Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

through Worcester. The gloving trade in the study area may have originated because of
easy access to skins, (for instance sheepskins from the Cotswolds) and suitable water for
seasoning the leather, but by the seventeenth century the local glovers may have
supplemented their local supply with skins from Ireland, as their counterparts did in other
parts of the ‘leather triangle’. The proximity of the study area to Worcester would enable
glovers to access skins imported up the Severn. Clarkson notes that the social structure of
the pastoral west ‘favoured the development of a local [gloving] industry’, but that those
involved in gloving were generally poor’. 138
In Alcester the terms fellmonger, skinner and glover seem to be synonymous.
Generally less wealthy than curriers and tanners, 139
some boosted their income as
maltsters and publicans. 140
One fellmonger cum glover, dealt in wool and linen and may
have sold his wares beyond the hinterland. 141
As the eighteenth century progressed the
term ‘glover’ was giving way to ‘breechesmaker’ in local records, perhaps indicating a
shift in priorities, although perhaps both gloves and breeches were still produced. 142
The
138 Clarkson, ibid., p. 29.
139 WoRO, probate of John Jennings, Alcester, skinner, 1679/80, £78-15-2, and of Richard Jennings,
Alcester, skinner, 1679, £30-0-0, and miscellaneous probate (794/163) of Arthur Cawdry, Alcester, glover,
1662, £56-0-4. No doubt their products included the new gloves that were traditionally stipulated in wills
for funeral-goers. Members of the Jennings family are also described as glovers, woolmen, staplers, etc.
140 WoRO, probate of Abraham Clarke, Alcester, maltster/skinner, 1702, £259-10-6.
141 WoRO, probate of Samuel Sandells, Alcester, fellmonger/glover, 1727, £51-2-4. His considerable stock
included more than 200 pairs of different types of gloves and mittens for men, women and children and
breeches of various styles including some made of fish-skin (possibly shark-skin, presumably brought in
from the coast). N. B. The principal creditor of his brother, William, (another glover), was a Warwick
fellmonger, suggesting that they accessed skins there. (WoRO, probate of William Sandells, Alcester, (no
occupation given), 1744.)
142 WoRO, probate of Richard Parsons, Alcester, glover, 1729. He made bequests of wool, gloves and
breeches. Stephen Hyam is described as glover in 1745 and then as breechesmaker in 1767. WoRO,
marriage licence of Stephen Hyam, Alcester, glover, November 1745. WoRO marriage licence of Anthony
Mills, Alcester, gardener, April 1767 is witnessed by Stephen Hiam, Alcester, breechesmaker. (Hiam
witnesses several marriage licence documents probably in his capacity as parish clerk. A curate’s note in
the Alcester parish register at WaRO, explains that Stephen Hyam, the parish clerk, had lost the parish
register of 1745-7.)
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