Shropshire Routes to Roots

David Davies arrives in Bridgnorth to seek work

The Story Continues

David arrives at Bridgnorth to find many other unskilled farm labourers like himself are seeking work. Most of them had fallen on hard times.

The Parish Officers encouraged them to seek employment out of their own Parish, so as not to be a burden on the poor rate.

Thomas Brassey, railway contractor Larger image, in a new window [32kb] [Shropshire Archive reference:PH/S/14/7]

Thomas Brassey, the Severn Valley Railway contractor, is reputed to be paying his navvies around 2 shillings and 4 pence a day. This is good news. But David is later disquieted by rumours that only experienced navvies get paid this amount. He is taken on and starts work immediately. However after the first day he is exhausted and soon realises why the experienced navvies are paid more than the local men. Although strong, and used to physical work, David does not have the stamina to do a full day. Each man is expected to fill 7 wagons. This meant lifting around 20 tons weight of earth on a shovel over his head into a wagon, this was considered a days work.

David now has the task of finding somewhere to lodge. Many of the other poorer agricultural workers were living in a temporary Shanty Town along the railway line. There were also huts providing bedded accommodation for one and a half pennies a night. But if David slept on the floor of one of these huts he would be able to stay for five nights for a penny. But he has no money at all and until his wages were paid he might well have to slept rough in disused limestone workings along side the track or in temporary mud shelters cut into the side of the hill.

On a saturday night David and a fellow itinerant worker wander into the town of Bridgnorth. A mob of over 200 or more navvies have congregated in the High Street: most are drunk. The two-man Bridgnorth Borough Police Force cannot control them, and besides, the navvies appear to live by their own laws. There are fights and the men are aggressive towards the police. Despite an Act of Parliament, passed in August 1838, which required Railway Companies to pay for constables to keep the peace near railway lines, there is insufficient Police presence. The Bridgnorth towns-people of are clearly anxious. David is shocked and realises why his wife May had concerns about the navvies' reputation.

At the end of the first week David decides that the work is too exhausting and the conditions too bad and also he will not get paid the high wages he had anticipated. Moreover, he has been frightened by the lawlessness of the hardened navvies. The deciding factor comes when he discovers that wages are only to be paid at the end of the month. David is desperate to feed his hungry family now. In a month's time they would be further in debt and closer to starvation.

Continue

David returns home penniless, and the decision to put all the family into the workhouse is forced upon him.

• Follow the family to the workhouse: Go
• Restart this adventure: Go

Return to top of page