Joseph Fewster

The Keelmen of Tyneside (eBook, PDF)

Labour Organisation and Conflict in the North-East Coal Industry, 1600-1830

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

A comprehensive account of the everyday lives of the keelmen of Tyneside, and their struggles and industrial disputes.

For hundreds of years the keelmen, the "keel lads o' coaly Tyne" celebrated in the north-east folk song "The Keel Row", ferried coal down-river to the estuary and cast it aboard ships bound for London or overseas. They were "the very sinews of the coal trade" on which the prosperity of the region depended.
This book charts the history of the keelmen from the early seventeenth century to the point where technological advances made them redundant in thecourse of the nineteenth century. It describes how the importance of their work placed them in a strong position in industrial disputes, especially since they could shut off the coal supply to London. It examines their numerous turbulent battles with rapacious employers and unsympathetic magistrates (often themselves involved in the coal trade), their struggles against poverty and eventually against redundancy, and their attempts to gain redress in Parliament and in the law courts. The book also describes the squalid conditions in Sandgate where, as recounted in the folk song, many keelmen and their families lived with a reputation for independence and savage roughness but exhibited impressive solidarity both as an early industrial labour organisation and as a tightly-knit, mutually supportive, and highly self-reliant community.
The book will be of interest to social and economic historians, labour historians, maritime historians and all interested in the history of the North East.

JOSEPH M. FEWSTER was, until his retirement in 1997, Senior Assistant Keeper in Durham University Library.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. Juni 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781846159503
• Artikelnr.: 56163684

Autorenporträt

Joseph M. Fewster

Inhaltsangabe

THE DOCUMENTS Introduction Editorial method Early years Documents
concerning the Keelmen's Strike of June-July 1710 Daniel Defoe and the
Keelmen Correspondence and documents concerning the Magistrates' Bill to
control the Keelmen's Charity The strike of the Keelmen of Newcastle in
conjunction with those at Sunderland, 1719 Another attempt to revive the
Charity Objections to a proposal by the shipmasters to delay the start of
the coal trade The Keelmen's Strike, May 1738 The Riot of 1740 in Newcastle
The Keelmen's part in the riot Census of Keelmen after the riot of 1740 The
Keelmen's Strike of 1744 The Keelmen's Strike of 1750 The Keelmen's Strike
of 1768 and attempts by Thomas Harvey, an attorney, to obtain an Act of
Parliament to establish their Society and Charity and limit the keel-load
The Keelmen join in general industrial unrest over the high price of corn
but continue their strike on account of a threat to their employment, 1771
Unemployment caused by actions of the shipowners, 1787 A new attempt to
establish a Charity for the Keelmen, 1786-8 Adjustment of the Keelmen's
wages, 1791-2 Riots by Keelmen at Sunderland Dispute over the loading of
ships by spouts, 1794 The Keelmen strike for higher pay, and the
authorities attempt to suppress them, 1809 Documents concerning the
impressment of Keelmen, 1803-11 The Keelmen's Strike of 1819, the great
Radical Reform meeting that coincided with it, and the alarm of the
authorities The 'Long Stop', 1 October - 6 December 1822 The decay of the
Keelmen's Hospital Bibliography