Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

After the completion of The Worcester and Birmingham Canal in December
1815, a commercial settlement grew up alongside the wharves at Tardebigge with
warehouses, weighing-machines, lime-kilns and employees’ cottages. Its construction,
maintenance and operation provided employment for surveyors, contractors, ‘navigators’,
lock-keepers, coal-clerks, wharf-clerks, canal ticket-clerks, canal-labourers, wharflabourers
and toll-collectors. 322
Some boatmen appear to have lived up to a mile from
the canal, while others lived on their boats. 323
Via Birmingham canal-carriers offered
services to all parts including London, while Worcester allowed access to the Severn and
the world beyond. One Birmingham canal-carrier, Thomas Dixon, bought a farm in
Tardebigge and thus operated a lucrative business taking farm-produce into Birmingham,
returning with coal and other items. 324
Fly-boats with a weekly timetable sped lighter
cargoes and perhaps the occasional passenger to their destinations. 325
In the nineteenth century the transport sector still only employed a fraction of the
workforce, but it was increasingly important. 326
There were further road improvements,
including a new route to Birmingham. 327
In its role as a new, manufacturing town,
Redditch was now served by coaches, whose proprietors competed assiduously for
passengers. 328
Carriers and hauliers also provided more varied and more frequent links
between canal, town and village. 329
Local records now list coach-keepers, coach-
322 WoRO, Tardebigge baptisms 1813-1840 and Tardebigge 1841 census. Also White, The Worcester and
Birmingham Canal. WoRO, marriage licence of John Irons, ‘one of the undertakers at the Worcester and
Birmingham Canal’, May 1809.
323 WoRO, Tardebigge 1841 census.
324 White, The Worcester and Birmingham Canal, pp. 220-1.
325 White, The Worcester and Birmingham Canal, p. 216.
326 Table 7.2 shows 1.2% at this period in probate. Table 7.6 shows a rise in baptisms from 1813 to 1840,
achieving 1% in the last decade, which is also the figure given in the 1841 census.
327 See Appendix 15.
328 Bradford, Old Redditch, p. 40, describes the rivalry between competitors. WaRO, QS17, king’s
moieties for conviction of unlicensed stage-coaches, 1846, also mentions Richard Humphriss (of Redditch)
operating a stage-carriage without licence. See Appendix 15.
329 See Appendix 14.
315