Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

While there are four occupations in common amongst all the parishes in Table 8.17,
(shown in bold type), there are also some descriptors which appear in certain parishes but
not in others. Geography explains some differences, such as the stone-cutters who appear
in the two quarrying parishes, and the millers and papermakers in parishes where their
respective mills were situated. Perhaps weavers, (who a hundred years earlier may have
been omnipresent), now mainly appear in settlements with few alternative non-agricultural
employments. Sometimes personal circumstances cause the differences in the parish’s list
of occupations, such as the exciseman and the musicmaster in Haselor, who presumably
could have lived in any local village, but chose to live there. In communities as small as
these (and smaller) there may only be one blacksmith and one tailor in the village, and, if
they were not of the age to be baptising children, naturally they do not appear in the data. 23
Multiple or dual occupations also conceal the presence of certain jobs, so, although Haselor
and Cleeve Prior had public houses, the publicans may appear as farmers or other
occupations in baptisms. So the list of occupations is incomplete even for adult males, but
is worthy of further investigation.
23 In this circumstance trade directories would fill such gaps in occupational data in certain parishes before the
Victorian censuses, as advocated in Mills, Rural Community History from Trade Directories.
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