Fitters & Turners & Smiths - Oh my!

[Peggy]

Can anyone please tell me if this sequence of occupations makes sense, and perhaps provide some detail about what they entailed? Did he work for a railway company, or at a factory, or. . . ? The location was Liverpool in 1851, then Birmingham.

1851 (on census, age 22) Coach Fitter
1857 (Marriage cert) Engine Turner
1857 (Birth cert) Machinist - Journeyman
1861 (Census, age 32) Millwright & Engine Smith
1861 (Birth cert) Engine Fitter
1862 (Directory) Engine Fitter
1869 (Death cert) Fitter

Thanks for any thoughts.

Peggy

[Ken Boyce]

Can anyone please tell me if this sequence of occupations makes sense, and perhaps provide some detail about what they entailed? Did he work for a railway company, or at a factory, or. . . ? The location was Liverpool in 1851, then Birmingham.

1851 (on census, age 22) Coach Fitter
1857 (Marriage cert) Engine Turner
1857 (Birth cert) Machinist - Journeyman
1861 (Census, age 32) Millwright & Engine Smith
1861 (Birth cert) Engine Fitter
1862 (Directory) Engine Fitter
1869 (Death cert) Fitter

Thanks for any thoughts.

Peggy

Hi Peggy
It is quite reasonable that someone could have a career along these lines as the occupations are very similar in that the individual would have dexterity in the use of hand tools, machinery and materials.

A Fitter is loosely a tradesman who takes apart or assembles mechanical things
A Millwright or "smith" is a tradesman who makes things out of sheet or forged metal
A machinist is someone who operates a machine which cuts, drills or shapes metal or wood.
A Turner is someone who shapes metal or wood on a machine (lathe)

Depending on the context the various occupations could have a well defined and narrower meaning (such as in a modern trade union factory or in a defined apprenticeship) or as seems the case here one could be "a jack of all trades"

In any of these trades one could be employed in a one or two man workshop, a shipyard, a rail car or engine manufacturer, a factory maintenance department, shipyard, coalmine etc, etc

Regards

[Peggy]

Thank you, Ken.

Do you know what "coach" might refer to in the 1851 "coach fitter" occupation? Would it necessarily mean railway coach? Could it refer to a coach drawn by horses, or wouldn't that be considered mechanical? Or was there another type I'm not thinking of?

A man who had been an engine fitter (but not, of course, in the 19th century) told me, if I understood correctly, that it would involve installing engines. Does that sound right?

Peggy

[Ken Boyce]

In the 1850s the general ref would be to horse drawn vehicles. A coach fitter would most likely work on the body, under carriage and trimmings in fact almost everything except perhapse the upholstery and the painting