Horse keeper

[Flyingswan]

Hi all, would anyone know what a horse keeper would do in 1870's Liverpool. I know that may sound daft but my GGG grandfather was listed as horse keeper but lived in haylock street (Dingle area I think). I was wondering if it would be anything to do with the "omnibuses" as he was previously an omnibus conductor.
Another of his jobs was a ' towns waiter'  anyone able to help as to what exactly this was?
Many thanks

[stanmapstone]

A Horse Keeper, aka a groom, worked in stables feeding and looking after the horses.

Stan

[stanmapstone]

In the 1881 census there are 21 men with Town Waiter as an occupation, all in the Liverpool area.
Some with "Towns Waiter (Munic)" apparently it was a police officer who looked after magistrates according to https://www.suttonbeauty.org.uk/suttonhistory/vallancey/

Stan

[Flyingswan]

Thanks very much Stan. I've been asking around but nobody seemed to have any idea about the town waiter job so nice to know

[Bee]

Town Waiter - Customs/excise official
according to "A dictionary of old trades, title & occupations"

[stanmapstone]

A Waiter is an obsolete name for an officer in the employ of the Customs at sea ports . I don't know about a Town-Waiter, but Coast-Waiter and Tide-Waiter are common terms.
There are a 34 Town Waiters listed in the Digital Library of Historical Directories from 1825 to 1900 http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4 and on Ancestry, all except 3 in Liverpool, you would expect them to be distributed more widely if they were customs officers.

This is from the Liverpool Mail - Saturday 05 January 1856 and from the Liverpool Daily Post - Tuesday 16 June 1868

Stan

[Irene pilgrim]

Great posts

[carol8353]

Hi all, would anyone know what a horse keeper would do in 1870's Liverpool. I know that may sound daft but my GGG grandfather was listed as horse keeper but lived in haylock street (Dingle area I think). I was wondering if it would be anything to do with the "omnibuses" as he was previously an omnibus conductor.
Another of his jobs was a ' towns waiter'  anyone able to help as to what exactly this was?
Many thanks

My grans's dad was a horse keeper in London,he too had been an omnibus driver.

Gran used to tell me tales of being taken by her dad to help feed and care for the horses on a Saturday morning.They were stabled in the same road as she lived,so didn't have far to go and used to pop in just to see them each day after school.