Do you recognize the FWKs in this 19th century photo?

[Alison FWK]

Can anyone help with names for any of the people in this photo? It was taken in Ruddington, in the 1880s or 1890s.

The photo was taken on Chapel Street, Ruddington, outside the Navvies Mission Society (a former Primitive Methodist Chapel). From the location it seems likely that they were knitters associated with the frameshops on the opposite side of (the narrow) Chapel Street (now the Framework Knitters' Museum), although we have nothing concrete to prove this. We haven't yet been able to name a single person in the photograph.

[Ruskie]

It's a fabulous photo Alison, but unless there are names written on the back of the photo, I would say you have no chance of identifying any of them, unless you know where the men worked and if there were employment records of some sort kept which survive today.
Even then you would be likely to just find lists of names and how on earth would you know who was who in the photo?
I think the odds are against you. I don't think it's surprising that you haven't been able to identify any of them I'm sorry to say.

[Alison FWK]

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

It could be that someone with a Ruddington FWK ancestor also has a copy of this picture, which is labelled (or which they know contains a named family member). Or if they have a photo of a Ruddington FWK relative who looks remarkably like someone in this photo.... There are more photos of late c19 frameworkers than you'd imagine.

[pinot]

Hi Alison,
        I've got a similar photo of my ggfather in a group, but  only know it's him because a distant cousin told me so. Ruddington doesn't seem to have an 'old photos' page, but there's facebook.com/RuddingtonMums where you might post the picture and find a descendent or someone to point you to a local paper or historical/photographic society.
             best of luck.

[JaneyCanuck]

Searching for the image at google images - it's rather a favourite of local historians. But it doesn't show up in anybody's personal pages.

You can search the 1881 census by occupation at Anc'y, so it's a bit of a stroke of luck that your photo is dated 1882. Just do an exact search entering only Ruddington Nottinghamshire for location and frame* for occupation. There are 229 of them. If you could work from a contemporary streetmap to then search within those results using streetnames for the surrounding area in the address line, you might get some good possibilities. What you could do with them then ... search family trees on line for the individuals? 

22 of the people in the search results were born 1865 or later. The youngest two were 12, and one of them lived on Church Street, which crosses Chapel Street (23 of the FWKs there lived on Church Street). He might be a candidate for one of those young 'uns.

Too bad it wasn't Calverton ... I might have had some rellies there! But now I do have to have a look at the museum website for sure -- don't forget to tout!
http://www.frameworkknittersmuseum.org.uk/

[lainie3961]

It would seem that you only have a portion of the photo Alison - see the picture on the link to 'picture the past' website

http://www.picturethepast.org.uk/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;NCCS001125&pos=45&action=zoom&id=47480


Elaine

[JaneyCanuck]

Actually, isn't the photo here more slightly more complete in all directions - up, down, left, right - than the one at that link? The other one seems to have been cropped. (Did you use the slide bar on the photo in this thread to see the complete width? It seems to be an original print.)

[lainie3961]

So sorry - no I hadn't used the slide bar to view the whole photo - mainly because I couldn't see it and view the photo at the same time. I thought the photo was cropped and so was only trying to help. Never mind, hopefully my posting hasn't wasted too much time for those viewing.

I never thought to take measurements of the two versions of the photos to compare which was the bigger and in which direction. How clever you are thinking of these things Janey!!!   

[JaneyCanuck]

Heh, I just checked and saw that there were bits missing from the other copy (the edge of the boy, the top of a window). I'd played with Alison's giant photo the first time around.

Not wasted at all -- very interesting read at the link you gave lainie!

I have one grandmother with framework knitter ancestors in Nottinghamshire, and the other comes from shoe industry workers in Northamptonshire. The industrial revolution in a nutshell in my tree.

Oh, and a hint -- you can see more of the photo by minimizing the size of the page while you are looking. Hold down the control key and press the minus sign (hyphen) key a couple of times and the image will shrink so you can use the scroll bar and see it at the same time. Then just reverse the process by holding down the control key and pressing the plus sign until you are back to normal view.