Sarah Priest

Sarah Priest

So what is a Priest doing in a Brettle family history?   Sarah Priest (nee Morris) was my maternal grandmother and the only grandparent I knew as a child so her background is of particular interest to me, and, I hope you.  Sarah Morris was born in 1875 at Tibbetts Gardens in Cradley Heath.  Tibbetts Gardens were not as salubrious as its name may sound, in fact it was an area of deprivation even by the standards of the time.  I cannot find old photographs of Tibbetts Gardens itself but the photo of the nearby Anvil Yard chain shops was very similar.  You can read more about chain shops (back yard smithies) and their significance, especially for women workers, in the section on Black Country History.  

Sarah appears as a chain maker, aged 16, in the 1891 census.  In 1896 Sarah married  William Harling, listed as a blacksmith on their wedding certificate and variously recorded in census information as a striker (part of a heavy chain making team), an odd maker (maker of small iron articles e.g. draft horse bridle parts), smith, shacklemaker and a shipping tackle smith: all similar hot metal working occupations.  The 1901 census shows that William had moved to find work as a smith servicing a coal mines in Barnsley Yorkshire, living with his sister and brother in law there.  Sarah and their young children Ethel and Benjamin did not follow him but moved back to Sarah's mothers in Tibbetts gardens.  William returned shortly afterwards but died aged 31 in 1905.  Sarah was left with Ethel, Benjamin and two further children Polly and William Godfrey Harling although William Godfrey died, less than a year old, in the same year as his father, William.  Times must indeed have been grim.  The widowed Sarah remarried in 1909 to David Amos Priest and they had three further children, Nellie, David Edward and Bessie.  By 1911 the whole family were recorded as living in Church St. Old Hill.

Sarah's "claim to fame" is that she was a member of the National Federation of Women Workers and took part in the women chain makers strike, a seminal event in trade union history (see here).   In the Autumn of 1910 the women chainmakers of Cradley Heath and Old Hill went on strike for a living wage.    Women chainmakers, one of the "sweated trades" identified by the 1909 Liberal Government had a minimum wage specified by the government's Chain Trade Board.  The employers refused to pay this and the women chain making worker went on strike. You can find much more information on the strike, its origins and outcomes here.  The photograph shows a strikers meeting being addressed by the charismatic Mary Macarthur, the famous feminist trade unionist in 1910. with Sarah Priest and her husband David beside her in the second row.  Why Sarah was the only person in the entire audience who was smiling remains a topic of family speculation!  After 10 weeks the women won their strike and their earnings more than doubled from 5 shillings (25p) to 11 shillings (55p) per week.