Lost Trades Nᵒ.14: Birmingham's Button Making

'Steel buttons', by William Humphrey, c. 1777.
Held at the V&A.

There were a variety of buttons produced in the eighteenth-century, for different purposes, and many had specific sites of manufacture. Dorset, for example, was famed for the Dorset button, which was was made with thread and usually used on women's clothing (below).

The buttons made in Birmingham were mostly those which were used on men's clothing to adorn coats, waistcoats and sleeves, as well as link buttons being produced for shirt sleeves. Sometimes, the positioning of men's buttons served little or no functional purpose, such as on coat sleeves, which at times over the century became very large and long, so to be folded back and buttoned into place (see top image). Decorative buttons were also worn by rich and poor, and the rich did not only purchase buttons in precious metals, but favoured new fashions in steel, fine brasses, mother-of-pearl, and a multitude of other materials too. Cut steel buttons, for example, became the height of fashion in the 1770s, and the image at the top of the page depicts a young man dazzling a lady with his fashionable steel buttons. These kinds of buttons were made in their thousands in Birmingham.

Lost Trades Nᵒ.11: John Taylor (c. 1711 to 1775) & Birmingham's First Factory (probably)

John Taylor I, c. 1750. In the possession
of Lloyd's Bank, London.

John Taylor (c. 1711 to 1775)

John Taylor was one of Birmingham’s most dominant manufacturers of small wares, often called 'toys', including japanned goods (decorative lacquer), metal buttons and enamelled boxes. In 1766 Lady Shelburne, who was visiting the Birmingham manufactories with her husband and some friends, called Taylor the 'principal manufacturer' of the town.* Taylor's business had grown from the 1730s, and his manufactory was probably Birmingham's first factory, in the sense we understand it today. He also was a partner in Taylor and Lloyd's bank, which opened in Birmingham in 1765 and is now simply Lloyd's Bank, and he died in 1775 a very wealth man.

Curious Machines: Ralph Heaton's Button Shank Machine (c. 1794)

c. 1794 button shank machine at Thinktank Museum, Birmingham.

Between the 1790s and about 1807 Ralph Heaton (1755-1832) ran a brass foundry on Slaney Street, so making a variety of brass wares, where he also made rose engines. A biographical description of Ralph's stated that he had: 

invented a most curious machine for making of button shanks, of so complicated a nature that although he did not obtain a patent for it, and admits every mechanic readily to see it, there is not one who could ever construct another.*

The button shank was at the back of a button, and was what attached the button to clothing. The machine was so 'curious' and 'complicated' because it worked in a fully automated process. Richard Prosser, in 1881, described the process as 'of great interest as being probably the first example of a machine in which the material is subjected to a series of independent operations succeeding each other at regulated intervals of time'.** The machine was powered by steam.

Although the article stated otherwise, Ralph did obtain a patent for his machine, in 1794, and examples of his curious machines are held at London Science Museum and Thinktank Birmingham. 

c. 1794 button shank machine in the London Science Museum. 

NOTES

* The Kaleidescope (Liverpool: E. Smith, 1821), p. 325. 

** Richard Prosser, Birmingham Inventors and Inventions (1881).

Birmingham Button Box: Country Life in Transfer Printed Enamel (c. 1760s)

Object Focus: Four buttons from what would have been a larger set of gentlemen's buttons depicting hunting scenes. Above a gentleman leans on his horse with his hunting dogs around, and below are images of the hunt.  

Birmingham Button Box: Joseph Green's Suit

Joseph Green in a formal jacket with smart buttons.
Copy held at V&A.

Several years ago I wrote about Portugal House, which was a grand house on New Street, built by Joseph Green. Green was a fashionable dandy, referred to as 'Beau Green', and I was recently informed that a suit of his formal clothes are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, complete with a fine set of metal buttons, which were possibly made in Birmingham (see below). The suit was probably worn in the late 1770s, and looks very similar to the one Green is wearing in a portrait of him (above).

Detail of buttons, from Joseph Green's coat. V&A.

Front of Joseph Green's coat. To see more
details of the suit on the V&A site, click here.

Joseph Green had married an heiress, Elizabeth Cotton, in 1776, whose family were of Etwall Hall in Derbyshire (Etwall here).* Green was described as of 'St. Philip's Birmingham' and the couple moved to Birmingham after the marriage, where Green had recently built his fine town house, Portugal House. Green had made his own fortune selling Portugal wine, hence the name of his home, some of the business possibly being inherited from his uncle, another Joseph, who was a victualler (an early name for an alcohol seller).

Joseph and Elizabeth had five children, the eldest inheriting Etwall Hall.** Green went bankrupt in 1799, and he seems to have left Birmingham at this time, and moved to Derbyshire. He died 28 January 1810 and was flamboyant to the end with the unusual description of his funeral procession in his will:

It is my will & desire that my Body may be deposited in Etwall Church yard in a Vault, near to the Comunion [sic] opposite to the Gate that leads to the Village, & that a plain stone be placed within the Church to be engrav’d thereon the arms, as on my Gold Seal, with a few lines to my memory, & that my Body be carried to the Churchyard in a Hears [sic], & only one mourning coach, to be carried to be interd [sic], by six of the Poor men of the Hospital, in their Gounds [sic]

He bequeathed the gold seal mentioned to his eldest son, along with portraits of his parents and 'all the family writings'.* Green was buried in the vault he described, which was discovered by accident this year (2019) at St. Helen's church in Etwall (see BBC news site here).***

Elizabeth later applied so that her children could take the Cotton name, which she achieved in 1820. She died in 1833 and was probably buried in the same vault as her husband.

Portrait of Joseph Green, owned by the family.
With thanks to Sarah Kimbell.

You can also find out about some Green's role in Birmingham's Theatre Royal - here.

NOTES
**Elizabeth's older brother, William, was described as a 'lunatic' by Joseph Green in his will, which probably explains why his sister and her children inherited the estate. 
***Joseph Green's coffin, discovered by accident in 2019, states that he was born in 1737.
* Joseph Green and Elizabeth Cotton married 12 August 1776 at Mucklestone, Staffordshire; will of Joseph Green, 1767, Dioceses Of Lichfield And Coventry Wills And Probate 1521-1860; will of Joseph Green, 1810, Dioceses Of Lichfield And Coventry Wills And Probate 1521-1860; Rag Castle

Birmingham Button Box: Floral Enamel Buttons (c. 1745-c. 1765)

These enamel buttons were almost certainly produced in Birmingham between about 1745 and 1765, and were possibly made in the manufactory of John Talyor. Taylor ran, probably, the largest manufactory in Birmingham at this time, including making enamel toys and gilt buttons. These buttons have a painted enamel centre set in gilt metal. There were other button-makers and enamellers in the town, but the combining of the two makes Taylor's factory a likely candidate for their manufacture. If they were not the product of Taylor's manufactory then they were probably produced through collaboration, with one maker producing the enamel circles and another mounting them in gilt metal.

Children in the Work Place

Birmingham Buttons

HAMMOND, TURNER & SONS
Disposition of John Turner, sworn to before Leonard Horner and John Spencer, Esquires, 1st May 1833.
Will you state the trade in which you are engaged? —Button manufacture.
Have you any mechanical moving power? —No steam-engine or water-wheels.
What number of workmen do you employ on your premises? —From one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty. We employ besides about three hundred and fifty out-workers; either working for us entirely or partially.
Will you state what number of children in the manufactory under fourteen years of age?—From twenty-five to thirty.
What is the earliest age? —I think nine.
What are the hours of work? —From seven till seven, with two hours for meals.
Do you leave off sooner on a Saturday? —We pay our wages on Friday, and have done so for many years. The work-people generally leave a little earlier on a Saturday.
What is your impression of the state of education of the children, in your employment? —They generally can read, and frequently write, and they in general attend Sunday-schools.
Have you any work in the night? —No.
Is there anything in the nature of your work calculated to injure the health of the children? —None, nor other persons, except gilding, and that under the improved system with little inconvenience.
In the course of your long experience, would you say that the health of the children in your employ was generally good? —Yes.
What is your impression of the moral character of the children, male and female, in your employ? —Good; it has been my invariable practice to attend to the morals of the people in our employ, discountenancing vice by every means in my power.
Are you acquainted with the nature of the dwellings of your work-people, both as to healthiness as well as comfort? —These are in exact proportion to the moral conduct of the parties. Where they are religious, they are clean; where they are drunken, dirty.
From your local knowledge of Birmingham, do you consider that the work-people live in health and comfort? —Yes; arising from the general custom, of each family having a separate house and access to good pump-water.
Has this proposed Ten Hours Labour Bill excited any attention among manufacturers or workmen, with reference to the town of Birmingham? —None whatever, as being inapplicable to the place.
Have you ever heard of a factory of any description in Birmingham where it is alleged that the children employed are over worked? —Never.
Do you believe the operatives are generally well off at present, taking into account the rate of wages, and the prices of the necessaries of life? —I have known them many times during the last forty years much worse off than at present, and I believe that a part of the proportion of the present distress arises from their improvidence.
Does the distress to which you allude extend generally to all classes of trades in Birmingham? —I think not.
Have you ever known in the course of your experience Birmingham without distress existing among some descriptions of employment? —Uninterrupted prosperity must have been very partial, and of short duration.

Tour of Lost Birmingham Nᵒ.37: The Opportunities of Industry - Corbett's Temperance Hotel (Paradise Street & Hill Street)

Corbett's Temperance Hotel in about the 1870s, it had opened in 1842.
The building dated from about 1750. The street leading down is Hill Street.

In October 1842 Joseph Corbett (1791-1868) opened his boarding and coffee house on Paradise Street.* This was a fine part of town, just opposite the newly opened Town Hall, so presumptions could easily be made that Joseph was a middle class man in business and always had been, but this could not be further from the truth. Joseph was about 50 years old when he, and his wife, started up the hotel on Paradise Street, and Joseph had taken all the opportunities that the industrial town of Birmingham offered, working his way up from poverty.

Joseph wrote about the ‘frightful poverty’, the ‘cold and hunger, and the innumerable sufferings’ of his childhood.* His father had been a drunk, so his mother had financially supported her family of eleven children by working long hours in the manufactories, and ‘one and all of [the children were] forced out to work so young that [their] feeble earnings would produce only 1 [shilling] a week’.* The young Joseph had been sent out as an errand boy at the button makers Hammond, Turner & Sons** where his parents worked when he was about seven years old, and had worked at that same company as a button burnisher (polisher) until he left to start up the hotel.* Joseph had some attributes that would have aided his rise through society, mainly his ability to read and write exceptionally well (his father could write, but not his mother), and a marriage to Ann Willington who seems to have come from a lower middle-class family, and who would have had some good connections.* His writing ability was found unusual; Hammond, Turner & Sons** was approached by the Commission on Child Labour in 1840 and Joseph produced a 1,500 word document describing his own experiences and thoughts on the matter of child labour, and with a sense of surprise the commission noted that ‘[t]his most creditable statement, the product of a Birmingham mechanic, is inserted without a single alteration of any kind’. The word ‘mechanic’ is used at the time to describe members of the working classes, and the commission felt the need to note that the excellent quality of Joseph’s statement was all his own work.

By 1840 Joseph was earning a good wage, between 30 and 35 shillings a week, but to be able to open a boarding house two years later he must have still been frugal with his wages. He didn’t agree with wives with children working the ten hour days in the manufactories, so it is unlikely that his wife had worked in their early marriage, but she did run a business making and selling straw bonnets from the late 1830s, which would have helped their financial position. Neither did Joseph drink; he became a member of the Birmingham Temperance Society and District Union (BTSDU) which had been initiated in 1830, and by 1843 he was sitting on the committee with some of Birmingham's most notable inhabitants. So it seems that by sheer hard work, being employed by a fair employer, by having the ability to read and write better than most in his situation, by marrying well for his position and by being careful with wages, Joseph managed to work his way out of the poverty that he was born into.

Joseph never turned away from his roots though, and also, never seems to have been allowed to. In the year he died, 1868, John Alfred Langford called him ‘an ornament to his class’, and the reason that Langford felt moved to write a long obituary about Joseph Corbett in his new book was because of all the good work that he had done in Birmingham from the early 1830s.* Joseph had become good friends with Thomas Attwood (whose statue is in Centenary Square), and was one of only two working class members of the Birmingham Political Union fighting for, among other things, universal suffrage;* Joseph himself received the vote for the first time in 1838, a right that he had personally battled for.* He fought against slavery, corresponding with the well known anti-slavery campaigner Joseph Sturge, and also worked as a guardian and overseer of the poor from about 1842, working for better conditions for the poor and to improve the conduct of the overseers.* His own experiences had ‘kept alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of thousands of families in this great town (Birmingham) and neighbourhood, who [were] in a similar state of horrible misery’.* As well as this he was chairman of a committee in 1846 which was attempting to end the imprisonment of debtors, as, even though the Birmingham Court of Requests*** had been closed two years previously, other courts had jurisdiction in Birmingham; he wished to stop the ‘injustice, oppression and cruelty inflicted upon the Working and Humbler Classes of Society’ by these courts.*

Although some of Joseph’s opinions on women may seem a little distasteful today, mainly the idea that women with children should always look after them at home, and that the education of women in household duties was neglected, we must take them in context of the times. There were no childcare facilities, so children had to be looked after at home by someone, and it was not socially conceivable that a man could perform that role. Also, men’s wages were usually higher. Joseph formed these opinions through his own personal experience; his own mother, so Joseph described, had ‘worked in a manufactory from a very early age’.

'She was clever and industrious, and [...] was regarded as an excellent match for a working man. She was married early [and] became the mother of eleven children: I am the eldest. [...] She had children apace. As she recovered from her lying-in, so she went to work, the babe being brought to her at stated times to receive nourishment. As the family increased, so everything like comfort disappeared altogether. The power to make a home cheerful and comfortable was never given to her. [...] She made many efforts to obstain [sic] from shop work; but her pecuniary necessities forced her back into the shop. [...] I have known her, after the close of a hard day's work, sit up nearly all night for several nights together washing and mending clothes’.*

Joseph’s involvement in the temperance movement can also be attributed to his childhood, he makes it very clear that his father was a drunkard and spent his time at the tavern rather than looking after his family.* The temperance movement had come from America and advocated moderation and abstinence from alcohol, and promoted the opening of alternative venues for socialising and relaxation other than public houses, such as Joseph Corbett’s own coffee house. The opening of temperance hotels followed in a similar vein, allowing travellers the option of places to stay that did not include a ready supply of strong liquor. But Joseph, unlike others, did not just want the closing down of the ale-houses, he wanted other leisure pursuits to replace drinking, such as ‘gymnastic exercises, quoits, cricket, &c,; public gardens, walks, baths, reading rooms, &c’.* Joseph’s temperance hotel was one of only around half a dozen in Birmingham, so was an important aspect of the Birmingham temperance scene. Corbett’s Temperance Hotel, then, was just another part of Joseph’s attempt to do some good, and once he had it, he also used the building in other beneficial ways, as many charitable institutions held their meetings at Corbett’s Hotel (see below).*

With all this charitable work, much of the running of the hotel was probably left in the hands of Joseph’s wife, Ann. He may have had strong opinions about the role of women in the upbringing of young children, but Ann, and the couple's daughter and several of the couple’s granddaughters worked in a number of strong roles throughout their lives. The couple’s granddaughter had helped them in the hotel since the age of about sixteen, and continued running it after Ann’s retirement even though she herself was married and had a young child. Other granddaughters were musicians or worked in their own right, and were recorded on the census as such, which was unusual for the time. This suggests that Joseph was possibly an open minded man of his time.

With all that Joseph Corbett achieved in his lifetime it seems strange that he is not remembered, but his position in society would be the likely cause of that. Despite all the work he did, his lack of large amounts of disposable income (there is nothing quite like putting a hundred pounds towards the building of a school that will get your name on a plaque), and his impoverished roots would not have advocated him to be immortalised, like Thomas Attwood, Joseph Sturge or the Cadbury’s, all of which Joseph had connections with. He is, I suppose, a bit of a 'working class hero', working quietly in the background to do what he thought was right and to improve the lives of the poor, of which he knew all too well what they endured. Hopefully this post gives him a little of the recogition that he deserves.    

--------------------------------
NOTES
I would really appreciate any more information on Joseph Corbett or other interesting Brummies.
* References on request
** To find out more about the button makers Hammond, Turner & Sons visit: http://hammond-turner.com/
*** I have written a number of posts on the conditions of the Court of Requests, see them here.
The image is courtesey of Birmingham Library and Archive Services.

The Employment of Children in the Button Trade: Statement from Joseph Corbett

Taken from the ‘Commission on Child Labour’ of 1841, looking at the employment of children in the button trade. Folios 129 to 133. Evidence collected by RD Grainger Esq. from Hammond, Turner & Sons at their Snow Hill manufactory. These folios contain a number of statements, all of which can be seen here, reproduced in this post is the statement from Joseph Corbett.

Mr. Joseph Corbett
Has been employed more than 40 years at Messrs Turner’s as a button burnisher. The average wages in this trade, in full work, are from 30s. to 35s. a week, but there is often a want of employment. Has often been consulted by the mechanics generally on occasions when they required advice. Has been applied to by mechanics in reference to the objects of this inquiry. Has taken an active part in public proceedings connected with the trade of the town. Was one of a deputation consisting of two from the button-makers appointed to wait on His late Majesty George IV., and other branches of the royal family, nobility, &c., in order to induce them to encourage the trade. On this occasion received several votes of thanks from the masters and men. In 1837 was again appointed a deputy to wait on Viscount Melbourne relative to the distressed state of the nation.
The witness handed in the statement marked [G.]

[G] Statement of Mr. Joseph Corbett
1. Children of both sexes are sent to work at too tender an age, particularly female children. During their childhood, at a time when fresh air and freedom from confinement are so essential, they toil throughout the day, acquiring not the least domestic instruction to fit them for wives and mothers. I will name one instance, and this applies to the general condition of females doomed to, and brought up amongst, shop-work.
My mother worked in a manufactory from a very early age. She was clever and industrious; and, moreover, she had the reputation of being Virtuous. She was regarded as an excellent match for a working man. She was married early. She became the mother of 11 children. I am the eldest. To the best of her ability she performed the important duties of a wife and mother. She was lamentably deficient in domestic knowledge; in that most important of all human instruction, how to make the home and the fire-side to possess a charm for her husband and children, she had never received one single lesson.
She had children apace. As she recovered from her lying-in, so she went to work, the babe being brought to her at stated times to receive nourishment. As the family increased, so anything like comfort disappeared altogether.
Poor thing, the power to make home cheerful and comfortable was never given to her. She knew not the value of cherishing in my father’s mind a love of domestic objects. My heart aches when I reflect upon her anxious and laborious situation.
Not one moment’s happiness did I ever see under my father’s roof. All this dismal state of things I can distinctly trace to the entire and perfect absence of all training and instruction to my mother. He became intemperate; and his intemperance made her necessitous. She made many efforts to abstain from shop-work; but her pecuniary necessities forced her back into the shop. The family was large, and every moment was required at home.
I have known her, after the close of a hard day’s work, sit up nearly all night for several nights together washing and mending of clothes. My father could have no comfort here. These domestic obligations, which in a well regulated house, (even in that of a working man, where, there are prudence and good management,) would be done so as not to annoy the husband; to my father they were a source of annoyance; and he from an ignorant and mistaken notion sought comfort in an alehouse.
My mother’s ignorance of household duties; my father’s consequent irritability and intemperance; the frightful poverty; the constant quarrelling, the pernicious example to my brothers and sisters; the bad effect upon the future conduct of my brothers; one and all of us being forced out to work, so young, that our feeble earnings would produce only 1s. a week; cold and hunger, and the innumerable sufferings of my childhood, crowd upon my mind and overpower me. They keep alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of the thousands of families in this great town and neighbourhood, who are in a similar state of horrible misery. My own experience tells me that the instruction of the female in the work of a house, in teaching them to produce cheerfulness and comfort at the fire-side, would prevent a great amount of misery and crime. There would be fewer drunken husbands and disobedient children. As a working man, within my own observation female education is disgracefully neglected. I attach more importance to it than to anything else. They impart the first impression to the young susceptible mind; they model the child from which is formed the future man.

2. As regards males and females promiscuously together in one manufactory, I do consider it as having a most immoral tendency. I have always found, where the intercourse was promiscuous, the females to be careless in their dress, indecent in their conversation, unchaste in their conduct; in fact, they are inferior in all respects to those who are kept apart from the male sex. Look at the young women employed the higher department of the manufactory, the warehouse for instance, under the superintending care of a master of sober and moral character. Here will be neatness of dress, decent and becoming conversation, and attention to business. Intellectual education, whether from a Sunday school or other sources, produces a marked distinction of improvement. It is not difficult to imagine a young female, of pleasing face and person, exposed, by being placed in a manufactory, to the lewd remarks and familiarities of the coarse and dissipated of the other sex. Perhaps not one idea of virtue was ever established in the mind of this susceptible and credulous creature. She is now put in the certain path to ruin and seduction. She is often treated as an inferior being; until some infamous seducer flatters to obtain her ruin. She is the victim of her own confiding and unsuspecting nature, but she is branded for being extremely vicious.
Suppose the weekly earnings of a female to be 6s, and this is above the average, out of this she has to pay for lodgings, for clothes, and for the making of them too, for she cannot make them herself never having been taught; her washing after work-hours, she will do herself; in her outlay she most be frugal to keep clear of the inconveniences of debt.
There can be little or no saving in this instance. Suppose the poor creature to be put to half time, or to be thrown out of work all together, she has no parents, no friends to fall back upon, resources she can have none; what then is the alternative?
The answer is obvious.

3. With respect to “turn outs,” much bad feeling is oftentimes created by the unwillingness of a principal to listen to the complaints of their work-people; to talk over kindly; and with a good feeling, their mutual differences. By this means misunderstandings would be made clear; concessions made; unjust and unfounded suspicions on both sides prevented; and the painful suffering to families, and loss of property to the masters need not take place.
It is a fact that in my trade, at our place, no “turn out” ever took place; and yet our list of prices is a standard for the town; my shopmates were all well informed, and still more my employer was open at all times to easy access. He never refused to listen to the most trifling complaint. The manager also was a man of an amiable disposition.
His mediations were just and satisfactory to both parties. I remember with pleasure the testimony of a silver snuff-box being presented to him for his honourable and conciliatory conduct.—(Inscription: “Presented to Mr. Joseph Conway, as a tribute of respect, by a few friends in the employ of Messrs. Hammond, Turner, and Son, May the 7th, 1828.”)
The only instance of anything like disaffection took place at our manufactory in the beginning of 1838. It had no reference to prices. It was concerning privileges. A wrong notion prevailed. The best informed were open to conviction, and kept to their work; the others, 4 of them, who were extremely ignorant, left their work, but soon afterwards repented of their precipitate and short-sighted conduct.

4. I have seen the entire ruin of many families from the waste of money and bad conduct of fathers and sons seeking amusement and pastime in an ale-house. From no other single cause alone does half so much demoralization and misery proceed.
Here I am forced back to the painful scenes of my childhood. Thousand and millions resort to the ale-house for conversation and amusement; and it would be anything but paternal on the part of Government to break up, or attempt to break up these places, without furnishing them with other recreative resources, as for instance, gymnastic exercises, quoits, cricket, &c.; public gardens, walks, baths, reading-rooms; &c.
Having worked in a manufactory 40 years, the effects of ignorance amongst the working people have been the cause of much uneasiness to myself.
The better a man was educated the better workman he made; and more civil and obliging to his employers, and the more respected and valued by them. I speak from the experience and observation of many years. Instruction and kindness towards the working classes has an elevating tendency. Women’s minds are often debased by the coarse and brutal conduct and conversation of their masters. The one mode of treatment creates better servants, and therefore better domestic characters; the other produces viciousness and brutality of feeling.
If the rich knew how much they could accomplish by condescension and example they would not be so scanty of kindness to the poor.
As a proof what kindness may produce, I will speak of my own place of work.
An aunt was employed upwards of 70 years; my mother 30 years; my father 30 years; myself upwards of 40 years; a son, who works under me, is now within a few days of being of age. Others have worked at the manufactory from periods of 10 to 50 years.
December 7, 1840. (Signed) JOSEPH CORBETT.
[Note.—This most creditable statement, the product of a Birmingham mechanic, is inserted without a single alteration of any kind.]