Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

inventories cease, it is more difficult to detect the involvement of tradesmen and craftsmen
in agriculture. However, records such as wills, directories and land tax assessments
demonstrate some such involvement. Victorian Redditch factory-hands probably ‘took a
holiday’ to help with hop-picking or harvest, but were less involved with the land on a day
to day basis than their cottage needlemaking forebears.
The precise analysis of multiple occupations is both problematic and fascinating. I
have made no attempt in this study to quantify frequency of multiple occupational
combinations, but Appendix 22 includes observations on occurrences in the study area. In
that appendix I have omitted farming as it was such a commonplace alternative
employment. Some other trades were also so closely associated as to be regarded as
synonyms. 14
Despite the move towards a more specialised economy, multiple occupations
were alive and well in the nineteenth century. 15
The balance between specialisation and
diversification of communities and individuals is discussed below.
Specialisation and diversification
Communities and individuals involved in the study area’s manufactures may have
had less to do with farming in 1840 than in 1660, but specialisation and diversification
went hand in hand. Chapters 4 and 7 discussed division of labour within the gun trade and
needle-trade, but as production was more minutely demarcated, so new opportunities arose
for other products. The diversification from needles into fish-hook and fishing tackle
manufacture has been mentioned above.
14 For example, the plumber-glazier-painter and the carpenter-joiner.
15 See M. Woollard, ‘The classification of multi-occupational titles in the 1881 census of England and Wales’,
Local Population Studies, 72, (2004), pp. 34-49.
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