Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

who continued to be a particularly mobile group 131
In 1841 Studley was home to a
japanner, who perhaps lacquered papier-mache items. 132
Leather, horn and tallow
Shoemakers were always present, but various records suggest that they formed
less than 5% of the adult male workforce. 133 The 1841 census puts shoemakers at 3.6%,
while baptism data 1813-1840 suggests that shoemakers were increasing slightly during
Period D. 134 Shoemakers mainly lived modestly, not troubling the probate courts. 135
Where shoemakers do appear in probate, many of their inventories show evidence of
mixed farming. 136
Although the usual descriptors in the footwear trade were ‘shoemaker’
or ‘cordwainer’, Arthur Conway of Beoley, was described as a ‘cobbler’. Perhaps he and
some others in the trade only mended rather than made footwear. 137
Some probate
inventories furnish us with details of tools and materials. In Matthew Tolley’s shop he
had shoe-leather, shop-tools and rosin and pitch to waterproof his shoes and boots, while
John Lewis of Redditch stocked men’s, women’s and children’s shoes, boots and wooden
131 WoRO, Beoley 1841 and 1851 censuses and Beoley baptisms 1813-1840. Paper-makers came from
Kent, Ireland, Somerset and Buckinghamshire. An Irish ‘colourman’ at a Redditch lodging-house in the
1841 census may have just been passing through, but he may have worked in the local paper trade.
132 WaRO, Studley 1841 census.
133 Although in Studley, Feckenham and Coughton some decades show a higher figure. (Tables 7.12, 7.19
and 7.20).
134 Tables 7.6 and 7.8.
135 Perhaps there were not as many shoemakers as one might expect from the number of tanners.
Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’, 17, pp. 45-9, also
found that although 28% of the county’s tanners resided in six parishes around Tardebigge, only 21% of the
county’s shoemakers were there, mainly concentrated on the town of Bromsgrove, where there was a
bigger market. Transporting finished footwear to town was no easier than transporting the leather.
136 For example, WoRO probate of John Hemminge, Feckenham, shoemaker, 1668, £27-4-6, and of John
Lewis, Ipsley, cordwainer, 1690, £60-12-0.
137 WoRO, probate of Arthur Conway, Beoley, cobbler, 1688, £13-4-10, and WoRO, miscellaneous probate
(811/2308) of Christopher Dewhurst, Studley, cordwainer, 1664, £8-13-4, where the inventory gives his
trade as ‘mending bootes and shoes’.
277