Fashion and work: 150
years of a Shoreditch family
(Wager, Mackie, Hoares, Eglington – West & Leslie)
[Please see the notes at the end of the text for links to a family history tree and an annotated Google Map which provides the abode details via the number following the address in square brackets [ ] ]
Len Arthur
Introduction and context
For around 150 years the lives of my mother and her Wager, Hoares and Mackie ancestors - including my own early years - were bound by a small inner area of London from Clerkenwell to Shoreditch roughly three by three kilometres. The area was cheek by jowl overcrowded, heavily industrialised and polluted, with few green spaces. It was the working class heart of London immediately north of the City of London and just east of the West End. Bounded to its north by the Regents Canal and flowing to the east into the similar working class areas of Whitechapel and Bethnal Green.
As workers then and now know, the ability to sell your labour on as regular basis as possible was the only way to survive in an urban and inner city environment and it is clear that my maternal ancestors moved into and stayed in this area as it provided the continuing opportunity to find work in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations. The continuing demand for workers providing ‘openings’ through extended family connections, for children to gain some basic training and as early as possible contribute to the family income. Once trained, that was largely it, that’s how you earned your living for the rest of your life, totally dependent on how the demand for that skill remained in need, which also in turn, determined wage levels. In these trades union organisation was a rarity. Escape through re-training seems to be rare indeed unless new work opportunities developed. The other escape was to become a small employer yourself, moving one rung up the ladder, but still dependent on contracts from larger employers and outlets. The labour market reigned supreme.
From the 1830s and probably earlier, my mother’s ancestors were involved in the fashion and accessory industries which processed the raw materials imported through the London docks, the canals, and railways, into goods either for the wealthy in the City or West End or for export around Britain or the world, back through the same transport system. Whilst skills and occupations changed through the generations largely the connection to the fashion industry remained reflecting how family work connections would provide openings for the ‘smart’ boys and girls.
This then, is a detailed story of several connected families surviving in the environment of this smaller area of London over a century and a half. It provides as detailed as possible insight into their lives largely developed from family history and other primary and secondary sources together with some personal recollections. Hopefully it provides an insight into workers' lives in this part of London that both challenges and supplements the extant narratives as well as bringing to life the experiences of workers in a particular family whose voices would otherwise be lost to history.
The Wagers
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| Elsie Arthur nee Wager |
In the late 1950s into the early 1960s aged from about 8 - 16 I lived with my parents in one of the Essex bungalow lands between Basildon and Southend, a place called Thundersley. My personal story can wait, as this one is about my mother and her ancestors. My father’s family story has been covered in other texts.
During that period in Essex, I remember that my mum often did tailoring ‘out work’, working at the dining room table, hand finishing top end suits for Saville Row and other City and West End outlets. It wasn’t easy work and I remember the tailoring chalk - which I misused around the house and wider naturally - and my mum complaining about the tough material and thread that really need industrial strength needles, beeswax, and thimbles to push it through to create the fancy edge stitching. Her Singer treadle sewing machine was always in the corner ready to go on buttonholes. She also worked in some of the small clothes making companies in the area which employed women in factory type situations. Again, much of it was finishing work.
Now and again, I would get some benefit from this work - other than filched chalk - and have a ride up to London with what I suppose was the ‘factor’ the go between the outworkers and the tailoring shops that served the customer. One I remember had a sporty Riley tourer and I got to sit in the front whizzing up to London along the A127, the London to Southend Arterial Road hanging on to the leather straps as we swung around the many roundabouts. The final delivery if I remember right was in the City near the Bank. A great adventure as a family car was far beyond our family income.
What I didn’t realise at the time and have only through doing family history research, how much this type of work and method of employment was rooted in my mum’s family history. This is now that story working back in time from my mum and her parents.
The Wager family - Dalston 1920s - 1930s
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| The Wager family c1918 |
here that she lived with her parents - my grandparents - Francis and Violetta Wager, her elder brother Francis (Frank) and two elder sisters Ellen (Nellie) and Doris from around 1918 - 1940. Frank and Violetta were now in their early 50s and had both been master tailors from around the turn of the century. The rented house in Navarino Road was a large one with a basement, reasonably sized back garden, a front and back room which was essentially one long large room which functioned as a workshop and several other rooms on the next two stories. The house is still there.
The house was both a home and a workplace, with the tailor’s tables and sewing machines in the workroom of the ground floor double room. It was here that Francis, Violetta and as they left school and received training, their son and three daughters produced suits for Saville Row and other City and West End tailors. I’m not sure about my uncle Frank and two aunts Nellie and Doris and how they received their training, but when my mum left school at 14, she was fitted up with an apprenticeship as a court dressmaker in the West End. She would often talk fondly of this time and in my memory, she still had friends dating from this period. The girls all expressed a desire to be mannequins - the term describing the models of the late 1920s and 1930s - of course out of bounds for working class girls, this role was reserved for the debutantes of the time.
There appears to have been some division of labour between my grandparents with Violetta, my grandmother ensuring the tailoring work was completed to standard and on time and possibly keeping the books and my grandfather the one who tailored but also secured the contracts - ‘hail fellow well met’ - and did the final deliveries. He was fond of a few glasses of whisky - possibly a remnant of his mother Jane being Scottish - so the end of business on Saturday afternoons and evenings was his time to entertain the client shops and possibly direct customers in the West End tailoring watering holes. It was a strictly once a week session and mum often referred to him being left asleep in front of the kitchen range on a Sunday morning to in my grandmother’s terms ‘let the old bugger sleep it off’.
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| The piano today |
How did this come about? How did my grandparents manage to start from what appears to have been children of widows, being brought up in very tough conditions in Shoreditch to earning a reasonable living running their own business?
The Wagers 1890s - 1920
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| Frank & Violetta Wager C1935 |
this remained a great puzzle until starting the family history as neither surname was passed down. At one stage apparently the tension was so bad that my grandmother’s mother - my great grandmother, Helen Hoares - used to receive a parcel at Christmas from her family with their turkey bones wrapped in newspaper! Apocryphal or not, the possibility of this being real is there in how her marriage came about, but it seems support also followed at a later stage and this leads into the possible background of the successful tailoring business.
When my grandparents married on 11 December 1898 Francis was 22 and Violetta (Letty) was 20. He was a Post Office porter, and she was a machinist it seems as a worker in a tailoring business. They are both down as living in Lime Grove, Mare Street, Hackney at number 11 and 14 respectively [50]. From Charles Booth's survey George H Duckworth’s notebook 1897 “Lyme Grove which has Youngs Assembly Rooms, a well conducted dancing establishment, Barretts coppering works, and Pikes large boot factory on its northern side and backs of St Thomas square on its south” The colouring on the map show housing poor to mixed. The 1905 Post Office Directory doesn’t mention these establishments but refers to a printing block maker, a ship’s chandler, a builder, a wire netting manufacturer and two almshouses.
At the birth of their first child, Francis E W Wager 18 months later in April 1900 they were living at 18 Nelson Street Whitechapel [51], and Francis, his father, is described as a tailor apparently, he had by this time moved on from working as a Post Office porter. Perhaps an early indication of the influence of Violetta, my grandmother? Booth describes Nelson Street 1898 through George Duckworth again “U? rather than pink of maps, very poor jews, on the North side is the black spot of the maps called St Johns place, known to the police as Jack’s hole. Better now than it used to be, well paved, more respectable than unrespectable families, tho’ still one or two rough families, all houses done up, parish shut up one or two houses as unsanitary brothels, some unfortunates still here, l to dark blue”. The 1905 Post Office directory indicates a number of workshops in amongst the housing, two ship’s chandlers, two tailors, cabinet and woodturner, looking glass maker, blacksmith and a number of shops, jewellery, butchers, confectioner, cordial maker, paper hanging dealer.
Another year later in the 1901 census they are back up in Shoreditch, living at 6 Dunloe Street [56]. Francis is now described as trouser finisher and a worker and Violetta as a tailoress working from home. There are two other families living at the same address. Booth’s survey George H Duckworth again in 1898 is described as “York St Joinery works at SW end, clean curtains and pink china pots in front windows, houses of 1820-30 type, broad road 42’ across, like it are Dunloe St…” The area is coloured mixed on the map. It is not clear whether there are two other families living in the house or an extended one of six, of those that are working one is a picture frame fitter and the other a railway carter. In nearby houses is a tent maker, carmen, print worker, dock labourers, box, boot, artificial flower makers, several cabinet makers, and a foreman boilermaker and one a timber works. A number work in the fashion industry, a feather curler, hat band machinist, childs costume makers, collar machinist and wood carver. Nearly all were born in London or nearby counties. The 1905 Post Office directory reveals that the street had several shops, grocer, fried fish, chandler, coffee rooms, bakers, oil man, hairdresser, a builder and a wood merchant. Alongside the shops were small workshops, most connected to furniture production but also the fashion industry with a tailor, two boot makers and a canvas shoemaker. The range of occupations provides an insight into the semi-skilled work that was available in this part of London and a glimpse into where the income was coming from to purchase the ‘pink china pots’ for the front windows! In 1901 at the birth of their second child Ellen, they were still living at Dunloe Street (63) and Francis is described in the baptism record as a tailor.
By 1904 and the birth of their third child Stanley, they had again moved a little way across the canal into Hackney and the baptism record shows them living at a much larger house at 25 Ash Grove, Hackney [64]. Ash Grove is not specifically mentioned in the 1898 Booth survey of the area. The road is coloured mixed. Ash Grove seems to sit between an area variously known as “.. the rookeries and a ‘thieves’ den’, with some hard drinking, and Mare Street which was increasingly Jewish with small workshops throughout”. The 1905 Post Office directory provides some more colour with a large area being taken up by the London General Omnibus stables - it remains to this day a bus depot. There are two boot manufacturers, a boot machinist, furniture trades, including trimmings and upholstery and a toy maker, together with an entrance to a large manufacturing chemist and a glass bottle manufacturer. Again, a changing marginal area where a larger house for use as a workshop with possibly lower rents due to location would fit the finances of a growing home business. Francis is described as a tailor. Sadly, Stanley dies in the September of the year of his birth.
By 1908 at the birth of their fourth child Doris in October of that year, they were now living in larger premises again at 17 Pownall Road [65] a few streets away from Ash Grove in Haggerston. Francis is now describing himself in the baptism records as a master tailor. In the 1910 electoral register [67] and in the 1911 census (68) they are still at the same address on Pownall Road where also in 1911, my mother Elsie was born. The confirmation of their changed circumstances is clear with both Francis and Violetta being described as tailors and as employers working from home. They have a four room house to themselves as a family of five. Pownall Road in the Booth 1898 survey was coloured mixed although the notebooks think that it ‘... looks no better than purple”. The 1911 census reveals a wide range of workers. Lithographic machine minder, chair maker, telegraphist, tea packer, compositor, cabinet maker, furniture maker manager. There are other tailors, dressmakers, and a mantle cutter. A few worked from home like Violetta and Francis, one a marquette maker and the others, who lived next door were umbrella and walking stick makers from Russia/Poland, most came from London and nearby counties. The 1905 Post Office directory reveals small workshops again, most relating to furniture making and other woodworking such as box and packing case makers and including a bamboo furniture maker. There are also builders and decorators. The fashion industry is present through two boot makers, silk finisher, tailor, dressmaker, a corset maker and perhaps the laundry. There were a few of the usual shops, grocer, baker, and another ship’s chandler.
By 1913, according to the electoral register, they had moved up another rung to two streets North of Pownall Road, to 72 Brownlow Road [80]. Booth's survey - which was carried out in 1898 - might have changed by this date - describes the road as “Brownlow Road… in the south side is 2 ½ stories and looks pink; in the North side the two storied houses are poor and look more like light blue. The map makes no difference.” The 1905 Post Office directory shows the road as largely residential with a builder on the North side, on the South side a wood carver, cabinet maker, dentist, wire brush maker and mechanical engineer. The last two were in workshops at 72A in Brownlow Road so seemingly next door to the Wagers, a growing workshop part of the street. From the sources it seems this is where they stayed throughout the First World War, moving further north to Navarino Road around 1918.
Until they moved to Navarino Road most of their married life had been spent in Haggerston just South and North of the canal. Dominating the surrounding streets were the massive gas works by Haggerston Bridge and another two just a bit further down the canal. Ash Grove where they lived in the middle of the 1900’s was further dominated by the omnibus stabling and a large chemical works. The houses and streets in the area would have been a little like living and working in one giant factory, composed of interlocking workshops, providing all aspects of production. The furniture industry seems to dominate
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| Regent canal c1905 |
but is closely followed by the fashion and accessory industries. Writing this brings back memories of stories my mother related about the canal, how filthy it was, often with dead dogs and cats floating around and how dangerous for children with it seems a number being drowned, and their bodies being found when the locks were operated. Socially the area was increasingly cosmopolitan with migrants, many Jewish people escaping from the East European pogroms, being attracted to the opportunity of finding employment in the small workshops or setting up shop on their own applying existing skills. Areas did seem segregated but not tightly so and transition was a constant. Many houses were occupied by different families and also included rooms that were used for living and production.
Letty and Frank and their family seemed to find a way through this economic and social labyrinth to survive and develop their own business, providing a rising income. An explanation for this trajectory will be partial but possibilities are worth exploring. It does seem that my grandmother, Letty, was a force to be reckoned with. I never met her, but that is certainly the impression that my mother’s stories convey she was a person who knew how to make the best of a situation. When she married Frank, he was a Post Office porter and within a short time he had joined her in the tailoring business as a worker, it seems at the starting skill point of a trouser finisher. Letty was described as a machinist but does seem to have had wider tailoring training and skills. Married women were still not employed, but it seems even with young children, Letty continued to take outwork, possibly using contacts from previous employment. It appears this then became a growth area for both of them to develop working from home taking on sub-contracting and then by the 1911 census taking on contracts in their own right. Each housing move seems to fit this development, larger houses with more room for the worktables and machines and the family in less attractive areas where the rents would be as low as possible. By the time they and the family had moved to Pownall Road and then Brownlow Road, they had moved back to the very road that Letty was living in with her family in the 1891 census just around the time she would have finished school. Possibly the CofE St Paul's school around the corner. Leaving at 12 if not earlier she would then have been one of ‘smart girls’ employers were looking for and been fixed up with an apprenticeship most possibly through her parents’ connections. From my previous historical research, it is clear that very few jobs were actually advertised, and people found work through family or other connections. It is possible that continuing connections with previous employers in the area she was from were sources of contracts for my grandparent’s expanding business. There were other possible family connections but first it is useful to place their trajectory within the wider context of the expanding tailoring business of this period.
There tends to be a general assumption that the industrial revolution passed London by with all the advanced growth taking place further North. The evidence points to an opposite picture. The County area of London contained 12% of the national manufacturing employment - including clothing - in both 1851 and 1911. If the Greater London area is included, a much more relevant area in terms of comparison, the figure for both dates is near 20%, only superseded by the Northwest. Numbers employed in London manufacturing doubled between 1851 and 1911 from 432,000 to 826,000. During this period the percentage of the numbers employed in clothing manufacture in London dropped from 15% to 10% but this was a consequence of faster growth in other occupations, the numbers employed grew by 43%. “By 1861, the East End contained 34,000 tailors and tailoresses; in 1911 there were 65,000 with employment increasing most rapidly between 1881 and 1901” This growth dropped back somewhat in the following 10 years, and their move to owning their own business might have in part been a reaction to this downturn, a way of securing some control of income in a more competitive market.
How would this have worked? The organisational structure of manufacturing in London was not as dominated by the factory system, this certainly did exist, but side by side was the expansion of production partly in different sized workshops and partly through ‘outwork’ in the home. Hence the community appearance of ‘one big’ factory. The capitalist division of labour, splitting whole hand craft, time served, artisan work with high worker control and discretion, into discrete tasks, breaking the skilled worker potential market control, and shifting more routine tasks to cheaper wages, with workers under more control and supervision, using new machines and being paid by the piece, was still the trajectory, but the control and integration of the work took more varied forms. The consequence of this process has been described as ‘sweating’ and the trades as ‘sweated industries. This is often linked with the idea that this type of production was a feature of old pre-industrial processes hanging on in a more competitive factory dominated market and the workers being forced to pay the cost and maintain profits through cheap labour. There is also a slightly different view that the system was in fact very efficient and worked with the times, enabling overhead costs to be kept down and workers having to take the hit in terms of seasonal and trade fluctuations. Either way, the profits rolled in for those who had the capital to own the machines, raw materials, storage, and market the goods.
Consumer goods production was particularly marked by this form of organisation such as in the large furniture and instrument making trades that were also prominent in this area. Of course, tailoring was one of these. The growth of the tailoring industry between the 1850s - 1914 seems to have been the result of two key factors, growth in demand both for ready-made, bespoke and an output that is a mixture of the two, combined with technical innovation enabling faster and larger scale production. Much is made of the development of the effective sewing machine - largely by Singer - from the late 1850s onward. However, the establishment of standardised sizes, from the Napoleonic war period but particularly by some London manufacturers in the 1850s, thus enabling large scale production, also played a key role. Both these factors helped enable an expansion of readymade clothes and suits which sustained the introduction of band saw cloth cutting to standardised sizes, replacing the time honoured scissors. Overall demand was aided by a period of fairly steady price deflation from the mid-1870s to the early 1900s resulting in the consequential growth in real incomes for those who received one that was reasonably steady as well as an increase in the population. At the same time there was a structural change in demand with government contracts, particularly those for the armed forces, sustaining the readymade market together with the growth of ‘white collar’ worker - the number clerks in London and home counties was 180,000 in 1891 and this doubled to 360,00 by 1911 - and skilled workers expecting to be able to purchase their ‘Sunday best’ from the expanding drapery and new departmental stores. The demand was also boosted by over a doubling of the total export value to £8.6m of clothing and apparel between 1881 and 1914.
Through all these moves Francis and Violetta Wager were living and working right in the centre of the London tailoring and fashion industry. It seems Violetta’s influence was already being felt in possibly encouraging Francis to move from being a porter when they married to getting some training in her tailoring industry. A trouser finisher was one of the semi-skilled jobs that provided a start in the industry with some training. Two incomes, despite being modest, had enabled them to move to larger housing although still in cramped conditions. During the Edwardian period they started the move from being workers to becoming small employers. It seems Violetta would have, like her brothers and sister, been ‘fixed up’ with a tailoring machinist’s job with a modicum of training when she left school at around the age 12, in the fast expanding industry. By 1911 she and the family were back living in the same road as the Hoares’ family were living in 1891 so possibly still retaining some connections with her first employer. During the Edwardian period it seems Francis and Violetta managed to shift away from being employees and subcontracting in the readymade industry to shifting up the ‘premium’ ladder to being able to produce finished bespoke clothing with possibly adjusting and improving on ready-mades for higher payment. Self-employment was not an uncommon route out from the sweated low wages, long hours and hard work of tailoring work as an employee but did require some reputation and connections to ensure the contracts and premium hand work in a very competitive industry. Home working as a sole income provider also required some investment in machinery, perhaps not critical as it could be rented, but still required access to part of the premium bespoke market. Where were the Wager’s connections?
Enter the Hoares and the Mackie’s and the historical tension that my mother referred to.
Hoares and Eglington family
Violetta was born in July 1878 in 2 How’s Street Haggerston [25]. Her father was James Hoares, variously a boot maker, riveter and laster, basically a cobbler for workers’ boots. Her mother was Helen Eglington, and from a family with interesting connections which possibly feed into the tailoring story. There is no record of the family in the 1881 census, although in that year Violetta’s youngest brother Ernest Hoares was born and the family were living at 40, Linford Road, Walthamstow [31], a much more desirable area than How’s Street. In the 1891 census the family were back in the Haggerston area but this time to the North of the canal in 4 Brownlow Road [43] the same road that Francis and Violetta and family were living in 1911. There were four Hoares children, now all in their teens. Harry, 17, was a tin worker; Maud 15, a book folder, Violetta (Letty in the record) was 12 and her younger brother Ernest 9, were scholars. Violetta was just coming up to leaving school and clearly the children were being quickly fixed up in the semi-skilled trades that were in provision in the workshops in the area. Violetta when her turn to enter the labour market came around became a tailor’s machinist and Ernest a french polisher in one of the many piano manufacturers in the area.
A number of interesting questions are raised about the moves the family made to better placed streets just as the one about how did Violetta and Francis develop the connections to develop their tailoring business toward the premium bespoke work. Of course, a definitive answer is unlikely to ever be known, but it does seem that Helen, Violetta’s mother, had family connections that may have helped, in part explain the turkey bones in newspaper at Christmas and the tensions between the families of Violetta (Hoares / Eglington) Francis (Wager/Mackie).
Helen’s father, Henry Eglington, was born in Derbyshire and in the 1851 census was an assistant compositor living with, and most probably working for his brother William, who was a printer and stationer in Finsbury. Henry’s other brother was also living and working in the same industry. Later census shows that William’s printing company was a fair sized operation with about 15 workers. In the 1861 census and now married, Henry was still a printer and compositor. By the 1861 census the family were living at 45 Westmorland Place, Shoreditch, [16]. Helen, now known as Ellen, was 15. Her father Henry and her brothers were still workers in the print industry, possibly all working for William, their brother. Also living at the same address was James Hoares, who was aged 22 and living with his father James, a boot maker, and Elizabeth who is down as his wife. However, it has not been possible to find a record of their marriage and James senior was already married and had a wife and family in Luton, Bedfordshire, where he was from and where his son, James, was born.
Well, it seems James and Helen’s relationship developed and on 14 April 1873 with Helen now aged 17, they were married. Within two months their first child, Henry James Hoares, is born - first names taken from respective parents. The marriage certificate has them both down as being of ‘age’ which is clearly not the case and there are no family members who sign as witnesses. Given the speed of events it does appear that there was an absence of parental consent and the development of some tensions within the better off and aspiring Eglington family. At the time of their first son Henry’s birth they were living at 1 Wallbrook Street in Hoxton [19] - not far from Westmorland Place - and James is down on the certificate as a boot laster.
Helen’s family, the Eglingtons, started to develop businesses in the growing print industry largely it seems as an offshoot from Helen uncle - her father’s brother - William, who in the 1871 census was living in Kingston - upon - Thames. This census has him down as employing 21 men and 12 boys and their house is large enough for four children and five servants. They do seem to have been a close family with many working for Uncle William. He died in 1899 leaving £200,000 - possibly around £20m at today’s value. The key to his success seems to have been to develop the idea of printing advertisements and standard items in a newspaper format then distributing these around the country weekly for the local press to add their news and classified ads.
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| William (L) Eglington |
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| Charles Eglington |
Back to Violetta and Francis Wager and their developing business. It is possible that the success of the Eglington family and Helen’s uncle and brothers led to contacts both in the City and the West Theatre world which could have led into part of their tailoring business supplying the premium bespoke trade. The only direct evidence I have of this is my mother telling me that her parents made dress uniforms and other clothes for a famous Royal Flying Corps flyer. This in all possibility could have been Dudley Eglington, their nephew, son of Charles Eglington. who won the Military Cross in the RFC during the 1WW and was very much the dapper dresser. It is a reasonable explanation and possibly the closest it is possible to come to an answer, ever. Still, it is an interesting ride!
Wagers and the Mackies
The background of Francis Wager, my grandfather, judging by residence and family occupations was totally dependent on the ability to work in very specific semi-skilled fashion industry employment, there were no escape routes.
His parents Jane Mackie and William Thomas Wager were married 1 October 1867 in the parish church St Leonards, Shoreditch. He was 23 and she 19. William was down as a weaver but was a wire weaver or worker, there is no occupation stated against Jane. They are both down as living at 12 York St Hackney Road, [8]. William’s father is down as a bookbinder but was a porter in the City of London. It is not surprising that an occupation was guessed at as he had died in 1854 and his mother had subsequently remarried. Similarly, Jane’s father is down as a typefounder in the print industry, which he was, but had also died earlier in 1865. William Wager’s father was from Kings Langley in Hertfordshire possibly migrating into London around 1815 perhaps working on the building the Regents canal - and Grand Union Canal - which ran through Kings Langley from Birmingham. Jane Mackie’s family were from Edinburgh Scotland, migrating to London around 1855 where her father moved from being a blacksmith transferring part of his skill to be a typefounder in the rapidly expanding print industry.
Jane and William's first child Susan Agnes Wager was born 7 May 1870 when the family were living at 29 Cowper Street [10] Shoreditch. Shortly after in 1871 the census finds them at the same address [15] and the house was crowded. Three families were living at the address and effectively it was four, as Jane had two sisters and two brothers living or staying with them at the same time. It is not at all clear why this was as it appears Jane’s mother was still alive until 1877 and at this census time appears to be back with her family in Scotland, possibly helping to look after her father.
It is in this 1871 census record where the connections with the fashion industry with both Jane and William are clear. Jane is down as a feather worker, as is her younger sister Margaret. Francis, Jane’s younger brother is down as a truss maker. This is the first mention of Jane’s feather work which she was then associated with for the next 25 - 30 years. This area of Shoreditch was one of the main centres of the growing feather processing industry, particularly ostrich feathers. Jane in later records is described as a ‘feather curler’ which was one of the highly skilled tasks of using pliers so the feathers would continue to stand up and flare out. A high level of accuracy was required as each feather was a valuable item, as measured by weight, their value was higher per gram than diamonds. Wastage and mistakes would be very costly. It also appears to be the kind of work that could be done in a workplace or with more trusted employees, at home, enabling an income to be made whilst also looking after a family. She clearly had some sort of trusted status in the industry. Other than for a short period of moving to Newcastle - upon - Tyne she lived and worked in this City Road part of Shoreditch.
The ostrich feather industry was one of those that went from boom to bust over a period of about 45 years, from the late 1860s to 1914. There were seasonal and longer term fluctuations but this was the overall picture Not untypical of the fashion industry but a longer period than most possibly sustained by the international scope of the demand, the growth of real spending power of the bourgeoisie both grand and petty, and the growing influence of new fashion magazines, depicting both famous actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and royalty wearing ostrich feathers in hats, boas and fans. In the street, being able to literally 'flounce' around wearing these during the day would have been a real sign of rich idleness, and status: a mark of conspicuous consumption.
On the back of this international boom there were fortunes to be made once the basic feathers had been securely imported, increasingly into London. Even at this basic stage per pound the feathers were valuable. This value was only sustained by the processing of the feathers for direct sale or incorporation into other fashion products. Ostriches lived in large wild flocks in South Africa, the Sahara, and the Sahel. It was not until the 1860s that they started to be domesticated and farmed in South Africa, a source which came to dominate the trade by the late 1880s with the original trade from North Africa of hunted birds declining.
Once landed at the docks in London large scale auctions were held initially every other month rising to twice monthly as the boom unfolded. By 1893 Britain imported £475,000 worth of ostrich feathers, 98% from Cape. Largely through British domination of international trade, imperial preference and the artisan skill London came to dominate the trade. The feathers were auctioned in lots, and it took an expert eye to spot the quality underneath the feathers which were in need of a clean to remove dirt and guano. They were then warehoused in the purchased premises for processing. One estimate has suggested that at the peak of the boom 2,000 men and boys and 20,000 girls and women were working in the trade, although the 1901 census suggests around 3,500 in total.
Ostrich feather manufacture was concentrated in a one mile radius of the City of London and the East End, particularly the Barbican, Aldersgate, London Wall, Jewin, Cripplesgate, Bartholomew Close, and Fenchurch Street. Ostrich feather plumes came from auction still tied in the bundles made up in the place of origin. They were then separated and individually strung on lengths of twine largely by women and girls as unskilled work. Apprentices and unskilled workers washed the feathers in specially designed machines. They were then passed to skilled male workers who bleached and dyed the feathers manually, in boiling vats containing 30 pounds of feathers each. This could take as long as ten days. Unskilled male workers then washed the plumes by hand, then the youngest boys and girls beat the plumes to remove clusters of bleach and separate the individual barbs of each plume. The flue of each feather was thinned by semi-skilled workers using glass, or sharp implement by machine or hand. They were then strengthened by skilled wire workers and laid up by being sewed together giving the appearance of a single full feather. The final and highly skilled stage the feathers were 'curled' to keep their full shape or twisted into boas. They were finally finished with wire worked fittings if need be and packed in tissue paper for sale.
When William Wager and Jane Mackie married in 1867 it seems that they may have both worked in what was then, the very early 'take off' days of the ostrich feather industry boom. They may have even met at work. As ever this may be a story that stretches the evidence too far, but it does have some plausibility which helps to explain later family events.
William was in the 1861 census described as a wire worker and later, in other evidence, as a wire weaver. This could have meant fine wire work in the jewellery and related industries or heavy wire work in making meshes etc. It does seem that with his background this was the fine work. Although his father was a porter in the City of London, his mother Anne Shipman, came from a family of fringe and trimmings makers that had a workshop and possibly shop at 62 Grey's Inn Lane, Clerkenwell in the 1841 census. She seems to have retained the family connection as a fancy milliner and fine wire work was very much part of this and trimmings fashion business. William's father died in 1854 of cholera - caught while on militia duty in East London - so his mother Ann was a widow with then three young children under 13 and could fall back on millinery. By the 1861 census Ann had re-married an older widower, John Barlow West. They had no more children and in this census were all involved in fashion work, John Barlow West was a watch case maker, William a wire weaver, Ann his sister and his mother milliners and the eldest sister Louise a straw bonnet maker.
When William marries Jane Mackie in 1867, he is still a wire weaver, Jane has no occupation stated but in the 1871 census she is down as a feather worker, so could well have been at the time of marriage three years earlier. Another wire worker, Isaac Harbottle, is a witness and the following year in 1868 he marries William’s sister Ann who is still a fancy milliner. So close and overlapping links with feather, trimmings, millinery, and wire work of that part of the fashion industry.
Cowper St just off City Road where William and Jane Wager lived when their first daughter Susan was born in 1870 and where they still were in the 1871 census was in the centre of what was fast becoming the ostrich feather warehousing and manufacturing area. The Jewish families Salaman and Hassan were early large scale dealers and producers respectively covering the South African and North African trade. It may have been these that they worked for but it is difficult to be definite. The Hassan family also had warehouses and possibly ostrich feather producing facilities on Tyneside, and this could explain why the Wager family moved to Newcastle around 1874/5, my grandfather Francis being born there in 1875. With both William and Jane being skilled at adding the final touches to the feathers that enabled their high value to be realised it was likely that they had reasonably stable employment bringing two but low wages into the family. Accuracy was indeed needed at this stage, as any damage would have destroyed most of the value of the feathers that had been created thus far. I strongly suspect that the work would have been done on the employers’ premises as there would have been an extreme reluctance to let these valuable plumes out of their control.
William and Jane were destined to have a marriage which lasted just about 10 years, being cut short with William’s death from a ‘brain effusion’ at the age of 32 in November 1877, leaving Jane at 29 a widow with four children of seven and under. In that short time of marriage, they had moved around a lot possibly seeking higher wages and better employment. At 29 Cowper Road where they were in 1870/71 [15] five families and 21 people lived at the address and most of the housing in the road was similarly multiply occupied with people involved with hand craft and artisan trades, even working from the age of 9. In 1872 at the time of the birth of their second child William, they were living a few streets away just North of Old Street at 7 Baldwin Street [17] which was next to the ‘lunatic asylum’ and which 20 years later was described in Booth’s survey as ‘...rough, some criminals, many thieves, very badly cobbled paved. Coffee shop on the North side at the East or City Road end, used as a brothel’. By January 1875 the family had moved to Newcastle - upon - Tyne where Francis - my grandfather and William and Jane's third child - was born that month at 21 Thornborough Street Byker, then a new working class district and William is still described as a wire worker. As above, one explanation is that they were helping to start up ostrich feather production for an employer or there was a need to be closer to Scotland and Jane’s family. A year later in December 1876 they were back in the same area of London at 5 Hull’s Place [22] where their fourth and last child Annie was born in that month. Hull’s place was described 20 years later by Booth as ‘thieves' den’. By the 27th of December 1876 when Annie was baptised, they were living at 36 Moneyer Street North of City Road [82]. William was still described as a wire worker. Monyer St is described 20 years later by Booth as being a Cul-de-Sac with overcrowding, broken and patched windows, broken tarmac and ‘poor’.
Just nine months later in November 1877 William Wager died and the family were then living at 14 Vincent Chambers, Hoxton New Town [24] and interestingly Jane signed with her mark, indicating that she was unable to write. Vincent Chambers appeared to be rented tenements recently built as ‘industrial dwellings’ by a mixture of charitable and private developers. In the 1881 census Jane is living at 29 Peerless Street [37] as a widow with three children eight and under. Jane, now 33, in addition to looking after the family, is also employed in her trade as a ‘feather dresser’. Her eldest daughter Susan who is now 11 is not living with her and appears to be living at a Shaftesbury home for ‘orphans and destitute girls’ in Harrow. Clearly Susan wasn't an orphan but possibly Jane’s circumstances were so desperate that an ‘arrangement’ was made to help out. Jane had seven or eight siblings living within walking distance - it appears her mother had also died in 1877 - but they were also living close to the margin, so would not have been able to help on a regular basis.
On 14 April 1884, Jane married Francis Leslie who was 30 and five years younger. Whether there was a connection or not is not clear, but the previous year Susan, William and Francis Wager were all baptised as Anglicans, Ann, the youngest, had been shortly after being born. On the marriage certificate they are both living at 31 Princess Street, Stepney [38]. Francis Leslie is described as a ‘stick dresser’ and Jane’s occupation is not specified. Jane signs with her mark. Francis from census information was also, like Jane, born in Scotland, but has been very difficult to track down. It could be that they met via a Scottish organisation in London such as the Caledonian Society. As seems to be the pattern with two children possibly now in work - Susan who was back at home, and William - and Frank coming up to working age, Jane would have been a good ‘financial’ proposition in terms of household incomes. By the 1891 census Jane, now Leslie, and family are living back in Hoxton just South of the canal at 77 Wilmer Gardens [46] one of the poorest streets in the area as described a few years later by Booth with floors organised on the flat system, three families to a house, deteriorating with the migration of thieves and housebreakers to the area. All the family are at work. Frank, her husband is a stick and cane dresser as is her eldest son William. Jane and her youngest daughter Annie are Ostrich feather curlers, and youngest son Frank - my grandfather - is a Post Office errand boy. There is a lodger who is also a stick and cane dresser. Susan, her eldest daughter, tragically dies of smallpox in 1894, alone on the isolation ship Atlas moored in the river Thames at Dartford. On her death certificate she also is described as an Ostrich feather warehouse worker and living at 33 Allington Street Hoxton [47] Booth again describing this a poor and rough area. It is not clear if the family were also at this address.
As the stick and cane making business was very much part of the fashion industry and was now the other main source of income into what was the Wager/Leslie household it is worth linking the family into this trade. Stick, umbrella and parasol making was concentrated in a similar way to that of ostrich feather plume production with a crescent pattern around the N, NE, and E of the City of London as can be seen from the 1895 Post Office Directory. Across the whole of UK, the 1901 census indicates that around 9.500 were working in these linked trades. Possibly as many as 20% were in this part of London largely in the high premium value production. As yet there does not appear to be a reviewed history of this part of the fashion trade so much of what follows is taken from online sources. It is quite likely that Francis Leslie and his stepson William Wager who were consistently described as ‘walking stick finishers’ in census and other documents worked at one time for one of the main walking stick manufacturers Henry Howell and Co who had factories and warehouses around 180 Old Street and in 1895 employed 460 people and claimed to be the largest single manufacturers of walking sticks in the world. This address is within 10 minutes walking distance from the places the family lived. So, the term ‘stick finisher’ could refer to an occupation that involved basic wood preparation and varnishing or the more elaborate engineering and carving skills of the premium sticks. It is not possible to say quite where Francis or William fitted into this spectrum.
With all fashion items demand fluctuates according to social meaning and standing. As with the use of ostrich plumes, walking sticks and canes had a heyday during the forty years up to the first world war. Canes were for carrying whereas sticks were more robust and used for walking but also served wider social and practical purposes. Using a stick and a cane for a period conveyed a higher social standing and the etiquette at one stage became so elaborate that types of sticks were to be used only at certain times during the day, with the more ornate ones and lighter ones being for evening wear, a standing that carried over into the musicals of the 1930s or the army ‘swagger stick’ or even Charlie Chaplin and his cane who incidentally was born in this area . There were also sticks for male and female fashion use. Stick and cane production could take up to two years from the raw wood, most of the earlier stages being used in drying and maturing the wood of various values for production. During the later part of the 19C finishing the sticks became increasingly elaborate with handles and top decoration and carving becoming ornate and being used to conceal all sorts of other uses. The sword stick is of course well known, but sticks were used to contain spirits, tools, and August John the artist had one made by Henry Howell to carry drawing pencils and materials.
Except possibly for the very high value decoration of specialist orders, most sticks would have been in part ‘mass’ produced via semi-skilled work and with the market peaking around 1900 at about 1m a year, competition for employment would have kept wages down. As with many items of the fashion industry the First World War rapidly changed the idea of what was valuable as well as structures of social standing and status. Following the war the use of motor transport, the office umbrella together with bowler hat and attaché case became standard and more utilitarian and ‘business like’ wear and effectively rapidly reduced the fashion and style accessory output.
It seems clear from the records and where Jane and family were living that they needed to be close to work to survive and that involved a basic hand to mouth existence, possibly continuing to depend on the support and income of children and Jane extended family of siblings, all of whom lived within walking distance of each other as can be seen from the map. The 1901 census finds Jane living with eldest son William and his wife Emily at 6 Hague Street, Bethnal Green [52]. He is a stick varnisher and there is no occupation down for Emily or Jane, however there are people working in the feather industry in the street and neighbouring ones, so perhaps she is still working. Clearly Emily completed the census referring to Jane as ‘mother-in-law’ and she is down as Jane Leslie. Francis and Violetta also live not far away [56]. Jane’s husband Francis Leslie is not with them, and it appears he is living as a visitor and working as an umbrella stick dresser in Manchester with someone who may be a Leslie relative. It appears Francis Leslie died around August 1904 aged 50 and is buried in Chingford Cemetery Essex after dying in the local infirmary. So after 20 years of marriage Jane is again a widow. In the 1911 census Jane aged 64 is living by herself in one room at 298 Sworders Building in Nile St [84] and is an office cleaner. The 1921 Census finds her living as a boarder and an old age pensioner at 46 York Road at the back of Kings Cross station [83]. In the 1939 census Jane Wager is down correctly as Jane Leslie was living at the St Johns Road Workhouse Islington but now called an ‘Institution’ at 129 St Johns Road, Now St Johns Way. She was now 81 and as one of the many older people that live in this building on an old age pension, and she helped pay her way as she is down as an unpaid domestic. Shortly after in January 1941 Jane died in Maldon in Essex where perhaps she had been evacuated to.
So back to Navarino Road; who was it who did the sword dance that my mum remembers a ‘great aunt’ doing? Could it have been Jane herself or one of her two surviving sisters Susan or Margaret? Of course, it will be impossible to ever find out but the field has been narrowed. And the Hoares v Mackie tensions can be seen to be being played out in that almost ‘rough and respectable’ workers context. The Hoares via Violetta my grandmother coming from a widowed family who nevertheless had connections with the nouveau riche Eglingtons and lived North of the canal. Helen Hoare had married 'below' the family expectations and she feared perhaps her daughter was doing the same, marrying into the Wagers from South of the canal, with Jane Mackie, my grandfather's mother being widowed, struggling, re-marrying possibly to survive, to someone who was younger and possibly not that well paid. Having a Scottish background possibly added to the mix. So two widowed mother in law's who possibly had different expectations of their children. Clearly my grandmother Violetta took the Eglington reins and bootstraps into the Wager/Mackie domain!
Some wider historical conclusions
The lives of all in this story are totally dominated by the ability to survive by selling their labour. The context in which they did so was very much dominated by an unequal power relationship between those that offered employment and owned the means of production and the increased revenue that came from what was sold on the market. The increased value that enabled what was essential raw materials to be changed into commodities that could be sold at a profit was down to the work and labour of the people, my maternal relations, who feature in this history. The employer’s profits came from their ability to use their power - manage - to keep control of as much of the added value as possible. This meant a concern to keep wages, the wage bill, and the cost of each unit produced as low as possible so long as the final quality was still saleable. To achieve this tried to organise the workforce in such a way that they were dependable when needed and disposable when not. I have not been able to find much information about the ‘contractual’ arrangements under which my relations were employed or how they were paid, by piece or the hour. I strongly suspect it was piece rates and employment would have been on varied hours and daily terms, very similar to today's zero hour type contracts.
The main theme of this history of my relations revolves around their struggle to cope with this, quite frankly exploitative situation. There is little evidence in their records or those more widely available of successful collective trade unions or even friendly society organisation that was effective in curbing the employer’s power. They were left to find individual paths to sustain an income, control family outgoings and if possible, increase the amount coming into the household. Some steps verge on desperation.
Being mobile and migrating features as one strategy. If the employer wants people to be disposable: then let's try to move to an area where we are likely to be less disposable. All my relations migrated: the Mackies from Scotland moving from blacksmith to typefounder; the Wagers from London to Newcastle and back again why, is unclear; the earlier Wagers from Hertfordshire possibly in building the Regents Canal or walking along the towpath; the Hoares from Luton in Bedfordshire after being imprisoned to be a boot laster instead of cordwainer; Eglingtons from Ashbourne in Derbyshire again not sure why; and finally, Francis Leslie moving to Manchester and back. Then once in London it seems that although they worked and largely remained in a very tight area, they moved a great deal from abode to abode within it, possibly looking for lower rents or to escape debts to a landlord, all to reduce household outgoings. It is likely that moving was easy with total belongings able to fit on a hand cart.
What they had to sell on the labour market almost totally depended on the early skilled or largely semi-skilled work they were ‘set to’ by their parents at around the age of 10. Education, although compulsory from 1873 was not free until 1880 and it was not until 1893 that the leaving age was raised to 12. Truancy to work was widespread and many worked before and after attending school. My great grandmother Jane Mackie seems to have been unable to write her whole life. There was almost no prospect of re-training outside of the ‘trade’ so from an early age my relations as workers were committed to the confines of a certain type of work and vicissitudes of that trade and production. My maternal grandparents and my mother were tailors; my maternal great grandmother an ostrich feather curler, my other maternal great grandfather was a boot laster. It was their narrowness of their skill and their ability to sell that labour that kept them in this part of London. Rising up the skill level within that occupation was one strategy open to them to become more dependable and less disposable and possibly securing a marginally higher pay rate and sustainable income. Jane Mackie became an ostrich feather curler and her husband William Wage, was possibly a thin wire worker, both top end finishers of the plume industry. Stick finishing could be top end and almost decorative or just mass producing varnishing. My grandparents moved into bespoke tailoring and took the root into self-employment and in turn, used the labour of their children. It seems that younger relatives, born in the 1890s and 1900 were beginning to move into the new industries, typing, clerks, post office, electrical engineering, whilst their parents continued to struggle in the semi-skilled industries such as shirt and school cap making.
The key role of the family unit in survival is clear. Potentially, if the money was pooled or outgoings shared, the more incomes coming into a household gave the edge to survival enabling them to live in an area that at least offered work. My grandparents seemed to always have two incomes and similarly the Wage/Mackie household. A partner dying was a disaster and in my relatives' case it was the husband that died young, leaving young widows in their 30s, with children still not old enough to work. The Mackie household Unmarried siblings seemed to be living with the Wager/Mackie’s after their father died; Jane Wager/Mackie was left in a very difficult situation when her husband died, and it seems here eldest daughter was designated as destitute so she could be taken into a Shaftesbury home. In the case of Jane Wager/Mackie and William Wager, her husband's mother, who was also widowed young, both found other partners and remarried when the children were of an age to work. My grandparents, it seems, were helped by family connections to develop their tailoring business and in turn seem to help the family out. All my relatives had siblings and their families living within walking distance, so help was at hand in dire situations, though possibly not with money.
Well, that’s it. The history of London families surviving in the fashion industry over 150 years. A survival in a small part of London that would be unrecognisable to anyone today, living cheek by jowl with three huge gasworks, chemical, glass factories and myriads of workshops, a community of living workshops, and ever changing communities of moving migrants and moonlight flit neighbours, perhaps with a grudging respect for each other due to similar and obviously recognisable circumstances.
Some sources
Link to the map with location of households mentioned in the
text and numbered in square brackets [].
Family tree from my mother Elsie Arthur/Wager as a glossary
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BW2HM3GHeRWTKnpLs-5apFQerTBGdgkE/view?usp=sharing
Some key texts drawn upon in the production of the monograph
Background books
People information
William (Louise) Eglington - Illusionist/Spiritualist
http://ehbritten.blogspot.com/2018/04/from-field-of-holes-notes-on-william.html
Twixt Two Worlds biography - https://archive.org/details/twixttwoworldsna01farm/page/2/mode/2up?view=theater
Charles Eglington - journalist publisher
The Theatre - archive - https://archive.org/details/s4theatre19londuoft/page/102/mode/2up
Place information
https://maps.nls.uk/view/102345964 Shoreditch, Old Street, Haggerston 1880s
https://maps.nls.uk/view/101027571 Byker Newcastle-Upon-Tyne 1880s
https://booth.lse.ac.uk/ The complete Booth’s survey
https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/38279/rec/1 Post Office directories
http://www.mernick.org.uk/thhol/raglon04.html Shoreditch
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp69-76 Islington
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol10/pp23-28 Mare Street & London fields
Tailoring, feathers, and walking sticks – see also the book sources
https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/tradeboard/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/h/history-of-fashion-1840-1900/
https://yzbirds.com/workfiles/howellhist.html Walking stick manufacturer
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/reading-list-tailoring/
