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

The 1812 London shoemakers' strike can be considered as the turning point
of consolidated practices. A twelve-week strike led London shoe retailers to
depend completely on Northampton production. It confirmed what was
becoming obvious, that is to say the strength of Northampton as a shoemaking
centre. The Napoleonic wars had multiplied shoe production in the provincial
town and many shoemakers were now confident of being able to reach the
metropolitan market without depending on London wholesale dealers and
retailers. The end of the Napoleonic wars and a sudden restriction in shoe
demand, imposed a more active action from Northampton producers. In the logic
of dependence on the London shoe market, Northampton was hit by a demand
crisis more than the metropolis itself. Many producers saw that the only solution
to survive the crisis was to approach directly the metropolitan market.
An early example of a new kind of local entrepreneurship can be seen in the
Kettering shoe manufacturer Thomas Gotch who, by profession a banker,
entered the army shoe trade as a manufacturer in 1778.84 Even more important in
understanding the provincial penetration is the setting up of a Northamptonshire
shoe depot in London in 1812.85 A group of Northamptonshire shoe
manufacturers associated in order to establish a selling agency in the capital.
This association was short lived because of internal problems and ended up as a
private business run by a certain William Hickson, a Northampton bootmaker
previously appointed as director of the depot and who had an extensive
knowledge of the London market being one of George Hoby's former
apprentices. 86 A few years later, in 1818, a second depot was set up at 33
We find, for instance, that Thomas Gotch was the main creditor of Samuel Wood, a boot and
shoemaker in the Strand in London in the early 1831. Wood owned to Gotch more than £400.
PRO B 3/5779: 'Bankruptcy of Samuel Wood, boot and shoemaker in the Strand, London' (22ld
November 1831). On Gotch see also R.A. Church, 'Gotch & Sons, Kettering, tanners, curriers,
boot and shoe makers, 1797-1888', Journal of Boot and Shoe Institutions, VII - 11(1957), pp.
479-88 and part H in ibid., VII - 12 (1957), pp. 506-12; R.A. Church, 'Messrs Gotch & Sons and
the rise of the Kettering footwear industry', Business History, Vifi - 2 (1966), pp. 140-9; P.
Mounfield, 'The footwear industry of the East Midlands IV: Leicestershire till 1911', East
Midlands Geographer, IV - 1, no. 25 (1966), pp. 8-23; R.L. Greenhall, 'The rise of industrial
Kettering', Northamptonshire Past and Present, V —3 (1975), pp. 253-66.
85 Victoria County History: Northampton, cit., vol. ii, pp. 324-5.
86 Parliamentary Papers (1812), micro 14.23, cit., pp. 652-3.
235