‘A Good Stock of Cloaths’: The Changing Market for Cotton Clothing in Britain, 1750–1800

References

• Proceedings of the King’s Commission of the Peaceifor the City of London; and alsoifor the County of Middlesex; Held at the Old Bailey (hereafter known as Old Bailey Records), January 1732, p. 32; May 1732, p. 138; October 1732, p. 234; 1741, p. 14; 1742, p. 2; June/July 1743, p. 202; July 1743, pp. 194, 196, 199–200; December 1743, p. 20; May 1744, p. 129; January 1744, p. 68; April 1745, p. 107.
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• Mary Thale (ed.), The Autobiography of Francis Place (Cambridge, 1972 ), p. 100.
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• An extensive appendix listing property lost through theft from a full range of London’s inhabitants can be found in the forthcoming volume 9 of the Pasold Studies in Textile History, Beverly Lemire, Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800.
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• Since the presentation of this paper in 1985 there has been additional research on this topic. See Beverly Lemire, ‘The Theft of Clothes and Popular Consumerism in Early Modern England’ Journal of Social History, vol. 24, No. 2 (1990), pp. 256–76.
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• References are made in the legal records to printed cotton, printed linen and printed cotton/linen during this period. On occasion, such as the theft from a shop in Seven Dials, the indictment described the fabric as being printed linen, but the owner of the shop described it as ‘printed linen and cotton’. The new lines of predominantly cotton textiles created some confusion even among contemporaries. Old Bailey Records, April 1745, p. 107.
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• Old Bailey Records, May 1758, p. 201; Ipswich Journal, 17 March 1759, quoted in Anne Buck, ‘Variations in English Women’s Dress in the Eighteenth Century’, Folk Life, vol. 9 (1971 ), p. 18.
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• Q/SB September 1753, Examination and Information, Kent Archive Office.
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• See chapter 1, section ii, in the unpublished thesis by Beverly Lemire, ‘The British Cotton Industry and the Domestic Market: Trade and Fashion in an Early Industrial Society, 1750–1800 ’, Oxford, D Phil, 1985.
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• London Magazine, vol. III (1783), p. 129.
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• The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 8 November 1777.
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• Old Bailey Records, October 1745, p. 237.
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• Q/SB May 1770, Examination and Information, Kent Archive Office.
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• The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 16 January 1778; 8 December 1777; 11 December 1777; 23 March 1779; The Public Advertiser, 19 August 1784.
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• On occasion the textiles received fell between the requirements of one group and another. Sayer writes to his cousin John Leigh in Manchester, 10 July 1756: ‘I have 2 pieces of Thicksetts to sell... which I shall dipose of the first opportunity; they being too fine for Footmens Frocks, and not fine enough for Tradesmens wear.’ PRO c. 108/30.
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• The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 16 January 1778; Old Bailey Records, March 1774, pp. 20–21.
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• Abraham Dent’s ledger of credit sales lists various sorts of cotton clothing fabrics sold from his shop to customers in his own and the surrounding villages of Cumbria. In 1762, for example, the ‘Rev. Mr. Hodgeson at Brough’ bought a fabric called ‘Everlasting’, a type of sturdy cotton corduroy, as did ‘John Haygarth in town’. Dent himself bought a quantity of this fabric for his own use in 1764. Mrs Stubbs purchased checked and flowered cotton for herself in the same year while others in or about the village chose fustian, thickset and a ‘stript cotton’. The assortment of cotton fabrics sold by Dent was not extensive. However the half dozen or so cottons stocked by Dent suggest the success of the early cotton textiles in penetrating the market for clothing fabrics, even in the less accessible areas of Britain.
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• Old Bailey Records, July 1784, p. 1114; September 1785, p. 1201; The Public Advertiser, 25 October 1784.
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• Old Bailey Records, September 1784, p. 1131.
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• Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 16 June 1770.
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• Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 March 1770; 31 March 1770.
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• The London proprietor of a clothing warehouse advertised in 1777: ‘Breeches of various kinds, of the Manchester manufactory, such as ribdeleur, ribdurant, barragon, satinet, everlasting, corderoy, jennet, stockinnet, etc. etc. all of the best kinds, at 16s. per pair’. The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 2 August 1777.
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• Autobiography of Francis Place, pp. 80, 110.
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• D/D ma 139, Glamorgan Record Office, Morgan Draper’s Ledger, pp. 165, 334, 26.
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• Old Bailey Records, October 1749, p. 157.
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• Old Bailey Records, September 1784, p. 1185.
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• Ibid., December 1784, pp. 28–29.
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• Adm. 49/35, Admiralty Records, Public Record Office.
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• D/D ma 139, pp. 149, 151, 153, 155, 157.
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• Philip L. White, The Beekman Mercantile Papers, III, (New York, 1956 ), pp. 1116, 1171.
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• Invoice, Peach & Pierce, 10 September 1770. Beekman Papers, New York Historical Society.
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• D/D ma 139, pp. 66, 92, 117, 134, 144, 162–63, 245, 255, 263.
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• The London Magazine, III (1783), pp. 128–29.
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• Instructions for Cutting out Appareil for the Poor ... (1789), pp. iii-iv. I am indebted to Mrs Madelaine Ginsburg, for drawing my attention to this source.
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• Instructions, pp. 40, 45, 56, 68, 72, 79–85.
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• By 1790, the dress of working men and woman had altered substantially. Mary English, an unemployed servant, owned in 1784, ‘one woman’s cotton gown, value 5s. one linen apron, value I2d. one pair of cotton stockings, value 2d. one pair of stuff shoes, value 6d. and one pair of shoe buckles, value 4s.’. Another inebriated sailor lost all his clothes but his shirt while he lay unconscious, and of this inventory breeches, waistcoat, and stockings were made of various sorts of cotton fabric. A milkwoman’s servant lost her box to thieves in 1785. Clothing worth 175. and composed variously of wool, linen, and silk was taken; but as well she lost 15s. worth of cotton clothing which had also been in the box. Old Bailey Records, July 1784, p. 962; December 1784, p. 165; February 1785, p. 497.
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• The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 3 November 1777; 5 December 1777; 26 January 1779.
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• Letter by Benjamin Franklin, quoted in Florence Montgomery, Printed Textiles (New York, 1970 ), p. 29.
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• The Ladies Magazine, v (1774), p. 538.
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• Ibid., pp. 2–21.
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• Ibid., pp. 4, 8.
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• Ibid., pp. 1–46.
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• Ibid., pp. 10, 13, 37–52.
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• # 1, # 14. G1963–97, 27.2.6–18, Shelburne Museum, Vermont.
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• The Weekly Journal or Saturday Post, 7 February 1719.
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