Hatting as an Industry Over the Years

[Tigress]

Hi all, this is my first post here. I have been a long time lurker of the FL, and this bit of info just made me want to share it. The following is from the archives of The Museum of Hatting Stockport Hatworks. It is a good read.

What about the Workers? Wages, prices and standards of living​

1830s to 1850s
The Stockport Hatting Industry expanded in the 1830s. But in the 1840s and 1850s an economic depression and a fall in demand for felt hats created a slump in hatting. A strike in 1841 made matters worse. Wages fell by 35%, unemployment rose and many families had to leave the area for work.

Many workers started their work day at five in the morning and would not return home until seven in the evening. During this time they were allowed two half-hour breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and one hour break for dinner. This adds up to at least a seventy hour week.

1870 to 1914
In 1874 laws were passed which limited an adult’s work to nine hours a day, for a total of 56 hours a week. Acts of Parliament like this one improved the workers’ living standards.

During this time, a Hatter’s wages rose from 10 shillings (50p) to £1 14s (£1.75) for a 56 hour week. Average wages in 19th-century Manchester at this time were well below subsistence level. 61% had a weekly income of less than 4 shillings (20p). So perhaps the skilled hatters fared better than other local workers.

From 1870 wages rose steadily until 1900, and the prices of goods fell steadily until 1895. Thus, ‚Äòreal wages‚Äô rose until about 1900. For example, in 1870 a loaf cost 8d (3p) but between 1887 and 1914 it was 6d (2¬?p). A worker could then afford to eat more bread!

Wages between 1900 and 1914 failed to keep pace with prices that had begun to rise. A rapid improvement in working class conditions had slowed down. One sign that wage-earners were not so satisfied with conditions came in a long series of strikes by great numbers of workers.

1930s
A Hatter earned £4 10s (£4.50) for a 46 hour week , and a week’s rent was 10 shillings (50p). A loaf of bread cost 10d (4p). Even though workers earned more, bread was expensive, and they were hungry.

‘Where the depression was blackest men were out of work for long years, families were living permanently on relief, shops were boarded up, houses were tumbling down. Towns almost seemed to be rotting away while their people grew weary and bitter because they had no work, nor hope of work….’
1940S
In the 1940s the basic wage for a Hatter was £6 8s 6d (£6.42) for a 46 hour week. This was roughly in line with the average wage for an industrial worker of £7. The weekly household expenses of a working class family of five was estimated to be £3. So a Hatters’ wages were usually enough to live on.

The introduction of a free health service in 1948 improved workers’ living conditions.

But there were vast regional variations in the quality of working class life. In the South the newer industries like car manufacture did well while the old industries like textiles declined dramatically.

1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s when Hatting was still a thriving industry, a Hatter was on a weekly wage of £10 for a 40 hour week. But it was a time of high inflation in which prices were rising fast. The £10 wage could not buy as much as time went on.

From 1945 to 1971 the number of cars on the roads rose from a million and a half to 12 million indicating that people were better off.

There were corners of poverty, notably in the central areas of big cities, comparable in severity with anything in the depression years of the 1930s…..

TO SUM UP
From 1770 to 1970 the lives of working people got better but there were times when things got worse. There was hardship for the workers during the mass unemployment of the 1930s, periods of inflation like 1900 to 1914 and the 1970s, and slumps like in the 1840s when wages actually fell.

There were big differentials in wages. The Hatters did quite well being skilled but unskilled labourers were very poor with wages below subsistence level.

Wages and prices are only part of a complicated picture. Many workers’ lives were made miserable by poor housing and degraded environmental conditions.


SOURCES

Teacher’s Resource Pack, Hatworks Museum

Information sheet ‘Balancing the Books’, Stockport Air-raid Shelters Museum

Records of the Amalgamated Society of Journeymen Felt Hatters, Hatworks Museum

British Economic and Social History 1700-1975 C.P. Hill (Edward Arnold)

Conditions of the Working Classes and Child Labor Felix H. Silverio

Victorian Manchester - Life in the 19th Century - www.manchester2002-uk.com/history/victorian/Victorian.html

Tameside’s ‘Millennium Yearbook’ on tameside.gov.uk

 

[Rick Blaine]

hi Tigress...

... great post, thanks for passing that along.
Facts such as these make me glad I am a Union man...

Regards,

Rick

 

[GentlemanFarmer]

Thanks

Thanks for the information. This kind of stuff just elevates the interest each time it's found and shared.

 

[Tigress]

I also got some other info from the museum but its not very relevant to post, just some basic hat care instructions.
Tigress