The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

possession, rather than consumption. Moreover there is a bias towards
consumers' durables. Clothing, for instance, the centre of McKendrick's bottom-
up theones of emulation, is still a very un-quantified area. 10 If per capita increase
in consumption is taken to be one of the most important features of a 'consumer
revolution', there is little evidence that all products followed this pattern in the
eighteenth century.
Data available for boots and shoes reveal the fact that demand was stable. In
England, at the end of the seventeenth century, Gregory King provided a
detailed view of shoe consumption. He estimated in his calculations on the
annual consumption of apparel that each year 12 million pairs of shoes were
consumed in the Kingdom. He fixed the cost at 20d a pair with a total value of
£1,000,000. Another £50,000 were spent for 6,000,000 buckles and shoestrings
(at a cost of 2d each) and another £100,000 in boots at the cost of £1 each pair."
A British Library manuscript attnbuted to Gregory King provides a more
detailed picture, distinguishing into categories and different users (table 3.1).
According to this estimation only 100,000 people (less than two per cent of the
population) in England did not wear shoes. On average each person consumed
two pairs of shoes a year. The total amount of shoes consumed each year was
10,600,000 pairs, plus 100,000 boots, 50,000 spatterdashes, 100,000 shasoons,
800,000 clogs and pattens. 100,000 pairs of shoes were estimated to be
exported.'2
Exceptions are N.B. Harte, 'The economics of clothing in the late seventeenth century',
Textile History, XXII —2 (1991), pp. 277-96 and the recent M. Spufford, 'The cost of apparel in
seventeenth-century England, and the accuracy of Gregory King', Economic History Review,
LIII —4 (2000), pp. 677-705.
The table is reported in N.B. Haste, 'The Economics of clothing in the late seventeenth
century', cit., p. 293.
12 A petition to parliament of 1694 is, with King's documents, one of the first attempts to
quantify the British boot and shoe market. In the petition it was estimated that the total number
of inhabitants in England was six millions (5.5 in King). It was estimated that each person was
consuming three pairs of shoes a year (2 pairs in King), at six pence per pair (20 pence in King).
The annual amount spent on shoes was thus £450,000 (1 million in King). They estimated also a
consumption of a million pairs of boots (at six pence per pair for a total of £25,000) and one
million clogs and galoshes (at three pence per pair for a total of12,500). A Computation of what
a tax laid on shoes, boots, slippers, and gloves may amount unto a year... (London, 1694).
95