Working at a stable and the docks in 19th c. Boston

Belle_91

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Hey everybody! So my WIP is set in 19th c. Boston and is about the lives of Irish-Americans. I want to have them work in a stable in the city (either a liberty stable or one privately owned) and the docks, but I have some questions.

If you were a well-to-do Boston Brahmin living on Beacon Hill, where would you keep your horse? Would all of those houses have an individual stable? I assumed that most of them would have kept their horses at a local liberty stable, but I just wanted to make sure. Also, where would these horses graze? I know back in colonial days, the Boston Commons was where you could take animals to graze, but what about in the 1860s?

Also, when you went to the docks to find work (as many Irishmen did) who did you go and see? Like who was your boss that would hire you on?

I hope these questions don't sound stupid. I am doing a lot of research, but I'm having trouble finding out about particulars. Thanks! Have a nice day.
 

benbenberi

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I don't know Boston, but in NYC in the mid-19c the well-to-do commonly stabled horses and kept their carriages in a mews (which might or might not be located in the same block as the houses). There are still a few left -- they're very desirable residential spaces now.

I doubt that urban horses would have had much chance to graze in the normal day to day. (See Black Beauty for some details on how city horses lived in London.)
 

snafu1056

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Working on the docks usually meant working as a longshoreman (sometimes called a stevedore). These were the guys who loaded and unloaded cargo on ships. They were day laborers, so that meant they showed up early in the morning wherever a big cargo ship was due to dock (they could get this info from the papers) and waited to get chosen for work by a foreman who worked for the company that was in charge of loading and unloading for the shipping line. Because foremen were the ones who picked the work crews, longshoremen spent a lot of time "balling them off"--that is, wining and dining them to guarantee themselves future work. This was practically part of the job. Other than that there was lots of downtime and waiting involved. Crowds of longshoremen could always be found napping or hanging around the docks waiting for work to open up. The tool of the trade for a longshoremen was his hook, which was used to grab cargo bundles. Generally you had to supply your own hook.

If you got on a work crew you either worked at one of the ship's hatches or down in the hold, which was considered harder work. There were also other jobs like shoveling coal into ships for ballast, but this didnt pay as well. It was dangerous work overall, and longshoremen were always getting injured or killed. It was also perfect work for immigrants and the uneducated because all it took was brute strength.

Im pretty sure they already had a union by the 1860s (the longshoreman's protective society), and strikes were common. A longshoreman's salary for the 1860s wouldve been around 15-20 cents an hour. His weekly pay would probably be around 5-10 dollars a week. If he was part of the union he made more. Union workers had to pay to join the union and also paid a monthly fee of about a dime.
 
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oldhousejunkie

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Hey everybody! So my WIP is set in 19th c. Boston and is about the lives of Irish-Americans. I want to have them work in a stable in the city (either a liberty stable or one privately owned) and the docks, but I have some questions.

If you were a well-to-do Boston Brahmin living on Beacon Hill, where would you keep your horse? Would all of those houses have an individual stable? I assumed that most of them would have kept their horses at a local liberty stable, but I just wanted to make sure. Also, where would these horses graze? I know back in colonial days, the Boston Commons was where you could take animals to graze, but what about in the 1860s?

Also, when you went to the docks to find work (as many Irishmen did) who did you go and see? Like who was your boss that would hire you on?

I hope these questions don't sound stupid. I am doing a lot of research, but I'm having trouble finding out about particulars. Thanks! Have a nice day.


Hi Belle,

If you haven't already, read "The Tea Rose" by Jennifer Donnelly. While set in London, it features Irish immigrants living in the East End where most folks were employed at the docks. It has a lot of interesting factoids. You may be able to consult her bibliography as well.

Also don't forget the extreme bias against the Irish in America during the
1860s.

I agree with Benbenberi in that most of houses on Beacon Hill would have had their own carriage house/stable. This is generally where alleys came into being--they separated the main house/gardens from the horses. Livery stables probably would have been used by folks who did not have their own stables (i.e. bachelors living in apartments, upper middle class folk, etc.) or used by visitors looking to stable their horses or in some cases, rent horses.

Good luck!
 

RationalIdealist

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I found a really interesting piece about the lives, work, and politics of nineteenth century dockworkers from Princeton University Press. It can be found here:

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s6947.pdf

Note: When you click on the link, it does take a little while to load the whole 44-page PDF. So don't do what I did and frantically click and re-click the link to make it work. ;)
 
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