William and Elizabeth Stansell

 William Stansell (also spelt Stansall or Stansull) was born in the town of Newark, Nottinghamshire in 1854, the first child of Robert, 25 and Ann, 21. He became a Tinsman or Tin Smith. 

A tinsmith, sometimes known as a tinker, tinman, or tinplate worker is a person who makes and repairs things made of tin or other light metals. Unlike blacksmiths (who work mostly with hot metals), tinsmiths do the majority of their work on cold metal. Tinsmiths fabricated items such as jugs, pots and tankards, candlesticks and cutlery. Also, needle cases (and other “tins”), stovepipes and guttering.

Elizabeth Merchant (or Marchant) was also born in 1854 in Barnsley, Yorkshire - around 90ks from Newark. Most of the information about her comes from her marriage certificate which doesn’t name her father. The only link to her birth family is that one of the marriage witnesses was called Mary Merchant. Other information on the certificate is that they were married in Yorkshire on August 19, 1877, they were both 23 and signed their own names.  William’s occupation was listed at that time as Brazier (a worker in brass). Afterwards, they moved back to Nottinghamshire.

 

William and Elizabeth, unusually, appear in almost all of the censuses they lived in. William continued to be a self-employed Tinsmith his whole life. Also unusual is that Elizabeth has a listed occupation as a Tailoress in 1881 and 1891 despite having their four children in those years.

Tailoring – the making and repairing of men’s clothes - was a poorly paid profession and the conditions in which the women worked and the wages paid to them were an example of ‘sweating’ which was common in all major towns in cities. The development of sewing machines in 1850 changed the manner of the work and the speed with which garments could be made, turning the acquisition of ready-made clothes into a reality for a large proportion of the population. What didn’t change, in any real sense, were the wages paid out to the tailoresses themselves. There was also no change in the sexual division of labour within the industry. ‘Women were concentrated in the low paid work processes, mainly machining. Wages paid to the seamstresses were abominable and the way in which they were obliged to live was fearful… They had to finish off a pair of men’s trousers for 1¾d and they had not only to fetch the work from the factory… but sometimes had it returned for being badly done. They were able to turn out about 12 pairs a day but had to find their own thread… they earned about 1/-2d a day or 5s a week assuming they worked an 8 hour day and 5 day week’. http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/t/the-tailoresses-of-rowhedge/

In the 1891 census, their youngest child was one month old. Others in the household include a 16 year-old apprentice and 73 year old cousin - Mary - who was “deaf and dumb”. Elizabeth would’ve had her hands full. Her only daughter, Laura, followed her into the trade becoming a dressmaker. In 1901, William’s widowed father Robert, a bricklayer, was living with them.  Elizabeth died in September 1916 at the age of 62. William died three years later in December 1919 at the age of 65.