Occupation deciphering help please

[ellenavon]

Hello all

Would be grateful if anyone can help with deciphering the occupations of two families on the 1841 Worcester Census I am about to (hopefully!) upload to the gallery.

Familes I am interested in are:

Thomas Hussey, halfway down left hand side

and

Thomas and Elizabeth Packman, towards the bottom of the right hand side.

Many thanks in advance.

Ellen

Added - Oh blow! The file is too large, and I have completely forgotten how to make it smaller.
If anyone can help, the image can be found on Ancestry

Thomas Packman, b. c 1791, Worcester, living in Worcester St Martins, with wife Elizabeth, c.1791 and daughter Sarah Ann, b. 1827.

[speleobat2]

Ellen,

Had a look on Ancestry. The best I can do for Thomas Hussey is Shooe something. If you look at the last entry on that page for Ann, she is a shooe binder--I think!

For the Packmans, I was going to suggest Glove something. Whatever it is, there are several more women on those two pages with the same occupation.

Except for cropping the picture, I don't know how to reduce the size either!

Carol

[JustJean]

Hi Ellen

Well it looks like "Glover y" to me. There are several other ladies his wife included who are listed as "Gloveress" although the ss being written fs in the old style. Why the y? Can't guess about that part unless the enumerator didn't at first get it into the next column. You asked for what it said.....not to make sense out of it!

Best wishes
Jean

[ellenavon]

Thanks both - yes, these are what I thought they looked like - and they don't make any sense to me either!

The Gloveress thing is intriguing me, as many of the women on the page have the same occupation, but Thomas Packman is the only male.

Weird! Off to google.

Thanks

Ellen

[ellenavon]

Good old google. You learn something new every day in family history research don't you.

It appears from loads of stuff on google that Worcester was the main glovemaking are of England in the 1800's.

I presume therefore that Thomas Packman's glovemaking occupation is described slightly differenly from the womens' just because he's male.

From Google:

During the 18th Century, Worcester moved ahead of London as the largest gloving centre. The city's pre-eminence was due to its geographical position on the River Severn and the natural land routes converging from the Midlands towards Wales. Sheepskins were converted to gloving leather by towing, involving the use of common alum and salt, producing a softer, lighter leather with more stretch than that which came from the tanneries using oak bark. Worcester was a prosperous and wealthy city in the 15th and 16th Centuries, noted for woollen broad cloth of the highest quality. This material was not produced solely by the clothiers but by others, including glovers. As the cloth trade declined, people and premises transferred easily to glovers, who were now becoming extremely dominant in the area. By 1910 a high proportion of total output was exported to the United States. However, the USA soon placed an embargo on all imports, bringing factories to a virtual standstill. The freeing of trade had detrimental effects on the workers and their masters. Between 1826 and 1866, the number of masters declined rapidly from 120 to only 40. The Great War brought an expanding engineering industry to the city and with its higher earnings permanently altered the labour situation.

Thanks for the help folks.

Ellen

[AndrewP]

Hi Ellen,

I think he was probably a Glover J (glover journeyman). That was an abbreviation given for use in the 1841 census instructions for Scotland, and was presumably the same for England.

See http://www.talkingscot.com/censuses/census-1841.htm for the Scottish instructions.

All the best,

AndrewP

[AndrewP]

Uploaded to Gallery:

http://talkingscot.com/gallery/displayi ... ?pos=-1675

All the best,

AndrewP

[ellenavon]

Brilliant - of course! Why didn't I think of that? Thanks very much Andrew!

Ellen