Tin Plate Workers

[Missmoss]

Hi Lydart

Thank you for your reply regarding the Redbrook tin works  , I'm following your suggestion.  Meanwhile have found an article 'The Introduction of the Tin Plate Industry' reprinted from the Glos. Society for Industrial Archeology Journal for 2003 at www.gsia.org,. Also have found interesting old photos @ www.sungreen.co.uk and www.coghlan.co.uk.

Missmoss

[Pejic]

The quoted gsia link needs .uk added to the end

[Missmoss]

Apologies for the error, thank you Pejic for pointing that out.

[saw119]

This topic has piqued my interest having just discovered a Tin Plate worker in my tree (who was also a journeyman). However, my ancestor appears to have a serious personality crisis because he also lists himself, at various times, as a Brazier, Ironmonger, Tin Plate Worker and Tin Man. Can all these occupations be interchangeable? He clearly served as an apprentice given that he calls himself a Journeyman in the 1851 census. Oh, and he's also very obviously a rural worker as he comes and lives in Ely. Perhaps he was a 'jack of all trades' for metal work in the city?

[youngtug]

A brazier was a brass worker, so using sheet brass and sheet tinplate to make things would have been of a similar skill set. Obviously some characteristics of the the two materials are different and would need to be worked differently for some things but the working of the two materials is easily learnt by practitioners of either trade.
An ironmonger, maybe he set himself up just to sell things, rather than, or as well as , working at making them.
Tin plate worker and tinman is basically the same, so not such a great difference in trade descriptions has it first seems.

[saw119]

I completely agree and understand all that it just exercised my mind to consider why he kept changing his occupation in the Parish records. I realise that all the jobs are synonymous with each other. Was really just speculating on the attitudes to work in the early Victorian period and the place of my ancestor in his environment.

[Cathcoo]

My great x 3 grandfather, James Day, lists himself variously as a tinplate worker and a tin man. His wife, however, describes him simply as a hawker in my great x 2 grandmother's birth certificate.
They lived in Southwark in 1851 and 61, and he says he was born in Hatfield, Herts. The plot thickens.

[Lydart]

But 'the plot thickening' is just what keeps us forever searching and expanding our searches !!

[youngtug]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker