INDUSTRIES 



preservation of the river in its natural state 

 still more desirable at the end of that century, 

 and a scheme formed in 1799 for making a 

 canal from Wandsworth to Croydon was 

 unfavourably reported upon on the ground 

 that it would inflict serious injury upon 

 the numerous mills and valuable manu- 

 factures.* As many as forty different indus- 

 trial undertakings were being carried on 

 along the course of the Wandle in 1805, and 

 most of them were said to be of considerable 

 extent and importance.^ A classification of 

 the list is interesting. There were twelve 

 calico-printing works, nine flour mills, one of 

 which at Merton was stated to be the most 

 complete of its kind in England, five snuff 

 mills, three bleaching grounds, one of them 

 thought to be the largest in the kingdom, 

 three oil mills, two dyeing works, a paper mill, 

 a skinning mill, a logwood mill, copper works, 

 iron works, and a porter brewery. The river 

 at that date was considered to be the hardest 

 worked of any of its size in the world. 

 Employment for upwards of 1,700 people was 

 furnished during its short course of ten miles. 

 Indeed when all the mills were at work the 

 total number of employed was estimated to be 

 little, if at all, short of 3,000. 



The eighteenth century is distinguished 

 by the absence of any strong motive for the 

 personal interest of the Crown in particular 

 manufectures and the predominance of the 

 laissez faire principle in economic policy. 

 Consequently we are deprived of most of that 

 material to be found in the public records and 

 State Papers which gives us such interesting 

 and withal authoritative information as to the 

 condition of many of the more common in- 

 dustries in the two preceding centuries. Parish 

 registers were readily accessible and the wills 

 of those engaged in particular industries can 

 be made to furnish materials to enable us to 

 gauge the extent and nature of those industries 

 at certain periods. Our account of the 

 bleaching and calico-printing works on the 

 Wandle during the eighteenth century is 

 perhaps our best illustration of the information 

 to be gathered from such documents. Unfor- 

 tunately their very voluminousness makes it 

 impossible at present to apply such methods 

 of research over the whole of a county. In 

 general our notices of any industry have had 

 to be derived from the accounts given by 

 writers whose works have been published 

 in or about the period, and cannot always be 

 accepted as absolutely trustworthy. 



1 Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surrey, iii. 343. 



2 Malcolm, Compendium of Modern Husbandry, 

 i. 6-8, 



Nevertheless, although for the reasons 

 we have given we have been able to write 

 more fully and with better authority of the 

 condition of the bleaching and calico-printing 

 industries in Surrey during the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, we need have little doubt that the period 

 was one of industrial progress in the whole 

 north-eastern region of the county immediately 

 contiguous to the Thames. The act of 

 1722-3,^ which finally abolished the pre- 

 tended privileges of the Mint in Southwark, 

 set the seal upon that legislation which since 

 the year 1697 * had aimed at sweeping away 

 those privileges which for centuries the lawless 

 inhabitants of such resorts of unlicensed liberty 

 had held unchallenged. The removal from 

 the neighbourhood of that part of its popu- 

 lation which had been beyond the jurisdiction 

 of all the authorities must have been an 

 important factor in the establishment of those 

 settled conditions of law and order which are 

 essential to the full development of commerce 

 and industry. 



The middle of the same century saw the 

 beginning of the bridge building era over the 

 tidal Thames. This is the most important 

 sign of the greatly increased need which had 

 now arisen for communication between north 

 and south. The opening of the new bridges 

 no doubt early resulted in the establishment 

 on the Surrey side of the river of many manu- 

 factures which required more ample conditions 

 of space than could readily be had on the 

 more crowded- northern bank. The fact that 

 some of the more important manufacturing 

 businesses now settled in Southwark and the 

 Surrey suburbs have been transferred there 

 from the other side of the river through having 

 outgrown their former limits of expansion is 

 one of the most salient characteristics at the 

 present day of the industries carried on in this 

 district. During the eighteenth century these 

 industries partook to the full of that great 

 variety of description of which we have 

 already spoken. It is almost impossible to 

 attempt to make a complete list of them. 

 The printed lists of patents for inventions 

 granted in the latter half of the century and 

 the first half of the following one prove how 

 large a proportion of the more inventive 

 amongst the engineers and metal workers, the 

 makers of mathematical, philosophical and 

 optical instruments, and the makers of 

 machinery of every description were then 

 settled in business in Southwark, Lambeth, 

 Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. The brewing 

 of beer and porter had become an important 



3 9 Geo. I. cap. 28. 



« Stat, 8 & 9 Will. III. cap. 27. 



255 



