F A M I L Y A N D BU S I N E S S D U R I N G T H E I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi Family and Business during the Industrial Revolution H A N N A H B A R K E R 1 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University ’ s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Hannah Barker 2017 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 Some rights reserved. 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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/9/2018, SPi This book is dedicated to my parents-in-law, Lily and Norman Leighton OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi Acknowledgements The research for this book was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of the project ‘ Family and Business in North-West England, 1760 – 1820 ’ : RES-062-23-0593. Two postdoctoral research associates worked with me during the period of the grant: Jane Hamlett and Mina Ishizu. I am grateful to both of them for their hard work and dedication to the project, and for co-authoring two of the chapters in this book with me. Nathan Booth, Stephen Connolly, Katherine Davies, Marci Freedman, and Lucy Matthews-Jones also offered valuable research assistance at later stages of the project. Academic col- leagues who were kind enough to comment on drafts and to share their thoughts and ideas with me include Peter Borsay, David Green, Sheryllyne Haggerty, Sasha Handley, Paolo di Martino, Colin Phillips, and Aashish Velkar. I am also indebted to the anonymous OUP reviewers for their thorough and thoughtful responses to the draft typescript, as well as to Jon Stobart, who read and commented on the entire typescript not once, but twice, in an act of great professional kindness. In addition, I pro fi ted greatly from the expertise of James Campbell, Clare Hartwell, Kit Heald, David Hughes, Jeremy Gregory, Norman Redhead, Joseph Sharples, Cordelia Warr, and Terry Wyke during the course of my research, and owe much to the editing skills of Geoffrey Windle (whose neighbourly kindness knows no bounds). I am also grateful to Lucy Peltz of the National Portrait Gallery and to Marcia Pointon for their help in identifying the medium of the portraits of James and Mary Fildes. I am grateful to participants of the following seminars and conferences for their comments and ideas as the research was progressing: the Conference on Modern British History, University of Strathclyde; ‘ Sources and Methodologies in the History of Masculinity ’ conference, University of Exeter; Institute of Northern Studies seminar, Leeds Metropolitan University; Economic History Conference, University of Warwick; Social History Society Conference, University of Warwick; Histories of Home Subject Specialist Network Symposium ‘“ Home-Work ” - Work in and at Home from the Sixteenth Century to the Present ’ , organized by the Geffrye Museum; Centre for Urban History research seminar, University of Leicester; History of Families and Households Conference, Institute of Historical Research; Business History seminar, London School of Economics; Day Confer- ence on Wills, Lancashire Record Of fi ce; Eighteenth-Century seminar, Queen Mary, London. The following local and family history societies were also kind enough to give me a hearing and to share their knowledge with me: Liverpool History Society; Pendle and Burnley Branch Lancashire Family History Society; St Helen ’ s Family History Society; Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire; Rochdale Family History Society; Lancashire Family History and Heraldry Society; Manchester Historical Association; Liverpool and South West Lancashire Family History Society. Special mention goes to the Blackburn and Darwen Family History OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi Society, who meet at Ewood Working Men ’ s Club in Blackburn, where I got to perform in front of a foil curtain to family historians drinking pints. Here I felt that I had fi nally been accepted as an honorary northerner. I would like to thank James Guest for helping me access his family archive, now lodged at Hudders fi eld University Archives as the E. H. Longbottom Archive, and Carole Mcloughlin and Margaret Laughton, who were kind enough to share valuable information from their family history research with me. Staff at the various archives I visited were also unfailingly helpful, and I am grateful to those at: Archives+, Manchester; Bolton Archives and Local Studies; Borthwicke Institute for Archives, York; Chetham ’ s Library; Cheshire Archives and Local Studies; Hudders fi eld University Library; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; Lancashire Record Of fi ce; Liverpool Record Of fi ce; London Metropolitan Archives; Maritime Archives and Library, Liverpool; Salford Local History Library; Tameside Local Studies and Archive Centre; The National Archives; University of Central Lancashire Library; Warrington Library; Warrington Museum and Art Gallery; Wigan Arch- ives and Local Studies. I should single out Michael Powell and Fergus Wilde of Chetham ’ s Library, Nigel Taylor of The National Archives, Craig Sherwood of Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, Gareth Lloyd of the John Rylands Library, and Anna Watson of the Lancashire Record Of fi ce for particular thanks for their efforts on my behalf. Sections of two chapters in this book appeared previously as journal articles. I am grateful to the editors of the Journal of Family History for permission to reprint parts of Hannah Barker and Jane Hamlett, ‘ Living above the Shop: Home, Business, and Family in the English “ Industrial Revolution ”’ , Journal of Family History , 35 (2010), 311 – 28, and to the editors of Business History for permission to reprint parts of Hannah Barker and Mina Ishizu, ‘ Inheritance and Continuity in Small Family Businesses during the Early Industrial Revolution ’ , Business History , 54 (2012), 227 – 44. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers for both these journals for their comments and suggestions. I would like to thank also the Guest family, Archives+, Chetham ’ s Library, the University of Central Lancashire Library, Warrington Library and Warrington Museum for permission to reproduce images from their collections, and to Stephen Corbett and the Manchester Regional Industrial Archaeology Society for allowing me to use their surveys as the basis for some of the building plans in this book. Finally, as be fi ts a book on family and business, I would like to thank my own family for putting up with me while I laboured away: particularly my husband, Stephen, who also helped by providing endless cups of tea and by drawing up architectural plans, my parents-in-law, Lily and Norman, to whom this book is dedicated, and who provided that most precious form of support to any working mother — guilt-free childcare — and my daughters, Mimi and Jess. Having a histor- ian interested in houses and an architect as parents means that they have seen more than their fair share of old buildings in recent years. You may not believe it now, but one day, girls, you will thank me. Acknowledgements viii OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi Contents List of Figures xi List of Tables xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 1. Wealth-Holding and Investment 16 Hannah Barker and Mina Ishizu 2. Family and Inheritance 48 3. Family and Business 78 4. Cooperation, Duty, and Love 118 5. Home, Business, and Household 156 Hannah Barker and Jane Hamlett 6. Family and Household 195 Conclusion 223 Bibliography 229 Index 255 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi List of Figures I.1. View of Market Street, Manchester, 1821 2 1.1. References to businesses in wills, Liverpool and Manchester 32 1.2. Fate of businesses according to wills and trade directories, Liverpool and Manchester 37 2.1. Bene fi ciaries in sampled wills, Liverpool and Manchester 56 4.1. Carter ’ s watchmaker ’ s shop, Bridge Street, Warrington, c. 1855 123 4.2. Watch and case made by James Carter in 1823 – 4 124 4.3. Engraving of the Livesey family 135 4.4. Portraits of James and Mary Fildes 151 5.1. Section from Horwood ’ s plan of Liverpool showing Prices Street, 1803 161 5.2. Row of shops on Millgate, Wigan, 2010 163 5.3. H. Singleton ’ s butcher ’ s shop, 9 Bridge Street, Warrington, 1913 165 5.4. Lord Street, Liverpool, 1798 166 5.5. 33 Thomas Street, Manchester, 2013 172 5.6. Plan of original layout of 33 Thomas Street, Manchester 174 5.7. Trade card of James Haddock Robinson 175 5.8. 85 Bold Street, Liverpool, 2013 176 5.9. 91 Dale Street, Liverpool, 2007 177 5.10. Plan of 89 (41) Dale Street, Liverpool 178 5.11. 20 Little Underbank, Stockport, 2013 190 6.1. William Hyde ’ s shop, Manchester, c. 1820 204 6.2. Hanging Ditch, Manchester, by Thomas Barritt, 1819 207 6.3. Hanging Ditch, from Hunter ’ s Lane to Old Millgate, Manchester, by Thomas Barritt, 1819 208 6.4. Mr Howard ’ s house and shop, Manchester, 1819 215 C.1. Portrait of Nathan Wood, by Thomas Barritt, c. 1800 – 5 223 Please note, third party material is excluded from the Creative Commons (CC BY-NC- ND 4.0) license terms which govern the reuse of this work. Permission to reuse this material must be sought from the rights holder. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/9/2018, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi List of Tables 1.1. Most common trades among sampled will-makers 20 1.2. Types of bequest in Liverpool and Manchester sampled wills, 1760 – 1820 23 2.1. Bequest conditions in wills written by men with both wives and children as % of total 66 5.1. Prices Street, Liverpool, c .1801 162 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi Abbreviations Borthwick Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York Carter Warrington Library, MS 2433, Notebook of James Carter, 1780 – 1869 CCALS Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service Coleman Liverpool Record Of fi ce, 920/COL 1 – 2 Life and ledger of John Coleman Cros fi eld Unilever Archives and Records, Port Sunlight, Diary of George Cros fi eld of Warrington, early twentieth-century transcript, original lost, JCS/11/10/01 Dixon Wellcome Library, Letter-book of Joshua Dixon, 1764 – 5, MS.2196 Heywood John Rylands Library, Eng MS 703, Diary of George Heywood Holt LivRO, 920 DUR/4/31/1, ‘ Some Memorials of our Mother, Emma Holt, by Anne Holt ’ , 1875 LivRO Liverpool Record Of fi ce Longbottom University of Hudders fi eld Library, E. H. Longbottom Archive LRO Lancashire Record Of fi ce TNA The National Archive OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi Introduction A visit to a town in the north-west of England 200 years ago would have been an assault on the senses. Though some parts of Liverpool, in particular, experienced widespread ‘ improving ’ measures from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, in the majority of other places (and indeed throughout signi fi cant parts of Liverpool too) it was not until the extensive street-widening schemes of the nineteenth century that most central thoroughfares were anything other than narrow and dark, with buildings tightly packed together and their upper levels often jutting out over the streets below. 1 Those wishing to navigate their way around would often have found mud and waste underfoot where pavements had yet to appear, streets bustling with a population hurrying about their business, and the air fi lled with both the shouts of market and itinerant sellers, and the types of odours one might expect to encounter in the days before municipal sanitation schemes and systematic curbs on air pollution. These sorts of urban experiences — exacerbated in many towns in the north-west, which were growing at unprecedented speed — drew mixed reac- tions from visitors and residents alike, so that, while one commentator described Manchester as ‘ a dog hole ’ in 1792, another noted excitedly in 1811 that he thought it ‘ a busy place ’ that offered ‘ a good deal to be seen and learnt ’ 2 Then — as now — shops offering both daily necessities and more exotic luxuries packed town-centre streets. Ralston ’ s view of Manchester ’ s Market Street in 1821, for example (Figure I.1), shows the distinctive timber-framed, jettied, and gabled structure of William Hyde ’ s grocery shop: at the centre of the picture on the left- hand side of the street, with its porch leaning at a rather drunken angle. Next to Hyde ’ s shop (moving towards the foreground) were the premises of the cheese- monger and provision dealer Charles Pollitt, in another timbered building. In the more modern four-storey brick building adjacent to that operated John Hemingway, silversmith and watchmaker, with Clough and Hill, ironmongers, next to it and closest to the viewer. On the other side of Hyde ’ s shop was Mary Walker ’ s ironmongers, and, next to her, Catherine Crossley ’ s toy warehouse, then an ‘ exhibition of ancient and modern paintings ’ , the premises of John Wickstead, umbrella maker, and the Red Lion public house. Across the street were shops and workshops variously run by a druggist, a boot- and shoemaker, a hosier, a linen 1 C. W. Chalkin, The Provincial Towns of Georgian England: A Study in the Building Process, 1740 – 1820 (London, 1974), 57 – 72, 89 – 112; Rosemary Sweet, The English Town, 1680 – 1840: Government, Society and Culture (Harlow, 1999), 75 – 90. 2 C. B. Andrews (ed.), The Torrington Diaries , 4 vols (London, 1934 – 8), iii. 116 – 17; Heywood, fo. 10. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi draper, another cheesemonger, a straw-hat maker, a cutler and surgeon ’ s instru- ment maker, a milliner, and a tea dealer. 3 This eclectic mix of small manufacturers, shopkeepers, and service providers was replicated both in other Manchester streets, and in other towns, across the north-west, and, though certain thoroughfares might boast more ‘ exclusive ’ shops than others, as a rule — and in contrast to the capital — there was no retail specialization by street. 4 Today shopworkers usually commute into town centres to sell goods produced elsewhere, while the buildings in which they work tend to house of fi ces above the ground and fi rst- fl oor levels. But, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these buildings were generally inhabited day and night by individuals who both lived and worked in them, and who constituted anything from 20 to 60 per cent of the urban population. 5 Figure I.1. View of Market Street, Manchester, 1821: John Ralston, Views of the Ancient Buildings in Manchester (Manchester, 1823 – 5), plate 4. 3 Pigot and Dean ’ s Manchester and Salford Directory, for 1819 – 20 (Manchester, 1819). 4 Ben Wilcock, ‘ Provincial Luxury: Buying and Selling High-End Goods in Liverpool and Manchester, c .1710 – 1785 ’ , University of Manchester Ph.D. thesis (2016), ch. 2. 5 This estimate is based on L. D. Schwarz ’ s calculations for London ’ s ‘ shopkeepers and other tradesmen ’ in his London in the Age of Industrialisation (Cambridge, 1992), 57 – 73; E. A. Wrigley ’ s assessment of occupational change based on the number of adult males employed in retail and handicraft in the 1831 census: E. A. Wrigley, ‘ Men on the Land and Men in the Countryside: Employment in Agriculture in Early-Nineteenth-Century England ’ , in L. Bon fi eld, R. M. Smith, and K. Wrightson (eds), The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford, Family and Business during the Industrial Revolution 2 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi The businesses that dominated the streetscape of towns were central to the economic growth and urban transformation that characterized the Industrial Revo- lution in Britain. Both the dates of the Industrial Revolution, and the term itself, are contentious, and have been much debated by historians. 6 It is used here, not just, as G. N. Clark put it, as ‘ a handy term for describing a period ’ , 7 but also because, in those north-west English towns that form the basis of this study, the second half of the eighteenth century and the opening decades of the nineteenth were times of unprecedented change, which was linked, at least in part, to the growth of industry. 8 Our view of the commercial world in this period tends to be dominated by narratives of particularly big and successful businesses, and those involved in new and large-scale modes of production. 9 Yet, in places such as Manchester, Liverpool, Preston, Bolton, Salford, Blackburn, Warrington, and Wigan, it was not great factories and mills that altered the urban and economic 1986), 87 – 128, pp. 297, 300 – 1; and my own calculations of the percentages of individuals with listed occupations in Manchester trade directories compared to estimates of the general population of the town between 1773 and 1823 in Hannah Barker, The Business of Women: Female Enterprise and Urban Development in Northern England, 1760 – 1830 (Oxford, 2006), 51, coupled with my estimates of household size in Ch. 5 of this work. 6 See, e.g., David Cannadine, ‘ The Past and the Present in the English Industrial Revolution, 1880 – 1980 ’ , Past and Present , 103 (1984), 149 – 58; N. F. R. Crafts, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985); Pat Hudson, The Industrial Revolution (London, 1992); Pat Hudson and Maxine Berg, ‘ Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution ’ , Economic History Review , 45/1 (1992), 24 – 50; J. Mokyr (ed.), The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective (Boulder, CO, 1993); Patrick O ’ Brien and Roland Quinault (eds), The Industrial Revolution and British Society (Cambridge, 1993); Steven King and Geoffrey Timmins, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English Economy and Society, 1700 – 1850 (Manchester, 2001); Jeff Horn, Leonard Rosenband, and Merritt Smith (eds), Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2010). 7 G. N. Clark, The Idea of the Industrial Revolution (Glasgow, 1953), 32 – 3. 8 Barrie Trinder, The Making of the Industrial Landscape (London, 1982); J. K. Walton, Lancashire (Manchester, 1987); J. Langton, ‘ The Industrial Revolution and the Regional Geography of England ’ , Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers , NS 9 (1984), 145 – 68; E. A. Wrigley, People, Cities and Wealth (Oxford, 1987), 160 – 1; J. K. Walton, ‘ Proto-Industrialization and the First Industrial Revolution: The Case of Lancashire ’ , in P. Hudson (ed.), Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (Cambridge, 1989), 41 – 68; Hudson and Berg, ‘ Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution ’ ; J. Stobart, ‘ The Spatial Organization of a Regional Economy: Central Places in North-West England in the Early Eighteenth Century ’ , Journal of Historical Geography , 22 (1996), 147 – 59; Geoffrey Timmins, Made in Lancashire (Manchester, 1998). 9 Neil McKendrick, ‘ Introduction ’ , in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1983), 1 – 6, pp. 5 – 6; Maxine Berg, ‘ Small Producer Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century England ’ , Business History , 35/1 (1993), 17 – 39, p. 18; Julian Hoppit, Risk and Failure in English Business 1700 – 1800 (Cambridge, 1987), 9 – 12; P. L. Payne, British Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1974). For examples, see T. S Ashton, An Eighteenth-Century Industrialist: Peter Stubs of Warrington, 1756 – 1806 (Manchester, 1939); R. S. Firth and A .R. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 1758 – 1830: A Study of the Early Factory System (Manchester, 1958); Neil McKendrick, ‘ Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline ’ , Historical Journal , 4/1 (1961), 30 – 55; Mary B. Rose, The Gregs of Quarry Bank Mill: The Rise and Decline of a Family Firm, 1750 – 1914 (Cambridge, 1986); R. Lloyd-Jones and M. J. Lewis, Manchester and the Age of the Factory: The Business Structure of ‘ Cottonopolis ’ in the Industrial Revolution (Beckenham, 1988); Marguerite W. Dupree, Family Structure in the Staffordshire Potteries 1840 – 1880 (Oxford, 1995); Robin Holt and Andrew Popp, ‘ Emotion, Succession and the Family Firm: Josiah Wedgwood & Sons ’ , Business History , 55/6 (2013), 892 – 909; Kenneth Quickenden, Sally Baggot, and Malcolm Dick (eds), Matthew Boulton: Enterprising Industrialist of the Enlightenment (Farnham, 2013). 3 Introduction OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/9/2016, SPi