After reading through the following slides, you will write a diary entry from the view of a Navvie. Parents/carers may help you read through the slides to get you started! Save your work and when we return after half term you will be issued a username and password to access Fronter. You will be able to upload your PowerPoint side to our class page. Good luck! Fox Class… Homework

Navvies

What are Navvies? In Victorian times, canals were dug out by hand. Navigations, meaning canals and navigable rivers, were excavated by groups of workers known as ‘Navvies’. They had a bad reputation for drunkenness and violence.

What tools did they use? Navvies would use basic tools such as spades, picks and wheel barrows to dig out and move earth and stone.

Can you imagine having to dig out miles and miles of canals using only your hands and basic tools?

The building of a lock in Manchester. Navvies worked long hours in very difficult conditions. They faced all weathers, rain, frost, wind and even snow!

Where did Navvies live? Navvies and their whole families would live in cramped temporary huts or tents near the canal. When a section of the canal was built they would move on. They were not liked by local people who feared their reputation.

Navvies worked very hard. The work was very dangerous and could even lead to serious injuries such as loss of limbs or even death when canals collapsed! This Navvie lost his hand but continued to work.

Navvies were not always older men.

Digging the canal After a canal channel was dug, it had to be lined with ‘puddle’ to make it watertight. First the channel would be lined with clay that had been transported in carts and then shovelled into place. Next the wet clay would have to be trampled and packed down hard either by the Navvies own feet or by driving sheep or cattle up and down the canal!

The navvies building a canal.

The workforce. As more canals were built, the workforce grew. Many contractors continued to hire unskilled farm workers, who could be paid less than the professionals. Yet it only took a few months to turn an unskilled labourer into a professional Navvie. The labourers preferred digging canals to irregular and badly paid farm work. In any case, these were often men who were too drunk and disrespectful to be hired by farmers.

‘Respectable’ Victorians viewed them as degenerate and a threat to social order, but much of the criticism was unjustified. Despite cruel exploitation and extreme deprivation the navvies achieved amazing feats of engineering, equipped with little more than gunpowder, picks and shovels.

Can you imagine what life must have been like for a Navvie? How hard was the work? Living together in cramped conditions. How dirty must they have got? Low pay and dangerous working conditions. The risk of accidents was high. Talk to your talk partner about what you feel life must have been like for a Navvie.

Friday 5 th November 1836 It is 5 o’clock in the morning and I am so tired. The guvnor woke us up this morning which woke the children too, just what I need is the kids screaming and waking the whole street. I wonder what today will bring? I am working on the Bridgewater canal today, well at least a part of it. I have to move along the river tomorrow as we are nearly finished this section. My hands and feet are so cold. I haven’t got anything to keep me warm. Yesterday Michael got trapped under a section of the canal that collapsed, God rest his soul. I was lucky to get out with just a few scratches. Every night when I get into bed my body aches all over. I am filthy from all the clay and mud and wet all over too – it is a wonder I have not got pneumonia! Still, the ale I had in the pub sorted me out – not that the locals liked me being in there. They told me to go as they didn’t want my sort in their town. They seem to forget I am just doing a job!

Diary Entry Your task today is to write a diary entry from the view of a Navvie. You may choose to be a Navvie who enjoys his job or a Navvie that doesn’t enjoy his job.

What to include? Think about the working hours. Think about the working conditions – what must they have been like and felt like? Cold, hard work, risk of injury, never ending! Think about the living conditions – all cramped together beside the canal. Think about your reputation in the Community – you are feared by everyone in the town. Are you happy with your job?

Diary entry by…. (enter your diary entry here…)