Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

tanners were amongst the most affluent inhabitants with money to invest. 144
status is exemplified by a gentleman’s son serving as an apprentice tanner. 145
This high
Another
tanner, Thomas Homer, was only valued at £62, but £40 of this was tied up in his tanning
assets, demonstrating the capital-intensive nature of this trade. 146
By-products were also of value. Henry Mathews had ‘two hundred and a quarter
of hornes’ and a ‘parcel of hayre’ in addition to his farming and tanning stock. 147
Sometimes a specific type of leather is mentioned; Richard Timbrell had ‘3 dozen
calveskins’ as well as other hides. 148
Timbrell’s widowed mother, Ann, had owned (and
probably run) the business before him. 149
Because of the capital involved, many tanning
businesses were family concerns.
Most tanners mentioned in probate were probably
owners or at least members of the owner’s family, whereas the likes of Thomas Benton
and Abraham Spencer were employees or journeymen. 150
At his death in 1668 Benton’s
only assets were his clothes and a lease, while Spencer is described as a journeyman
tanner and later as a labourer, and (at his death) a pauper, contrasting starkly with the
status of the master-tanners. 151
However, with its need for long-term capital, business
owners in the tanning trade were also prone to financial difficulties. The bankruptcy of
one Ipsley tanner in the mid 1750s may bear witness to troubled times in the rural leather
trade as noted in other zones. 152
The decline of this zone’s tanning industry can be seen
144 SCLA, ER139/135,141, concerning William Sheward, Callow Hill, Feckenham, tanner, who invested in
various bonds.
145 SCLA, DR18/17, papers from 1694-8 regarding Theodore Sadleir, son of a ‘gentleman’ of the same
name, apprenticed to Thomas Reeve, a Coughton tanner.
146 WoRO, probate of Thomas Homer, Lower Bentley, (Tardebigge), tanner, 1674, £62-0-0.
147 WoRO, probate of Henry Mathews, Studley, tanner, 1682, £84-12-9.
148 WoRO, probate of Richard Timbrell, Ipsley, tanner, 1698, £189-19-8.
149 WoRO, probate of Ann Timbrell, Ipsley, widow, 1682, £244-5-0. Her inventory, which mentions the
tanhouse and its contents, provides a rare spotlight on a woman in the tanning industry.
150 WoRO, probate and miscellaneous probate (816/2893) of Thomas Benton, Studley, tanner, 1668/9, £10-
0-0. His assets only comprised his clothes and a lease.
151 WaRO, Coughton parish register 1729-58.
152 Berrow’s Worcester Journal 9 Jan. 1755 reports the bankruptcy of John Barford, Ipsley, tanner.
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