Brian, I took me a while to dig out the article as it was written by Scilla Stephenson not Pat Brunsden, my mistake as Pat is looking into the poor house records. It is in lace 117, p15, and is in response to an article in Lace 114 p12 which had a more general analysis of occupations in the 1841 census.
Scilla looked at the 1851 census, recording villages to the South and West of St Neots - which is on Bedfordshire - Hunts border, and to the North and East towards Huntingdon and the border with Cambridgeshire, on the East side of the river Great Ouse. As I said, she covers Toseland and Graveley parish (22 lacemakers) but misses Yelling. Yelling was a village of 386 persons in 1851, and had 4 lacemakers recorded all between the ages of 11 and 19. No occupations were recorded for their mothers so it is possible they also made lace. In Toseland the wife is often down a lacemaker as well as the daughters. In 1861 most of them are still there but the enumerator has chosen not to record any female occupations. No straw plaiters either. A quick scan for villages just to the South and East of Yelling & Toseland, reveals a scattering of lacemakers in Eltisley, but none in Croxton, Caxton, or Papworth St Agnes, so this really is the fringe. Louise Schlumberger-Private [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pdf which had a name of Lace 117 p15.pdf] - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
