Daughters
Milling, especially when the miller and his family lived on site, was likely to be a family business, which would involve all members of the family. It was not unusual for brothers, nephews and cousins to work together at a mill, with their sons becoming apprentice millers when they reached the appropriate age. The 1881 census regarding members of the milling community also includes several examples of the daughters of millers who assisted their family in the milling business. They are often listed as “Miller’s daughter” or “Miller’s assistant” on the census, such as Flora A. Wright aged 13, daughter of Thomas Wright, living at 4 Cliffe Cottages, Kent, and Jane Mills aged 14, living with her father at Pycroft Lane, Chertsey, Surrey, who is listed as a “Labourer (miller corn)”. Some women born into milling families also became millers in their own right at a young age, such as Ann Baker, aged 23, living alone at 8 Back Lane, Durham St Nicholas, and listed as a “Corn miller”.
A Miller’s daughter by Phyllis Catt, for example, details her experience living with her milling father John Gwillim and family, in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1910 the family moved from Coultershaw Mill in Petworth, West Sussex, to North Mill in Midhurst, West Sussex. At North Mill, Catt discusses her childhood, where she could always hear the “rumble of machinery and the rush of water”, and she learned about how the mill worked on visits inside the mill, which she saw as a “wonderful treat” [1]. John Gwillim milled at North Mill from 1903 to 1934.
Footnotes
[1] Catt, Phyllis, A Miller’s daughter (Midhurst and Petworth Printers), p.5
