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

These new retailing systems were associated the rising middle-class who
could not afford bespoke. 19 To reach such a mass distribution world, production
did not have to be mass-marketed based, but had simply to provide goods in
large quantities, short times and on a fairly standard level of quality. 20 The
appearance of warehouses did not seem to change the traditional retail practices
in the trade. Marketing techniques, such as ticketing or branding of goods
followed and did not accompany the birth of larger distributive units. 21 The
Napoleonic wars saw a further increase of general dealers selling shoes. Samuel
Brown, a linen and woollen draper in Enfield Town, expanded his business to
clothes, hats to include a shoe warehouse. 22 In the 1850s, clearly in opposition to
what has been suggested by Jeffereys, shops like Wilcoxon in the City were not
rare (illustration 4•9)•23 Its splendid trade card of 1858 shows a circular building
entirely occupied by a large shoe shop, specialised in wholesale and export but
supplying also families.24
These changes, here set in chronological order, have not to be taken as
exclusive. Traditional shops in which production and retail were associated
remained common well into the second half of the nineteenth century. This was
particularly true of the shops supplying those classes for which bespoke was still
very important. High-class shops, such as Perkins in Red Lion Street (illustration
4.10), remained common examples of shoe retailers in the shopping streets of
London. The high market was in many ways 'traditional'. In the 1850s Dawson,
boot and shoemaker in Burlington Arcade was described by Augustus Sala as a
world of luxury:
' C. Fowler, 'Change in provincial retail practice in the eighteenth century', cit., pp. 49-50.
20 The subject of shoe measures is particularly important. Future research should explain the
relationship between the creation of standardised products and the universal systems used by
producers and customers. It seems clear that the problem of mass production cannot be related
only to the quantity of shoes produced as suggested by June Swann. See J. Swann, 'Mass
production of shoe', cit., pp. 41-8.
21 M.D. George, London life, cit., pp. 199-201.
22 In 1829 Frederick Thomas Noyce, shoemaker in Richmond, was producing shoes but also
buying them from William Wood, shoemaker in King's Road - Richmond, from J.W. Sims, shoe
dealer in St Martin Le Grand and from Thomas Clarke, shoe dealer in Charlton Street,
Bloomsbury. PRO, B 3 3740: 'Bankruptcy of Frederick Thomas Noyce, shoemaker in
Richmond, 30 July 1829'.
J.B. Jefferys, Retail trading in Britain, 1 850-1 950 (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 353-60.
We have to notice the symbols used in the trade cards: horses and ships are suggesting
overseas trade, while the Monument underlines the importance attributed to the physical location
of the shop.
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