Why would a baker suddenly become a French polisher?

[LizzieW]

Anyone hazard a guess why someone who was a confectioner/baker up to and including the 1851 census in Holbeach, Lincolnshire would be living in Shoreditch in 1853 and working as a French Polisher.  I have his death certificate, he died in Shoreditch in November 1853 and his wife was the informant on the death cert.  His surname is so unusual that it can only be his death cert, plus his first two names are correct, as was his age and the name of his wife.  He died of consumption which he'd had for 18 months. 

All I can think is that he and his wife didn't realise he had consumption and thought that the flour etc. in his occupation was causing his cough.  Why he would go to Shoreditch and become a French Polisher though is beyond me.  Surely even in 1853 people must have known that Shoreditch wasn't as healthy a place as Holbeach, Lincolnshire.

[Rena]

You'll need to research the conditions in your ancestor's original county, but :-

I think several bad harvests (due to rain) which started in 1845 and then again the next year might have had something to do with it.  The scarcity of British grain crops meant the prices rose horrendously making it virtually impossible for ordinary people to afford the staple diet of bread, etc. which meant bakers losing their jobs.  Additionally, at that time there was a high import tariff on imported grain, presumably because large estate owners would have to lower their prices to match the imported grain prices.

Confronted by widespread crop failure in the autumn of 1845 especially in Ireland where they depended on potatoes, The Tory Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel purchased £100,000 worth of maize and corn meal secretly from America. Baring Brothers & Co initially acted as purchasing agents for the Prime Minister. The government hoped that they would not "stifle private enterprise" and that their actions would not act as a disincentive to local relief efforts. Due to weather conditions, the first shipment did not arrive in Ireland until the beginning of February 1846.The maize corn was then re-sold for a penny a pound.

In 1846, Peel moved to repeal the Corn Laws, tariffs on grain which kept the price of bread artificially high. The famine situation worsened during 1846 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in that year did little to help the starving Irish

[LizzieW]

Oh thank you that makes sense, I hadn't thought of that.  My 3 x g.grandfather who, I presume, was an agricultural labourer moved his wife and large family to the industrial part of Cheshire, they were on the 1841 census there and he was working on the railways as a labourer. Unfortunately, he died of Pulmonary Consumption in 1843 and is buried in Cheshire (strangely very close to where my husband and I lived when we were newly married in the early 1960s, although I hadn't started family research then so I didn't know).  Following his death, his wife and family moved back to Lincolnshire where they were ag.labs.

I did research the railways and found a railway boom and mania occurred during the 1840s and that by 1845, 2441 miles of railways were open and, if you can believe it 30 million passengers were being carried (seems an awful lot to me at that time, perhaps it should be 3 million). Apparently people moved from the countryside to towns in the 19th century for higher wages, not realising living conditions were often worse and disease prevalent.  That's not to say, of course, that I haven't got ancestors who died from consumption in the countryside.

[Andrew Tarr]

I did research the railways and found a railway boom and mania occurred during the 1840s and that by 1845, 2441 miles of railways were open and, if you can believe it 30 million passengers were being carried (seems an awful lot to me at that time, perhaps it should be 3 million). Apparently people moved from the countryside to towns in the 19th century for higher wages, not realising living conditions were often worse and disease prevalent.

That's only 30 million journeys a year, or less than 100,000 a day, which doesn't sound so much, does it?  Quite a lot of those journeys would have been excursions to the seaside for example, which were very popular and the trains were often overcrowded.  I think it was in the 1840s that Thomas Cook started his travel-agency empire with train excursions.

Many people moved from country to town because income was more important than health - even assuming that they were aware of that problem at the time.

[LizzieW]

Thanks Andrew I should have worked that out myself 

I suppose, like nowadays, people will go where the work is.  Sad that for two of my ancestors at least, the moved lead to their deaths.  In the 1870/80s many of my ancestors moved from Lincolnshire to Manchester.  I had so many ancestors on different branches of my tree all living in Lincolnshire who moved from country to town.

[Skoosh]

My ggggrandfather was a baker & became a carter. The baking trade was hard-graft, no machines & constant nights. Not work for an older man!

Skoosh.

[jonw65]

Forty when he died, if this is the right one
Dec 1853 Shoreditch 1c 111
Bassingthwaighte, George Francis
age 40

In Holbeach in 1851
piece 2097 folio 603 page 41

[LizzieW]

Yes that's him.  I've got the full details.

[LizzieW]

My ggggrandfather was a baker & became a carter. The baking trade was hard-graft, no machines & constant nights. Not work for an older man!

Skoosh.

My 2 x g.grandfather was a Master Baker, he trained in Boston, Lincolnshire but by 1871 had moved to Manchester.  He remained a Master Baker/Confectioner until he died in 1910 aged 65 from Bronchitis and Heart Failure, not an uncommon cause of death in Manchester at that time.