Consistency and accuracy in commercial listings in directories

Consistency in Sample Commercial Listings in Directories

Classification was a constant problem for directory compilers, because many businessmen had several occupations. At the top of the retail hierarchy were the drapers (who usually called themselves “mercers” to emphasise the superior quality of the cloth that they sold). A draper had to carry heavy stocks and needed not merely technical knowledge but substantial working capital.¹

Surprisingly, drapers frequently operated also as grocers. For example, Adam Eve seems to have combined both activities from the outset of his business in 1782 and the firm that he founded was still listed as grocers (in addition to drapers, tailors and hatters) into the 1840s² In 1796 one of Eve’s competitors, Messrs Smith & Hyde took one youth as an apprentice mercer and another as an apprentice grocer. At its core grocery was concerned with tea, coffee, spices, dried fruit, rice etc and usually soap and candles; see Grocer: Isaac Smith. Most of these items were also sold by “shopkeepers”, who were listed separately in the directories and had a much lower social status. The shopkeepers were mainly supplied by the grocers and some grocers operated primarily as wholesalers. Shopkeepers were listed as such in the directories, but in the census returns they often called themselves grocers.

Consistency in listing was hard to achieve. Consider, for example, the following three common trades.

TRADE	NUMBER LISTED IN LOUTH
	Pigot 1835	Pigot 1841	White 1842
Boot and shoe maker	34	24	30
Butcher	20	30	28
Milliner and dressmaker	20	14	14

Boot and shoe makers are dealt with in more detail in the appendix below and butchers are dealt with on another page.

Milliners and dressmakers were harder to categorise. A minority had their own shops and offered (as the Misses Gorbutt of New Street put it) “all that is novel, elegant and fashionable in the various styles of French and English taste”³ but more worked from ordinary houses; some even worked at their customers’ homes for “eighteen-pence a day and her meals”.⁴ The people that made much money out of women’s clothes tended to be the drapers rather than the dressmakers; cloth was expensive but labour was cheap. It was difficult to keep track of the dressmakers because their businesses tended to be short lived.

The uncertainty about the position of many commercial residents makes it impossible to check whether in some cases listing was obtained by placing an order for a directory. However it is unlikely that this happened on any significant scale, because the number of traders listed in the directories was huge and most small traders would not have thought paying for listing worthwhile.

Appendix: Boot and Shoe Makers 1835–42

The Trade

Apart from agriculture, the footwear trade was the leading source of adult male employment⁵ at the beginning of the Victorian period and also a substantial source of female employment. Leather boots and shoes were relatively expensive and, unlike many other items of clothing, could not easily be made at home. The tradesmen usually referred to themselves as “cordwainers” (which originally meant workers in high quality leather).

Business organisation in the 1830s was not as clear as it became later. By the close of the nineteenth century the trade was dominated by national chain stores that had their own factories, mainly in the vicinity of Northampton and Leicester, and in towns like Louth operated as retailers of ready-made boots and shoes. However these chains did not reach Louth until the 1880s. Some substantial privately owned shoe shops were mainly concerned with retailing ready-made shoes bought from wholesalers but also manufactured their own boots and shoes. The better shops had bespoke departments, including wooden lasts prepared individually for wealthy customers.⁶ Repairing boots and shoes was an important commercial activity in itself and by the end of the century most of the self-employed “cordwainers” were largely concerned with repairs.

Literary sources should be treated with some reserve. In the brilliant 1953 film version of the play Hobson’s Choice, we see John Mills first buying sheets of leather and then doing all the work needed to turn the leather into top class boots; and this method of single man working is also described in Flora Thompson’s recollections of her wise uncle Tom;⁷ but a division of labour was much more typical.

In the 1830s the proportion of boots and shoes manufactured locally was probably high, though Henry Boothby, the town’s leading footwear supplier, advertised “an immense variety” of boots, shoes and slippers selected by himself in London, some probably imported from France.⁸

The Louth-made shoes sold by Boothby may have been made by employees, but are as likely to have been made by self-employed out-workers. In the trade it was not unusual for a shoe to be partly made by one person, partly by another and then given its final finish by a third. In the main shoe manufacturing centres the number of specialities multiplied and a bewildering number of technical terms used. Even in Louth we find in 1860 a shoemaker seeking two “Ladies’ Military Heel Channel Hands” and offering piece work at three shillings per pair “with constant employ Summer and Winter”.⁹

Out-working was particularly attractive in that the tasks could be divided amongst members of a family. In the mid-nineteenth century census enumerators’ books for Louth there are examples of female “shoe binders”, whose job was to join the top of the shoe to the sole; these women do not appear in the directories. An example was Ann Singleton of Gospelgate, who described herself as a shoe binder in the 1841 census. She was probably the widow of Jonathan Singleton, a shoemaker (unlisted in directories but voting as a cordwainer in 1834) who had died shortly before the census. Out-working was also encouraged by the relative simplicity and low cost of shoemaking tools. Even in the largest production centres sewing machines were not introduced until the 1850s and many other heavy items of equipment did not appear until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Another way of examining the trade is to look at the need for working capital. A retailer like Boothby must have carried a substantial stock as well as the expenses of his shop. The smaller operators had no shops and probably bought materials in small quantities. In some cases it is likely that they did not buy sheet leather at all: in 1867 George Stainton, a leather cutter in Aswell Lane, advertised “men’s and women’s uppers”; the shoemaker would buy a roughly cut version of the most important part of the shoe, trim it and add the remaining parts.¹⁰ In the larger manufacturing centres, and possibly also in Louth, some out-workers needed no capital. They took a partly finished shoe, did some work on it and handed it back in return for payment. At all times the item remained the property of the retailer.

Directory Listings

The structure of the trade meant that shoemakers must have presented difficulties to directory compilers. Their probable aim was to list those that dealt direct with the public and to exclude those that worked only for other shoemakers, whether as employees or as subcontractors. It was easy to identify shoemakers with shops in the main streets, but many others worked from ordinary houses. In the 1834 poll 57 voters identified themselves as cordwainers (including one honest “cobbler”) but 36 of them occupied houses etc rated at less than £3 (NB half values).¹¹ A comparison between Pigot 1835 and Pigot 1841 suggests that the former was thought to have included too many shoemakers occupying low value premises.

For shoemakers, as for other trades, it is sometimes difficult to reconcile directories with rating lists, because the ratepayer was not necessarily the same as the businessman. As a shoemaker William Henry Gray with premises in Market Place was second only to Boothby, but he could not vote in 1834 and was not listed in R1838, because the ratepayer was his widowed mother, Rebecca. Similarly the business of Thomas Brown seems to have passed by 1841 to his son, Charles, but his widow was the ratepayer in R1838. (She was not listed in directories but Chronicle 5.10.1838 recorded that she complained to the magistrates about her delinquent apprentice, who had absented himself from work for a week. “All remonstrance appearing to be thrown away, he was committed to the house of correction for one month.”)