*3 weeks later*

It’s been quite the time jump from last post to this one!

I’ve been incredibly productive and thoroughly enjoying my time in the Soho archives at the Library of Birmingham.

I’m over halfway through the undergraduate research scholarship now and I have been pleasantly surprised by how much relevant content I’ve managed to discover within the archives. The amount of secondary work that even for a moment mentioned women and/or child workers was sparse so I did not have high hopes. Neither did my supervisor. I think he was fully expecting my funding to paid for me to waste my time for five weeks ploughing through documents and discovering not one single item of useful information.

The content that I have found is hardly comprehensive, rather it allows insight into a few varying perspectives of life at Soho.

I’ve found out about women workers as burnishers – 19 workers, all female, all named and all literate enough to write about their duties, and calculate their wages.

I’ve seen that servants were mentioned in correspondence and might be a viable avenue of research if my later choices are fruitless.

I’ve learned the geographical locations male teenage apprentices originated from and the different arts they were instructed in.

I’ve discovered that 22 windows were broken by the boys and apprentices in just one year from the fitting department.

I attempted to trace whether all the boys and apprentices who received Christmas presents were sons of workmen already at Soho, but this has been an arduous task and near impossible because it’s highly likely that the boys who were orphans that Boulton took in and trained up were given the surname of the respectable worker families in whose houses they lodged.

Most of the evidence I have managed to find so far has come from the end of Boulton & Watt Snr’s ‘reign’ and has more of Boulton & Watt Jnrs involvement.

I’d like to find mentions of women workers in correspondence, because I have found a lot of evidence for women workers in the Manufactory from visitor accounts, but no proper documents yet.

My next task, after finishing with the charming Christmas presents lists, which I am calling my favourite primary source, is to find children workers…somehow.

Teenage apprentices are all well and good, but I know there were children working in the Manufactory and I intend to find evidence to support that from within the archives.

Research resumes Tuesday when the archives are next open and I hope to find yet more enlightening and entertaining sources – if I get to browsing the correspondence I’m certain to find the latter!