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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/69543 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. NAVVY COMMUNITIES AND FAMILIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY LONDON EXTENSION, 1894-1900 Bryan John Ayres Submitted in part fulfilment for the degree of PhD in History at the University of Warwick January 2015 This thesis may be photocopied CONTENTS List of Figures 3 List of Tables 4 Acknowledgements 5 Abstract 6 Abbreviations 7 INTRODUCTION 8 I Antecedents of the London Extension and its Subsequent History 9 II Historiography 13 III The London Extension and the Late Nineteenth Century Construction Worker 18 IV Perceptions and Wider Society 28 V Methodology and Sources 35 VI Structure of the Thesis 39 CHAPTER ONE A True Community? 42 I The Concept of Community and the Issue of Class 43 II Itinerant Workers and the Hutted Encampments 50 III Navvies Within the Wider Community 69 IV Socialisation: Work and Leisure 73 V Socialisation: the Domestic Environment 82 VI Local Recruitment 91 CHAPTER TWO Rumours and Reputations: Navvy Communities in Contact with Health and Poor Law Agencies 99 I Rumour 100 II General Perceptions of the Navvy 104 III Health Issues 117 IV Vagrancy and Common Lodging Houses 133 CHAPTER THREE The Navvy Community and the Law 147 I Policing the Navvy 147 II The Drunken Navvy? 150 III The Nature of Criminality 160 1 IV The Domestic Sphere and the Concept of 163 Respectability 181 V The Navvy as Victim CHAPTER FOUR ‘ “Navvy” Import alions [sic]’: Navvy Children and Elementary Education in the Midlands, 192 1894-1900 I Elementary Education at the End of the 194 Nineteenth Century II ‘ “Navvy” Import alions [sic]’: Perceptions of Navvy Children and a Resort to Corporal 202 III Punishment? The Aim of Elementary Education and the Social 211 IV Control Thesis Aspects of Home Life and the Concept of the 214 V Backward Child Attendance, Finance, and Staffing: The Logistical 226 Impact of the Navvy Children CHAPTER FIVE Religion and Home Mission: The Navvy 237 Mission Society and the London Extension I The Origins of the Navvy Mission Society and 238 Home Mission 249 II Outreach: The NMS Missionaries 259 III The Mission Room and the Written Word 264 IV Looking to the Future?: Targeting the Children 269 V Social Action in Practice 283 CONCLUSION 297 BIBLIOGRAPHY 2 List of Figures Figure 0.1: Map of Great Central London Extension. 11 Figure 1.1: Catesby Navvy Camp, Northamptonshire. 59 Figure 1.2. Helmdon Road Navvy Camp, Northamptonshire. 60 Figure 1.3: Barley Fields Navvy Camp, Finmere, Buckinghamshire. 61 Figure 1.4: Interior of Navvy Hut, Newton, Warwickshire. 62 Figure 1.5: Interior of Navvy Hut, Calvert, Buckinghamshire. 63 Figure 1.6: Interior of Navvy Hut, Calvert, Buckinghamshire. 64 Figure 5.1: Interior of Mission Room at Loughborough. 262 3 List of Tables Table 1.1: Age Profile of Male Railway Construction Workers and Spouses (adjusted to year 1895). 94 Table 2.1: Cases of Smallpox Reported in Nottingham, Leicester and Loughborough, 1892-1899. 118 Table 2.2: Industrial Accidents by Occupation 1894-1898. 126 Table 3.1: Cases of Drunkenness Reported by Police Forces, 1893-1899. 154 Table 4.1: Ruddington C of E Boys School – Object Lessons 1894/5. 200 4 Acknowledgements The Great Central Railway holds particular meaning for me for two reasons. Firstly, I am old enough to remember the line in its final years of operation. Secondly, and more importantly, family connections with the line go back several generations. As such, I owe a debt of gratitude to my late father and grandfather for awakening a lifelong interest in, and affection for, the line. In undertaking the research for this thesis, I am grateful for the assistance given to me by the staff of the National Archives, Lambeth Palace Library, the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, Oxford History Centre, Northamptonshire Record Office, Nottinghamshire Archives, and Warwickshire County Record Office. Thanks are also due to the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland for permission to reproduce images from the Newton collection, all rights in respect of which are held by Leicestershire County Council. I would like to express especial thanks to my supervisor Professor Carolyn Steedman for her patient, insightful and expert help over the last five years. Finally, I am appreciative of the interest shown in this project, and assistance provided, by members of my family. 5 Abstract This thesis examines navvy communities and families at the very end of the nineteenth century against the backdrop of the construction of a specific railway line running through the centre of England: the Great Central Railway London Extension. Although navvies have been subjected to a number of previous studies, this thesis seeks to situate their experiences within the context of late nineteenth century working-class society. It analyses the concept of community in relation to the mainly itinerant workers and their dependents, and explores the role of difference in terms of lifestyle and culture, together with shared experiences, and how these may have helped to define identity. Navvies were still considered by many contemporaries to be somewhat disreputable, isolated and neglected, and thus, at the margins of society. This notion is assessed by reference to their encounters with the various agencies of the Victorian state and voluntary and religious sectors including the police and judiciary, the poor law, the education system, health services and Christian home missionary endeavour. A central theme of the thesis is the importance attached to perceptions of the navvy community. Attention is devoted to the manner in which such perceptions were created, and in particular on the role of literary representations of the navvy. These perceptions often shaped the initial response of local residents to the influx of the workforce, but they were challenged and frequently amended as a result of direct contact. An argument is also advanced that a crucial pointer to the way in which the incomers were regarded and treated was the degree to which they conformed to accepted social norms, not least being that related to respectability. 6 Abbreviations BPP – British Parliamentary Papers TNA - The National Achieves. LPL - Lambeth Palace Library. RecOLR - Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland. MRC – Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. NRO - Northamptonshire Record Office. OHC – Oxford History Centre NottA - Nottinghamshire Archives. WRO – Warwickshire County Record Office. 7 INTRODUCTION ‘His class is one of the most neglected in the commonwealth: he is a Bedouin on English soil, creating great works … One hundred thousand specimens of “humanity in the rough” wander up and down the United Kingdom from one public work to another’, is how one commentator, described the collective body of the country’s navvies in 1905.1 An apt description it would seem noting as it does the navvy’s itinerant lifestyle, a degree of marginalisation, and in stressing ‘humanity in the rough’, making reference to the men’s apparent rough edges, but also, and perhaps more subtly, indicating the hard physical nature of their labours. The quotation postdates by only a few years the completion of the railway line that forms the background to this thesis, the Great Central Railway London Extension, and provides a link with perceptions of the navvy stretching back to the peak of railway construction in the mid years of the nineteenth century and forward into the twentieth century. Given that the navvy was intrinsically linked with major civil engineering projects, itinerancy was a fact of life for many, reflecting as it did the nature of such work. It was of limited duration which for many meant a short period of residency in a given area before the demands of securing future employment compelled migration. Above all, navvies earned a reputation for disreputable behaviour which engendered suspicion and perhaps even fear in some quarters, and provides a ready explanation as to why collectively they might have been considered as outcasts. These characteristics, together with a more recent assumption that implies overwhelming Irish ethnicity, have ensured an enduring and increasingly stereotypical image of the hard drinking, lawless and godless navvy. This in itself is something of a 1 Felix Baker, ‘England’s Bedouins’, Good Words, 46 (1905), p. 351. 8 contradiction given that the Irish, with their widespread adherence to the Catholic faith, are rarely considered to be godless. With the construction of a specific railway line as a background, this thesis looks afresh at railway construction workers. Unlike previous studies, however, which have tended to concentrate exclusively on the men, I extend the coverage to include aspects of community and family life which shifts the focus where possible upon women and children in their families. Using these themes I challenge the emphasis of earlier scholarship which has all too often viewed this social grouping in isolation; I seek to situate it within the wider experience of the late nineteenth century working- class. Given that my research is delineated by the course of the railway it is essentially regional in character and concentrates on the areas through which the main part of the line passed, namely, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. I Antecedents of the London Extension and its Subsequent History Although the railway line is of interest in its own right, and aspects of its construction and specific locations on or in close proximity to the route will be a recurring feature throughout the thesis, I am not writing a railway history.