Tinker is a 1949 British drama-documentary second feature ('B')[1] film directed and written by Herbert Marshall and starring Derek Smith.

"Tinker is a young gypsy boy who runs aways from the slums to join mining trainees at a coal industry residential training centre in County Durham.

Due to the circumstances of its making, and the natural playing of the boy, the film has a certain freshness and un evident honesty of intention, There is, unfortunately, considerable ineptitude in the writing and handling, and one has to applaud motives rather than results.

"[3] Kine Weekly wrote: "The detail is obviously authentic and the leading characters, actually played by budding miners, are quite natural, but somehow or other it lacks the professional touch and fails fully to live up to Edinburgh Festival eulogies.

"[4] Picture Show wrote: "There are no professional actors in the cast of this film, which was made at a Residential Centre where young miners are trained – trainees themselves and their mothers and fathers played their real-life roles.