Can I just add something about Blacksmiths that got me into a heated discussion in the 80’s with a very old family member of my wife’s. His claim to fame was that in 1979 (aged 82) he had been interviewed by an Open University team investigating “Industrial working life at the beginning of the 20th Century”. He told how he served his Blacksmithing apprenticeship, became a Journeyman and later a Smithy in his own right. But what the OU team wanted from him was his experience working in a Railway Works in a vast “Smithy” Workshop where he had been the Foreman; complete with Bowler Hat.
I had been able to listen to the family copy of the OU tape which was entertaining as much as I could understand: imagine a deep North Bucks/South Northants accent. The tape was littered with anecdotes, mild blasphemies and he constantly strayed off topic, until brought back by the OU team. The thing I picked up on was that time and again he would retort (imagine the vernacular)..”he weren’t no ‘Smithy’...he was a Striker; there bain’t more n’ handful of true Smithies in the place”.
Now as it happened I recalled my father explaining about a relative who had been a Striker, and having explained this did not mean he went on strike, but that he was an Apprentice Blacksmith. So I asked the question if the Strikers in his factory were in fact Apprenticed Blacksmiths; and then regretted asking!
Leaving aside the dialect vernacular and his anecdotes about “striking while the iron is hot” and joke about “when the Smithy nods his head, the Striker hits it”, I learned simply that a Striker worked as an assistant to the Smithy. He was not a Blacksmith (Smithy), or even an Apprentice Smithy, but –as would have it – usually a local man with muscle who was taught to wield a hammer.
His job was to strike the iron whilst the Smithy held it with tongs. He reluctantly admitted a good Striker was worth a ‘half-penny an hour’ more than a poor one, but that was about as far as it went. He also told me that long after he had retired, automatic power hammers replaced the Striker.
So now you know if you ever come across the term - as I have frequently in my Tree- a Blacksmith Striker or plain Striker is a Blacksmith’s assistant, especially if working in a Factory. However I add the rider that in the smaller Smithies, a striker was more often than not also serving an Apprenticeship.
