THE BUILDER AUGUST 1925

The Society of Operative Stone Masons; Its Links With Operative and
Speculative Masonry of the Present Day

BY BRO. BERNARD H. SPRINGETT, L. R., England

THE BUILDER is happy to publish this carefully considered study,
submitted to it for that purpose by the author. The subject is one
that has received much discussion, especially in England, where
brethren have long been keenly interested in the origins of our
Speculative Fraternity. Bro. Springett holds many Masonic honors,
won for him by years of activities in many branches of the English
Craft. On this side of the water he is widely and favorably known
as the author of a fascinating book, "Secret Sects of Syria and the
Lebanon."

AS probably most readers of THE BUILDER are aware, we have working
in London today, as for many years past, a keen body of Freemasons,
including many well-known Grand Lodge officers, who use a ritual
supposed to have been invented, according to those who have no
sympathy with us, by Clement Stretton, John Yarker and Dr. Carr,
all keen searchers back into Masonic history. It is really a
revival of what we have every reason to believe was worked by the
members of at least one of the four old lodges who banded
themselves together under Anthony Sayer in 1717 to form the first
Grand Lodge.

While the landmarks of Speculative Masonry are identical with those
of Operative Masonry, as everyone would expect to find them, in the
latter many of the reasons for certain words and much of the floor
work which Anderson retained are more clearly defined, and it is
the usual thing for those who join us to find explanations for much
that had previously been looked upon as unexplained symbolism.

In Scotland, all the older lodges show distinct traces in their
minute books of having gradually changed over from Operative to
Speculative--that is, from confining admission to pure Craftsmen to
extending the benefits of initiation into Freemasonry, at first to
a limited number of professional men, and continuing to increase
the proportion of these latter, with the gradual extinction of the
former. In 1708 no fewer than forty members of No. 1 Lodge of
Edinburgh, generally known as St. Mary's Chapel, seceded from their
Mother Lodge on account of the increasing number of admissions of
men who were not Craftsmen, and formed a lodge of their own, "The
Lodge of Journeymen, No. 8," from whose own history we get a very
interesting insight into the work that was carried on by them, as
handed down by tradition--certainly not taught by book. Up to 1840
this lodge insisted on one-tenth only of its members being
non-Craftsmen, the remainder being purely "Wrights and Masons," the
former signifying most of the trades other than stonemasons who
would be engaged in the building trade, and it was from this
portion of its members that the officers of the lodge were
selected, with the exception of the Secretary, who was usually a
lawyer. These officers consisted of a Warden, sometimes called also
the Deacon, or "Deces," who presided over the lodge; a Box-master,
or Treasurer, and one who was known as "The Eldest Entered
Apprentice," who seems to have been elected annually from among the
members of the lodge and to have taken a leading part in the
initiation of candidates. The latter, as in all Operative lodges,
had to undergo a rigorous examination as to their physical
capacity, for which purpose they were stripped completely, and were
then re-clothed in a long white garment, a practice still observed
in most countries but our own.

In England and Ireland we have the Operative Stonemasons, pure and
simple, holding their lodges all over the country, but especially
in connection with stonequarries and where large edifices were
under construction, employing a great many skilled craftsmen. These
Stonemasons worked a very simple ritual, but allowed no one to join
their ranks except through an initiation ceremony closely
resembling that known to us today.

Owing to the doubts cast on Bro. Stretton's account of the
ceremonial worked in the Mount Bardon quarries, near Leicester, I
have spent quite a lot of time looking into this particular
question, and have been able to satisfy myself, as well as many
Masonic friends who previously had some doubts, that even to this
day Operative Stonemasons are quietly working a ritual, greatly
emasculated, it is true, since the advent of trade unionism, which
they have clearly derived by oral transmission from medieval times.

Papers and books of account which have been kindly loaned to me by
the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers, through their
genial Secretary, Mr. George Hicks, show that at the commencement
of the last century many such lodges were in existence. They worked
a ritual somewhat resembling in many respects that of our own
lodges--that is, as regards the admission of new members--that at
first sight it might be taken for a crude imitation of our own
ceremony of initiation, the result of some Operative Masons being
also Freemasons in our established use of the word. But there seems
no reason to doubt that both bodies derived their ceremonial from
a common source, this being, in my opinion, the trade gilds of the
Middle Ages, themselves deriving from Eastern ancestors.

I have been able to find records of 191 of these lodges in England
and Wales, and I have had particulars of seventeen in Ireland. All
of these were subject to the rules of a Grand Lodge, to which they
elected delegates, with a certain number of District Lodges to act
as intermediaries. These met quarterly, while the Grand Lodge met
twice a year, for many years at Huddersfield, and afterwards at
Manchester. But the greatest possible secrecy was always observed
with respect to these lodges, which will account for so very little
being known of them by the ordinary Mason, of whom they seem to
have been extremely jealous, regarding him as the unqualified
usurper of the name of a trade of which he knew nothing. With the
coming of trade unionism, and the passing of the Act of 1838
prohibiting the holding of all unauthorized secret assemblies,
mainly at the instigation of our then Grand Master, the Duke of
Sussex, still greater secrecy and still simpler ritual resulted,
and a skeleton form of the ritual, formerly imparted in the
tap-room or the quarry, is, I am told by one who ought to know, now
gone through quietly on the scaffold.

Mr. R. W. Postgate, in his valuable trade union work, The Builder's
History, writes as follows:

"The various Acts passed between 1799 and 1810, under which all
combinations were forbidden and heavy penalties for infraction from
time to time enforced, drove those trades whose organisations did
not disappear to more secret organisation. Some such as the London
tailors, went in for a semi-military system. The Building Unions
practised the oaths and initiations which played such a large part
in their later history. Without, like some trades, seeking to
extend their clubs beyond the limits of a small town they confined
themselves to the little local clubs which were the predecessors of
the modern Trade Union movements. These did not disappear. All over
England and Scotland the skilled craftsman continued to hold the
fort nightly meeting of his trade club at the public-house, and the
records and rules of some of these clubs have survived. The old
traditions were very strong, and the desire for mutual improvement,
as men an as craftsmen, was very marked. The Falkirk Society
excluded all lewd, disorderly and fractious persons, and drunkards
swearers, and Sabbath-breakers. Other societies, such as the
Newcastle Operative Masons, stressed the improvement effected in
man's nature by association. In some case there was also a rule
against the introduction of politics a destructive of harmony.

"The festive nature of these gatherings must not be forgotten. The
Masons' Society and the two Carpenters' Societies which existed at
Newcastle, had rules to the effect that twopence per night must be
spent on beer by every member, while the first entries in the
Preston Joiners' Cashbook. 1807--perhaps the oldest remaining Trade
Union document--relate to the purchase of beer."

I am indebted to Mr Sidney Webb, a very prominent member of the
late Labor Government, for giving me a clue to obtaining much
valuable information as to these stonemasons' lodges and their
ceremonial. Mr. Webb, with the assistance of his wife, wrote The
History of Trade Unionism, which is very justly considered the
standard work on the subject. In this he states:

"The Operative builders did not rest content with an elaborate
constitution and code. There was also a ritual. The Stonemasons'
Society has preserved amongst its records a manuscript copy of a
'Making Parts Book,' ordered to be used by all lodge of the
Builders' Union on the admission of members. Under the Combination
Laws, oaths of secrecy and obedience were customary in the more
secret and turbulent trade unions, notably that of the Glasgow
Cotton Spinners and the Northumbrian Miners. The custom survived
the repeal, and admission to the Builders' Union involved a very
lengthy ceremony, conducted by the officers of the lodge: the
outside and inside Tylers, the Warden, the President, the
Secretary, and the Principal Conductor, and taken part in by the
candidates and the members of the lodge. Besides the opening
prayer, and religious hymns sung at intervals, these 'initiation
parts' consisted of questions and answers by the dramatis personae
in quaint doggerel, and were brought to a close by the new members
taking an oath of secrecy. Officers clothed in surplices, inner
chambers into which the candidates were admitted, blindfolded, a
skeleton, drawn sworn, battleaxes, and other mystic properties
enhanced the sensational solemnity of this fantastic performance.
Ceremonies of this kind, including what were described in Home
Office Papers of 1834 as 'oaths of an execrable nature,' were
adopted by all the national and general unions of the time. Thus,
we find items 'for washing surplices' appearing in the accounts of
various lodges of contemporary societies."

A similar ritual is printed in Character, Objects and Effects of
Trade Unions, published in 1834, as used by the Woolcombers' Union.
Probably, says Mr. Webb, the Builders' Union copied their ritual
from some Union of Woolen Workers. I would prefer to think it was
the other way about. The stonemasons' MS. contains, like the copy
printed in the pamphlet just mentioned, a solemn reference to King
Edward the Third, who was regarded as the great benefactor of the
English wool trade, but whose connection with the building trade is
not obvious. In a later printed edition of The Initiating Parts of
the Friendly Society of Operative Masons, dated Birmingham, 1834,
his name is omitted, and that of Solomon substituted, apparently in
memory of the Freemasons' assumed origin at the building of the
Temple at Jerusalem. "The actual origin of this initiation
ceremony," continues Mr. Webb, "is unknown. John Tester, who had
been a leader of the Bradford Woolcombers in 1825, afterward turned
against the unions, and published in the Leeds Mercury of June and
July, 1834, a series of letters denouncing the Leeds Clothiers'
Union. In these he states "the mode of initiation was the same as
practiced for years before the flannel weavers of Rochdale, with a
party of whom the thing, in the shape of it then wore, had at first
originated. A great part of the ceremony, particularly the death
scene, was taken from the Odd Fellows, who were flannel weavers at
Rochdale, in Lancashire, and all that could be well turned from the
rules and lectures of the one society into the regulations of the
others was so turned, with some trifling verbal alterations." In
another letter he says that the writer of the "Lecture Book" was
one Mark Ward.

The series of "Initiating Parts," or forms to be observed on
admitting new members, which are preserved in the archives of the
Stonemasons' Society, I have been able to borrow and make extracts
from, at the same time getting some of the pages photographed in
order to show where I have personally obtained the material for
much of this article. They reveal a steady tendency to
simplification of ritual. We have first the old MS. doggerel
already described, copied most probably from a still older
manuscript. The date of this present copy Bro. Wonnacott considers
would be considerably anterior to the first printed ritual, which
is dated 1834. This, whilst retaining a good deal of ceremonial,
turns the liturgy into prose, and the oath into an almost identical
declaration, invoking the dire displeasure of the society in case
of treachery. A second print, which bears no date, is much shorter,
and the declaration becomes a mere affirmation of adhesion. The
society's circulars of 1838 record the abolition, by vote of the
members, of all initiation ceremonies, in view of the parliamentary
inquiry about to be held into trade unionism.

