Water: Andrew DWYER

He came from over the sea, well almost, he came from Ireland. 

I’ve been in search of Andrew Dwyer for a very long time. So long in fact that you’d think I’d have given up the search by now wouldn’t you? Well the answer is a definite no. I come back to him regularly, but he remains one of my brick walls. I’m just rambling here because I don’t think there will be much to write about this maternal great grandfather.

According to details from public documents he was born in Kilkenny, Ireland. What the documents don’t say is if he was born in Kilkenny Town or Kilkenny County, that lack of information contributes to a huge brick wall.

Here’s what I know for sure about him.

Andrew Dwyer said he was born in c 1837 in Kilkenny, his father was called John. On 29 January 1854 he married Susan Crocker, and he died in Canning Town Essex on September 7th 1895. Andrew and Susan had 13 children in 20 years.

In the records there is considerable discrepancy in his year of birth, from 1834 on his marriage certificate at age 20, to 1845 on his death certificate. On the four census records that he appears on his birth year ranges between 1836 and 1837. Susan was the person who notified his death and can be forgiven for probably getting his age wrong, because if he was indeed only 50 this would give him a birth year of 1845, making him just ten years old at his marriage.

Susan was born in Bristol of Irish Parents.

Not unusually they both have the same address on the marriage certificate, that of Roscoe Street, Plaistow Marsh, Westham. This meant that they only had to pay for the reading of the banns in one parish. Their witnesses were Thomas Crocker and Catherine McCarthy.

I cannot find Andrew on the 1851 census, but he is on the 1861 at Chemical Cottage, North Woolwich Road, Westham. Occupation Chemical Works labourer. The different birthplaces of the two children indicates that they had previously lived in Poplar.

While I cannot find exactly where the Chemical Cottages were that the family lived in along North Woolwich Road, nearby were many chemical companies including the Gibbs Manure and Vitriol factory. The advantage of living so close to where Andrew worked would have far and away been outweighed by the stink that emanated from them. In one of the articles I read it was described as a 'very powerful pungent odour’ and an ‘empyreumatic odour’. 

Sulphuric acid was made by burning sulphur and other minerals. The smell from adjacent slaughterhouses that imported cattle to provide the raw materials to manufacture manure, liquid blood and dried animal bones, merging with guano and other noxious substances would have seeped into the very fabric of everyday life. It is no wonder then that they had by the 1871 census moved house by the 1871 census. While his occupation remained labourer, now it was in an iron works
1871 Census

Andrew may have worked for one of the East End’s biggest employers, The Thames Ironworks. It would have been a huge industrial area noisy with workshops and foundries requiring a very large workforce.

http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/conMediaFile.319/Moving-a-beam-at-the-Thames-Ironworks.html

The 1881 census shows that the family had again moved, this time to 27 Brunel Street, Westham. With his occupation as iron labourer he could have still be employed at The Thames Ironworks. Andrew and Susan’s family had grown and this census finds their married daughter Annie Pirret living at home, as well as Andrew’s cousin Isaac Hayes

Labouring work was physically hard and not well paid, and I initially thought that Andrew’s change of occupation at age 56, on the 1891 census, to gas stoker might have meant a less physical job. How wrong could I have been. This except from Flora Tristram’s London Journal, and the following image of the Retort House, Great Central Gas Works, Bow Common, London.

In the big boiler-house: the row of furnaces on either side were burning brightly… There were about twenty men present, going about their work in a slow, deliberate fashion. Those with nothing to do stood motionless, lacking the energy even to wipe away the sweat streaming down their bodies…The foreman told me that only the strongest men were selected as stokers; even so, they all developed chest diseases after seven or eight years of the work, and invariably died of consumption. That accounted for the misery and apathy depicted on every countenance and apparent in every movement the poor wretches made. 1891 Census

On this census, the 1891, married daughter Kate, (Gibson) and her two children were living at home along with Andrew, Susan and three of the other children at 34 Brunel Street Westham.

Sadly, the next time I find information about Andrew is his death, just four years later in 1895. Cause of death, jaundice of five days. His wife Susan appears to have given his age as 50, but he would have been closer to 60, and at this age was still labouring in a gas works. 

The Beckton Gasworks opened in 1870 and employed thousands of men to stoke the furnaces in almost intolerable heat. A working day could be anything up to eighteen hours a day seven days a week to supply gas to the rapidly growing city of London. Demand for gas was much higher in the winter meaning that come summertime many workers were laid off, leaving them to seek employment as casual labourers on the nearby docks.

In 1889, thousands of men were working long, hard days in unsafe conditions for pitiful wages at the Beckton Gas Works in East London. Stokers could shovel coal for up to 13 hours a day and take home just 5 pence (2.5pence in modern money) per hour.