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

same chain of production, such as butchers, tanners, cumers, saddlers or
leatherdressers, by far the largest occupational group among apprentices'
parents were cordwainers.
The analysis of apprentices' provenience and background allows us to
reassess some general conclusions about apprenticeship's decline in the course
of the eighteenth century. In the Cordwainers' company case, even with a
classic situation of numerical decrease, apprenticeship does not seem
characterised by a simple decline. Apprenticeship remained through the century
the main method to communicate 'skills and experience' from one generation to
another. 57 The data presented allows us to clearly recognise an increasingly
stronger family dimension within the trade. Eric Hobsbawm, in his examination
of European shoemaking at the end of the ancient regime, underlines the
existence of a peculiar inter-generational continuity in London shoemaking, not
at all present in other European cities. 58 Such inter-generational continuity was
achieved though the company itself. About 15 to 20 per cent of all cordwainers'
apprentices had a father whose occupation was cordwaining (fig. 2.3). The
practice of apprenticing sons was widespread within the lower metropolitan
trades and cordwaining was not an exception. 59 It was normal when the son was
supposed to succeed his own father in the family business. A second possibility
was to apprentice a cordwainer's son to another cordwainer. This case presents
a more proactive view in which the parental willingness to continue his craft in
future generations was associated vif1 the expansion of skills.6° By entering
another workshop a shoemaker's son could learn new techniques and eventually
transmit them. What has to be underlined is the fact that these mechanisms
found in the Cordwainers' company structures a useful means to operate from
one generation to another.
57 J.F. Rees, The art and mystery of a cordwainer (London, 1813), p. v.
58 E.J. Hobsbawm, 'Political shoemakers', Past and Present, LXXXVIII (1980), pp. 102-3.
G. Mayhew, 'Life-cycle service and the family unit', cit., pp. 212-16.
60 I.K. Ben-Amos, 'Failure to become freemen: urban apprentices in early modem England',
Social History, XVI —2 (1991), p. 165.
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