Archaic occupation 1700s-1900s
What was a bodger?
A bodger was a wood-turner who worked in the beech woods on a pole lathe, turning chair legs and stretchers for furniture workshops. The trade centred on the Chiltern beech woods feeding the High Wycombe chair industry; the modern sense of botched work came later. You will find the term in English records, mostly 1700s-1900s.
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FAQs
What is a bodger in modern terms?+
A wood-turner. Treat the match as a guide rather than a swap: tools and markets changed, so read the title against the record's own date (1700s-1900s).
Why do census occupation columns use words nobody says now?+
Enumerators wrote down whatever the household told them, spelled by ear, and local trade slang went straight onto the form. Directories, apprenticeship papers, and wills often carry the fuller wording for the same person.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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