I wrote "Some Findings of Britain's Black Working Class, 1900-1914" published in Immigrants and Minorities Vol 9 No 2 (July 1990) pp 168-177 and I mention the death of Six-Fingered jack aged 79 in the workhouse in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, reported in 1902. He had been a navvy. My source was Dick Sullivan, Navvyman (London, 1983) p 48 which also mentions two other black navvies. Sullivan used the quarterly publications of a Christian mission to navvies.

Jeff Green


========================================
Message Received: Sep 30 2015, 02:46 PM
From: "msherwood"
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: FW: canals

Thought you might find this interesting. My email to her is at the end.



From: Liz Mcivor [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 30 September 2015 09:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: canals



Dear Marika,



In terms of funding, when it came down to major shareholders there were
certainly some individuals who had previously invested money in slave
economies. The share books for various canals companies don't mention this,
but some of the same names can be found where large amounts are involved,
and there was a certain amount of 're-investment' amongst smaller
shareholders (widows ect) where a more steady income stream was being looked
for in the years prior to abolition in England.

It would take a fairly large chunk of research time to link shares up, but
the first port of call would be to compare the finances of major landowners
and businessmen.



Re navvies, again, a complex picture as the personal lives of workers are
not well documented until the later period, when navvies were more commonly
seen and photographed on railways and roads. Apart from references to them
under gangs in company books, the evidence remains in contemporary
descriptions, letters and press reports along with popular songs and
broadsheets like 'Paddy upon the canal' about an Irishman arriving in
Gateshead. Irish made up a large portion in the Victorian period, but were
also represented earlier along with Welsh Cornish and Scots in canal
building because even prior to famine, there had been earlier crop failures
and a population explosion pushing landless labourers elsewhere to look for
work. For the most part, landless English agricultural workers made up the
majority of the early navvies, although not those from areas where building
took place, because small rural communities not only could not provide
enough men, but were unable to commit to work across agricultural pressure
points.

So whatever their origin, all navvies were 'outsiders'.



As for black workers, as usual, they are 'invisible' unless they happen to
appear in a photograph, and then it leaves you with later projects.
Occasionally a person in a picture appears to have a darker skin colour than
his workmates (looking at Ship canal and reservoir pictures from the 1890's)
but it is difficult to tell because of distance and focusing.

I have recently spotted a few people of non-white racial identity in recent
acquisitions to our photographic archive, but there is no context or
reference to the subjects..they usually appear as an 'accident' in shot..not
the subject. I feel that is telling in itself, that the photographer was
familiar enough in an industrial city not to concentrate on that aspect.

There are relatively few images of early navvies anyway, and these are
watercolour or engraving such as the Walker series (Leeds Uni Library).

It wouldn't be surprising if there were a few Black navvies, bearing in mind
the itinerant nature of work in Victorian England. In Bradford, a series of
watercolours of 'Street' people in 1900 (meaning hawkers and vendors in the
market as well as people begging for a living) include amongst around 35
white people, three Black men, aged 16 , 40 and 70. If that is just a sample
of basically homeless itinerants in one town centre, it indicates that there
had to have been a bigger community. One of these itinerants (the middle
aged one), was recorded as originally a Slave, from Zanzibar, who had
escaped on a passage to a plantation in India, and worked passage to
England, to work in a Mill in Leeds, presumably (although not stated),
having also worked passage from Liverpool via the canal, as was very common.
He became disabled in the mill and that was how he ended up selling
pamphlets in Bradford, with a wife and child.

To be honest, the black navvy is something I haven't explored greatly, but
would like to at some point.



I am very interested in the 'disappeared' characters of history and where I
can, try to highlight them. One restored negative from around 1905 shows a
boy who appears to be of Chinese or mixed race ethnicity, posing outside a
pub called the 'Black Boy' (named after a slave)) on a beer barrel. The
photo was taken by the son of a strict Methodist as an anti-drink message,
and again, race is not the subject, but is evidence of a much more
multicultural presentation of the city than the one given in official
documentation and art.



I hope this is of use for now.





I have tried to send you a picture of the above gentleman, but it is proving
difficult as large file. If I get the inbox cleared I may be able to send
later.





Thanks



Liz



Liz McIvor

Curator (Social History and Technology)

Bradford Museums & Galleries



Tel 01274431826/5900 ● www.bradford.gov.uk

follow us on Facebook and Twitter
www.bradfordmuseums.org



Bolling Hall Museum, Brompton Avenue, East Bowling, Bradford, BD4 7LP.

Bradford Industrial Museum, Moorside Mills, Moorside Road, Eccleshill,
Bradford, BD2 3HP.



Department of Regeneration and Culture

Bradford is the world’s first UNESCO City of Film







_____

From: msherwood [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 30 September 2015 08:12
To: Liz Mcivor
Subject: canals

Good morning, Ms McIvor!



I have watched most of your programs on canals. May I ask a couple of
questions?



1) Any idea how much of the funding came from people who had made their
fortuens from either the trade in enslaved Africans (which continued after
1807 - please see my After Abolition, IB Tauris, 2007), or from plantation
owners?

2) I believe most of the men who built the railways were Irish - not
the canal builders?

3) Were there any Black men/families among the workers?

I was very glad that you noted that though the Act to stop children working
on the canals was passed (dornt recall the date) it was not
implemented/monitored until the 1870s. It was the same for those working in
the mines, no?



Sorry to trouble you!





Marika Sherwood

Hon. Sr. Research Fellow,

Institute of Commonwealth Studies

University of London