Way a lovely sleep in we had today. Very nice thank you. When we finally did get up around ten. The Man made a yummy bacon and egg brekky. He is such a great breakfast cook. As predicted the weather was quite grotty. Cool, windy and a bit wet. The weather man is pretty much spot on. I had thought we might go to a nearby museum this afternoon, but in the end we decided to stay in. Nice actually as we don’t do it very often.
The lowest floor of our building is actually two floors below street level. It looks out over the back lawn so that should give you an idea of how sloping the property is. On the lowest floor is a large resident’s lounge. Since we discovered the lounge about eight months ago The Man has been gradually working away at a jigsaw puzzle that is on the table down there. It is a garden scene all greens and yellows. Not an easy one but he is making slow headway. Today he spent another couple of hours there very patiently adding more pieces to the puzzle. I’ve bought quite a lot of genealogy magazines, and each of those has a free CD with it. So while The Man was puzzling away I got work sorting through the disks. One of them has an interesting article about the 1889 dock strike.
My family story coninues here...
There is a very good chance that my great grandfather and his family were affected. He appears on the 1881, aged 19, living at home with his widowed mother. His occupation listed as general labourer census in an area very near the docks. He is at the same address on the next census (1891) and again his occupation is general labourer.
The strike, even though the cause was just, it would have meant an even harder time for the men and their families. With even their meagre income no longer coming in it must have been incredibly hard to feed the families. Everything that could be pawned would be, from clothing to bedding. And no income also meant that the rent man couldn’t be paid.
More that £11,000 was raised through a collection and by mail helped to feed them for a short time. Just as things were becoming very grim they were saved by the arrival of a huge donation from Australia of more that £30,000.
The short version is that the dockers won and got their rate increased to six pence an hour. Known as the ‘Dockers Tanner’
http://www.unionhistory.info/timeline/1880_1914.php
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