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

shoemakers who produced the entire shoe in their own houses. When all shoes
were finished, they were carried back to the workshop and the shoemaker was
paid on a piecework basis.77 If produced in the provinces, shoes were packed in
baskets (from which the word 'basket work') and sent by wagon to the capital.78
The increasing availability of roads, especially from the second half of the
eighteenth century, is considered to be another important element that facilitated
the provincial up-rise. It reduced the cost of transport and enabled provincial
production to be retailed on the London market at lower prices than local
products.79 Land connections were not the only important element in the
Northampton productive development. In May 1815 a four mile-long canal
connected Northampton with the Grand Junction canal at Blisworth. This canal
linked the town with Manchester, Birmingham and the North of England, but
also with London. 8° It was imperative to be able to move footwear rapidly. The
Napoleonic wars provided large Army and Navy orders that London shoemakers
were not able to satisfy. 8' The only solution was to hire labour in the country
sending leather and material and receiving back finished shoes that could be sold
to Army contractors. According to Devlin Dacres this was the main reason why
"Northampton advanced into an importance greater than ever, as a shoemaking
district". 82 The trade prospered not only in Northampton, but also in other
county centres such as Wellingborough and Kettering.83
76 M.D. George, London l(fe and labour, cit., p. 199.
17
Victoria County History: Northampton, cit., vol. ii, pp. 320-1; D.M. Brooks, 'The growth of
post school education and technical training in Northamptonshire: the boot and shoe trade'
(Unpublished M.Ed. Thesis, Leicester University, 1970), pp. 10-11. The term 'clicker' to
identify a leather cutter is a nineteenth-century word.
78 A. Adcock, The Northampton shoe (Northampton, 1931), p. 37.
A. Dyer, 'Midlands', in P. Clark, ed., The Cambridge urban history of Britain. Volume II:
1540-1840 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 95.
80 V.A. Hatley, 'Some aspects of Northampton history, 1815-51', Northamptonshire Past and
Present, III —5 (1964), p. 243.
81 D. Bythell, The sweated trades, cit., pp. 107-9.
82 J.D. Dacres, Contract reform: its necessity shewn in respect to the shoemaker... (London,
1856), p. 6. The first army order to Northampton dates from 1642. Thomas Pendleton received
an order for 4,000 pairs of shoes and 600 pairs of boots for the English Army in Ireland. The
total value was more than £1,400 and he employed 12 shoemakers. In 1648 Northampton
provided 2,500 pairs of boots to Cromwell's troops and in 1689 more than 2,500 pairs to William
ifi's army in Ireland. E. Bordoli, Old Friends (Northampton, 1934), p. 24.
83 Parliamentary Papers, Lord's Committee on the Poor Laws, 1817 (1818), V, p. 101, cited in
J.H. Clapham, An economic history of modern Britain (Cambridge, 1926), vol. i, pp. 18 1-2. Eden
reported in 1797 that in Kettering "stimulated by government contracts, a large-scale boot and
shoe manufacturing quickly grew up there on an outwork basis". F.M. Eden, The state of the
poor (London, 1797), vol. ii, p. 530.
234