We were Coachmen, Servants and Craftsmen. Early Railway Recruitment - Part 3

This is last post on research that I have been doing on the occupations that 400 London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) employees had before coming  to the company’ Traffic, Coaching and Operating Department (hereon known as the traffic department) between 1837 and 1860. This is based on a single file found in the National Archives. In the first post (here) I discussed how most of the department’s new employees came from the company’s permanent way department. The second post (here) presented evidence relating to those who went into the department directly after school, and those that came from the army or from being labourers. This last post will look at individuals who had worked in transportation industries, were previously employed as servants and those who had been skilled craftsmen.

One of the big questions relating to the early railways is how many employees came from other transportation industries. The results above reveal that the number was small and only ten had been involved in such businesses (2.50%). The ten were constituted of two mariners, five coachmen, one carman, one letter carrier and one currier. What is interesting about the ten is that there were no individuals who had worked in the canals.  Indeed, apart from the mariners (and possible the carman), it seems that most had been working for themselves.  Coachmen, particularly, were seeing the railways as a chance to improve their fortunes in the greatest number.

Furthermore, it also seems that there was no pattern as to when ex-transport workers joined the railway, and in each of the six periods I have split the years between 1837 and 1860 into (see above) there are always at least one individual joining the department. The only pattern that has been discerned is the types of jobs that the men went into. Eight of the ten went into the secondary labour market (with low weekly pay, low job security and few promotional prospects), becoming Porters (3), Guards (1), Pointsmen (1), Ticket Collectors (2) and Police Constables (1). However, only two joined the company’s primary labour market (with high job security, promotional prospects and good pay), one becoming a Station Master and another becoming a station agent. Indeed, these individuals were the mariners, clearly indicating that their prior jobs were perceived as being more skilled and that their education made them suitable for administrative posts. Therefore, this further reveals, as the last post did, that employment patterns before the railways came into existed determined how the L&NWR appointed individuals to posts.

Ex-servants constituted a large number of the sample, with fifty-seven of the 400 being employed as such (14.25%) before coming to the railway. Of these two had been butlers, one was a footman, six had been grooms, thirteen were listed as having been in ‘Gentlemen’s service,’ while thirty-four were simply described as servants. There seems to be no pattern as to when they joined the railway. In the years between 1837 and 1839 they made up 9.09% of those joining the department. In the early 1840s, however, none joined, but in the late 1840s they constituted a massive 19.05%. In the early 1850s the proportion dropped to 8.93%, then rose 16% in the late 1850s and 24.59% in 1860. Thus, the evidence implies that the labour market changed. Before the railways domestic service was the largest employing sector of the economy. However, as shown, when the railways came along they took over this mantle and many people saw them as means to obtain better employment prospects.

Most of the servants went into the secondary labour market. However, it is interesting that large numbers were in the positions that had a public service focus (and which were cleaner). Thus, twenty-seven became porters, three became ticket collectors and nine became police constables. Therefore, there was a clear link between the types of occupations individuals did before they came to the railway and the positions they took up within the L&NWR. This is reinforced by the fact that the Butler, an individual who was a ‘club servant’ (whatever that is) and a man who was in a ‘gentleman’s servant’ were the only three who went into the primary labour market as an Agent, Clerk and an Assistant Agent respectively. Thus, because two of these seemed to have been servants of a higher status, and one may have been, they were accordingly given jobs in the railway that were of similar standing.

Lastly, the forty-one skilled craftsmen were in the sample, and had been occupied in twenty-eight different professions including Tin-Plate Workers, Brassfounders, Shoemakers, Brickmakers and Weavers. Proportionately, skilled craftsmen were the largest group of individuals joining the railway in the period 1837 to 1839, constituting 27.27% of them. Thereafter, their contribution hovered around 10% in each of the remaining periods. I am uncertain what this suggests, and because the sample size for the period between 1837 and 1839 is only twenty-two, the figure may be artificially high.

Furthermore, unlike the other areas of the economy, where individuals’ jobs before they came to the railway affected their position within it, the correlation in the case of the skilled craftsmen was not as strong. The craftsmen took up positions in both the primary and secondary labour markets. Given that the majority of individuals had at least a fair education given their professions, it would suggests that the L&NWR was not just assigning individuals to their posts based on their prior occupations, but also on their ability to undertake their responsibilities.

Overall, I have not been able to reveal in these three posts all the information that I have discovered. However, a number of interesting things have been revealed about recruitment in the early L&NWR’s. Firstly, its Traffic Department recruited heavily from its engineering sections, suggesting that the completion of lines and the subsequent unemployment this brought for some, allowed the company to choose from known staff. Furthermore, there were not a great number of individuals who worked previously in either the military or other transportation industries, as has always been suspected. Lastly, the jobs that individuals received from the railway company were closely correlated to the level of skill and education that were required for their original occupations.

This is by no means a complete study, and there are over 300 pages in the document that haven’t been surveyed. Thus, I hope to do this at some point and give an even better picture of early railway recruitment.

I was a Schoolboy, a Soldier, a Labourer. Recruitment in the Early Railway Industry - Part 2

In my last post I discussed research I have been doing on  professions that the earliest railway workers had before they joined the London and North Western Railway’s (L&NWR) Operating, Traffic and Coaching Department (to be hereon known as the Traffic Department) between 1837 and 1871. Previously, I looked at sixty-eight individuals (out of 400) who had been employed in the company’s Engineering Department before to coming to the Traffic Department. In this post I will start to focus on the remaining 332 men who, before coming to the L&NWR, were employed in jobs outside the company.

As stated, for ease of interpretation I have categorised the 400 workers into the following fourteen categories (Note, there is one slight modification from the table presented in the last post because an error was found.)

Firstly, only a very small proportion of the individuals, twenty-three out of the 400 (5.75%), had no prior employment before coming to the railway. This was reflected in their ages. The youngest of them were three boys of thirteen, two of which were appointed as Booking Clerks and another of which became an ‘assistant agent.’ The oldest individual in the sample was James Nicholson, the [Station] Agent at Bulkington, who was listed as being thirty-six.  Yet, because of his age and his position of responsibility it is highly implausible that he had done nothing before coming to the railway. Overall, apart from Nicholson and two other individuals, the rest were all under the age of eighteen.

However, more interesting conclusions can be made about changes in the L&NWR's recruitment processes. Only four of the individuals who had had no prior profession were recruited in the 1830s and 1840s (3.57% of the 121 individuals recruited in these years). Furthermore, only three of these men were engaged in the early 1850s (2.67% of 112 new employees). Thus, this leaves sixteen that were appointed between 1855 and 1860 (12.80% of 125 individuals). Clearly, in the railway's emergent years it was principally recruiting individuals who had experience of other industries. However, in the late-1850s did it start to recruit people straight out of school, and this is presumably when families’ decades-long associations with the railways began.

The positions that these individuals went into are also of interest. In this period only two went into the secondary labour market (with low weekly pay, low job security and few promotional prospects), becoming a policeman and pointsman. Indeed, the twenty remaining took up positions as agents, clerks and assistant agents (all clerical positions), and, thus, were in the primary labour market (with high job security, promotional prospects and good pay). Consequently, because only sixty-six of the individuals in the overall sample of 400 went into the primary labour market, the L&NWR’s Traffic Department evidently was recruiting a large number of school-leavers into clerical positions before 1860, possibly because of a skills shortage in the economy. But, importantly, this data also signals that by 1860 the distinction between the two labour markets, the jobs they encompassed and what sort of individuals went into them, were well-defined.

One of the most repeated stories about early railway managers was that their ranks were dominated by senior military men, as they were the only ones that had experience of administering large organisations. However, in four previous blogs (starting here) I have clearly showed the error of this assertion. Nevertheless, my interest in the transference of skills from the military to the early railways meant that I was on the look-out for soldiers and sailors when doing this study.

Of the 400 railway workers in my sample only twenty-eight (7.00%) had been in the military before being employed by the L&NWR. Six had been in the royal navy (two as Royal Marines), with twenty-two being ex-soldiers. All bar three of the individuals went into the secondary labour market. Indeed, it is no surprise that fourteen joined the railway police as presumably the discipline of military training made them suitable for this position. Additionally, eight others received manual positions where strength was required, three becoming porters and five taking up posts as pointsmen.

As for when the individuals were appointed, it seems that there was a consistent stream of soldiers and sailors moving from the military to the railway between 1837 and 1860. Indeed, of those employees who joined in the late-1830s, ex-military men made up 9.09% of these. This increased to 11.1% in the early-1840s, but decreased to 7.14% in the early 1850s. However, thereafter the proportion rose again to 9.80% in 1860. In the early-1840s there was seemingly an anomalous result as only 1.59% of the sixty-three new railway workers appointed in the period had been in the army or navy. The reason for this anomaly is unknown.

The profession that most of those in the sample were engaged in before coming to the Traffic Department was that of ‘labourer’ (apart from those who had worked in the Engineering Department). Anyone who has used the census’ will testify how ambiguous this job description is. Indeed, only in six cases out of the sixty-two ex-labourers was more information available (one carter, one collier, two quarraymen and two warehousemen). Unsurprisingly, all the ex-labourers went into the secondary labour market and the positions that they were appointed to in the greatest numbers were as porters (17), pointsmen (19) and policemen (8). Additionally, they also obtained positions as foremen, gatemen, greaser and shaklers (whatever they were) or signalmen. Therefore, the majority of ex-labourers went from strenuous positions to strenuous positions. However, it is quite possible that the railways paid better than their previous employers.

Of more interest is that the proportion of new Traffic Department staff that had been labourers declined over the period. Between 1837 and 1839 they constituted 27.2% of all those appointed. Yet, in the early-1840s this dropped to 18.5%, in the late-1840s the proportion was 15.8%, in the early 1850s it rose slightly to 16.1%, but declined again in the late-1850s to 14.4%. Lastly, in 1860 they constituted only 9.8% of all new staff.

This suggests that changes occurred in the national economy, as well as within the railway companies. Firstly, it would appear that the simple description of ‘labourer’ was becoming less common as time progressed, possibly as new trades were started, new inventions were created and the economy diversified in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, and as will be shown in the next post, the reducing number of ex-labourers, who would have had only poor education at best, suggests that the L&NWR was increasing looking to recruit into secondary labour market men with better schooling or even better backgrounds. Only an investigation of the company's files have the potential to prove this.

Overall, this post has revealed that between 1837 and 1860 the L&NWR’s Traffic Department refined who it wished to recruit into its ranks. In the 1830s the new company was recruiting a far higher proportion of poorly educated individuals whose experiences were limited to labouring work. Indeed, school leavers did not feature highly.  Yet, by 1860 most positions that new railway workers were appointed to were highly dependent on their prior experiences and education, as well as being defined by the strict parameters of the company’s primary and secondary labour markets. Thus, it is clear that between 1837 and 1860 the norms of railway employment of the later nineteenth century were developed. In the last post of this series this will be demonstrated further.

What Did You Do Before Becoming A Railwayman in the Early Industry? - Part 1

The topic of the next few posts is new to British railway history and has never, ever, been researched in detail before beyond statements like ‘I think,’ which isn’t really useful. What I will be looking at are the occupations of early railway workers before they came to the industry. Most study of railway labour focuses the employee’s working environments, such of their hours of work, wages and promotional prospects, or their union activity. However, these issues principally affected the railway industry from the 1870s onwards and before then these topics were not as important as the formal patterns of labour management were still developing. Indeed, the repeated idea of railway work is that it ran in families, with sons following fathers into the industry. Yet, at the start of each ‘railway family’ was an individual who was not a railway employee, but decided to be one. Thus, my aim is to reveal, through research on one document, what early railwaymen did before coming to the railway.

The document I used is held in The National Archives under RAIL 410/1805 and is a staff record book listing London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) employees from the Operating, Traffic and Coaching Departments (to be hereon known as the Traffic Department) between 1837 and 1871. The information I have used were the individuals’ ‘last employment previous to entering the company’s service,’ the date they joined the company, their age on joining and the position they received. For speed of data collection other pieces of information, such as their names, locations, or who recommended them, have been left out of my research.

Before anything else is said, it is important to note how the results are spread across the decades.

Clearly, more data is available from 1850 onwards, reflecting the fact that as the company expanded its workforce grew. Across the entire period the railway employees had between them 120 different professional occupations, however, I have sorted these into twelve categories based on the economic sectors these were in. Only four individuals (1%) had professions that I could not categorise as I had no clue what they were (such is the nature of the 19^th century occupational descriptions).  The distribution is shown below of their

It should be remembered that the data relates to Traffic Department employees and does not include railway workers from other departments, for example the Engineering or Locomotive Departments. Indeed, it seems that a large numbers of individuals worked for railways before entering the Traffic Department. However, analysis reveals some interesting things about how the department sourced labour. Sixty-eight department employees, or 17.25% of the entire sample, had come from railways’ secondary labour market and had undertaken jobs that had low job security, pay and poor promotional prospects. However, of these, forty-nine (72.06%) had come from the ‘Permanent Way Department’ (4) or had been a platelayers (45).

What this was suggests is that the L&NWR’s Traffic Department drew heavily on its own Permanent Way staff for employees in the period. Nevertheless, the proportion of staff moving from the Permanent Way Department to Traffic changed with time. Between 1837 and 1839 4.55% workers made the move, however, this osmosis reached its height between 1850 and 1854, when 25 of the 112 in the sample transferred (22.32%). Nevertheless, the proportion dropped thereafter, and in 1860 only one person (1.96%), John Lycett, a Police Constable at Rugeley Station, had been employed in the Permanent Way Department before starting with Traffic. The proportions are shown below.

Thus, the L&NWR’s Traffic Department increasingly drew on staff previously employed the Permanent Way Department in the 1840s and early 1850s. Presumably, this was driven by two factors. Firstly, the core of the L&NWR’s network began to be completed in the late 1840s, meaning that the number of staff the engineering establishment required diminished. However, concurrently, the business of the line was increasing, meaning that the Traffic Department required staff.  Therefore, they were happy to employ those ex-Permanent Way men who were put out of the job.  

Furthermore, from the late-1850s the number of transfers declined. Given what is known about employment in the later railway industry, it seems that by this period the department which individuals joined were usually the ones they stayed with throughout their career. Thus, the low number of transfers from Permanent Way Department to the Traffic in the late-1850s and 1860 reflects that these employment patterns were becoming established. Indeed, on the L&NWR at least, it would suggest that the idea of sons following fathers into the industry began in the late 1850s.

However, while transference out of the Permanent Way Department would have been a step-up for some railway workers, in the majority of cases their new posts were still manual one. The distribution of the posts Permanent Way staff went into after their transfers is shown below.

Indeed, given that ex-platelayers constituted forty-five of the forty-nine individuals transferred from the Permanent Way Department, and what they had been doing what was effectively the lowest ranked job in railway companies’, it is unsurprising that many took up the lowest jobs in the Traffic Department. Indeed, thirty-four (the Gatekeepers, Porters and, particularly, the Pointsmen) were all manual jobs that were the lowest rank on the promotional ladder. Also, Police Constables, that worked for the companies’ private police forces, were basically hired muscle, and were also low-ranked jobs. Only two individuals, the two ‘[Station] Agents,’ were part of the L&NWR’s ‘primary labour market,’ which had high job security, steady pay and promotional prospects. These were John Robinson, who had transferred in August 1846 from being a Permanent Way Inspector, and George Turner, who had transferred in November 1851 from being a platelayer.

Thus, what has been learned is that the L&NWR’s traffic department employed large numbers of ex-Permanent Way Department employees, that these individuals usually transferred from low-paid manual jobs into low-paid manual positions in the Traffic Department, and that by the late 1850s, because employment patterns were becoming more established, these moves became less common. Indeed, this would suggest that as the railway industry became more mature, the opportunity for upward mobility declined as people were tied to the department with which they started.

In the next post I will look at the other individuals in the sample who came to the L&NWR’s Traffic Department from outside the railway.

The Female L&SWR Clerk - Part 1

The history of the female railway worker has been shrouded by the fact that railway employment has always been dominated by men. Therefore, this has been reflected in the scholarship on labour relations. A look at the index of David Howell's book on railway trade unionism, Respectable Radicals, has little mention of railwaywomen. Indeed this problem is exacerbated when studying female labour on the railways before 1914, as the proportion of women employees in the industry was small. On 31^st December 1913 British railway companies employed 643,135 persons, however in July 1914 there were only 13,046 (2.02%) female railway workers (Wojtczak, 2005, 38).

Therefore, this puts historians who are researching railwaywomen before 1914 at an obvious disadvantage. Invariably research into male railway labour, especially before 1914, is much easier than that for women. Male labour can be analysed easily, for example by occupation type, wages, length of service, grade of employment and geographical location, and therefore conclusions can be reached as to employment experiences and labour relations without significant trouble. However the male domination of the industry before 1914, combined with the short-term, temporary and uncodified nature of the early female railway employment, means that the historian must look for the 'women' before looking for the 'worker,' because of the 'needle in a haystack' nature of the task. For this reason Helena Wojtczak's excellent book Railwaywomen, Rosa Matheson's thesis, Women and The Great Western Railway: With Special Reference to the Swindon Works, as well as her book, The Fair Sex: Women and the Great Western Railway, only document the experiences of railwaywomen before 1914 in minimal detail because of the limited available information. Therefore, it is the challenge for those researching railwaywomen in this period to build up the fullest picture possible, so that in the long run more detailed analysis can take place once that picture has been formed.

In this and the next Blog entry, I therefore hope to add to the existing literature on railwaywomen by presenting the history of the female clerical staff of the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) between the 1870s and 1914. The L&SWR had employed women since 1850 when platelayer's wives were employed as gatekeepers on the new Dorchester line. However, in the 21 years after female employment had been restricted to the wives and widows of existing company employees, the latter employed benevolently by the company to support the deceased worker's family.

By the 1870s the L&SWR railway clerk was special kind of employee. This was reflected in the nature of the application process, which, while including nepotism, was tougher than for most railway employees, such as porters or engine drivers. The initial stage of the process was that the applicant, who had to be between the ages of 15 and 19, had to be nominated by a family member or family friend who had connections with the company, either through a board member or member of senior management. Their name would then be placed in a book, from which the directors would choose in turn applicants to go forward to the testing phase of the process. This test would be in 'literacy, arithmetic up to vulgar and decimal fractions' to see if the individual met the educational and intellectual standards for the work. Lastly, they had to be observed for three months by a senior manager, to see if they were suitable to be a clerk. Once a boy was confirmed in post, clerical employment did, however, have its rewards. Clerical staff had the greatest job security of any L&SWR employees, they had respectability within the company, and lastly they were the only ones who realistically had any opportunity to be promoted into senior management. Therefore, when assessing early female clerks within the L&SWR, the highly established nature of male clerical employment is important, as any attempt by women to access clerical positions would invariably be within, and reflect, this established framework and its development.

Between the years 1870 and 1914, I have discovered only nineteen female clerks employed by the L&SWR. The first known case was that of Miss Fifield. Her father was agent (Station Master) at Oakley station, and in November 1871 he applied for his daughter to be employed as a telegraphist there. The Traffic Committee, to whom he applied, passed the issue to board of directors. Unfortunately the board minute is missing to see how they reacted. There is however a good chance that the board employed Miss Fifield and at the same time instituted a new policy. In July of 1872, Mr Vermer, agent at Dean Station, requested that a telegraph instrument be placed there. The Traffic Committee, without passing it to the board, recommended that his daughter be taught how to operate it. This suggests that when the Fifield case was brought up at the board meeting they agreed that she could be employed a telegraphist and, at the same time, laid down some form of rule for the future regarding the employment of female telegraph clerks.

However, it seems that despite breaking into the ranks of the clerical staff in a very small way, the L&SWR still barred women from becoming full administrative clerks, which was still the preserve of men. In March 1874 Mr McLees, Agent at Honiton, successfully requested that his daughter, Bertha, become a Telegraphist at the Station. However a year later when he applied for his eldest daughter to be appointed as a Booking Clerk there, this request was declined. Her younger sister, Flora, was however appointed as a Telegraphist. In fact until 1881 the L&SWR only employed women as telegraphists, and other cases of this type of employment have been found in 1877, 1879 and 1881. All of these appointments were to the weekly paid staff and not the salaried staff, to which most clerks belonged, and were the result of a father applying directly to the Traffic Committee for the appointment.

What the evidence suggests is that the L&SWR's policy, that is suspected to have been instituted in 1871, restricted the employment of women to the post of telegraph clerk. In the context of L&SWR clerical history it is important to note that the L&SWR had merged the posts of Junior and Telegraph Clerks in 1868, essentially abolishing the latter, and placing all junior clerks on one promotional tree. This meant that while junior clerks were now also obliged to also cover telegraph work at stations and depots, the clerical work must have taken precedence after the merger of the position. This was because the duties of the telegraph clerks were not skills that juniors clerks would have to carried over when they were promoted to senior clerkships. Therefore it is quite possible that the company was using cheap female labour to fill the gaps in staffing that had been caused by the removal of dedicated telegraph clerks.

In addition it is obvious that these vacancies were filled by nepotism, but of a unique kind. As stated, the normal route for boys wishing to obtain a situation was for the directors to choose nominated applicants from a book, after which they would go forward to the testing phase of the recruitment procedure. However, the appointment of the female telegraphists was through their fathers directly approaching the Traffic Committee. In the Victorian society, where there were clearly defined spheres of what women and men's work were, this direct approach to the Traffic Committee was meant to bypass the established clerical recruitment process, which the women almost certainly would not have been allowed to enter into. Further, the applications of fathers for women to take up positions were sporadic and not seemingly at a set time or over a period. Thus, there seems to be no systematic effort by the company to recruit women into the company's clerical ranks before 1914. Overall these pieces of evidence suggest that it was the impetus and determination of these women that forced, or persuaded, their fathers to make the applications, through an alternative, more direct, application process. Therefore, the early female telegraphists on the L&SWR were women fighting against an employment system that told them they could not be anything more than housewife and mother.

In the second part I will look at how women's clerical roles did extend to administrative clerical work and how the L&SWR eventually introduced, just prior to the war, full female clerks.