New Occupation

[Rusty]

Well new for me anyway, I've just come across two 'Teazle Men' in my husbands tree. They are father and son and I found them in the 1851 Census, it must have been a fairly lucrative occupation as in the 1861 census the son is a farmer of 45 acres employing 2 labourers.

Perhaps he grew his own teazles and when the market folded he turned his land over to agriculture.

Made a nice change from all the miners, shoe makers and ag. labs. that our trees are littered with.

Margaret

[Merry]

I definitely don't have any teazle men on my tree! *sulks*

I enjoyed discovering my 4xg-grandparents were mantua makers in the mid 18thC. can't remember any other interesting ones at the moment.

[Shona]

Were they in a wool-producing area, Margaret? The following explains how teasels were used to 'tease' wool fibres to create a smooth nap.

http://themeaningsofthings.org/wordpress/?p=125

[Rusty]

Ooh, Merry, Mantua makers sound interesting, my husband has lace makers and a couple of hair dressers way back in the East End, but the lace makers all seemed to end up being box makers, didn't sound half as exciting.

Shona, this is Somerton in Somerset, I don't think that it was a big wool area though there was a collar factory in Somerton and sail making in Crewkerne and Chard, I don't know if they would use teazles for that, maybe they had to get them all up to Yorkshire or somewhere, looking at that clip they must have needed ever such a lot. There are/were quite a lot of teazles still growing down on The Levels, I imagine that picking them today would be frowned on though from memory they were wild and not on private land.

Margaret

[Rusty]

I've just Googled for Teazle growing in Somerset and found a site for Keinton Mandeville and apparently Teazles were grown commercially for the cloth trade in Shepton Mallet, I knew that they made Babycham and shoes in Shepton but not cloth.

[Olde Crone]

Mantua making is something which has always fascinated me. The idea of making a life time garment from one piece of cloth, no cutting, all shaping done by sewing, appeals to my mean nature! Of course, it developed from that idea and Victorian mantua makers would have cut away excess cloth to get the shape but they still would have needed extreme skill to shape a garment.

I have a reed maker in my tree and for ages I fondly imagined he made reeds for clarinets asnd oboes, lol. The truth was more mundane - reeds are part of weaving looms. Stood him in good stead though, as he went from seemingly humble origins to lavish wealth in the 1800s.

OC

[Kit]

Probably not interesting for the person involved but I like the sound of the bell polisher on the royal ship (I have Britannia in my head but I don't know if there was one back then or if I mentally substituted the name)

Teazle sounded very mysterious though, well until I read Shona's post.

[Phoenix]

I found a "hair dresser and bird stuffer" recently.

[Shona]

The most exciting I came across was a whorehouse man. Turned out to be an Ancestry glitch - he was actually a warehouse man. Boo!

[Olde Crone]

Oh, Shona's post has reminded me of one which made my eyebrows rise a bit:

A 13 year old MASSAGE boy. He turned out to be a message boy.

OC