Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

whitesmith, brass-founder and button-maker, while by the mid-nineteenth century nonferrous
metalworkers included tinkers, tinplate-workers, zincworkers, galvanisers,
brassfounders, whitesmiths and braziers, all in small numbers. 195
Over the two centuries
there were always a couple of clock and watchmakers present in the zone, presumably
serving local needs.
As elsewhere, blacksmiths were dispersed, being situated to serve their own
communities. 196
The blacksmith was indispensable to his neighbours, mending and
making all manner of iron items but also doctoring horses and sometimes cattle. Local
records often do not clarify which blacksmiths undertook such farriery work, but Thomas
Perkinson, needlemaker and blacksmith, was chosen by the Throckmortons to ‘bleed and
drench’ their horses. 197
In Stuart times some blacksmiths (and needlemasters) were from
yeomen farming families eager to have another string to their bow. Another example of
diversification by such families is provided by the locksmith, William Field. 198
In the
eighteenth century many smiths continued to farm, and in addition Decimus Marshall of
Sambourne had six stocks of bees and two grocery shops, one of which was in
Alcester. 199
The local smithy was an important focal point, none more so than that of the
195 WoRO, probate of John Steward, Studley, watchmaker, 1795. Wo RO, s143, BA307/2, Redditch
Common and Webheath Enclosure Award 1771 mentions Richard Brandis, button-maker, probably
connected with the extensive Birmingham trade. WaRO, Coughton parish register 1722-1759 mentions
John Alcock, husbandman and whitesmith. In 1758 Coughton register records the burial of John Walker,
brass-founder of Birmingham. His probate (1765) says late of Birmingham, now of Sambourne. He may
have carried out brass-founding in Sambourne as well as Birmingham. WaRO and WoRO 1841 and 1851
census and Billing’s Worcestershire Directory 1855. Tinker is used in the sense of tinman or brazier, not
an itinerant.
196 However, the high percentage of references to blacksmiths in parish registers c. 1700 (Studley (5%) and
Coughton (6%)) may suggest that some of them were producing nails, needles or wire on a more
commercial scale, not just serving their agricultural neighbours.
197 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/26, Throckmorton MSS, 1674, shows payments to Thomas Perkins alias
Perkinson. The few references to ‘farriers’ include: WoRO, Feckenham baptisms, 1702, Edmund Danby,
Feckenham, farrier, and WoRO, probate of William Bellamy, Redditch, (Tardebigge), farrier, 1723.
198 WoRO, marriage licence of William Field, Tardebigge, locksmith, July 1687. (He is of a family known
as Field alias Painter.)
199 WoRO, probate of Decimus Marshall, Sambourne, (Coughton), blacksmith, 1714, £70-18-7. Several
other blacksmiths also keep bees, as discussed in Chapter 6.
288