Rivet Boy
John Nicol is twelve. He would rather stay at school until he is fourteen, the standard leaving age in 1888 Scotland. His father, died in an accident in Australia before he was born. His Mum and his younger sister now need him to be a breadwinner, as his mother’s widow’s allowance is inadequate.
He goes to be a rivet boy on the construction site of the new Forth Bridge despite having a fear of heights. Henderson’s narrative perfectly captures the danger, dust and dirt and, sometimes, bullying endured by these boys. One of the most striking features of the narrative is the number of young boys killed, falling from the bridge. The regularity with which this happened is alarming. Will John Nicol survive, and will he ever achieve his dream of a job as a library assistant in the famous Carnegie Library in Edinburgh?
Henderson’s major achievement in this short work is to make the reader care so much for John and his fellow bridge workers that they come alive. It is a rarely explored period in history, so readers will come to the book with little prior knowledge. Henderson gives us all the engineering knowledge we need to understand how amazing and precarious the construction of the Forth Bridge was.
