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What now for Sheffield’s Little Mesters? |
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Sheffield’s workshops
Sheffield’s town centre was crammed full of hundreds of rented workshops, and the sound of metal being hammered and ground was a familiar daily buzz. Many of these workshops were once houses, which had gradually been adopted for workshop use. Their more affluent owners had left the town centre for the new rural suburban developments, fleeing the smoke, smells and open sewers. The danger of disease was a particular incentive for the better off – many moved out of the city after the cholera epidemic of 1832, which killed 402 people.
A Sheffield Grinder's Hull, from illustrated guide to Sheffield, 1879 |
Other workshops were part of large tenement factories, purpose built by Master Manufacturers – the people who gave the Little Mesters the work. Even though part of the same building, these were not factories in today’s sense of the word, where everyone worked for one employer every day for a fixed wage. Nor were they like the vast steelworks built in Sheffield’s East End from the 1840s onwards, owned by steelmasters who directly employed their workers.
For the talented Little Mester whose services were in demand, the system worked well at this time. They could be highly independent, and undertake work for any person they wished, even if they were renting space in another company. It also worked well for the Master Manufacturers, who could meet orders for large amounts or for particular products by employing whom they wanted, when they wanted, and without paying out for overheads. It was mostly a prosperous time for the light trades. When the market was buoyant, the expanding Victorian middle classes were eager to buy from the enormous variety of goods.
But there were also slumps in trade and fluctuations in the market. The people who bore the brunt were those craftsmen who still had to pay the rent on their workshops, but did not have work coming in to meet the cost. There were also craftsmen who had to be self-employed and work for different Manufacturers just to make ends meet. In hard times, they often had to cut their prices, which meant lower wages for any workers they employed and cheaper materials. It is probable that these independent workers were not popular, as they would have undercut local prices and produced lower quality products.
Words: Emma Green and Natalie Murray
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