BENTLEY and RELATED FAMILIES
Chapter 3: Thomas BENTLEY (1799->1848)
Like his brother James, Thomas Bentley became a brass founder. He was a journeyman in 1851 i.e. a day labourer as opposed to full time employee. At that time he was living at 4 Court, 2 House, Edmund St in Birmingham. This type of address would tend to indicate fairly squalid living conditions for Thomas and his large family. Thomas’ oldest and youngest living-in working sons, Samuel and Goerge, were also brass founders; the younger was only 13 years old. Thomas’ four daughters were also employed in manufacturing. Harriet and Emma were wood screw makers, Sarah a steel pin raiser and fanny a button presser.
The occupations of Thomas and his family demonstrate the importance of the manufacturing trades in nineteenth century Birmingham. In 1889, when Birmingham was granted city status, over a thousand trades were practised within the city. Showell wrote ‘The variety of articles made in this town is simply incalculable’. This diversity was unusual; most cities specialised in one or two trades, and were therefore more prone to local depressions due to a slump. The rate of production was prodigious. In 1888, in one week, the city produced an estimated 20,000,000 pens, 8,000 guns, 15,000,000 buttons, 1,500 saddles, 6,000,000 copper or bronze coins, 9,000 bedsteads, 500,000,000 cut nails, 25,000 pairs of spectacles 25,000 pairs, eight tons of papier mache goods, about £20,000 of gold and silver jewellery, and 4,500 miles of iron and steel wire!
The brass with which Thomas worked had become popular towards the end of the eighteenth century. By 1770 there were 38 brass founders in Birmingham, by 1788 this figure had risen to 56, and in 1797 there were 71. Brass goods included lamps, picture frames, furniture, toasting forks, letterboxes, and nails. The use of brass fittings in gaslights in the nineteenth century also helped the trade. By the 1860s around ten thousand people were involved in the brass industry, increasingly in more specialised factories rather than workshops. The factories were usually unpleasant places to work, being dusty, noisy and dangerous. Showell's dictionary contains the entry ‘In 1865 it was estimated that the quantity of metal used here in the manufacture of brass were 19,000 tons of copper, 8,000 tons of old metal, 11,000 tons of zinc or spelter, 200 tons of tin and 100 tons of lead, the total value being £2,371,658’. In 1831 1,800 were involved in the brass trade, ten years later this number had almost doubled and by 1870 the trade was providing 10,000 jobs.
Fanny worked in another typical, but at the time declining, Birmingham industry, button making. Birmingham was famous for its buttons in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when they were primarily made of metal. Changes in fashion caused this to alter, and glass or cloth became popular. Of the 17,000 working in the buttons industry in 1830 only 6,000 continued through to 1860, due mainly to the abolition of import duty on buttons in the 1840s with a resulting flood of cheap imports and mechanisation of the trade which streamlined the workforce. The result was over-production. By the 1860s the industry was in decline. Buttons were a common workshop industry, although one button was usually made by several different people, which made production faster and cheaper. This process was common in the manufacture of many nineteenth century goods. Much work, including the sewing of the finished buttons onto card, was sent to women and children to do at home for very low pay in cramped conditions. The sub-division of labour was very great, so that one button would pass through the hands of around fifteen people.
Samuel had become an engine smith (i.e. maker of steam engines) by 1881, when he was living at 100 Winson Street, with his wife Mary and two young grandchildren, Edith Bentley and Frederick Mallard. By the same time George was employing one youth in his own brass casting business, but he still lived at a court address, 6 Court, 2 Beach Street. In 1881 George’s oldest daughter was a warehouse girl still living at home.
Nothing is yet known of the fate of Thomas and Elizabeth’s daughters. Presumably they all married and moved away from home. Neither Thomas nor Elizabeth appears to have been alive in 1881.
Thomas BENTLEY b.1799 m.Elizabeth –
….Mary Ann BENTLEY b.1822
….Thomas BENTLEY b.1822
….Samuel BENTLEY b.1828 d.>1881 m.Mary –
……..Male BENTLEY m.-
…………Edith BENTLEY b.c1874 d.>1881
……..Female BENTLEY m.- MALLARD
…………Frederick MALLARD b.c1877 d.>1881
….Elizabeth BENTLEY b.1828
….Eliza BENTLEY b.1829
….Sarah BENTLEY b.c1830
….Harriet BENTLEY b.c1832
….Fanny BENTLEY b.1834
….Emma BENTLEY b.c1836
….George BENTLEY b.c1838 d.>1881 m.Clara –
……..Ada L. BENTLEY b.c1866 d.>1881
……..Edith A. BENTLEY b.c1868 d.>1881
……..George BENTLEY b.c1870 d.>1881
……..Samuel BENTLEY b.c1880 d.>1881
….Joseph Josiah BENTLEY b.c1848
