A Dictionary of Pub, Inn & Tavern Signs by Colin Waters

It was typical enough of a Victorian husband and father to turn his hand to a series of different jobs to earn enough to support his family, but whenever Benjamin Titford was asked to state his occupation on any formal document, he declared that he was a ‘silversmith’ – the trade to which he had initially been apprenticed but one which he had never actively practised as a way of making a living. ‘I’m a doctor’, ‘I work in the media’, ‘I’m an electrician down the pit’ what a wealth of social information these innocent little phrases contain! I had a great-great grandfather who worked in London as a pawnbroker’s assistant, later becoming a commercial clerk, a general salesman and a shopkeeper. As a conversational gambit, ‘What do you do?’ follows quickly on the heels of ‘How do you do?’ keen as we are to pigeon-hole people and to understand what makes them tick, we often feel more at ease once we know what a person does for a living – or even what a retired person used to do for a living. O let us love our occupations, Bless the squire and his relations, Live upon our daily rations, And always know our proper stations (Charles Dickens, The Chimes, 1845) Not all of us love our occupations, but in a very real sense they define who we are. Produced through MRM Associates Ltd., Reading No reproduction permitted without the prior permission of the publisher.

V.434 W.440 X.456 Y.457 Z.458 Back Matter.459 Also Available.459Ī DICTIONARY OF OLD TRADES, TITLES AND OCCUPATIONSįirst published in 1999 by Countryside Books 3 Catherine Road Newbury, Berkshire Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by Andrews UK Limited Text © Colin Waters 1999, 2002 Illustrations © The Colin Waters Collection 1999, 2002 All rights reserved.

A Dictionary of Pub, Inn & Tavern Signs by Colin Waters