Joseph Lewis

  General Notes:

IGI has two entries for Joseph Lewis christening in 1834. First gives 9th Feb 1834, Sedgley, Stafford, parents Joseph Lewis and Mary. Second gives 28th Dec 1834, Tipton, Stafford, parents Joseph Lewis and Mary.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Census, 1841, Sedgley, Stafford. Listed as age 7 and living in Princes End with parents and 6 siblings.

• Census, 1851, Sedgley, Stafford. Listed as age 16 and living in the High Street, Princes End with parents and 3 siblings. Occupation is a Furnace Man.

• Census, 1861, Tipton, Stafford. ⁴⁹ Listed as age 26 and living at Princes End, Tipton, with his wife and 3 children. Occupation is a Puddler in Forge.

• Census, 1871, Motherwell, Lanarkshire. Listed as age 36 and living at St Vincents Place, Motherwell with 5 children. Widower, and occupation is Iron Puddler.

• Census, 1881, Rushall, Stafford, England. Boarding at 3 Cannon Street, the household of Mr Thomas Sharp.

• Occupation: Iron Worker. In a number of census' he is listed as "Iron Puddler". This was a highly skilled job. Historian David Landes writes: "The puddling furnace remained the bottleneck of the industry. Only men of remarkable strength and endurance could stand up to the heat for hours, turn and stir the thick porridge of liquescent metal, and draw off the blobs of pasty wrought iron. The puddlers were the aristocracy of the proletariat, proud, clannish, set apart by sweat and blood. Few of them lived past forty. Numerous efforts were made to mechanize the puddling furnace - in vain. Machines could be made to stir the bath, but only the human eye and touch could separate out the solidifying decarburized metal. The size of the furnace and productivity gains were limited accordingly" (The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. VI, Part I, 1966, p. 447).

Joseph married Ann Barnes, daughter of James Barnes and Elizabeth Morris, on 21 Oct 1855 in Wellington, Shropshire. (Ann Barnes was born in 1831 in Bilston, Stafford, christened on 2 Oct 1831 in Bilston, Stafford and died on 9 Jul 1868 in Dalziel, Lanarkshire, Scotland.)