George Alexander: Spar and Block Maker in Leith

George Alexander spent his life in Leith, Scotland. He was born there in 1804 and was living in North Leith when he married Mary Sime June 1, 1832. She was from Anstruther in Fife where her father, John Sime, was a boot maker and her mother was Margaret Black.

George and Mary had six sons and one daughter between 1835 and 1847. James was born about 1835, John, 18 April 1835 and George 18 April 1839. Henry was born 25 October 1841, Thomas and his twin sister Mary 16 April 1844 and David 03 July 1847.

George was a block maker, a skilled craftsperson employed in the construction of wooden blocks used on the sailing ships of the 1800’s. A block, according to, The Dictionary of the Marine, written in the late 1700’s is  “a machine known in mechanics by the name of pully, and used for various purposes in a ship, particularly to increase the mechanical power of the ropes employed in contracting, dilating, or traversing the sails.”
George's son John was also a block maker.

Scottish census records track the family in Leith starting in 1841. In that year, George and Mary and their three oldest boys, James, John, and George were living on Citadel in North Leith. On the night of March 30 in 1851 when the next census was taken, they were a family of eight with 6 boys, living still in North Leith at H Newhouse, Smiths Land, Citadel. Mary (the daughter) was not on the census.
 
By 1861, they had crossed the Water of Leith and were living on the Shore in South Leith. (James and John had moved out although James and his wife and young son were living in the same building.) In 1871, George and Mary were still at 75 Shore, with George, Thomas and David. In 1881, they lived there on their own. In November of 1882, Mary died at home and George followed a few days later.

Life in Leith
Leith was a busy port when George and Mary were married and starting their family. Protective barriers and dry docks had been constructed to protect ships from the rising gales of the North Sea. Sailing vessels arrived from Copenhagen and Antwerp carrying grain, hemp and hides and were quickly reloaded with pig iron, leather goods, and linen by the yard. Berwick smacks travelled twice a week to London, ships sailed to Aberdeen and to the northern islands carrying passengers and goods. Barges plied the harbour and fishing fleets headed out for herring. Military vessels entered the port, their Union Jacks flapping in the wind.

The city of Leith had grown around the port. Ship building and outfitting were major industries.  Roperies and sail making shops provided materials for the sailing vessels. Coopers made wooden barrels. Cement was produced for docks which needed constant repair. It was here that George found work as a block maker in the building and repairing of ships.

Much of the money made in Leith flowed to Edinburgh but some of the building represented the wealth that remained in Leith. Impressive structures like the Corn Exchange on Baltic Avenue were built with ionic columns of Greek architecture. Bonded Storage and the Exchange Building where custom duties were collected made the purpose of Leith’s existence clear as millions of pounds of goods were tracked as they passed through the port each year.  There were many banks to handle the exchanges. Clubs for Seamen, for merchants, and for carpenters opened onto the streets.

Thoroughfares transversed the city. The Shore, where the Alexanders lived, ran along the right bank of the Water of Leith. It was lined by a single row of multi-family houses, inns and exchange offices and was an important walkway. Leith Walk was a broad avenue between Leith and Edinburgh, originally built to fight Cromwell’s troops. The tall tenements along the Walk were interspersed with gardens and nursery markets, inns and shops. Carters shared the dusty road with horse-drawn buggies, with trams, with people on horseback, and with workers walking the mile and a half between Edinburgh and Leith.

In Leith, the tenements rose 3 or 4 storeys above the pottery streets and families had one or two rooms with few windows. Narrow winding thoroughfares were accessed through closes and wynds. There was no running water and outdoor privies served several families. Smells from the industrial tanning of hides and rendering of fat filled the air. The Water of Leith was clogged with pollution and waste from homes and factories. Air pollution from coal burning fires hung over the city. Leith was a busy port city.

Life Beyond Leith

The Victorian era in which George and Mary raised their children was a time of political, economic and social reform in Great Britain of which Scotland remained a part. Political control continued to move from the land owning upper class to include upper middle class men, then artisans and later towards universal male suffrage. There were huge gaps between the upper classes, the owners of land and factories, and the evolving working class. Upper classes lived and ate well. Despite improvements over the period as towns became more livable, many unskilled workers lived in back-to-back houses or crowded tenements with insufficient light and ventilation and poor sanitation. George’s family was better off than many others. He and his sons were skilled artisans. They would have started in their trades as young apprentices, and with skill and hard work (73 hours a week in 1840) they could become journeymen and masters of their trade. They would own their own tools and control their own time. Their skills would command the respect and favour of employers.

Women had few rights especially married women.  Meek, dutiful and supportive, their position in the home was to make it a place of peace and shelter. Only in 1881 did school become compulsory for 5 to 10 year old children and sometimes that needed to fit around their hours of work.

Food production increased in the years between 1830 and 1880 as farmers used fertilizer and crop rotation to improve yields. More people were able to live in cities and were better fed and healthier. People lived longer and population increased. An understanding of the causes and treatment of disease was slowly developing. Lister wrote about antiseptics and the use of sterile medical instruments decreased the number of deaths from childbirth fever. Diseases like typhoid fever, still spread through crowded communities, and that was what killed the first wife of George’s son Thomas.

In 1851, Britain shared its scientific knowledge with the world at the Great Exhibition held in London. Blast furnaces increased iron production which was used to replace wood in engines and machinery, allowing the building of steam engines. Artificial dyes replaced natural ones. On the sea, Clipper Ships sped across the oceans in 1850 in just 14 days only to be replaced by steam ships by the end of the century. Large factories meant mass production, meeting the increasing wants of a population with growing disposable money.

Production was mechanized and increasingly international. Raw cotton was shipped from the plantations of the American South and sugar imported from the West Indies. While bringing wealth to Scotland and England as shipping nations, production was no longer under local control as cotton mills were to discover during the American Civil War when their sources of raw cotton dried up. Many workers worked at dangerous jobs in large mills.

In the middle 1800s Britain was involved in protecting her colonies in the new World and in India. Conflict involved other countries in Europe, Austria, France and Prussia and the rebellions of 1848 happened in other places. Only after George and Mary died would war take British men to foreign soil in South Africa.

The second chapter of our story also begins and ends in Leith. George and Mary raised sons who were artisans working in the construction and maintenance of ships.