Sales of corn and cattle in Louth markets. Value of market tolls. Hiring fairs.

Louth was, and is, a market town. Originally this simply meant a town where a public market was held; and the earliest markets were comparable to modern car boot sales; but the description came to be applied to towns that provided trading centres for the surrounding rural areas, whether the trade took place in a market or not. Louth’s 1551 charter referred to long-established Wednesday and Saturday markets, which are still held in the town centre. In 1775 the Corporation established a new market place for sheep and pigs in Upgate on the site of what is now Royal Oak Court. That market was moved to the Quarry (a very large chalk pit) in 1802. In 1817 the Old Corporation decided that cattle sales might also take place there and in 1829 it was made an offence to sell cattle, horses, sheep or pigs in any other street.¹ The Quarry sales were on Fridays and were still usually referred to as “Louth sheep market”. The markets were not held every Friday; if 1840 is taken as a sample year, Mercury listed a total of 31 Friday markets in Louth. Some of these would have been for sheep only; sales of cattle were intended to take place fortnightly.

Sales of corn took place at the Wednesday market. These were commercially significant and the prices and quantities were the subject of statutory returns, which showed that Louth was a much less important centre for sales than Lincoln, which in turn was less important than Boston. In 1838 the (normally) weekly sales of wheat at Louth averaged 587 quarters at an average price of £3 1s 2d per quarter, as against 1,455 quarters for Lincoln and 1,990 for Boston. (A quarter was a unit of volume equal to 8 bushels or 64 gallons. The weight of a quarter of wheat varied but about 480 lbs seems to have been expected; barley and oats weighed less per quarter.)² Wheat sales were far more important than sales of barley and oats.

The Value of Markets

The right to hold a public market and collect fees from the stallholders was formerly very valuable and typically granted by royal charter. By the nineteenth century market rights were relatively less important in themselves, because most buying and selling took place in shops. However they were still valuable and the rating lists indicate a real increase: the ordinary market tolls were not stated in R1823, but the total valuation of the ordinary market and sheep/cattle market tolls was £180 in R1838 and £280 in R1851; by comparison the RVs placed on the town’s largest shop were £138 and £120 respectively.

The main importance of markets lay in concentrating shopping on market days. An extreme eighteenth century example of this was provided by William Hardy, a prominent Louth draper, who took a lease of a shop in Alford but only opened it on Alford’s Tuesday market days. The matter was publicised because an Alford draper (unsuccessfully) prosecuted him under some legislation relating to itinerant traders.³ Market days promoted the development of networks of carriers that on market days transported people and goods to market towns from the surrounding villages. White 1856 listed numerous carriers to Louth on Wednesdays, some of whom also operated on Saturdays. Exact numbers cannot be calculated, since the list does not make it clear how many of the carriers named were working in partnership. Carriers are not further dealt with here, because the majority of them lived in the villages, rather than in Louth.

The Market Scene

A vivid, though slightly sentimental, picture of of a Lincolnshire market is given by Thomas Miller’s description of Gainsborough’s Tuesday market in Chapter IV of Our Old Town (1857, but relating mainly to the 1820s). The following points emerge from his description.

(a) The market was a social occasion, not merely an economic activity.
(b) The market was held out of doors the goods being displayed on wooden stalls.
(c) “Nearly every shopkeeper in the town had a stall in the market-place”.
(d) Many of the sellers were farmers from the neighbouring countryside, or their wives and daughters. The farming families came to buy as well as sell.
(e) Miller makes on specific reference to an itinerant trader “a dealer in Sheffield hardware doing desperate deeds at the front of his covered cart.”
(f) This was not merely a retail market; it included “men carrying heavy loads of hides” and the coopers had “piles of rushes which they sell to the chair-bottomers”.
(g) Meat formed an important part of the goods sold.
(h) Livestock was also sold; Miller refers to poultry and pigs but not to cattle or sheep.
(i) Miller does not refer to corn merchants, but it is clear from press reports that the town’s trade in corn took place at the Tuesday markets.

Probably most of these points would have applied to Louth, though having two different market days must have reduced the social significance of each and made it less worthwhile for Louth shopkeepers to have market stalls, unless their shops were small or away from the town centre. Information about stallholders tends to emerge only incidentally, mainly from crime reports. For example we know that John Fanthorpe, a small scale dealer in crockery, operated from a market stall, because he fell victim to a juvenile thief, who also stole from stalls held by potters from Grimsby and Horncastle and from Maria Wakelin, a toy dealer, who had a small shop in the Market Place.⁴

Lincolnshire, and particularly the Lincolnshire Wolds, constituted an important source of wool. In 1824 changes in tariffs were seen to provide an opportunity for new markets specifically for wool and these were established at Gainsborough, quickly followed by Louth and Grimsby. To promote sales in Louth a new building, the “Wool Mart” was erected on the corner of Lee Street and Kidgate in 1825. It was designed to provide both a place for buyers and sellers to meet and a warehouse for farmers to store their wool pending sale; but it was not a success. ⁵ An advertisement in 1828 had an air of desperation: storage for fleeces was offered at the nominal price of ½d per tod (28 lbs) per month. ⁶ The building was put to various subsequent uses and is now an auction room.

No doubt some sales of wool took place at Louth’s Wednesday markets but the only large local purchaser, the carpet factory, had no need of a market. The main purchasers of wool were merchants (sometimes called staplers), who acted as middlemen between the farmers and the West Riding manufacturers. One of these, John Holdsworth (c 1800–1855), was resident in Halifax, the traditional heart of the cloth trade, but also owned a house in Louth from at least 1832 and voted in Louth in the parliamentary election of 1852.

Fairs

In addition to the right to hold markets the Corporation (from 1836 the Borough Council) had the right to hold fairs; no separate monetary value was put on this. Louth had a Spring fair after Easter and an Autumn fair on or around 23 November. Following a public meeting in 1848 the Spring fair was given a fixed date, 30 April, and new fairs were introduced in September and October. These were reasonably successful. By the 1850s the April fair was spread over two days, one for sheep and one for cattle. ⁷

A fair was in principle little different from a market but was intended to attract buyers and sellers from a wider area. Fairs were also social events and often attracted large numbers of visitors, especially after railway travel became available.⁸ Consequently the fairs attracted travelling showmen and (a point very frequently made in contemporary press reports) travelling pickpockets. Some fairs (eg Horncastle’s horse fair) had a national following and many were of regional significance; but Louth’s fairs were not on this scale. The following extracts from 1837 are typical.

Louth fair on Monday last was but thinly attended by strangers. The cattle were not numerous, but there were plenty of buyers of fat beasts at 7s to 7s 9d or 8s per stone … The town was particularly lively owing to the great number of exhibitions – Wombwell’s splendid menagerie, Mrs Samwell’s equestrian troupe and a host of minor shows. No depredations of importance that we hear of were committed. Amongst the fat beasts in the fair were four superior heifers bred by Mr West Larder of Cockerington and sold to Mr West Mawer of Louth, butcher.

Louth fair yesterday (Thursday) was largely supplied with beasts and the buyers were plentiful. Fat things fetched 6s to 6s 9d and 7s per stone and others obtained good prices. For sheep and horses it is not considered a good fair, and consequently there were none worth noticing.⁹

Statutes (Hiring Fairs)

A different type of fair was the “statute”, a fair for the hiring of those farm workers that were employed by the year, and also some domestic servants. (The name was derived from the belief that these traditional fairs had been made a statutory requirement in the sixteenth century.) In east Lincolnshire statutes usually took place in the Spring; for example in 1838 statutes were listed for Alford on 27 April, Louth 30 April and Horncastle 1 May.

Andrew Walker’s review of Lincolnshire fairs and markets ¹⁰ is particularly valuable for statutes. Newspaper accounts of them were generally biased. Statutes were regarded as not altogether respectable, having the air of slave markets and “encouraging immorality”. Chronicle 22.1.1858 reported a debate of a meeting of “gentry, clergy, and influential landowners and agriculturalists” to discuss the replacement of statutes by a registration system. The Bishop of Lincoln spoke about the importance of ensuring that domestic and farm servants were of good character. In reply a tenant farmer pointed to the need for face to face interviews and gave the example of a prospective waggoner that was of good character but “as soon as he saw the young man he found him knock-knee’d, weak in the back and no use to carry a sack of wheat”. As for immorality, “at Louth fair there were generally 5,000 lads and lasses, and far more immorality prevailed there than at the statutes”.

Mid-nineteenth century editors were fond of reporting the decline of the statutes, for example:

“There was a good attendance of both masters and servants, but the latter were so exorbitant in their demands that little or no business was done.” (Chronicle 7.5.1848) “[T]he attendance of servants and masters was below the usual average and not much hiring transacted.” (Hull Packet 3.5.1850). “… little hiring done.” (Hull Packet 23.2.1855). “As for hiring that is effected in the public market. it is becoming every succeeding year ‘small by degrees and beautifully less’ ” (Advertiser 19.5.1860).

Notwithstanding editorial disapproval and the depression in agriculture beginning in the 1870s, Louth’s statutes survived into the 1920s. Late in the nineteenth century they were often called “May hiring statutes” or just “May hirings”. Intermittent press reports show a tendency for female wages to rise relative to those of male. In 1899 it was reported that at Louth’s statute “girls willing to milk were exceedingly scarce” and for female servants the demand was “far in excess of the supply”. At the top of the hiring scale the annual wages quoted for head waggoners were £16 to £22 and for cooks £18 to £22 (plus, of course, free meals and accommodation).¹¹ During the First World War general inflation and military demands had raised wages to £24-35 for waggoners, £30 for cooks, £14-20 for general maids and £10 for “young girls”.¹²

Markets and Fairs

The Value of Markets

The Market Scene

Fairs

Statutes (Hiring Fairs)