Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

UBD contains no glovers, but one fellmonger cum breechesmaker and two other
breechesmakers. 143
In Period D the town was still home to the odd fellmonger, a skinner cum
woolstapler and Josiah Wright who was a leather-cutter, leather-seller, shoemaker and
pawnbroker. Only one male glover appears in this period, but Mary Hemming, who
advertised as a glove manufacturer in 1830, may have employed a handful of female
glovers, though those in evidence in the 1841 and 1851 censuses were perhaps employed
sewing gloves as outworkers for Worcester manufacturers. 144
The apprenticeship of
Katherine Allen to an Alcester glover in 1729 hints that females were always involved in
the gloving industry, though generally hidden from view before the nineteenth century. 145
The abundance of shoemakers or cordwainers in the study area from Alcester
northwards, suggests that they sold over a wide area, perhaps finding a market in more
arable regions. 146
Perhaps more substantial shoemakers also acted as factors for their
colleagues. Local customers could presumably order and buy shoes direct from the
makers, some of whom were situated centrally in the town in Shoprow. For the most
part Alcester’s shoemakers probably used leather produced locally (from local or Irish
hides). Some of the town’s shoemakers pursued other occupations too, including
farming, malt-making and inn-keeping, while others served as parish or manor officials.
Their wealth and status ranged from that of illiterate Richard Harris, who made shoes on
143 UBD 1792. The family of Joseph Watts, breechesmaker ran the aptly named public house, the Buck and
Breeches. Presumably Alcester’s breechesmakers were making breeches from leather as some of them
were also fellmongers or glovers. All references to breechesmakers occur in the period 1750 to 1820
suggesting that this was the period when leather breeches were in vogue for certain classes of men. Within
the study area leather breeches were almost exclusively made in Alcester.
144 West’s Warwickshire Directory 1830.
145 TNA, IR1/49. William Greenhill takes her as apprentice, perhaps to sew gloves as females did in Period
D.
146 The terms shoemaker and cordwainer seem interchangeable throughout the study period. Areas such as
Zone B have fewer shoemakers.
101