Tuesday 15 April 2008

The Turner

A couple of interesting insights into the world of the Turner. . .

The first is from an 18th century book originally published in 1747 - The London Tradesman.
I took a photo of the page and the front cover when I saw the book at The Museum of London whilst doing a demonstration. Unfortunately I lost the photos and can’t remember the name of the author.


The second is an extract from Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor published in 1861 giving the relative levels of drunkenness between the various London trades. Turners come 35th out of the 66 only just ahead of the sawyers who had a perhaps undeserved reputation as a hard drinking, rough crew!

2 comments:

rika said...

I believe the first one is:

R. Campbell, "The London Tradesman, being a compendious view of all the trades, professions, arts, both liberal and mechanic, now practised in the cities of London and Westminster", T. Gardner, 1747.

(An excessive number of library classes do come in handy sometimes!)

The second one is utter rubbish: it claims that only 1 in 108 artists was a drunkard. We all know this isn't true . . . :)

Robin Fawcett said...

Yes - I agree.
And as for clergymen .... w e l l !