Occupation on a passenger manifest

[ruthruss]

Hi there, what is the occupation of JC Allen in this 1893 manifest (marked on the attachment)? I see several of the passengers have what looks to be the same. To me it looks like mech (short for mechanic).

[Dundee]

Mech = Mechanic

Debra 

[emeltom]

I agree - Mech for mechanic

[maddys52]

A mechanic in those times was a machine operator.

A useful reference for old occupations:
https://rmhh.co.uk/occup/m.html

[arthurk]

Mechanic was also used as a kind of catch-all term for the working class, as in Mechanics' Institutes.

Interestingly, all the men in that extract are listed as Mechanics, apart from one Farmer, and all the single women are "Spin" - Spinners or Spinsters? Unless this was a bulk emigration from a cloth-making area, I suspect Spinsters. This suggests that unless someone had a particular skill or trade, they may have been using "Mech" and "Spin" as general terms for men and women of working age.

[ruthruss]

Mechanic was also used as a kind of catch-all term for the working class, as in Mechanics' Institutes.

Interestingly, all the men in that extract are listed as Mechanics, apart from one Farmer, and all the single women are "Spin" - Spinners or Spinsters? Unless this was a bulk emigration from a cloth-making area, I suspect Spinsters. This suggests that unless someone had a particular skill or trade, they may have been using "Mech" and "Spin" as general terms for men and women of working age.

I'm very pleased to read about this insight, thank you. The reason I'm so concerned is that (here's a bit of background) if this is my J.C. Allen, then I believe he was travelling to New York to visit his parents. His father had taken his mother from England to New York to see a psychiatrist (she had severe bipolar disorder). J.C. was not a "mech", he was a writer. But if, as Arthurk suggests, "mech" was a general term, this would line up.

I read in Carl Zimmer's book "She has her mother's laugh" that at this time (1893) it was illegal to bring a "feeble-minded" person into the US. So the whole situation is very messy and interesting.

[arthurk]

It's quite hard to get inside the minds of those who devised the terminology and those who applied it, but even assuming Mechanic just means "working man" (or perhaps unskilled worker?), it doesn't seem quite right to me to put a writer in that category. On the other hand, if what he wrote was in any way controversial, if might have been safer to pretend he wasn't one.