The Etruscan Breadwinners photography album is a significant record of employees at Wedgwood at the turn of the 20th century. Every page includes a group photograph for each department labelled with the names of the employees featured. It was put together in 1898 by Harry Barnard (1862 – 1933), then a designer for the Wedgwood Company, who later became Wedgwood’s London Showroom Manager. You can read more about him on a separate blog post. Barnard produced several photography albums that document life at the factory. The photography albums, along with the hiring books, wage books and employee records are some of the most interesting items held in our archive collection. They represent the stories of the people employed at the factory and provide just enough information to enable a search of traditional family history records to build a picture of their lives outside of the factory. The photographs in the Etruscan Breadwinners album allow us to put faces to the names of those who worked at the factory at the end of the 19th century. Here are two examples of real stories I’ve uncovered about two young workers photographed for this album.
Nellie Davison (1882 – 1973)
Nellie Davison appears in the group photograph of apprentice earthenware ‘paintresses’ in the Etruscan Breadwinners album. Her name can also be found in hiring books for the period. The hiring books provide her date of birth as 13 December 1882 which meant she was 15 or 16 years old when Harry Barnard took the photograph for the album, but also show that she started working for Wedgwood in 1896 as a ‘handpaintress’ making her part of the team of women who applied hand painted decoration onto ceramic pieces. Two addresses are provided for Nellie, 38 Cavour Street and 54 Cavour Street, both on the same street in Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent and situated a very short walk away from the since demolished Wedgwood factory at Etruria. Nellie also features in several wage books dated from 1913-1934 so we can get an idea of the amount she was earning on a weekly basis. For example, in the week ending 11 March 1920, she was paid 1 pound, 19 shillings and 2 pence. This wage is the equivalent of £106.10 in 2025.
The date of birth and addresses provide us with enough information to find Nellie on census records. She first appears in the 1891 census which shows that she is the youngest of eight children in a household that also includes her mother, Lavinia Davison and grandmother Tamar Owen. Her mother is described as a widow so her father must have passed away in the years between her birth and when the census was taken. Of the seven household members that are shown as working, only one member, her sister, Lily Davison, does not work in the pottery industry but as a dressmaker. I could not find any records for the family on the 1901 census, but they do appear in later censuses. By 1911, the family are living at 38 Cavour Street as a household of six. Marriage and death records show that one brother, Frederick passed away in 1902 and two sisters, Minnie and Maud potentially got married and moved away. The 1921 census is very interesting as it records the names of employers as well as occupation and shows that both Nellie and her brother Harry worked at Wedgwood, Nellie as a paintress and Harry as a printer. Nellie does appear in the 1939 register and is living with her brother Harry and Rose at 54 Cavour Street. She is fifty-seven and still working as a paintress. According to death records, Nellie passed away in 1973 in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent at the age of 90.
With just a small amount of information from employee records in our archives, we can map out details of Nellie’s life. There are some gaps, particularly between the 1939 register and her death, but we can build a picture of her family life during the time she worked at the factory, and thanks to this album, we can also see what she looked like.
Bert Bentley (1878 – 1937)
Alfred Herbert ‘Bert’ Bentley is one of the more familiar workers featured in the album and he became known for his work as a modeller and ornamentor. He is included in the photograph for jasper decorators on the second row. One of the most interesting records we hold about Bert Bentley is his birth certificate. Bentley was adopted and the certificate lists his birth parents, William Dodd and Elizabeth Dodd (née Jackson). He was born on 15 February 1878 in Newcastle and his birth was registered by his birth mother. In the 1881 census, Bentley is listed as Alfred H Dodd, the adopted child of Eli Bentley, a police constable and Mary Ann Bentley. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any records in our collection or elsewhere that provide any details of the adoption or been able to identify more details about his birth parents in census or marriage records. However, these records tell us that Bentley was adopted at some point before he was 3 years old. According to the marriage records of St. George’s Church, Newcastle-under-Lyme, when Bert married Charlotte Emery in 1901, Eli Bentley is listed as his father.
Bert went on to have three sons and two daughters with his wife Charlotte. One of his sons, Harry, went on to become a guilder at Wedgwood. In both the 1911 and 1921 census, they are shown to be living at 22 Clarence Street, Basford which is roughly a mile away from the Wedgwood Etruria factory. In the Returned Soldiers Book held in our collection, Bert is listed as having served as a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. According to death records, Bentley passed away in 1937 at the age of 58. He had worked at Wedgwood for forty years and in interviews with former colleagues, he is remembered for his sense of fun and interest in history. Bert’s talent was recognised by Wedgwood as he was allowed to mark his initials, ‘BB’, on some of his jasper pieces. We also have a work book dated from the 1920s which lists the items that he made. I found a Staffordshire Sentinel newspaper article relating to his death that reports that he died of untreated ‘pulmonary tuberculosis’. He was buried in 1937 in Hartshill Cemetery in the same plot as his wife Charlotte who had died in 1928.
These are just two examples of how material in the archive can be used to trace the lives of former employees. While some eras are covered better than others, the V&A Wedgwood Collection Archives holds over 250 years of material which can help you trace an ancestor or another Wedgwood employee.
Selected items from the V&A Wedgwood Collection Archives are available on Search the Archives with material being added regularly.
Find out more about visiting the V&A Wedgwood Collection Archives.
