The Midland Railway Study Centre - Ashchurch Staff

Machine Youths

There was a Machine Youth/Lad post in Ashchurch in the early days. It was established on 5th March 1861, and there were five holders of the post, one twice, before the grade was changed to Parcels Porter in 1877. The post would seem to have had porter-type duties (Alfred Taylor identified himself in the census as a railway porter well before the grade was formally changed to porter), though the remuneration, at 6 to 10 shillings per week, was less than that of porters (16) and of the assistant porter (12-14). Two of the goods clerks and an assistant goods clerk in Ashchurch had been Machine Youths elsewhere before being posted to Ashchurch. The two whose next posts are known moved on to become porters elsewhere. One, J Clarke, was promoted to the post of Assistant Stationmaster in Ashchurch when it became vacant in 1865.

Name	Joined from	Pay increments	Next posting
Drinkwater	5/3/1861 (new appt)	1862
Clark J	3/5/64	1864	17/12/65 Ashchurch Asst stationmaster
Drinkwater	17/10/65
Taylor A		1873	18/8/74 parcels porter Clay Cross
Stone R	19/8/73	1874,75	5/11/72 porter Kingsbury
Smith W G	5/10/75	1876,77	4/10/77 Ashchurch parcels porter (post description changed)

Possible associations from the censuses:

Drinkwater is perhaps one of the family of Thomas, innkeeper of the Queen's Head at Aston Cross in the 1860s and 1870s, but it has not been possible to make a firm association.
A Taylor must be the Alfred Taylor, 15 and born in Upton-upon-Severn, who was lodging in Ashchurch in 1871 and shown in the census as working as a railway porter (before the grade was officially changed thus). He was in Newbolt and Dunston, Derbys, in 1881, a railway clerk, and still there in 1901, stationmaster.
W G Smith will be the William George Smith, 20, who in 1881 was living at home in Aston-upon-Carrant, where he had been born, and who was working as a railway porter.