Genealogy Forum UK

Does anybody know any sites where it describes working condition for various occupations?

I'm compiling a list of occupations from my family tree, and even though I know what a certain occupation is like now, I was wondering what the working conditions would have been like back in the day!

Thanks

Hi snoops - try this one : http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/index.html

Maggie

That's really good for the more obscure occupations, but I'm after something that tells me a bit more - especially with the occupations that still exist and how different they were years ago.

For example I have two music proffessors on my tree, both in their early 20's - I'd like to know what qualifications and what responsibilities they may have had. There are others too, that I'm pretty sure aren't the equivalent to their modern day namesakes.

Music professors in the 19th/20th century would have been much the same as today; educated to MA level, teaching at a college or privately where they would have covered theory, history, composition and performance. They would probably specialise in a particular instrument and/or period. Nowadays not much has changed except that business in music is more covered, as is music technology and music theory is much wider. They may well also be composers subsidising their meagre compositional income with teaching.

SRD wrote:Music professors in the 19th/20th century would have been much the same as today; educated to MA level, teaching at a college or privately where they would have covered theory, history, composition and performance. They would probably specialise in a particular instrument and/or period. Nowadays not much has changed except that business in music is more covered, as is music technology and music theory is much wider. They may well also be composers subsidising their meagre compositional income with teaching.

I'm still not convinced that a couple of 20 year olds coming from two seperate very ordinary backgrounds would have been to university - even though the one did become the equivalent of a millionair years later.

Of course it was unusual for 'an ordinary 20 year old' to have a university education at all, it would have been unusual for them to continue on at school into their teens let alone on to university, that was more the privilege of the upper and upper-middle classes. There would have been wealthy people prepared to pay for a clever, poorer, lads education (and it would have been almost exclusively a male benefit), and there were scholarships and bursaries, but the job itself, once they had got that far, was much the same.

I've got a feeling that people who taught music would have titled themselves music professors too.
There was a thread on another site http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... 30497.html
If there were about 3500 professors of music in the 1881 census then I doubt if they all had education to MA level.

gardener wrote:I've got a feeling that people who taught music would have titled themselves music professors too.
There was a thread on another site http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... 30497.html
If there were about 3500 professors of music in the 1881 census then I doubt if they all had education to MA level.

That sounds more likely to me!

I'm not so sure, at a time when many many people's only form of entertainment was to play a musical instrument there would have been a great call for music teachers of all sorts. It would have been a good career for even a moderately talented musician. And there's no reason why there shouldn't be 3,500 in any one year; if you consider a 40 year working life that's less than 100 MA's (in music) qualifying each year. With many of the purely music colleges opening in the 18th century as well as those traditional universities that had strong musical traditions, and such a demand for their services that doesn't seem too large a figure to me. And the 19th century was so very important in the explosion of 'Classical' music, googling 19th century composers brings up over 200 on wiki alone and those don't include those who were born, and wrote, in the 19th century that are considered 20th century composers, people like Elgar, Ethel Smyth, Delius, German, Vaughan Williams and countless foreign composers. I would think that a masters in music would have been as relatively commonplace as a masters in media studies is nowadays.

I havent watched this video but have just seen it on Ancestry.
http://www.ancestry.co.uk/occupations#e ... ideo=intro

May help?
Jo

grangers14 wrote:I havent watched this video but have just seen it on Ancestry.
http://www.ancestry.co.uk/occupations#e ... ideo=intro

May help?
Jo

Didn't tell me that much, although I didn't know ancestry had police records - I do have one policeman in my tree! So I'll have to look him up!

Antie Em wrote:Hi snoops - try this one : http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/index.html

Maggie

I've just found out what a fettler did. My great grandad in Mansfield occupation.

I've found this site for old occupations whilst looking for the term Pimp Maker, apparently someone who makes up bundles of waste wood for fuel.