Quentin Outram reviews John Austin’s The Sheffield Heavy Spring Trade: 1829-2025. Sheffield, 2026, pp. 192, p/b. ISBN 978 10369 32701.

Heavy springs are the springs you used to find and still find on railway trucks, carriages, and locomotives, lorries, busses, and cars. They are not the kind of springs you find in watch and clock mechanisms, jewellery, folding knives, upholstery and mattresses. There are two main types of heavy spring: leaf springs where a number of narrow steel plates of diminishing length are fixed one on top of the other to form an elliptical shape in profile, and coil springs where a steel rod is wound around a cylinder to form a helix. By 1850 Sheffield had established a national pre-eminence in the trade which was to last until after the Second World War.

John Austin worked on the shop floor of a Sheffield spring shop starting in 1973 surviving the hot, heavy, and demanding work for nearly two years. He also acquired a history doctorate and has had a varied career in higher education and business. This book is a product of his retirement. It is part business history and part labour history. It is well-illustrated with over a hundred images of products, people, and processes. The book follows a chronological and narrative structure but includes a valuable 12-page section on ‘Recollections of Life in a Spring Shop’ and an 8-page section of technical notes, as well as a glossary.

The labour history has not been easy to write because of a dearth of sources. The Railway Spring Makers had a union whose Secretary, George Austin, testified to the 1867 Trades Unions Commission on the Sheffield Outrages. The Laminated and Coil Spring Workers’ Union was formed in 1911. It later merged with the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers in 1977. Both the earlier unions were very small: George Austin claimed 360 members in 1867, the Laminated and Coil Spring Workers were down to 230 members by 1974. Nevertheless the author has made good use of newspaper reports and his shop-floor experience has enabled him to write convincingly of the ‘labour process’ and the reality of industrial relations in the 1970s.  The author has omitted detailed references but states that he will be happy to share these on request.

Quentin Outram

For further information or to order the book:

Correspondence:

• email: john.austin1@btinternet.com
• mail: John Austin, 65 Alexandra Gardens, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S11 9DQ.