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

The City was unable to contain both production and distribution within its walls.
The fading livery companies' authority presented the opportunity to de-
centralise production in the suburbs. By the eighteenth century to set up a shop
outside the narrows medieval streets of the City, for instance in Aidgate,
Lombard Street or Covent Garden - the so called West End of town - where
broader streets allowed customers to reach shops with their carriages, meant to
have several competitive advantages. Not less important was the fact that a shop
(and related workshop) in the 'liberties' during the eighteenth century could
easily evade the complex and sometimes contradictory rules imposed by the
Cordwainers' Company.
The retailing differentiation within London had not only a horizontal
dimension East-West. Even a North-South dimension could be identified. There
were two sets of streets, running nearly parallel, almost from the eastern
extremity of the town to the western, forming a line of shops. The southern, near
the river, extended from Mile End to Parliament, including Whitechapel,
Leadenhall Street, Cornhill, Cheapside, St. Paul's, Ludgate Street, Fleet Street,
the Strand and Charing Cross. The other, in the North, started from Shoreditch to
Oxford Street, through Threadneedle Street, Cheapside, Newgate Street,
Snowhill, Holborn and Broad Street. 4° The southern line, considered to be the
most important, finished with the newly built Mayfair, centre of noble settling
where the best shops in London were located.4'
Such complexity was present also in shoe retailing. The London market was
not only differentiated, but also the most extended in Britain. If we compare the
number of shoe shops in London with other English towns, we can understand
the dimension of the metropolitan market. With nearly 900 outlets in 1822 and
with more than 2,000 in 1834, it was more than eight times bigger than the
second shoe market in Britain (table 4.1).42
40
A. Vickery, The gentleman's daughter: women's lives in Georgian England (New York -
London, 1998), pp. 250-1.
W. Sombart, Luxuiy and capitalism (Ann Arbor, 1967), p. 131.
42 We are here including boot and shoemakers in directories, varying from chamber masters to
large shoe manufacturers and other kinds of outlets.
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