Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Table 7.22 Male occupational structure in specific groupings from Feckenham registers
1681-1708 (shown as % of adult males with known occupations)
Burials
1681-1708
Baptisms
1702-1706
Agriculture (excl. labourers) 35.4 20.3
Labourers 26.5 37.2
Extractive 0.0 0.0
Building (excl. carpenters) 2.3 3.5
Tailors/bodice makers 3.1 2.9
Other textile, clothing & paper 4.6 4.7
Shoemakers/cordwainers 3.1 5.2
Other leather, horn and tallow 0.8 0.6
Carpenters/joiners 2.3 2.3
Other woodworkers 1.5 7.6
Blacksmiths/farriers 3.5 3.5
Other metal (excl. needles/hooks/pins) 0.0 0.0
Needles/hooks/pins 0.8 4.1
Transport 0.0 0.0
Innkeepers/victuallers 2.3 0.0
Other food, retail, service, dealing 10.8 6.4
Domestic servants 0.8 0.0
Professional 2.3 1.7
Males with known occupations (n) 130 172
Table 7.22 shows that needlemakers were present and increasing, but not to the
same extent as in Coughton and Studley. 44
However, the inland revenue apprenticeship
books after 1710 indicate an increase in needlemakers in Feckenham and the dominance
of the needle industry in this zone. 45
44 The comparison of figures for needlemakers in burials and baptisms suggests that needlemaking was new
to the parish.
45 See Appendix 23. The specifics of the needle trade are discussed in the text below.
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