Middlemen in English Business 237 



Dealer and Retailer. 



The dealer and retailer were the final distributors, into the hands 

 of the consumers. The two differed slightly. The dealer owned 

 craft for unloading ships but was wanting capital enough to buy at 

 Billingsgate, where the practice was to buy whole cargoes and allow 

 credit for 28 or 30 days. He accordingly bought from the first buyers, 

 did his own unloading, and retailed principally to housekeepers. But 

 the retailer kept a shed and sold coal by the bushel, i.e., in very small 

 lots.^ He was called in early times "Small Coal Man."- The re- 

 tailers were likely descendants of the woodmongers, who took to sell- 

 ing coal as wood became scarce. In 1664 they are mentioned wth 

 the woodmongers as engaged in the coal business.^ They distributed 

 the coal in sacks which had been measured, sealed and marked as 

 ha\dng the lawful dimensions ; the bushels used were likewise measured 

 and approved by government agents.^ They delivered their coal 

 in cars, carts or wagons, and had, a^ woodmongers, control of the 

 carmen within the city's bounds.'' The total expense of distributing 

 100 chaldrons of coal yearly to nearly 300 familes averaged annually 

 during the nine years, 1734-43, about £29.^' 



The earliest market in the city for coal was Seacoal Lane in the 

 \-icinity of Fleet Ditch. Seacoal was brought here and stored as 

 early as the beginning of the thirteenth century. At the same time 

 some seacoal came to Billingsgate. The more common fuel was 

 wood and charcoal brought by cart and sold from cart at Smithfield 

 and Cornhill. The seacoal was sold in sacks and measured by in- 

 spectors called "meters."" Another set of "meters" inspected the 

 charcoal brought by land. The colliers of Croyden in Surrey sup- 

 phed much of London's consumption and they sometimes became 

 men of no mean distinction. One Grimme or Grimes, collier from 

 this town was a noted personage in reign of Edward VI. It appears 

 that the inspection at London was very severe on these "foreign" 

 colliers.* 



In 1379 an Order of Common Council shows that the policy and 

 practice were to forbid the operations of middlemen in the fuel busi- 



' Rep. from Com. H. C, X, 548. 



- Gent. Mag., 1734: 666; Besant, Eighteenth Cen. Lon.. 134. 



^ 6 and 7 Chas. II, Cap. 2, Sec. 1. 



' 3 Geo. II, Cap. 26, Sees. 11, 13. 



5 Hazlitt, Lon. Com., 151-2. 



« Rep. from Com. H. C, X, 588. 



■ Lib. Alb. I, XXX\'. 



*V. C. H., Surrey II, 245 



