36 fo. 94.

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62 For example, Boulton identifies a few seasonally varying foods bought by London institutions, but is unable to draw any overall conclusions about seasonal trends. Boulton, ‘Food prices’, 240.

63 TNA, SP 18/36, fo. 94.

64 Daniel Defoe, A farther case relating to the poor keelmen of Newcastle (c. 1712). Italics added for emphasis.

65 Seasonality is calculated compared to an index, where 100 would be the expected value in a randomly distributed year – (total events ÷ 365.25) x number of days in the month. February is assumed to have 28.25 days.

66 Clear crisis mortality years have been removed but varying patterns of disease could also have produced this change between the early and late samples.

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70 TNA, SP 18/36, fos. 94, 136.

71 TNA, SP 18/36, fo. 159.

72 TNA, SP 29/180, fo. 169.

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75 Richardson, ‘Extracts’.

76 See, for example, TWA, Acc. 543/14, fos. 143r, 141v.; Richardson, ‘Municipal accounts’, 45; Woodward, Men at Work, 128, 132.

77 Dendy, Hostmen, 20.

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85 Hatcher, Coal, 478.

86 Calendar of State Papers Domestic (CSPD), 1665–1666, 57; CSPD, 1666–1667, 26, 150, 266.

87 The system expanded into the eighteenth century: Graham Butler has argued that Newcastle Infirmary (1751) provided ‘a type of repair service to the poor, restoring able men (and women) back to health and returning them to their “economic lives”.’ Graham A. Butler, ‘Disease, medicine and the urban poor in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, c. 1750–1850’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012), 270.

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99 Dendy, Hostmen, 205–6.

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102 Fewster, Keelmen, 16.

103 TWA, Ellison Papers, A/32/21; Fewster, Keelmen, 79.

104 TWA, Acc. 394/7.

105 TWA, MD.NC/1/3, fo. 3r. Also fo. 19r and passim. The ‘Town Hutch’ was the lockbox in the guildhall that stored both the town's ready money and its document archive.

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