As in most trades, training was by apprenticeship, usually of seven years. The “Book of Trades” which first appeared in the early 1800s describes corkcutting as “not very profitable either for the master or the journeymen.” By the 1840s, a similar publication said “the premium for an apprentice would be inconsiderable unless he were to reside with the master.”
Cork cutters were paid by the gross until the 1890s when payment by the hour became common. Employers found that the men worked more carefully when piecework was abandoned. Hours of work at this time were about eleven hours per day Monday to Friday and a half day on Saturday. One hour’s unpaid lunch was allowed. In earlier times, corkcutters were renowned for keeping “St. Monday” i.e. they did not work on Mondays while recovering from the excesses of the weekend. Mayhew’s survey of the 1850s only found five percent of cutters had alcohol problems.
The work must have been monotonous and relentless, but at least it was carried out indoors and could be done sitting down. The heat from the cork burning process would have kept the premises comfortable in winter and there were no seasonal slumps in demand to cause unemployment. Corkcutters could work into their eighties if their eyesight and hand control allowed it. They struck for better pay in London in July 1853. There were no noxious fumes and the work was quiet, allowing employees to chat while they worked. Mary Darby Robinson, a poet who lived at the end of the eighteenth century, described the distinctive squeaking noise emanating from their workplace as their knives cut the cork in her poem “London’s Summer Morning”.
By the 1890s London cutters had organised their own benevolent society to help protect them against illness and unemployment. It was based in a local public house and employers would also go there to find staff when they had a vacancy.
Over England as a whole, cork cutters needed to move considerable distances to find work as the trade was centred in large towns and most counties only employed a few men . One in five thousand men were corkcutters at the peak of employment in 1860. There is some evidence that migrating corkcutters were issued with a ticket enabling them to move to other towns and find board and lodging there.
A number of corkcutting families gradually migrated to London over a period of three or four generations. Despite the opinion expressed in The Book of Trades, some masters ran very successful businesses and were able to set up branches in different towns, the business continuing and growing for several generations.