Of course everyone knows what a sagger makers bottom knocker was.VXTT

I pay a visit to a foot fettler now and again. She calls herself a 'podiatrist' but I know she's a foot fettler!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945 - 50

Current location (optional) Norfolk, UK

Quite a well known folk song, even around the Oz folk clubs!!
The lyrics tend to support the notion that 'poverty knock' is indeed onomatopoeic


http://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/song_database/Occupational/Poverty_Knocks.40.aspx

You can hear it here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blw5_H9aw-U

My Gt-grandfather and grandfather worked at Clough`s as Finisher`s.Also, a Mender in the family . Lady near where I live was a Doffer.
One old lady I knew spent her whole life from being an half-timer in the mill as a weaver spent the last 2 years of her life in a N.H. Had to sell her house to pay her fees and died penniless after a life-time of scrimping and saving and hard work!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) `59-`66

Current location (optional) HAWORTH

So, what was a doffer?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

a doffer was the person who went around the weaving shed from loom to loom collecting the empty bobbins. He wheeled a box to allow him to collect quite a number. The bobbins were then sent back for refilling.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1949-53

Current location (optional) Bingley

Yes, Denis. I think all of us from our age group can remember that occupation cropping up on "What's My Line" many years ago, can't we? Something to do with the pottery industry, I recall.
On a similar vein, I was reading a book on the "Bronte Country" recently and came across a section about a teacher in Stanbury in the 1890's, recording the occupation of the fathers of his pupils, such as cartwright, engine tenter, warp dresser and fariner. The word 'fariner' puzzled me a little and thought it might have something to do with flour. When I checked it out on 'Wicki', it turned out to be someone who supplied animal feed and in times past the name had been used as a surname.
That said, it was good to see you on Monday last, Denis, when we shared a meal at 'The Beeches', a 'Toby Inn' of some renown these days. The place was packed!! Good to hear you made it home to Wisbech safe and sound, floods an' all!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

Back to textiles, what about "bobbin liggers"?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958 - 65

Sagger makers certainly existed, though there weren't many around Keighley. They made the saggers that pottery was placed in to be fired (a visit to the potteries museum in Stoke-on-Trent is a wonderful day out).
A sagger makers bottom knocker was an "occupation" that was invented for comic effect to denote someone who was of an even lower status than the sagger maker.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

Just come across this interesting post for the first time and am looking forward to reading through.
As for your first query, Shaun - have you come across the folk song "Poverty Knock"? I have the sheet music somewhere. The chorus goes as .........
"Poverty, poverty knock,
My loom is a working all day.
Poverty,poverty knock,
Gaffer's too skinny to pay"

- then the memory fails.
I think that Liverpool group The Spinners recorded it.Or was it The Oldham Tinkers?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1952-60

Current location (optional) Lincoln

To digress slightly: a lot on us (in the '50s), struggling to stay on target at KBGS, had to raise cash through the only way we knew how: a job in local industry during the school holidays.

Labouring was the only work you could get - I had a spell (aged 14 - the then school leaving age) in a sawmill - bottom of our street - (Leightons) next to the Eastwood Tavern and opposite Prinnies Burlington Shed..

But once you stepped inside a textile mill, mugging was classified.

My recollection is that most mills in Keighley were woolen / worsted spinners - some knitting wools - some producing warp and weft for suiting. My first experience was with Hayfield Knitting Wools at Glusburn. My uncle, Les, was a time and motion man there and I had a spell in the spinning under an "owerloooker" called Raymond .,,,,,(from Beechcliff Keighley) - a stern taskmaster and an off-duty "connoisseur" of Taylor's bitter with a propensity to vent its more gaseous qualities at inopportune moments. (fart noxiously).

There was a free staff Hayfields Bus that left North Street, Keighley from outside the Regent picture house for the morning work. I forget what time I had to get up but I remember running like hell up Bradford street , Lawkholme and Alice Street to catch it or lose a day's pay.

All this is leading to the fact that I had a "position" as a "setter and doffer" at the behest of the said Raymond.

As a setter I brought empty bobbins in a little cart to the spinner's "gate" and filled the empty spindles waiting on the frame to receive spun yarn. The setter's knack was to pick bobbins between digits 1/2, 2/3 and 3/4 (left and right hands). Then in alternate (l and r) movements you served (set) the vacant spindles with empty bobbins - each time aiming to break your record.I could set a side of 120 spindles in just under 120 sex (secs)atbe (all things being equal)

Once set, and the frame was ready for an exchange of full bobbins of spun yarn for empties (the serious bit), the spinner who would shout for the doffer to come and switch over the full bobbins of spun yarn for the empties waiting to be filled. And so the sequence repeated itself. But this was a crucial time for the doffer - a moment of slackness and you could have all the full bobbins rolling all ovver't'floor and the spinner cussing you high and low.

I didn't know that there should have been two doffers and setters to service the spinners in our room. The setter/doffer (ME) had to take the filled bobbins of yarn to the twisting store; collect the rovings from the bobbin room or from the roving room when we were waiting. (I was fetcher and carrier doing two jobs) but I had to keep our women working because they were on piece work and their wages depended on continuity.

It was hectic. I worked so hard my "Ss" followed my "Qs"
When my time came to an end, Raymond (t'owerloooker')said he was "capped" I had stuck it out and gave me 30 Senior Service and a few bits of cake paid for by a collection from "t'lasses".

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1952-60

Current location (optional) Lincoln

Hi Shaun -

Poverty knocker is almost certainly a (grimly)
humorous name for a weaver.
Old Tommy Daniels of Batley used to sing (and might
have written)the song Poverty Knock which has the lines:

Poverty, poverty knock,
My loom it is saying all day,

The reference is to the sound made by the shuttle and the
poverty of the hand loom weavers.
Clearly the term lived on well into the time of the power loom.

I've just checked Wright's English Dialect Dictionary and it has
Poverty knocker - a. a weaver; b. the shuttle of a hand loom.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-64

Current location (optional) Haworth

Poverty knock was sung for many years by the Oldham Tinkers -they introduced the song by telling the story of the weaving sheds around Oldham
Their CDs are still available from Amazon

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-1966

Current location (optional) cumbria

My old Dad was the village blacksmith and I don't suppose there are a great many of those left. I can still remember the smell of horses hooves burning as he put the hot shoes on.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 55-60

Current location (optional) Harrogate.

There are lots of Blacksmiths still in the rural areas where horses abound . There is one in a village where my wife went to school who still works under the shade of a chestnut tree .

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 43-46

Current location (optional) Tasmania

Every morning on my way to school from Bradford Street then over Lawkholme Bridge to Alice street I used to pass a stone mason, an engine shed that housed shunters and a blacksmith at the bottom of Alice Street. Always thought that seeing such gave me a respect for honest labour and a deeper understanding of the work ethic.

Early Lessons

Bum-banging satchel belaboured me
running the long street to school.

The mason, hand bunched thick
round the stock of a flat chisel,
watched me through glasses
frosted by a million flying shards,
returned to peck at that day’s shape.
Strange curves emerged
from a peck, peck, pecking,
patient as dripping water,
that discovered bits of houses
in the bones of earth.

The oily shed, home to an old tank engine
that seethed like a great black kettle on a hob
steam flowered from sprung seams.
I knew the sear of that coal-gulping maw
and the sudden vent of dragon breath
that filled the yard with scalding vapours
and belches of sulphur that engorged a sky
bannered with the smoke of a town girded for war.

In the farrier’s hearth,
a hoop glowed in its golden nest of coke
bellowed to a heat I felt feet away.
Mightily rang the anvil with his bouncing hammer,
as he fettled the sparking iron, plunged it back
into the belly of fire. Swarthy and grimed,
he chimed from the heart of a Vulcan reek
of quenched iron and burnt hoof.

Late as usual, I was left to chase
into the place of hard desks,
chalk and the long slow plod of hours;
a place where good French seemed a logical impossibility
and Geometry was a foreign language.

Arthur, I thought that, when you would be making a contribution to this 'thread', you'd be mentioning one of our female forebears, who you found during one of your delvings into ancestry, who was a 'Corn Dolly Maker'. Not many of those around these days,eh?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

These two films migh be of interest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WohhLX_YLlE

about life in the West Riding in 1945

but, of more relevance is:

WIMSOL BLEACH FACTORY, KEIGHLEY (1951)

http://yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/wimsol-bleach-factory-keighley?destination=search%2Fapachesolr_search%2Fkeighley%3Ffilters%3Dtype%253Ayfa_film%26highlight%3Dkeighley%26mode%3Dquick%26solrsort%3Dscore%2520desc%252C%2520sis_cck_field_film_id%2520asc&highlight=keighley

from 'The Yorkshire Film Archive'

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959 - 1966

Current location (optional) Lancing/Shoreham border

Both videos posted before in the thread "We of the West Riding (in 1945)"