Griffith James Davies ……. a life coming out of the shadows

Now, I have every confidence I will find out more on the life of Griffith James Davies.

But I suspect it won’t be easy, which is only to be expected of what historian once called “a humble man”, which is to say, a man born into a working class family in 1847, who worked as a carpenter, and lived his entire adult life as a lodger in someone’s else’s house.

I have to admit I hadn’t come  across him until Dave Rawson who is a City Councillor for Chorlton Park, sent over this picture of the gravestone of Mr. Davies, commenting “I came across this headstone in Southern Cemetery recently.

I just wondered if you have seen it or know anything about Brother Davies? 

I do know that the period during which he was a senior union activist with this union, it was involved in bitter in fighting, reconciliation and an exhaustive strike here in Manchester.” 

The inscription recorded that he was born in Wales, and for ten years was the organizer “for the north of England, and until his death [was a] walking delegate of the Manchester and Salford District of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners”.

And that his gravestone was “erected by a few friends and members of the above society”.

Finding him on the census returns was easy. 

In 1861, aged 14, he was still living at home and gave his occupation as a carpenter.

But a decade later he was living in Ordsall in Salford, and until his death in 1903 he rented space in houses across Chorlton-on-Medlock and Hulme.

Remarkably we also have a probate document which shows that at his death he was at 67 Warwick Street in Hulme and that his effects amounted to £979.

The same document records that he was a “Manchester Union delegate”, which along with his inscription set me off looking for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, which in the middle decades of the 19th century had been an important trade union.

By the 1870s it was based in Manchester, and just seven years after Mr. Davies’s death published a short history of the union.

And there on page 72, was a reference to Griffith James Davies, who stood unsuccessfully in an election for the post of General Secretary, and while he lost, he came a good second, obtaining 2,987 votes against his rival a F. Chandler, who polled 4,599 votes.

But the consolation was that he was elected Chairman and part of his inaugural address was recorded in the book.

Alas, the extract contained no stirring call to action or a proud defence of trade unionism but was a technical speech on changes to the Society’s constitution.

Still they are his words, and in the absence of a photograph it is all we have.

So far that is it, but there will be more to come, and in the process his life will come back out of the shadows.

Leaving me just to reflect on Dave’s reference to the Manchester strike which occurred in 1877, and which Mr. Davies will have played an active part.

It has begun on May 1st and according to the union’s official account “no less than 3,500 joiners turned out owing to the employers’ refusal to concede an advance in wages. ….. The contest was bitter and prolonged lasting twelve months”, and was broken by the employers who brought “into the town some seventeen German workman and about two hundred self styled Americans to take the place of those on strike”.

The strike had also been hampered by the presence of two unions in the dispute of which Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners was the junior partner.

Just what Mr. Davies did is unknown but given his position as the organizer in the north he will have been in the thick of it.

So I shall go on looking, starting with the newspapers for the period, and later visiting the Working Class Library in Salford, and the Museum of Labour History in Spinningfields, while re-reading the history which is a fascinating glimpse into one trade union during the 19th century.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; the grave of Griffith James Davies, Southern Cemetery, 2020, from the collection of Dave Rawson, and the fronts piece of the Society’s history

* Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, History of the Society, 1860-1910, by F. Chandler, 1910