Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

On the 21st of May, the manager posted the following notice at the company’s works: “The forge and mills will be laid off during the whole of the next week through Whitsuntide holidays, unless a sufficient number of men from each department express their willingness to the manager during tomorrow to commence work on Monday night and continue without fail till Saturday evening. After considering the number of men from the respective departments who are willing to work, the company will then decide whether to light up any of the mills or forges.” On the following day the following notice was posted: “In consequence of the holidays to be held during next week it has been decided to lay both the mills and forge totally idle during the whole of Whit Week, and the fires will not therefore be relighted until Monday the 1st of June.”

Comment

Comment

My possibly mistaken impression is that some of the workers figured that they could have their cake and eat it – pretend they had been frustrated in their desire to work by their employer, and extract holiday pay for Whit Week. The arbitration award (included in op cit) by pioneering industrial arbitrator Rupert Kettle (succinct bio (Ward 1887) – see also his Strikes and Arbitrations (Kettle 1866)) is interesting:

I hold that the employers could not legally act upon the first notice, nor were any portion of the workmen legally competent to bind their fellows by themselves consenting not to work. The contract of hiring and service is an individual and several contract between the employers of the one part, and the workmen of the other part; and unless there is some express stipulation to the contrary in the contract the employer is bound to find work, and the workman to work for his employer, during the whole of every ordinary working day. When the Darlington Iron Works were closed on the 29th of May, any workman who attended there in the regular course of his duty might:
1. Have summoned under the Master and Servant Act, the person with whom his hiring contract was made.
2. Or, after holding himself at the service of his employers every working day until the next ordinary reckoning time, have demanded his full wages, and, if not paid, he might have recovered the amount by a civil action.
3. Or, the workman might treat the refusal to employ as a recession of the contract, and, therefore, rescind it on his part, so that the contract would be determined by mutual consent.
The workmen who are parties to this arbitration have chosen to take the last mentioned course. They went on Monday, by their agents, to the office of the Darlington Iron Co., and demanded to be paid up and allowed to leave the service. This demand was not complied with on the Monday, but, upon its being repeated on the following Wednesday, the discontented workmen were paid up and allowed to leave their employment. Payment and satisfaction was thus made of everything which could be claimed under the contract, and it was therefore rescinded by mutual consent.
I award that no further claim can be made by the workmen.

Under William Barningham’s ownership most of the workforce were apparently Irish immmigrants.

Whitsuntide in Lancashire:

The Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsuntide, was formerly kept as a high church festival, and by the people was celebrated by out-door sports and festivities, and especially by the drinking assemblies called “Whitsun-Ales.” One writer (inquiring whether the custom of “lifting at Easter” is a memorial of Christ being raised up from the grave) observes that, “there seems to be a trace of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the heads of the Apostles, in what passes at Whitsuntide Fair, in some parts of Lancashire; where one person holds a stick over the head of another, whilst a third, unperceived, strikes the stick, and thus gives a smart blow to the first. But this probably is only local.” “Whit-week,” as it is generally called, has gradually grown to be the great yearly holiday of the hundred of Salford, and the manufacturing district of which Manchester is the centre. This seems to have arisen from the yearly races at Manchester being held from the Wednesday to the Saturday inclusive, in that week. After the rise of Sunday-schools, their conductors, desiring to keep youth of both sexes from the demoralizing recreations of the racecourse, took them to fields in the neighbourhood and held anniversary celebrations, tea-parties, &c., in the schools. The extension of the railway system has led to “cheap trips” and “school excursion trains” during Whitsuntide; which are occasionally taken to Wales, the Lakes, and other great distances. Canal boats take large numbers of Sunday scholars to Dunham Park, Worsley, &c. Short excursions are made in carts, temporarily fitted with seats. It is customary for the cotton-mills, &c., to close for Whitsuntide week to give the hands a holiday; the men going to the races, &c., and the women visiting Manchester on Whit-Saturday, thronging the markets, the Royal Exchange, the Infirmary Esplanade, and other public places; and gazing in at the “shop windows,” whence this day is usually called “Gaping Saturday.” The collieries, too, are generally closed in Whit-week; and in some the underground horses are brought to the surface to have a week’s daylight, the only time they enjoy it during the year. The mills, coalpits, &c., generally have the requisite repairs of machinery, &c., made during this yearly holiday – those at least which would necessitate the stoppage of the work at another time (Harland 1867).

1899: Daily News 18 May 7/1 “Whit-week would be a very good time to close the schools.”

More on the plant in the 1870s.

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Original

THE HOLIDAY QUESTION AT DARLINGTON IRONWORKS.
MR RUPERT KETTLE’S AWARD.
Mr Rupert Kettle has made his award as arbitrator to the North of England Iron Trade upon the holiday question, which has lately promised so seriously to interfere, not with that industry alone, but with all the leading manufacturing operations in the country by reason of the action taken by certain Darlington ironworkers last Whitsuntide, and the decision thereon by the County Court judge of the South Durham district, by which employers were made responsible for workmen’s wages during local holidays.
The award is as follows:-
Case of the Darlington Iron Co.-On the 21st of May last, the manager posted the following notice at the company’s works:-
“The forge and mills will be laid off during the whole of the next week through Whitsuntide holidays, unless a sufficient number of men from each department express their willingness to the manager during to-morrow (Friday) to commence work on Monday night, and continue without fail till Saturday evening; after considering the number of men from the respective departments who are willing to work, the company will then decide whether to light up any of the mills or forges.”
On the following day (May 22) the following notice was posted at the same works:-
“In consequence of the holidays to be held during next week it has been decided to lay both the mills and forge totally idle during the whole of Whit-week, and the fires will not therefore be relighted until Monday, the 1st of June.”
I hold that the employers could not legally act upon the first notice, nor were any portion of the workmen legally competent to bind their fellows by themselves consenting not to work. The contract of hiring and service is an individual and several contract between the employers of the one part, and the workmen of the other part; and unless there is some express stipulation to the contrary in the contract the employer is bound to find work, and the workman to work for his employer during the whole of every ordinary working day. The law guards carefully the right of the workman to earn his daily bread, and it guards with equal care the right of the master to have in time, skill, and force, the full service of the workman. The law will not encourage any implied exception to this mutual obligation under the contract of hiring and service in favour of public festivities, merrymakings, or sports. When masters seek to enforce the penal law against workmen for neglect of work at what is popularly called holiday times, magistrates usually decline to convict. I believe it is from this practice that a loose general notion has arisen that workmen may refuse to work at certain local or general holiday times. It does not, however, follow that because the magistrate does not find evidence sufficient to convict, the judge of a civil court would not, even upon the same evidence, enforce the terms of the contract, or give damages for a breach thereof. The criminal judge would determine whether the excuse for neglect of work or of finding employment was so far reasonable as to reduce the offence from what would otherwise be a crime to an act of mere misconduct, but the civil judge cannot give effect to any such excuse; he must strictly construe and strictly enforce the contract.
When the Darlington Iron Works were closed on the 29th of May, any workman who attended there in the regular course of his duty might:
1. Have summoned under the Master and Servant Act, the person with whom his hiring contract was made.
2. Or, after holding himself at the service of his employers every working day until the next ordinary reckoning time, have demanded his full wages, and, if not paid, he might have recovered the amount by a civil action.
3. Or, the workman might treat the refusal to employ as a recession of the contract, and, therefore, rescind it on his part, so that the contract would be determined by mutual consent.
The workmen who are parties to this arbitration have chosen to take the last mentioned course. They went on Monday, by their agents, to the office of the Darlington Iron Co., and demanded to be paid up and allowed to leave the service. This demand was not complied with on the Monday, but, upon its being repeated on the following Wednesday, the discontented workmen were paid up and allowed to leave their employment. Payment and satisfaction was thus made of everything which could be claimed under the contract, and it was therefore rescinded by mutual consent.
I award that no further claim can be made by the workmen.
RUPERT A. KETTLE, Arbitrator.

813 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Arbitral tribunal (1) ·
• Arbitration (1) ·
• Barningham, William (1825-82) (2), Arkengarthdale (NY)-born Darlington ironmaster, metal speculator, controversial testator (wife died November 1883 aged 57) ·
• Breach of contract (1) ·
• Common Law Procedure Act 1854 (1) ·
• Darlington Iron Company (2), aka Darlington Steel and Iron Company, owner (of the aka Albert Hill and Springfield works) till 1872 William Barningham ·
• Darlington (5) ·
• Dispute resolution (1) ·
• English folklore (17) ·
• Folklore (4) ·
• Holiday (5) ·
• Ireland (24) ·
• Irish Catholics (10) ·
• Kettle, Rupert Alfred (1817-94) (1), barrister and judge, pioneering arbitrator of trade disputes ·
• Lancashire (34) ·
• Master and Servant Act 1867 (1) ·
• Master and Servant Act (1) ·
• United Kingdom labour law (1) ·
• Whitsuntide (4), the week following Whitsunday, traditionally one of three holiday weeks for medieval serfs ·

All tags.

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