John Jaffray: Victorian Bookbinder, Chartist and Trade Unionist

Abstract

• John Jaffray (1811-1869) was a journeyman – a qualified binder – who did not own his own business but worked for others. His professional life as a finisher took him to numerous workshops in central London. He was also an historian of his trade, collecting ephemera and the memories of men long since retired, which stretched back to the famous strike of 1786. He has left fascinating vignettes of shop floor politics, and he inspired his friends to add to the archive after his death. The ephemera thus collected were bound into a series of scrapbooks which comprise part of the collection now in the British Library.