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

industrial period. If we consider this research as business history, the classic
sources of the business world are not sufficient to create a complete reconstruction
of the trade. Firms were very often small and few of their records survive. The
National Register of Archives provides a web list of boot and shoe companies
whose private archives are present in record offices or in private hands. 26 However
few of them relate to the period before 1850. Even for the few existing the quantity
of information in the document is limited. Normally we have cash books with
prices, customers and quantities of shoes purchased. Little information can be
glean ed on production, selling techniques and types of products. On the latter
issue, most of the records normally report a vague label of 'shoes'. Even in the case
of long living companies their records are often incomplete. A famous case can be
Gotch & Son of Kettering, whose archive is not at all complete although the firm
has been one of the major British shoe producers during the last two centuries. A
second and even more extraordinary case is Hoby in the West End of London, the
most important London producer in the early nineteenth century and active till
1959, of which no records or papers survive.
It has therefore been necessary to integrate business records with a long and
variegate ensemble of other sources. A very important collection of primary
sources has been the Cordwainers' Company records at the Guildhall Library. My
interest has been focused on the records from the late seventeenth century till the
demise of the Company in the 1830s. The Company manuscripts have provided a
large set of information on institutional aspects of the trade such as internal
structures of the Company, number of apprentices and their regulations,
membership of the company and methods to acquire it. They provided also useful
information on the relationship between the shoemaking trade and other
occupations such as butchers, tanners, curriers and leathersellers. Petitions and
Acts of Parliament contributed to a deeper comprehension of the long running
disputes between these trades. 27 The limits of Company records, petitions and acts
of Parliament are self-evident. They provide an institutional image of the trade in
which the day by day problems can hardly be seen. Unfortunately for Paris the
records of the Compagnie des Cordonniers were lost during the Commune of 1871.
' National Register of Archives' website: http://www.hmc.gov.uk/
10