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

very low. In London a particular problem was the practice of curriers cutting
leather hides to sell small pieces to 'middling and poorer' shoemakers. 87 In Paris
the problems caused by small shoemakers working in cellars and garrets had
already created several complaints in the Compagnie in the second quarter of
the seventeenth century. The argument underlined how Parisian curriers were
not respecting a law imposed on them to buy all leather from the Halle aux
Cuirs. They were using façoniers (middlemen) to buy leather from the provinces
and sell it in pieces (without any stamp) to small shoemakers.88
2.6.1 The workforce in London
According to the Commons enquiry of 1738, in London there were less than
five hundred shoemakers - most of them masters and members of the
Cordwainers' Company - who could afford the £10 price of an entire hide.89
During the first decades of the eighteenth century, curriers started selling small
pieces of leather for as little as two shillings, enabling journeymen to buy the
exact quantity needed to produce a pair of shoes for the market on their own
account, instead of working for a master who provided their leather. 9° With the
profit from just a couple of pairs of shoes or boots journeymen were able to
sustain their family and buy another two shillings-worth of leather.9'
Unsurprisingly, large shoemakers opposed - with the help of the Cordwainers'
company - 92 the creation of a small shoemakers' market in order to avoid
competition and the diversion of labour from the 'virtuous trade'. 93 In 1738 the
87 GL, MS 7,360: Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, 'Trade Records - Original
petitions...'. See also The Case of the middling and poorer sort of master shoe-makers: humbly
set forth to the Honourable the House of Commons (London, 1738).
88 AN, F' 2 1464, MS 3: 'Motif des dispositions de chacune des articles du project de
reglement'.
89 Commons Journals, 23 (3" May 1738), pp. 176-7.
9° GL, MS 24,963: Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, cit.; R. Campbell, The complete
tradesman, cit., p. 217.
' GL, MS 7,353: Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, cit., vol. IV, if. 108-9; J. Rule, The
experience of Labour, cit., p. 34.
2 GL, MS 7,361: Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, cit., if. 17-42. Help was asked by the
London Cordwainers' company to various provincial guilds and societies of Cordwainers to
support their petition to Parliament. Many provincial groups, however, did not support the
London Cordwainers' company.
C.H. Waterland Mander, A descriptive and historical account, cit., pp. 89-90. In eighteenth-
80