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Consumerism in Preindustrial and Early Industrial England: The Trade in Secondhand Clothes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Beverly Lemire
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Extract

The secondhand clothes trade was a vital reflection of consumer demand in preindustrial and early industrial England, one that has gone unrecognized because of the nature of the trade. It did not involve the manufacture, finishing, or refining of raw materials or the sale of new commodities. It was largely invisible trade, leaving few records and generating no legislation. Yet the trade in secondhand clothing was a common feature of English life and met the needs of much of the English population in a way that other manufacturing trades and industries did not. Historians considering the characteristics of the domestic market in this era have naturally focused on the new manufactures and the widening range of goods produced in response to domestic demand both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—everything from caps, stockings, and pottery to the products of the British cotton industry. The growth of these industries has been seen as a testament to a strong demand among consumers for varied, attractive, and inexpensive goods. But the extent of demand among the various ranks of people and the intensity of this demand cannot accurately be determined solely from the development of new industries and the sale of new commodities.

The demand for clothing, textiles, and other consumer goods was not the sum total of the consumer impulse. An equally powerful drive was manifested not through the purchase of new commodities but through the sale, trade, and purchase of secondhand merchandise. Joan Thirsk has noted that “the labouring classes found cash to spare for consumer goods in 1700 that had no place in their budgets in 1550.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1988

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References

1 Thirsk, Joan, Economic Policy and Projects (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, describes the origins of the domestic manufacture of a range of inexpensive articles for domestic consumption and the export trade, e.g., caps, stockings, hats, and linens. McKendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society (London, 1982)Google Scholar, relate various examples of the expanded markets for pottery goods, shaving accoutrements, and children's books and toys in the eighteenth century. For other examples of the development of products for the eighteenth-century British market, see Chapman, S. D., “The Genesis of the British Hosiery Industry, 1600–1750,” in Textile History, vol. 3 (1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Enterprise and Innovation in the British Hosiery Industry,” in Textile History, vol. 5 (1974)Google Scholar; also, Lemire, Beverly, “The British Cotton Industry and the Domestic Market: Trade and Fashion in an Early Industrial Society” (D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

2 Thirsk, pp. 174–75.

3 Eversley, D. E. C., “The Home Market and Economic Growth in England, 1750–80,” in Land, Labour and Population, ed. Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E. (London, 1967), pp. 206–59Google Scholar. This estimate has been modified by other historians. Neil McKendrick suggests that greater recognition be granted to the role of women and children in augmenting the earnings of the family. McKendrick, Neil, “Home Demand and Economic Growth: A New View of the Role of Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution.” in Historical Perspectives, ed. McKendrick, Neil (London, 1974)Google Scholar. Suggestions have also been made that nonmonetary components added an incalculable element to wage rates and that in the face of declining real wages longer hours were an alternative to declining income. Cole, W. A., “Factors in Demand, 1700–1780,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700; vol. 1, ed. Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald (Cambridge, England, 1981)Google Scholar, and O'Brien, P. K. and Engerman, S. L., “Changes in Income and Its Distribution during the Industrial Revolution,” in Floud, and McCloskey, , eds., vol. 1Google Scholar. The common factor in all these assessments has been the tacit assumption that demand for and consumption of goods would involve new articles only.

4 Ginsburg, Madeleine, “Rags to Riches: The Second-Hand Clothes Trade, 1700–1978,” Costume 14 (1980): 122–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The term “salesman” was used throughout this period to denote someone who traded in used clothing. Campbell, R., the author of The London Tradesman … (1747)Google Scholar, wrote, “The Salesmen deal in Old Cloaths, and sometimes in New. They trade very largely, and some are worth some Thousands: They are mostly Taylors, at least, must have a perfect Skill in that Craft.” A variety of other terms were also used to describe those who dealt in second-hand clothes. Terms tended to change with the region. For example, in Cheshire, a “dealer” or “broker in household goods” implied a broker trading in clothes and furnishings. A mid-nineteenth century watercolor by Louise Rayner of the Water Street Row, in Cheshire, depicts the premises of just this sort of tradesman.

6 Buck, Anne, “Variations in English Women's Dress in the Eighteenth Century,” Folk Life 9 (1971): 5–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 This social ambition was recognized by Bernard Mandeville and described in his satire The Bee; or, Private Vices, Public Benefits (London, 1714)Google Scholar in the early decades of eighteenth century. Mandeville noted, “People, where they are not known, are generally honour'd according to their Clothes and other Accoutrements …. It is this which encourages every Body, who is conscious of his little Merit, if he is any ways able, to wear Clothes above his Rank, especially in large and populous Cities, where obscure Men may hourly meet with fifty Strangers to one Acquaintance, and consequently have the Pleasure of beeing esteem'd by a vast Majority, not as what they are, but what they appear to be.” The need for cheap clothing was felt not only in Britain but also in her colonies and plantations. Casks and trusses containing goods listed as “Wearing Apparel” were exported from Bristol to points in Ireland, as well as to various of the New World colonies not likely to produce goods of that sort themselves or where very cheap clothing was needed—e.g., Newfoundland, Quebec, Ireland, South Carolina, Grenada, and Barbados. The Bristol Presentments (Bristol, 1770–1819)Google Scholar contain many references to this sort of export. It is probable that some of this trade comprised secondhand goods, as well as slops, particularly as there exist later references to a long-established trade of this sort.

8 Madeleine Ginsburg has written what is probably the first modern appraisal of the London secondhand clothes trade. See Ginsburg, pp. 121–35.

9 Ibid., p. 122.

10 WDB/63/3a, Cumbria Record Office, Kendal.

11 Vaisey, David, ed., The Diary of Thomas Turner (Oxford, 1985), pp. 185, 190, 206–7, 244Google Scholar.

12 Coleman, D. C., The British Paper Industry, 1495–1860 (Westport, Conn., 1975), p. 37Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., p. 173.

14 Ginsburg, pp. 122–25.

15 Jackson's Oxford Journal, March 17, 1770.

16 Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor (London, 1851: reprint, London, 1967), 1:368Google Scholar.

17 The records of the trials that took place at the Old Bailey in the eighteenth century were published under various titles, the most common being Proceedings on the King's Commission of the Peace … for the City of London and also … for the County of Middlesex; held at … the Old Bailey …. December, 1742, p. 14Google Scholar; Weatherill, Lorna, “A Possession of One's Own: Women and Consumer Behavior in England, 1660–1740,” Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 139–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes the rapid adoption of china and other utensils used for hot drinks, by the middling households by 1725, at which time 18 percent of the households studied, headed by both men and women, owned items of this sort. These are the same classes of households that would be eager to adopt new styles of clothing and who may well have exchanged the outmoded clothing they possessed for either the new range of china or of earthenware, thus contributing to the stocks of secondhand clothes in circulation.

18 Stamford Mercury, April 25, 1728.

19 The Public Advertiser, January 28, 1765.

20 The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, May 27, 1777.

21 Tradecards, John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

22 The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, February 14, 1777.

23 One less reputable pawnbroker found himself up before the magistrate “on the Oath of a poor Woman” who returned to redeem her pledged hat only to be told that he did not have it. This woman had pawned the hat for sixpence every week for years. The pawnbroker was ordered to find the hat or bring his books before the Mansion House inspector (The Public Advertiser, January 5, 1762).

24 The Universal British Directory, vols. 1–4 (1790–1798)Google Scholar.

25 The Public Advertiser, March 8, 1765.

26 The Public Advertiser, January 2, 1760.

27 The Public Advertiser, January 10, 1760.

28 The Public Advertiser, June 15, 1762.

29 Stow, John, Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster … Corrected, Improved … in the Year 1720 by John Strype …, 6th ed. (London, 1754), 1:474Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp. 366–67.

31 Ibid., p. 437.

32 Ibid., pp. 622, 757.

33 The Universal British Directory, vol. 1.

34 Mayhew (n. 16 above). 2:26.

35 Ibid.

36 The Public Advertiser, August 19, 1761.

37 Mayhew, 2:28, 42.

38 Lemire (n. 1 above), chaps. 1 and 2, and “A Good Stock of Cloaths: Growing Consumption of Cotton Clothing in the Last Half of the Eighteenth Century,” Economic and Social History of Dress (in press).

39 Thale, Mary, ed., The Autobiography of Francis Place (Cambridge, 1972), p. 80Google Scholar.

40 Mayhew, 2:28.

41 The Universal British Directory, 1:49–345Google Scholar; Mayhew, 2:27.

42 Ibid., vols. 1–4.

43 Bristol Reference Library B21353. I am indebted to Sarah Levitt, curator at the Bristol City Museum for drawing my attention to this source.

44 Sketchley's Bristol Directory of 1775 (1775; reprint, Bath, 1971), pp. 2, 15, 23, 24, 27, 28, 32, 36, 44, 57, 68, 77, 78, 85, 87, 93, 101, 107Google Scholar.

45 I am indebted to Miss Anne Buck for a copy of the inventory that she discovered in the Bedfordshire Record Office and most generously brought to my attention. Miss Buck first described Susannah Somers and discusses the whole process of “Buying Clothes in Bedfordshire: Customers, Tradesmen and Fashion, 1700–1800,” in an essay to be included in a forthcoming volume on the economic and social history of dress, based on the Pasold Conference of that topic in 1985.

46 Northampton Mercury, April 11, 1763.

47 Mitchell, S. I., “Urban Markets and Retail Distribution, 1730–1815” (D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1974), pp. 365–66Google Scholar.

48 Universal British Directory, vols. 2–4.

49 Mayhew, 2:28.

50 Ibid., pp. 100–101.

51 Ibid., pp. 40–41.

52 Ibid., p. 40.

53 Ibid., p. 33.

54 Ibid., p. 29.

55 Smith, Adolphe and Thompson, John, Street Life in London (1877: reprint, New York, 1968), p. 73Google Scholar.

56 Palmer, Dennis and Pincet, Gisellet, trans., Flora Tristan's London Journal: A Survey of London Life in the 1830's (London, 1980), p. 11Google Scholar.

57 Sarah Levitt has recently published a book examining the patenting of clothing items in the nineteenth century, providing insights into the beginning of clothing chain stores, the garments sold, and those who bought them (Victorians Unbuttoned: Registered Designs for Clothing, Their Makers and Wearers, 1840–1900 [London, 1986]Google Scholar).