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SUMMARY:Labouring in early modern London - Dr Judy Stephenson\, University
  of Oxford
DTSTART:20161027T160000Z
DTEND:20161027T173000Z
UID:TALK67254@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Duncan Needham
DESCRIPTION:Although they are often referred to\, labourers in early moder
 n London are an ill defined and little studied group. They are usually tak
 en to be the ‘unskilled’. This paper draws on business and institution
 al records to give long needed detail on labourers employment in London fr
 om the early seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. Using case studie
 s from various sites around London it examines what sorts of work labourer
 s did\, in construction and elsewhere\, how they were hired and deployed f
 or it\, how they were paid\, and what their relationship to others working
  around them were. \n\nThe labourers that existing literature has referred
  to were semi-skilled assistants to craftsmen in the construction industry
 \, such as masons\, bricklayers and carpenters\, and they worked in mixed 
 teams in large firms. Many of them worked for the same firm or contractor 
 for many years. This was not the only group\, however. Large contracting f
 irms of labourers deployed general or common labourers\, who carried out d
 igging and hauling work\, across numerous sites for the Crown and City. Ot
 her unskilled men in brewing\, maintenance\, on the river\, at docks\, and
  in other trades were called ‘labourers’\, and provided varying levels
  of strength and biological capital for varied levels of pay.\n\nLabouring
  men were paid by the contracting firms who placed them\, not by the insti
 tutions where they worked. Only a small elite of foremen earned the day wa
 ges of the traditional literature. The vast majority of London labourers e
 arned substantially less\, over unpredictable hours\, lived without securi
 ty of employment\, and by the end of the eighteenth century were no better
  off than their predecessors a century and a half before. 
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre\, Trinity Hall
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