How did the development of the motor car prior to the First World War create new jobs, and who was involved in this industry? Nell Darby gets into gear for the answers

It was back in 1886 that a German inventor, Karl Benz was granted a patent for a new mode of transport that he termed the Benz Patent-Motorwagen; over the course of the next seven years, he sold a grand total of 25, but by the end of the 19th century, Benz was the largest car company worldwide. This was just the latest in a line of vehicles that inventors and entrepreneurs had created: from a model-sized prototype steam-powered machine invented in the late 17th century, to the ‘road locomotive’ built by Richard Trevithick at the start of the 19th. In England, a gas-powered car had been built in 1894, but it wasn’t until the Daimler Company produced a new car in 1897 that the UK had its own production vehicles available.

However, driving was initially an activity of the minority, because of the expense, and also the ‘Red Flag’ act which made it mandatory, for safety reasons, for a man to walk in front of every car with a red flag, warning people of its existence. In 1896, however, the act was repealed when the Locomotives on the Highways Act was passed, making motoring a more attractive prospect. At this point, one Scottish editorial welcomed the ‘advent of the motor-car’, and the removal of the ‘legal barriers which have hitherto prevented its use in this country’. In anticipation of the repeal, the Motor Car Club had already announced its first ‘meet’ the following week, and a ‘trial trip’ – something of a race between rival car manufacturers – to Brighton would also take place, featuring cars from England, America, France and Germany (‘this trip ought to provide a capital test of what motor cars can generally do, as well as give a good idea of the respective merits of the different types of vehicle’).

Just three years later, in 1899, one north-east newspaper was noting that ‘the motor car has now invaded the streets of Newcastle, and looks like staying’. Then, in 1903, the Motor Car Act was introduced, increasing the speed limit from 14mph to 20, and removing some other restrictions on driving. Over in the United States, five years later, a mass-produced car, the Model T, started to roll off the production line at the Ford Motor Company, and the modern age of the car had well and truly come into being.

Men and women drivers
Both men and women drove cars, and the increasing popularity of driving for women can best seen, perhaps, by looking at newspaper articles mentioning them. In 1900, Sporting Life noted that ‘lady car drivers are not very numerous in England at present, although we occasionally run across one or two’, whereas by 1908, one local paper was noting rather disapprovingly that ‘lady motor car drivers are becoming as reckless as the men’. The disapproval of female drivers can be seen in various accounts of poor driving, including one in Dunstable, in 1905, where a female driver was killed in an accident, and two men injured. The dead woman was Hannah Montague Hawnt, known as Nance. She was the 30-year-old wife of William, a bicycle merchant who also owned a motor engineering company in Clerkenwell, London. Montague had been sitting behind his wife when she overtook a motor-trolley badly, and collided with it.

The burgeoning motor vehicle industry, though, offered a range of new jobs for men, primarily, in addition to related occupations in motorcycle production, and it grew rapidly. Although we have to take into account repetition in terms, a search on TheGenealogist shows that entries mentioning working in the ‘motor car’ industry are ten times higher in 1911 than in 1901, going from the hundreds to the thousands. In 1901, there are references to car engineers and clerks, car cleaners and fitters (and one man even being based at the ‘Mawson Lane Motor Car Shed’ in Chiswick); the presence of car salesmen from France and America in London is also significant. However, it is the 1911 census is particularly significant for giving an indication of how these jobs grew and diversified. This was also the year that Ford opened a manufacturing centre in Britain, showing the growth of the industry.

Motor industry
These jobs were carried out across the British Isles, although there were some specific centres of production. For example, Kings Norton – then in Worcestershire, now a Birmingham suburb – was home to motor works that employed men of all ages. Scots-born David Easton, aged 76 in 1911, was still employed at the local motor works as a ‘motor man’, perhaps a general hand, doing whatever job was needed. More specific jobs in the industry included riveters, repairing the bodies of cars; motor trimmers and machinists working on the interiors; wheel brake fitters; engineers and car testers; engine makers, body makers, and within this last category, some men – such as Sam Hewitt from Dudley – were employed to make the iron framework for car engines. Another man, Alfred Appleton in Newport Pagnell, gave his specific occupation on the census as ‘motor car fitter in all iron and brass fittings attached to car and filing up [the] same’.

Other men found a niche as car repairers for when things went wrong; others trained as engineers but then found work as drivers for other families; and some worked as inspectors, checking the work of car makers and engineers, or as their supervisors. Garages were established, and these were owned and run by other men, such as Arthur Philips, who owned a motor garage in Harrow, Middlesex. Garages and car manufacturers employed caretakers, such as Robert Peters, who worked at a motor works in the Fishponds area of Bristol. There were also humble jobs: Arthur Swinfield in Manchester, for example, was a car washer. It can be a bit confusing looking at census and occupation records, in so far as some terminology suggests an older form of transport. Several men described themselves as ‘carriage builders’ or ‘coach builders’, when they worked on motor cars, rather than older styles of vehicle. This is the case with James Bermett in Manchester, who was working at a car factory as a carriage builder.

Companies employing such men included the luxury car-maker Wolseley, which had been established in Birmingham since March 1901, and many men in the city and its outskirts worked for the Wolseley Motor Car Company at Adderley Park. These were men like William Bartlett, who was originally from Banbury in Oxfordshire, but who lived in Smethwick and journeyed to the car firm every day. His colleagues included Hubert Dale, Harry Purcell and Richard Hemmings, all clerks, showing that factories employed men not only to work on building the cars, but on taking on paperwork and accounts in their offices, too. These men came from around the country to work at such factories, and were from a wide range of ages as well. Men in their late teens worked as chauffeurs and car cleaners, men in what we would deem old age worked as washers and caretakers, and within these two sides worked many others, either on the practical side of car building, or in administration.

The early years of motoring created a new industry, and with it, new jobs – or older jobs repurposed for the modern age. Those who had once worked in carriage building, the construction of horse-drawn wagons, might move into car-making; engineers in other fields might now start working on building motors. Factories catered for the growing market, and by the time the First World War broke out, Britain had become a nation of drivers and motor cars.