Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Deal and the Deal boatmen, c.1840-c.1880

Bower, Jacqueline Mary (1989) Deal and the Deal boatmen, c.1840-c.1880. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent. (doi:10.22024/UniKent/01.02.94225) (KAR id:94225)

Abstract

The traditional role of the town of Deal, on the East Kent coast, was that of providing services to shipping. The boatmen were the town's dominant occupational group. In the nineteenth century, however, many inhabitants, represented by the Borough Councillors, the local newspapers and some leading townsmen, were conscious that this era was ending and were seeking a new role for the town.

The themes addressed in this thesis are therefore twofold. The first is that of how a smallish rural town attempted to adjust, over a period of about forty years, to economic decline. The second theme is the boatmen's work, their society, their family relationships and their position in the community.

The thesis looks at Deal's development from the seventeenth century to its zenith in the early nineteenth century. It suggests that growth and decline in Deal directly coincided with periods of war and peace in national history, and that consequently the decline of the nineteenth century was inevitable, given the century of cross-Channel concord which followed the defeat of Napoleon.

Chapter Three discusses the boatmen's decreasing opportunities for making a living from the 1830s and their consequent decline. Chapters Four and Five consider the effect of this decline on the rest of the population and the attempts made by some sections to redress the situation. These chapters examine the degree to which they had succeeded by 1880, and how the town changed in character as a consequence.

Chapter Six attempts to reconstruct the customs and practices which governed the organisation of the boatmen's work. Chapter Seven assesses the importance of family and kinship in the boatmen's society, while Chapter Eight looks at the extent to which the boatmen existed as a separate community within the town, and whether this separation increased as their economic importance declined.

Item Type: Thesis (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD))
Thesis advisor: Whyman, John
DOI/Identification number: 10.22024/UniKent/01.02.94225
Additional information: This thesis has been digitised by EThOS, the British Library digitisation service, for purposes of preservation and dissemination. It was uploaded to KAR on 25 April 2022 in order to hold its content and record within University of Kent systems. It is available Open Access using a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivatives (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) licence so that the thesis and its author, can benefit from opportunities for increased readership and citation. This was done in line with University of Kent policies (https://www.kent.ac.uk/is/strategy/docs/Kent%20Open%20Access%20policy.pdf). If you feel that your rights are compromised by open access to this thesis, or if you would like more information about its availability, please contact us at ResearchSupport@kent.ac.uk and we will seriously consider your claim under the terms of our Take-Down Policy (https://www.kent.ac.uk/is/regulations/library/kar-take-down-policy.html).
Uncontrolled keywords: History of Deal c.1840-c.1880
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Economics
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
SWORD Depositor: SWORD Copy
Depositing User: SWORD Copy
Date Deposited: 19 Jan 2023 12:06 UTC
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 12:07 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/94225 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.