INDUSTRIES 



Taking one of the sheriffs with him he had 

 repaired thither with all speed, and had found 

 that the principal actors were certain servants 

 of the felt-makers gathered together out of 

 Bermondsey Street and the Blackfriars with a 

 great number of loose and masterless men. 

 The cause had turned out to be the committal, 

 which was alleged to be unjustified, of one 

 of the felt-makers' servants to the Marshalsea 

 prison upon the warrant of the Lord Cham- 

 berlain. 



On II July 1596 the Privy Council 

 directed a letter to be sent to the Lord Mayor, 

 Aldermen and Recorder of London bidding 

 them to see that certain orders which had 

 been set down by their lordships were put in 

 execution for the reformation of sundry 

 abuses practised by the felt-makers who dwelt 

 in divers remote places adjoining to London 

 and the suburbs. A like authority was also 

 to be sent to the justices of Middlesex and 

 Surrey inhabiting near the city.* 



As affording some indication of the number 

 of felt-makers in Southwark shortly after this 

 date we may note the occurrence in the 

 registers of the Prerogative Court of Canter- 

 bury of six wills of felt-makers, all described 

 as of St. Olave's parish, the wills being all 

 dated between the years 1600 and 1605, and 

 proved within a short time of their execution.'' 

 The testators are all apparently of English 

 birth. The trade of a hat-band maker ap- 

 pears also to have had several representatives 

 in St. Olave's at this period, for we have the 

 wills of Knevet Parry, 'bandmaker,' dated 

 21 August 1603,^ Edmond Horsley dated 

 21 September 1605,* and Francis More, 

 dated 15 January 1606-7," ^^^ *-^° latter 

 being described as ' hat-band makers,' and all 

 belonging to St. Olave's, Southwark. Francis 

 More it may be noted left his wife Margaret 

 'the lease which I hold of Copley of two 

 houses at the Maze gate at Battlebridge in 

 Southwark, and a lease of a Tiplinghouse at 

 the lower end of Mill Lane,' as well as all 

 her apparel, rings and jewels, ;{^ioo, and ,^30 

 in household stuffj and was evidently a man 

 of no inconsiderable estate. 



It appears from the parish books of St. 

 Olave's that during the seventeenth century a 

 great number of the inhabitants of this 

 parish were felt-makers and hatters.' Among 

 the token coins issued by traders in the borough 

 there has been found a halfpenny with the 



1 y4cis of the P. C. xxvi. 14. 



2 See the abstracts in Surr. Arch. Coll. x. 144 ; 

 XI. 118, 119, 120, 13s ; xiii. 104. 



3 Ibid. xi. 115. * Ibid. xii. 95. 

 6 Ibid. xii. 201. 



» Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surrey, iii. 600. 



XI 



crest of the Hatband-makers' Company, 

 namely a hand holding a hat, with the legend 

 Adam Smith 1668 in Southwarke.'' 



We can have little doubt but that these 

 industries continued to be carried on exten- 

 sively in Southwark and Bermondsey during 

 the eighteenth century, although we have 

 little or no information of special interest 

 concerning them during this period. Notice 

 may however be made of a curious invention 

 patented in 1769, by James Hodges, described 

 as a ' wood hatt weaver,' in the adjoining 

 parish of Lambeth for his ' new invented art 

 or mistery of weaving wood hats in a loom.'* 

 Early in the succeeding century, in 1804, 

 George Simmonds of St. George's parish, 

 Surrey, took out a patent for a method of 

 manufacturing hats, bonnets and other useful 

 articles of paper, and of rendering the same 

 waterproof when required. The paper was 

 cut into slips, plaited like straw-plait, and 

 varnished.' 



However much our evidences of the hat- 

 making industry of Bermondsey and South- 

 wark may fail us to estimate its real extent in 

 the eighteenth century, there is little doubt 

 that it was during the first half of the nine- 

 teenth century that it reached its greatest 

 development. Bermondsey at one time during 

 this period obtained such pre-eminence in the 

 manufacture as to gain the title of the ' Hat- 

 ters' Paradise,' and to have numbered some 

 3,000 hat-makers amongst its inhabitants.*" 

 This was some time before 1850, in which 

 year the number of hat-makers in the whole 

 of Surrey was then stated to be 2,130, the 

 majority of whom were actually operatives, 

 as compared with 8,728 in the rest of Eng- 

 land and Wales, more than three-fourths of 

 whom were retailers.** The system adopted 

 for the classification of industries at the last 

 census (1901) does not enable us to estimate 

 clearly in any particular district the numbers 

 employed at the present day in hat-making 

 or in the various subsidiary manufactures 

 which it calls into being. It is certain how- 

 ever from the long list of firms which appear 

 in the Directory as established in Southwark, 

 and to some extent still in Bermondsey, and 

 carrying on business as hat manufacturers or 

 engaged in such trades as hat-band makers, 

 hat block makers, hat cork cutters, hat guard 

 makers, hat lining and leather cutters, hat 

 plush manufacturers, hat tip stampers, hatters' 



' Mrs. Boger, Bygone Southwark, 244. 



s Pat. of Invention, No. 936. 



» Ibid. No. 2,765. 



*" E. T. Clarke, Bermondsey (1902), 237. 

 " Brayley and Britten, Hist, of Surrey, v. App. 



361 



46 



