The 1921 census will be the last census publication for some years to come – the 1931 Census of England and Wales was destroyed in a fire at the Office of Works in 1942, the 1941 Census was never taken due to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the 1951 Census is not due to be released until 2052.
It had been planned to conduct the census on 24th April 1921, but it was postponed to 19th June because of industrial unrest.
Both the railways and the coal industry had been controlled by the state during the war and whilst under government control, wages, hours and safety had improved. With the onset of economic depression caused by the war and under pressure from foreign competition and in 1920 the mine owners pressed for wage cuts and an extended working day. The Coalition Government of David Lloyd George however was unwilling to impose wage reductions. The government did agree though to return the mining industry to the mine owners on 31st March 1921. The owners immediately told the miners that they would have to accept reduced wages and extended hours or lose their jobs.
The National Transport Workers Federation, representing dockers, seamen, tramway men and others, together with the National Union of Railwaymen and the Miners Federation of Great Britain had formed the Triple Alliance in 1914. There was no binding agreement between them but an acceptance that the alliance would be a force for united action. The miners went on strike when the owners imposed their new conditions of work but, on Friday 15th April 1921, the leaders of the transport and rail unions announced a decision not to call for strike action. Decades before the totally different American commercial day, that day became known as Black Friday, from a widespread belief that the decision amounted to a breach of solidarity and a betrayal of the miners.
The miners however continued with what became a bitter strike. Right from the start it was clear that there was going to be great hardship. The committee of Armitage Club and Institute inaugurated a scheme for providing free meals to the children of the parish whose parents were unemployed. Local collieries employed 185 men, (out of a total parish workforce of 585), and both the pottery and the brickworks had to lay off workers because of a lack of coal for the kilns affecting a further 150 men.
The free meal scheme was made possible by liberal subscriptions from people in the parish, from gifts of food, and of course from volunteers who ran the scheme. Over the two and a half months of the strike, 11,650 free meals were provided to needy children of the parish. Eventually the miners were forced back to work after accepting a pay cut.
The strike finished just before the day the census was taken but you can still see the effects in the information provided by the households. In fact, one of the miners, Sam Topliss from Mavesyn Ridware who now lived in Rectory Lane gave his occupation as ‘miner on strike’. A couple of others, John Dent and Percy Blood, both living in Tuppenhurst Lane had given their occupations and ‘on strike’ but the ‘on strike’ had been crossed out. In addition to this sixteen of the people who gave the collieries as their employer added ‘out of work’ to their occupation.
Compared with previous censuses, the questions about employment in the 1921 Census were more detailed. People were asked to state their ‘Profession, Trade, or Service’ (the equivalent of their modern day ’job title’ as before), but also to give the name of their employer and details of their place of work. The 1911 question about the number of children, alive or dead, that married couples have had was not on the survey – apparently the results from the 1911 census had still not been tabulated.
In some parts of the country the delayed census had another effect – more people were away on holiday when compared with earlier census returns. Blackpool for instance reported a 62% population increase compared with 1911 and most of the increase was down to holiday makers. This does not seem to be the case in our parish though, probably because the holiday week was later in the year. There are some shown as visitors and four households were away from home on census night, but the cover sheet gives the name of the head of the household. They are
- Miss Bailey of Armitage
- Mr W Evans of Armitage
- Mr H Tregay of Boathouse Lane
- Mr George Warrilow of 9 Ricardia Terrace
Given the recent war it would not have been surprising to see an imbalance in the male/female ratio, but any effect is swamped by the number of male residents at Hawkesyard Priory and Hawkesyard College. At the College there were 30 boys aged 11 to 16 whilst at the Priory there were 36 single men shown as ‘Member of Religious Community’. Included in that Community were five Professors teaching Theology, Scripture, Classics, History and Mathematics.
The number of children at different ages did show an effect though – there were 25% fewer children aged between 2 and 6 years old compared with younger or older children.
There were plenty of coal miners and their occupations may be shown as simply miner, or coal hewer or coal miner (hewer). Quite a few are shown as datallers or similar like datlers and these were the miners who were paid on a daily basis for work done as required. Datallers’ work included building and repairing roadways.
One of the jobs that caught my eye, probably because my great grandfather, John Grimley living in New Road with his wife Hannah (nee Sutton), was one and that was a ‘stallman’. The simple definition of this is ‘a miner who works at the face of a narrow stall or a longwall stall’ but Ken Edwards in his excellent book ‘The Brereton Collieries 1791-1960’ gives much more information. He states that the Brereton Collieries used the Longwall Stall system until the advent of machine mining in the 1930s and then includes the following description given to him by an old Brereton miner.
A ”stall” was a section of the face of coal that was to be worked usually about 60 yards long; each stall had a number.
The man in charge of the stall was called the “stallman”, he was paid for the coal sent out from his stall. He employed his “holers” to cut out the bottom of the seam, a section about 6 inches wide and 2 feet in depth then a wedge of coal was removed so that the holer could get his shoulder under the coal to complete the undercut to a final depth of 5 to 6 feet. The face was supported during this operation by inserting props or wedges in the cut.
This undercutting took up to a week to complete a stall, a week in which no coal was produced; so no income for the stallman. The stallman would go to the Colliery Manager and “sub” money to pay himself and his (probably two) holers. Once this had been completed the stallman would then ask for 2 or 3 loaders. They would all go to the coal face and the sprags would be withdrawn, starting gradually from each end until only one sprag or wedge remained in the middle of the stall. This one wedge now supported the whole face of coal; a pit prop was thrown at the wedge to knock it out and the whole face of the coal would fall. Sometimes holes would need to be bored and shots fired to blast the coal into pieces small enough to load out onto tubs. It would take a week to load out the fallen coal.
At the end of the coal clearing the stallman would get paid for each ton of coal less his subs and he would pay the holers and the loaders.
There are a number of people shown as stallman or loaders but only one man, Harry Richards, of Brereton Hill, is shown as a coal holer so most holers must have given their occupation as something else e.g. coal miner or hewer. One coal miner hewer, Ernie Smith of Tuppenhurst is shown as ‘Coal miner hewer – on the box’ showing that he was off sick – ‘the box’ was where Friendly Societies had kept the money to pay workers who were off sick.
Most people in the parish had been born in Staffordshire but there were a sprinkling of people from more exotic places. Ruth Edna Scroging, a visitor with the Holdcroft family in New Road had been born in Canada whilst the Hinton family visiting the Johnsons at Fog Cottages had a daughter who had been born in Japan. Thomas Mitchell of Talbot Terrace at Brereton meanwhile put under his birthplace as ‘Born at sea’.
Altogether there were 1619 individuals shown on the census comprising 364 households. The transcription can be seen here under the Records section and, as usual, you can simply scroll through the table or put a name in the Search box.