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Ireland (Historical Counties) => Ireland => Antrim => Topic started by: ab196 on Saturday 02 June 18 14:40 BST (UK)
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Hi
I was wondering if anyone would know whether workers in the mills in Belfast would have been tattooed with a number when working there, particularly between 1908 and 1925?
Thanks in advance
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I am pretty certain they wouldn't be. I have never heard of such a thing. And there were over 50 mills with thousands of workers. I can't imagine anyone in Ireland allowing themselves to be tattooed by their employers. We can be a bit stroppy here. You wouldn't get away with that.
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Thanks Elwyn
That's what I was thinking. I had a conversation with a friend this week who told me that her relative who worked in one of the mills had a series of numbers tattooed on her arm and she thought it was done by the mill owners. But I know of other people who worked in mills and I never heard of this.
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Let's see if anyone else in a mill had a tattoo and judge from that. But I think the tattoo probably had some other source. Alcohol springs to mind. But I could be wrong.
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1690 mebbes? ;D
Skoosh.
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1690 mebbes? ;D
Skoosh.
Tattoos are not something I have come across in Irish ancestry. Sailors and soldiers sometimes had them, but I think that that relates to their occupation, rather than to Ireland.
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Well Elwyn the problem is now solved. She has now learned that the number on the relatives arm was in fact the army number relating to the woman's husband.
Thanks for your input.