Nail making was Bromsgrove's main trade during the 18th and 19th centuries. Figures from 1778 estimate that 900 people were employed in the nailing industry compared to 140 and 180 in the next two textile manufacturing trades. By 1851 the number of people working in the nail trade had risen to 10,300 with equal numbers of men and women employed. In the 17th century it was rare for women to be involved in the nail trade but by the following century the situation had dramatically changed. William Hutton walking from Derby to Birmingham in 1741 was struck by the number of women with 'smutty faces, thundering at the anvil...stripped of their upper garments and not overcharged with their lower'.

 

There were no apprenticeships or regulations in the nail making trade which meant that whole families would be employed working long hours. According to the 1861 census child labor in Worcestershire accounted for around 1/4 of the child labour across England and Wales. This was largely the result of the nail trade. A good nailer could produce 24,000 nails in a week however due to the expansion of the trade and the abundance of nailers, prices continually dropped. Robert Sherard in a series of articles for Pearson's Magazine described the nail workers as the 'White Slaves of England'. There is a link to these articles on our 'Useful Links' page.

 

The Beginnings

 

 

In Bromsgrove the first signs of the nail trade started to appear in the early 17th century. A William Tylsley, whose son died in 1602 is the first known nailer in Bromsgrove. During the same century the nail trade in this region started to flourish mainly due to two main reasons; being near to the River Seven with its links to the sea and trade and secondly North Worcestshire was close to the raw materials needed to make nails; coal and iron. Another river, the River Stour also became important in the nail making trade in the region with more slitting mills for its length than any other river in Britain. A slitting mill was a watermill for slitting bars of iron into rods. The rods then were passed to nailers who made the rods into nails, by giving them a point and head. Another important change was the improvements to blast furnaces and the change from charcoal to coal which made the trade competitive. Richard Reynolds in a letter around 1760, "The nail trade would have been lost to this country had it not been found practical to make nails of iron made with pit-coal". All these developments in the 18th century helped to transform the trade into a major industry in the 19th century. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The workshop

 

 

Nail making was a cottage industry that was normally done in small workshops, often shared by two or three other nail makers. Please click here for a short video about a workshop and nailer. A typical nail shop was usually about ten or twelve feet square with one door and one or two unglazed windows. There would be a central hearth or fire so that all the family could work independently of each other. There could be as many as six working round one fire. Typically nailers either rented or owned their own shop but a nailer who had no shop of his own could rent a "standing" from a fellow nailer and share the fire to carry on making nails. Nailers would also have to provide their own tools and equipment. The bellows, a small block or anvil, sharpening tools and "the Oliver" which was used for making large nails. The 'Oliver' was a kind of work-bench, equipped with a pair of treadle operated hammers - which provided a mechanism for beating the metal into various shapes but the nails were still made one at a time. The Midland Mining Commission report of 1843 includes this description:-

 

"The best forges are little brick shops of about 15 feet by 12 feet in which seven or eight individuals constantly work together with no ventilation except the door and two slits, a loop-hole in the wall. The majority of these workplaces are very much smaller and filthy dirty and on looking in upon one of them when the fire is not lighted presents the appearance of a dilapidated coal-hole. In the dirty den there are commonly at work, a man and his wife and daughter, with a boy or girl hired by the year. Sometimes the wife carries on the forge with the aid of the children. The filthiness of the ground, the half-ragged, half-naked, unwashed persons at work, and the hot smoke, ashes, water and clouds of dust are really dreadful".

 

Nailers often rented their cottages and nail shops from a nail-master; it was normally the nail-master who supplied the bellows and forge whilst the nailer supplied and maintained his own bench and tools. Iron was supplied in 60lb lots and taken home with the order. Once completed, the work was returned to the middlemen (known as foggers), these people were notorious for treating the nailers badly. Underhand practices were common, the most common was to tamper with the scales to reduce the amount of money owed to the nailer and they gave little allowance for waste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trouble, strikes and suffering

 

 

The Industrial Revolution saw the slow decline in the handmade nail trade. The first blow was the development of the cut nail. The cut-nail process was first developed in America by Jacob Perkins in 1795 and later in England by Joseph Dyer, who set up machinery in Birmingham around 1811. By 1830 cut nails were being produced in large numbers, reaching its zenith in the 1860s. The process involved cutting nails from sheets of iron, making sure that the fibers of the iron ran down the nails, which gave a superior grip compared to handmade nails. Another major blow to the industry was that hand-made nails were also being imported in increasing amounts from Belgium which aided the low prices and economic depression and poverty of the nailers. By 1907 hand wrought nails accounted for less than 10% of the total nail production in the region.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another source of despair for Bromsgrove's staple trade was the truck system and the 'fogger'. The fogger was a middleman who exploited the poverty of the nailers, supplying them with iron on credit, much as the nail master did, but buying the nails back at well below list prices or by truck, (this was the practice of payment in goods not money, which although illegal persisted in the Black Country until the 20th century). The fogger was also usually the owner of a public house or "tommy shop". When a nailer's supply of iron was stopped by the regular nailmaster for any reason such as high stocks of nails, fraud by the nailer or bad work, the nailer was forced to go to the fogger or starve. He would then be paid by check which had to be spent in the fogger's shop or public house on goods which were usually inferior or adulterated this was known locally as "tommy trucking". These acts largely went unchecked for many decades because the nailers were often too poor and scared to report the foggers. To add further misery to the nailers the workforce faced continual cuts to wages. The 1840s were especially bad and were known as the 'hungry 40s'. 

 

 

Disturbances

 

 

During the "Hungry Forties" the people in the nail trade suffered terribly and by 1842 nailers were dying of starvation. The Worcestershire Guardian of 16th April 1842 reported that the nail trade in Bromsgrove and Stourbridge was in a 'deplorable state'. The situation was made worse in 1842, due to the nailmasters reducing the already low wages by another 20% and just over a week later the nailers rioted. Several thousand nailers from all the nailing districts proceeded to march on Dudley where there was to be a meeting of the nailmasters. On the way the nailers visited a number of warehouses and forced the masters to go with them as prisoners. They also slashed the bellows of any nailers they found working who would not join them on their march. On arrival at Dudley the masters were forced to hold a meeting with delegates from the nailers. However as this meeting was taking place, the military had been sent for to try and restore order. A troop of cavalry arrived and the rioters were dispersed with several arrests being made. Over the next few days the cavalry was reinforced by troops bought into the area from other counties. From time to time there were clashes between the troops and the nailers who used their hammers as clubs. They also used what was known locally as a "tiswas", this consisted of three nails welded together in such a way that when thrown upon the ground one point would always stick up. These were thrown under the horses of the charging cavalry crippling the horses and throwing their riders off. Gradually the riots were brought under control and the authorities in an attempt to try and quell the crowds distributed loaves of bread and other foods to the nailers. The nailers who were arrested were taken to Worcester but given reasonably light sentences.

 

 

The situation and conditions for the nailers did not improve after this march. In 1843 the state of the trade was reported about as far away as London. The Times newspaper reported that the area was 'considerably excited and alarmed by rumors and disturbances amongst the turn-out nailers of Bromsgrove'. The situation was seemed sufficiently dangerous enough for the 1st Royal Dragoons to come from Birmingham to help maintain order. A report from 1840 highlights the economic situation and problems nailers had to face making handmade nails, 'at Bromsgrove the price paid for making nails has been reduced to one-fifth within the last three years, cut nails being now much used.'

 

In 1852 another major disturbance took place in the area. During a strike against the truck system and low wages, a protest march was led by Sam Salt from Halesowen to Bromsgrove. Please click here for an audio piece on the 1852 march. Strikes like this one were common throughout the 19th century. However not all strikes were started by disgruntled workers. One example of this would be of a nail master instigating a strike when their warehouses became over-stocked. Therefore stopping a certain type of nail being made. They would then encourage the nail makers of the certain area who made that type of nail to strike. Then when the nailmasters stocks had run out, play one area against another to reduce wages even further. Life was extremely hard for the Bromsgrove nailers and by the 1900s the trade had all but stopped. This meant that nailers had to find other ways to bring an income into their households.

 

 

Cottage Life

 

 

A typical house generally consisted of one room down stairs and two up stairs with a nail-shop attached. Although working and living conditions were atrocious for a lot of nailers some of the better off nailers in Bromsgroves who lived behind the eastern side of High Street were able to supplement their income with market gardening. These nailers who lived in this area had gardens that were large enough to cultivate and produce vegetables in the winter and a variety of fruit in the summer. Rural nailers also could get work on farms, so much so that half of the work force in this area only made nails in the winter months. However not all houses in Bromsgrove had large enough or even had gardens at all to allow for market gardening. A report from 1840 "the cottages in and near Bromsgrove and Redditch have no gardens, or very small ones". In the same report concerning Bromsgrove and Redditch it also detailed the earning breakdown of a nailmakers family. The heads of the families would earn 8 shillings to 11 shillings per week as agricultural labourers and 10 shillings to 24 shillings as needle makers per week. Children at the age of ten would earn around 2s per week. For children this would increase per year by 6 pence for girls and 9 pence for boys.

 

 

Much of the physical heritage of the nailmaking industry has almost disappeared from Bromsgrove and its surrounding areas. Only one pair of early 19th century nailers cottages are listed in the town and are located on the Stourbridge Road. There are others that survive but they are in much a converted and modernised form. You might be able to recognise a nailers cottage by their single storey side or back extension. However the majority of houses were mostly removed during the 20th century after the trade died. There were only a handful of nailers still producing hand-forged nails after the end of the First World War. The last two nailers to keep on working were Albert Crane and Charlie Tooth both from Sidemoor and they continued into the 1950s.