Most of these images are from the Sodbury Tunnel works under the Cotswolds, begun in the late 1890s (see Maggs 156-57), and have been slightly adjusted for better clarity. They may be used without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit Helen Hughes and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on all the images to enlarge them.
Navvy Mission Activities
A group photograph outside a mission building. The banner at the back reads simply "Navvy Mission Society." Navvy Smith is seated on the grass in front, with the children.
What started with a few brave missionaries like Catherine Marsh and Elizabeth Garnett, and idealistic clergymen like the Rev. Barrett and the Rev. Evans, grew into a flourishing movement. "Every large settlement in England, Scotland, and Wales, has its mission and reading-room and schools, its temperance societies, and often much-needed ambulance classes. The men pass the 'first aid' examinations remarkably well," wrote Garnett in 1893 (100).
Two photographs from the Sodbury Tunnel works, 1901-02. Left: Navvy Smith conducts a class on ambulance training. Right: Mothers' Union: Navvy Smith and his wife Kate are on the far left.
As evidenced by Navvy Smith's sermons, along with the preaching went great efforts to improve the way of life of the workmen. Garnett makes the point that many skilled people were prepared to give time to the mission: "Contractors, engineers, gentry, and clergy, are very generally interested, and many give excellent help" (100). Clearly, even those whose primary motive was religious conversion involved themselves in the daily lives of the navvies. Navvy Smith is seen here conducting ambulance training, and taking part in some special occasion, with his wife, among the navvy mothers.
Reaching the children was important to Navvy Smith. (a) Three navvy "nippers." (b) Navvy Smith with the "Nippers' League" at the Sodbury Tunnel works in 1902. (c) Navvy Smith with his own family: Kate, with children Harry, Dorothy, Margaret, Nora and Nellie.
As Coleman writes, "though the Navvy Mission's main activity was to preach at the men ... it also did much for them in other ways" (183), and quite apart from giving them and their families instruction for first aid, care of infants and so on, missionaries like Navvy Smith, who had come from their own ranks, must have stood as examples to them. It seems that Navvy Smith's whole family was involved in his efforts, and it says much for him that his albums and sermon notes have survived in the family to this day.
Left: Amateur theatricals at the Sodbury Tunnel works, 1901-2. Navvy Smith is seated in the middle, with his wife Kate beside him on the right. Right: Tinted photograph of a procession captioned "Hitchen Heath 1903" in the album, with children dressed in uniforms and some carrying flags. A drummer boy can be seen in the middle, and a girl in a white smock on the far right.
Involving the navvies and their families in leisure activities, by putting on shows and encouraging them to take up music, most often by playing mouth organs, was seen as one way of keeping the men out of pubs and the children out of trouble. Such tactics seem to have worked. According to Garnett, even before Navvy Smith joined the mission, "The old scenes of brutality are very nearly things of the past. Marriage is regarded, and the moral tone of the men is quite different." She reports one navvy as saying, "The Navvy Mission has changed all our works. It has raised our whole class. How? Why, it has taught people to respect us, and it has taught us to respect ourselves" (100).
However, the primary aim, of converting the men and their families to the Christian faith, seems to have had less success: "it made its converts ... but they were few," says Coleman (185). And there was much left to be done, both for the navvies' physical and spiritual welfare. Garnett ended her own report on the Navvy Mission by saying that "the contractors still do not put up adequate accommodation for their men, and ... overcrowding outside the works is too common; also ..., in spite of precautions, drink is sold illegally in the huts." She adds a warning, too: "were the mission to collapse, the whole class would drop down again" (100). The mission, however, remained active, with men like Navvy Smith helping it to continue well into the twentieth century. In a report of 1913-14, for example, he was praised in connection with a builders' strike in Birmingham, "for the noble service he rendered to the movement in looking up distress cases, and relieving them with the funds collected. It was a work of great trial, and he did it well" (qtd in Studdert-Kennedy 17).
"Navvy Smith, "a deeply sincere and delightful man" and "an immense force for good."
By this time the Navvy Mission Society was supporting workers involved in the war effort. Navvies had obvious and essential parts to play in the war, by constructing trenches, tunnelling and so on, and in his new role as recruiting officer, Navvy Smith was reported to have recruited over a thousand of them for the war effort. Naturally, he acted as their "Lay Chaplain," and would like to have accompanied them to France (see Studdert-Kennedy 18, n.28). But he must have remained in England: later, in his chapter on "Churching the Ungodly," Dick Sullivan describes him as having co-edited the navvies' Public Works Magazine for several years before it ceased publication in 1916.
When the Navvy Mission merged with the Christian Social Union in 1919 to become the Industrial Christian Fellowship (see Studdart-Kennedy 16), Navvy Smith could still be found attending to the needs of the workers in Birmingham, where his efforts continued to be applauded. In 1921, for example, he was praised as "a deeply sincere and delightful man" and "an immense force for good" in a note in the Birmingham Business Club's house journal (qtd. in Studdert-Kennedy 145). It is sad to learn from Dick Sullivan that he spent his later years less happily, mainly in ministering to factory workers, but he must have looked back with some satisfaction on the work he had done. He died in Luton in the summer of 1932; his descendants have every reason to treasure his memory.
Links to Related Material
- Navvy Smith's Photograph Albums, 1: Navvies at Work
- Navvy Smith's Sermons
- "Churching the Ungodly"
- "The Great War"
- The Victorian Navvy
- Victorian Navvies — Their Nationality, Religion, Social Position, and Relation to the Armed Services
Bibliography and Further Reading
Barrett, D. W. Life and Work among the Navvies. 2nd ed. London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1888. Internet Archive. From a copy in the Bodleian, Oxford University. Web. 12 August 2023.
Coleman, Terry. The Railway Navvies: A History of the Men who Made the Railway. London: Pimlico, 2000.
Garnett, Mrs Charles. "How and Why the Navvy Mission Society was Formed." Woman's Mission. Ed. Angela Burdett-Coutts. New York: Scribner's, 1893. 92-105. Internet Archive. From a copy in the University of California Libraries. Web. 12 August 2023.
Maggs, Colin. A History of the Great Western Railway. Stroud: Amberley, 2013.
Marsh, Catherine. "My Work among Navvies at Beckenham." Woman's Mission. Ed. Angela Burdett-Coutts. New York: Scribner's, 1893. 106-10. Internet Archive. From a copy in the University of California Libraries. Web. 12 August 2023.
Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald. Dog-Collar Democracy: The Industrial Christian Fellowship, 1919-1929. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Sullivan, Dick. Navvyman. Coracle, 1983. [full text on this website, but see especially Ch. 20: "Churching the Ungodly."
Created 14 August 2023