The tuner would appear to have been working in the factory yet not regarded as a factory worker. A plate in Wainwright’s book on the Broadwood company shows a tuner at work in Broadwood’s factory in 1842. He wears what would appear to be far smarter clothes than the other men at work in the picture; although he is wearing an apron, he wears a dark jacket over the top and rather than the caps worn by the others, he has a top hat sitting on top of what appears to be a frock coat folded neatly on an adjacent stool. This would imply that his day could be spent both inside and outside the factory, rather than the modern day practice of employing both in-house tuners and out-working tuners. Another picture in Ehrlich’s book The Piano shows a smart, dapper gentleman in a frock coat and smart shiny shoes tuning a cabinet piano – a very tall instrument around six feet high.
Generally, the tuner in the Victorian/Edwardian age seems to have been regarded as something of a gentleman, since they were neither fish nor fowl when it came to class: they were a breed apart within the factory – on the factory floor, yet not of it; they were tradesmen yet often came to the front door and conversed freely with the lady of the house (and occasionally with the man of the house) since they were working on one of the most prized possessions in the home.
By Gill Green MA
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