Person:Frederick Seal (2)

From Dee: Frederick later worked at Birmingham mint before the brass foundry. Is this when they both worked at a jewellery workshop belonging to Harriet Samuels, the Quaker Jewellery family. My aunts Lilian and Hilda worked there too. Aunt Hilda told me her granddad started work there, but he couldn’t get an apprenticeship there, so his uncle asked Keith’s great granddad Edwin to get him one at the Foundry (? Birmingham mint), and his grandmother Tamer worked a Brass buttons press at one time there too And then a press at the mint foundry in the workshop that made gold and brass buttons and gold braid and medals His aunt then unnamed worked making gold braid to sew on uniforms and sew it on them, it looks like she made gold chains too. My three great grandmothers and mom’s mother May worked there. My mom’s mom was a forewoman and when she started there my great grandma Watson was her forewoman and and granny Watson told my dad that her forewoman was Harriet and Susannah’s mother Tamer, when he asked my Grandmother May Jones his mother-in-law she said it was before her time there. I’ve been in that workshop as a child my grandma took me to see where she worked and my uncle Brian Jones worked in the next workshop making gold rings. He wed my aunt Winnie, my dad’s sister. Aunt Hilda worked there in the late 1960s and 1970s and Aunt Lily 1960s until she retired 1980s, both in the warehouse offices. Uncle Brian 1950/1960s. Granny Watson 1890 to 1930s. Tamer in the 1890s but she must have work there earlier too perhaps a few times leaving and coming back, was not unusual in the 1800s to have babies or look after families, Granny Watson did this in the 1900s and Samuels let her. She was a Jewellery shop manageress too, opening Chester shop in 1902, working there for about year then back to being forewomen in Birmingham in 1903. This was while my Granny Jones was working there. She was there 1899 until 1911. when she wed and then open a grocery shop and bakery with her husband and in-laws, while at Samuels she earned £3 pounds per a week as forewomen. Women also worked at home, making chains of all kinds from silver wire and gold wire, also they made metals chains for cheap watches/ship whistles/ toilet and house servant bells.