A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



was compiled by his eldest son William, who for 

 many years was associated with his father in the 

 boot manufacturing business, which he afterwards 

 relinquished for literary work. 



The subject of the ' memoir ' was born in 

 I 78 1 and apprenticed at the age of fourteen to 

 bootmaking. In 1 80 1 he commenced business 

 in the bespoke trade on his own account in 

 London, but desiring to enter the wholesale 

 trade and the manufacture of boots for exporta- 

 tion, he journeyed in 1806 to Northampton, 'the 

 principal seat of the manufacture,* the trade 

 having been driven out of London ' by trade 

 combination for high wages.' Of 181 1 the 

 history says : — 



' The trade of Northampton at this time, from the 



demands of the war and the high wages maintained in 

 London by the Trades Unions, was rapidly on the 

 increase, but a great inconvenience had begun to be 

 felt among shoe manufacturers for the want of a 

 London Agency for the disposal of their goods. 

 Every manufacturer as he accumulated surplus stock 

 had to find his own market and collect his own book 

 debts, objects which involved frequent journeys to 

 town, and in those days, when there were no railroads 

 and no penny post, great loss of time and expense. 

 The custom was to send a few hampers of shoes by 

 canal to some London firm, follow them by coach, and 

 lodge at the inn till they were sold. 



' My father called the manufacturers together and 

 proposed to them an association for renting a ware- 

 house in London as a general dep6t for their goods, 

 to which naturally all buyers would be attracted, and 

 placing the whole under the charge of a managing 

 agent to be remunerated by a small commission on the 

 sales. The scheme found favour ; he was appointed 

 manager; warehouses for a shoe dep6t were taken on 

 the George Yard, Smithfield, in 1 812. The George 

 Yard dep6t was at first a success. It facilitated 

 greatly the trade of those who supported it, but not 

 equally. The goods of some manufacturers sold 

 more readily than those of others, as either better or 

 cheaper. Some lost customers instead of gaining 

 them by the dep6t, buyers profiting by the variety of 

 choice afforded them and going from one manu- 

 facturer to another. In fact, the principles of 

 individual competition and mutual co-operation 

 would not work well together, and hence arose 

 jealousies and divisions which ultimately broke up 

 the original establishment and substituted for it a 

 number of private commission houses upon a less 

 comprehensive model.' 



Mr. Hickson continued in London as a 

 general commission agent, and the journal speaks 

 of the flourishing state of the wholesale shoe 

 trade owing to great demand for shoes occasioned 

 by the war, but a graphic description is given of 

 the subsequent distress. 



'The cessation of an extravagant war expenditure, 

 and the bad harvest of 1 8 16, when in November the 

 price of bread rose to is. 3id'. the quartern loaf, began 

 the period of severe commercial depression from 

 which the shoe trade suffered with other interests and 

 was slow to recover. The war had been successful, 

 but its cost had been fearful, and the supplies for the 



British Army in Portugal and Spain had been so ill- 

 man.iged that the Government stores had been 

 augmented to an extent ten times greater than the 

 actual need, while our troops were constantly com- 

 plaining of insufficiencj'. While the soldiers of 

 Wellington were fighting barefoot, 30,000 pairs of 

 army shoes per week were passing through my father's 

 hands, which, by the instructions given him through the 

 head contractors, were shipped to every port in Spain 

 and Portugal but the right one, the army having 

 generally marched to some other part of the country 

 before the shoes arrived. The war ended, these were 

 re-imported and thrown upon the market, and month 

 after month for some years sales by auction were 

 advertised by Government. Quantities of shoes and 

 other articles of military' clothing, which did not 

 realise half their cost price, were sacrificed by Govern- 

 ment either as useless or to prevent a collapse of 

 revenue. Scabbards and pouches were sold in 

 sufficient quantities to affect sensibly the ordinary 

 demand for leather, and every trade that an extrava- 

 gant Government expenditure had unduly stimulated 

 was now in a proportionate degree paralysed.' 



In 18 13, in 15 May issue of the Mercury, 

 a curious kind of fraud is brought to notice. 

 ' Caution and Reward : Shoemakers that have 

 been in the habit of using clay in the bottoms of 

 shoes will be prosecuted.' 



The clay was presumably used as bottom 

 filling, and would perhaps when dry produce a 

 spurious firmness and solidity. One case was 

 taken into court by way of warning, and the 

 issue of 23 May reports the same : — 



' George Neal, a journeyman shoemaker, was last 

 week convicted before John Chambers and Charles 

 Smith, Esq., two of His Majesty's justices of the 

 peace for this town, in the penalty or damages of £^ 

 for wilfully spoiling the materials for ten pairs of shoes 

 by improperly making them up and putting a quantity 

 of clay between the soles.' ' 



In 181 7 Stephen Haslock, Newland, North- 

 ampton, offers for sale jockey boots, £1 18s. ; 

 Wellingtons, ^^i 55. ; ditto long, ^^i 8s. ; Hes- 

 sians, £1 ; Regents, i8s. ; Blucher, 141. ; short 

 ditto, I2S. 



1 During the preparation of this article (1905) the 

 writer has had the opportunity of discussing various 

 questions with an old stitchman or cordwainer who 

 was apprenticed at the age of eleven, sixty-nine years 

 ago I This man immediately exclaimed, when hearing 

 of the incident mentioned above, ' Why, we did very 

 much the same thing in the thirties ! ' It appears that 

 masters giving out work to be ' made ' only supplied 

 ' bottom filling ' for the higher grades. The shoe- 

 makers therefore obtained leather-dust from the 

 curriers, which could be had for the asking, and damp- 

 ing it, employed it for the same purpose as their 

 predecessors had the clay. That these old customs, 

 illicit though they may be, die hard is evidenced by a 

 case in the Northampton Court of 22 Dec. 1857, 

 when a man was sent to prison for one month for 

 using curriers' shavings for fittings in making up army 

 boots, and converting the pieces of leather served out 

 to him by his employer, Mr. M. P. Manfield, to his 

 own use. 



324 



