"Who Do You Think You Are" Series 13, Episode 5 Ricky Tomlinson

[Rena]

A Carter = a labourer with a horse!

Skoosh.

. and cart  an old fashioned "white van man"     the first one to buy the horse and cart probably had the gift of the gab to have won orders against such fierce competition.

[silvery]

Was just going to say the same, Rena, about a carter being a 'white van man' or man with van.     I have a carter in the tree and poor families all over, together with industrial schools.    I got a bit annoyed with Ricky Tomlinson.   You would have thought his family was particularly picked out for a duff hand in life.

[Mike in Cumbria]

  You would have thought his family was particularly picked out for a duff hand in life.

Some people must have watched a different programme from me. Ricky Tomlinson was using the individuals in his own family to illustrate a much wider point about inequality and unfairness.

[jillruss]

Is there any difference between a carter and a rullyman? A couple of my ancestors in East and West Yorkshire were rullymen in both 18th and 19th centuries. I've always assumed this was a driver of a horse drawn cart.

[Andrew Tarr]

Is there any difference between a carter and a rullyman? A couple of my ancestors in East and West Yorkshire were rullymen in both 18th and 19th centuries. I've always assumed this was a driver of a horse drawn cart.

Do you mean a lurryman ?  (i.e.lorry)  That name crops up occasionally.

[jillruss]

Sorry - yes I did mean lurryman. And rullyman. Just checked my records and the West Yorks ancestor was a lurryman, whilst the East Yorks one was a rullyman but, as far as I know, both drove horse drawn carts! Must just be the local vernacular.

[Treetotal]

I have Rullymen too and I'm from East Yorkshire 
Carol

[Guy Etchells]

Is there any difference between a carter and a rullyman? A couple of my ancestors in East and West Yorkshire were rullymen in both 18th and 19th centuries. I've always assumed this was a driver of a horse drawn cart.

In today's terms a carter would be anything from driving a van to a rigid large goods vehicle and the lurryman the artic drivers (i.e. the heavy carts).

This however is not cast in stone and depending on who used the term both could mean the driver of any size of horse drawn cart.

Cheers
Guy

[Gnlgymd100]

I enjoyed this one.  In fact the series on the whole so far has been quite interesting.  Mind you, I was a bit disappointed with Cheryl's one last week - she seemed disinterested at times but like Ricky's this week - you did get a sense of her pride in where she came from.  I'd have liked her episode to go back a few more generations on the Laing line but that's purely because I wanted to see if I was right with thinking that her Laings came initially from Scotland

Kay