victorian London research - plasterers

[kilotank]

Hello.

I want to find out more about my family history of 3 generations of plasterers in London victorian Britain. I have done the usual googling for many hours but to no effect. I have also tried contacting various trade unions but to no avail.

Can anyone advise how to best research this sort of information.

Thanks

[peterd]

do you want to find the individuals or about victorian plastering in general if your looking for family members you will have to post detials you have on them

[kilotank]

Hi Peterd

I am looking for both really if I can. 1. I want to see if I can trace physically where my relations worked, ie for a company, did they have their own company, were they registered to a trade union etc, build up a life picture, and 2, get some contextual information on the industry they worked in, ie conditions, trends, education. salaries etc.

any ideas where to signpost me?

Thanks

[gardener]

Hi

the first step (which you have perhaps taken) would be to find them in each census. If you look around at the neighbours then you may get some clue as to their social standing - if they are sharinga house with another family then they are not likley to own a business of their own, but if they have a servant or two and the children are still at school into their teens then perhaps they might.

You could try trade directories too, especially if the surname is unusual.

Perhaps you could ask The Worshipful Company of Plaisterers to point you in the right direction
http://www.plaistererslivery.co.uk/what-we-do.aspx

When you hit Google did you try both the Books and the Scholar options? Sometimes they give the best results for this sort of stuff.

[kilotank]

Hi Gardener

Many thanks for your response, really useful. You appear to have great insight into building the pictures of history. If I may learn from you a bit more.
1.How did you know about Plaisterers (google research or you are a historian)? If you could divulge your technique it is something I could put into practice in other areas.
2. How can you find out if children are being schooled?

Thanks for the tip on improved googling! again very helpful.

Kilotank

[gardener]

Hi
No, I am not a historian I found the Plaisterer site by googling for: plasterer history London
I usually try a few key words and see what comes out. Some times I move onto the Advanced search option, but not very often.
When I suggested looking at how long the children attended school I was simply thinking of the census. Usually children are listed as scholar or by their employment. Mind you, scholar can mean anything or nothing as I understand some were listed as scholar if attending Sunday school.

[mike74]

Hi Kilotank,

I know you posted this afew weeks ago so you may now have the info you require. Just to let you know that I work about 2mins walk from the Worshipful Company Of Plaisterers, I could pop in there for you if you want and see if they could give me any info that you need. Not sure if I can just walk in and check their records, but I'll try.
Send me the info you require and I'll see if I can get it.

All the best Mike

[kilotank]

Thanks Mike

I did phone them but they just signposted me to the LMA. So as my Christmas treat to myself I am planning a trip to London next week. My first genealogy related outing ever!

Nice that you were prepared to help out though ...what a nice bunch of people genealogists are

Merry Christmas all.

Tank