318 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



It is ven- obvious that the same conditions that warranted the 

 business of the country chapmen warranted that of the city hawker. 

 A dispersed town population, with the poorest facilities of communica- 

 tion within the town, could be most cheaply and effectively reached 

 by hawkers. As streets were improved and hackney coaches were 

 drawn into service shopping could arise and the sedentary supplant 

 the peripatetic method of retaihng. 



MINOR TEXTILES. 



Brief descriptions of the organization of the several minor textile 

 industries will serve a comparative purpose. 



{a) Lace. 



The lace-making trade was one of the chief occupations of Bucking- 

 hamshire from the fifteenth to the midst of the nineteenth century. 

 The chief centers were Newport Pagnell (Olney), High Wycombe, 

 Aylesbury, and Claydon. The trade was at its best during the 

 eighteenth century. One of the chief of these lace-makers was 

 Ferdinando Shrimpton of Penn. He and other men of his class kept 

 several hundred workers employed constantly.^ They went weekly 

 to London, generally on a Monday, and sold their goods to the London 

 milliners at the lace markets held at the George Inn, Aldersgate 

 Street, or in the Bull and Mouth Inn in St. Martin's by Aldersgate. 

 They returned with a stock of thread and silk, which they gave out 

 to their workwomen to be made up according to their orders.- Olney 

 was a sort of staple town for bone-lace.^ It was said to excel all other 

 towns of the country in lace.'* At a weekly lace-market great quan- 

 tities were sold. Lace-buyers also came round about once a month, 

 meeting the lace-makers at some inn and bought their lace there.^ 

 The introduction of machine-made lace about 1835 killed this local 

 industrv.^ 



^Treasury Papers, CCX'ill, 47. 

 - Pinnock, I, 31. 

 3 Defoe, Tour, II, 173. 

 ^ Bull. Hist, of Newport Pagnell, 17. 

 '" W. Shrimpton, Notes on a decayed Needle-land, 25. 



^Paliiser, 393. The above description of the lace trade is taken from V. C. H., 

 Bucks, II, 106-7. 



