The working week

Belly builders, fellmongers and troners - what did yours do for a living?

Researching an ancestor's occupational records can provide useful facts such as age, birthplace or next of kin. It can also give you an insight into how they spent their waking hours.

The first thing you need to do, says Maggie Loughran from the Federation of Family History Societies, is clarify what it is your ancestor actually did, using independent sources such as birth, marriage and death certificates, parish registers and the census. "The way we describe occupations is often verbal and open to different interpretations," says Loughran. "For example, I've got one guy, a chimney sweep just outside Preston in the late 1880s, who is variously described as a labourer, an artisan and a chimney sweep."

Sometimes establishing their job title is not as revealing as you would hope. Do you know, for example, what belly builders, fellmongers or troners did for a living? "Even now," says Loughran, "our job titles often don't describe what it is we really do. In 100 years people will probably be equally mystified by the term business consultant or IT manager." You can find the answers at one of the online indexes to old occupations, such as

Almost everyone will have at least one ancestor who spent time in service, either as domestic help or, in rural communities, as agricultural labourers. "When you're thinking about occupations, you have to think regionally," says Loughran. Whole communities were often employed in the same trade. In the west Midlands, for example, generations earned their crust as nail makers. Local museums can be useful for finding out more.

Next check if there is a specialist index for your ancestor's occupation, using Jeremy Gibson and Elizabeth Hampson's Specialist Indexes for Family Historians. You can also look in contemporary trade directories ( and newspapers, where they may have advertised their trade.

If your forebear's trade was skilled, you could see if they had an apprenticeship or were registered with a guild or livery company. Others, such as pawnbrokers, gamekeepers or publicans, would have needed a licence to practise their trade. Those that survive are most likely to be found at the National Archives or in the quarter sessions held at county record offices.

You are far more likely to find a record of your ancestor if their profession was regulated by an officiating body. "Quite often the professional trades published yearbooks giving the names and qualifications of their members, plus the address at which they practised," says Loughran. The Law List was published from 1780, the Clergy List (now Crockford's Clerical Directory) from 1858, and the British Medical Directory from 1845. Also useful are university records and trade magazines.

Public servants, such as police, firefighters and merchant seaman, were generally well recorded but the level of detail varies. Sometimes all you'll get is confirmation that they worked there; other times more personal details are revealed. The records for Hampshire constabulary, for example, refer to an 18-year-old PC called Archie Bacon. In 1872, he lasted less than five months in the force before getting the sack for being "drunk on duty at Alton and publicly disgracing himself by attempting to arrest a sober man on a charge of drunkenness".

Reading up on their working week puts flesh on the bones of your ancestors, says Loughran. "My Irish grandfather was a dock labourer. From research I know that the gang leaders were more often than not publicans. So, these men would spend hours sitting in pubs waiting for the boat to come in and, when it did, they'd be paid in beer."

Women also worked. Professor Pat Hudson suggests that "around 30-40% of women from working-class families contributed significantly to household incomes in the mid-Victorian era," with most working in domestic service or in the textile or clothing industries.

Neither were children exempt. Seven-year-old John Saville, a collier's boy from Sheffield, gave this evidence to the Royal Commission on Child Labour in 1841: "I stop 12 hours in the pit. I never see daylight now except on Sundays."

Rat catching
David Cufley

Three of my ancestors, John, John and James Cufley - two brothers and a son - ran a rat-catching business in Enfield during Victorian times. You can find them listed in directories from the time.

They didn't kill the rats; they used different methods: sometimes weasels but mainly nets. Some of their techniques were probably family secrets.

They had to catch the rats alive and they had to be uninjured because they sold them on to gambling dens. They would get paid by the farmer for clearing them out, and then they would take them down to London - walking or taking a cart down the Great Cambridge Road - and get another tuppence a rat.

Men used to gamble on the speed with which a terrier could dispatch a bunch of rats. In Bernard Cornwell's book, Sharpe's Prey, there's a brilliant description of a gambling den in the East End where they are running a rat match. It describes the smell, the sawdust on the floor, the sounds, the people involved - a real insight into my ancestors' lives.

There were two centres for rat catchers - one was at Enfield in Middlesex and the other at Clavering in Essex. There were four rat catchers in Enfield: the Cufleys and a man called William Collins. They all lived in the same area and James Cufley married Collins' daughter Emily, so the two families were related.

In London Labour and the London Poor, Henry Mayhew wrote about Jimmy Shaw, a publican and ex-prize fighter who ran rat matches at his pub. He told Mayhew: "The poor people who supply the rats are the most ignorant people I ever come near. Really you would not believe people could live in such ignorance." He also talks about one of the rat catchers from Essex bringing him basketfuls of rats, 35 dozen in all, and getting paid five guineas - which was big money.

My lot paid a high price, though. From the symptoms listed on John Cufley's death certificate it appears he died of Weil's disease, which you get from rat bites.


· Find lots of avenues for occupational research at

· If your ancestor worked for the government, any records are likely to be at the National Archives. Consult their research guides at

· The Society of Genealogists publishes an excellent My Ancestor Was A ... series that will help you find out more. See what's on offer at

· The Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations by Colin Waters (Second Edition, 2002, Countryside Books) explains over 4,000 old trades, titles and occupations.

· The booklet, An Introduction to Occupations: A Preliminary List, by Joyce Culling (2nd edition, FFHS, 1999) outlines various sources that can be used to discover evidence of occupation. This is available through It is also worth using the search engine to find booklets offering more detailed information on specific occupations (lawyers, policeman, and coal miners, for example).