An old photo of riveters at Cammel Lairds. Notice the lack of Health & Safety equipment. This would have been a very noisy job. Hammering rivets into plate steel. Probably all stone deaf...

They certainly were all stone deaf and everyone else who worked near them, an occupational hazard for those who worked in a shipyard. I had a uncle who was a riveter and he couldn't hear a bomb going off next to him. When riveting died out and the ships were mostly all welded the riveters were retrained and took on many semi skilled jobs like buffing, grinding and tack welding.

Nice one Bert. Some of these guys may have been boiler makers. They spent their time inside huge cylinders doing their rivetting. Musta been worse than the Corsas that drive round here with their stereos...

My grandad was a boilermaker at Lairds and after he died 1948 there always used to be a visitor from a representative of the Boilermakers calling at xmas who brought a small amount of money for my nan (not Father Christmas bert).
I'm just wondering now if Lairds workers had anything setup to help widows of workers out in those times

It was the Boilermakers Union Derek that paid out the Christmas money, my auntie used to get it, wife of the riveter I referred to earlier. The union later became the Amalgamated society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights and ancillary workers. I'm not sure when the practise stopped but I'm sure it has, it was £5 if memory serves me right.

wow that is a great photo, 1 of the wonders of the Wirral that place is

Wasn't the deafness called "Boiler maker's ear"?

Nice bits of info there guys

My grandad may be on that picture - he was a rivetter at Lairds in 1900. I don't know for sure, as I've no photographs of him......he died when my dad was a baby. He lived on Brook Street, Birkenhead.