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Original Article

Dressing the Poor: The Provision of Clothing among the Lower Classes in Eighteenth-Century Madrid

Pages 23-42 | Published online: 12 Nov 2013

References

  • The concept of a ‘consumer revolution’ was coined by N. McKendrick, ‘Commercialization and the economy’, in N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb eds, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa, 1982), pp. 9–194. For a critique of this concept and a study of consumption in the Spanish context, see J. Torras and B. Yun eds, Consumo, Condiciones de Vida y Comercialización. Cataluña y Castilla, siglos XVIII–XIX (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, Consejería de Educación y Cultura, 1999).
  • Tailors and shoemakers accounted for 8·5 and 7·7 per cent, respectively, of Madrid’s artisans in 1757. See J. A. Nieto Sánchez, Artesanos y Mercaderes. Una Historia Social y Económica de Madrid (Madrid: Fundamentos, 2006), pp. 328–29.
  • Lemire B, Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997); M. Lambert, ‘Cast-off wearing apparel: the consumption and distribution of second-hand clothing in northern England during the long eighteenth century’, Textile History, xxxv, no. 1 (2004), pp. 1–26. From a broader chronological and geographical perspective, see L. Fontaine ed., Alternative Exchanges: Second-Hand Circulations from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2008).
  • The deteriorating living conditions of Madrid workers are explored in J. Soubeyroux, ‘Pauperismo y relaciones sociales en el Madrid del siglo XVIII’, Estudios de Historia Social, i, nos 12–13 (1980), pp. 7–227; J. M. López García, El Motín contra Esquilache. Crisis y Protesta Popular en el Madrid del Siglo XVIII (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2006).
  • Lemire B., ‘Consumerism in preindustrial and early industrial England: the trade in secondhand clothes’, The Journal of British Studies, XXVII, no. 1 (1988), pp. 1–24.
  • As observed by J. de Vries in ‘Between purchasing power and the world of goods: understanding the household economy in early modern Europe’, in J. Brewer and R. Porter eds, Consumption and the World of Goods (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 106.
  • Using as a reference the wages of a building labourer, the salary level in Madrid at the end of the eighteenth century was clearly below that of other big cities in north-western Europe. See E. Llopis Agelán and H. García Montero, ‘Precios y salarios en Madrid, 1680-1800’, Investigaciones de Historia Económica, vii, no. 2 (2011), pp. 295–309.
  • For the ‘poverty declarations’ as a historical source, see F. Sánchez Escobar, ‘Con el Último Aliento. Las Declaraciones de Pobreza en los Hospitales General y de la Pasión de Madrid (1767–1808)’ (Unpublished predoctoral dissertation, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2009).
  • Llorente J.C.Zofío, Gremios y Artesanos en Madrid. La Sociedad del Trabajo en una Ciudad Cortesana Preindustrial (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Madrileños, 2005).
  • Isla M.F.Carbajo, La Población de la Villa de Madrid desde Finales del Siglo XVI hasta Mediados del Siglo XIX (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1987).
  • Lope de Vega, ‘La prudente venganza’, in Novelas a Marcia Leonarda, xxxviii (Madrid: Castalia, 2007), p. 32.
  • We may thus add evidence to Harald Deceulaer’s assertion that the emergence of ready-to-wear apparel was not a phenomenon exclusive to English cities: the nieuwwerkers (‘new workers’) of Ant-werp and the roperos de nuevo (‘new clothiers’) of Madrid were virtually alike. See H. Deceulaer, ‘Guildsmen, entrepreneurs and market segments: the case of the garment trades in Antwerp and Ghent (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries)’, International Review of Social History, xliii (1998), pp. 1–29. For the rise of ready-to-wear clothing in early modern Madrid, see V. López Barahona and J. A. Nieto Sánchez, ‘La ropa estandarizada. Innovaciones en la producción, comercio y consumo de vestuario en el Madrid del siglo XVII’, Sociología del Trabajo, lxxi (2011), pp. 118–35.
  • A number of these ‘old clothiers’ were French. See M. D. Ramos Medina, ‘Algunas sagas comerciales francesas en el Madrid de la segunda mitad del Seiscientos’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, serie IV, Historia Moderna, xii (1999), pp. 223–47.
  • On footwear in Europe, see G. Riello, A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Pasold Research Fund, 2006).
  • For the strategies implemented by ‘new clothiers’ and the evolution of the clothing industry in Madrid, see V. López Barahona and J. A. Nieto Sánchez, ‘La formación de un mercado de trabajo: las industrias del vestido en el Madrid de la Edad Moderna’, Sociología del Trabajo, lxviii (2010), pp. 147–68.
  • Larruga E., Boneta, Memorias Políticas y Económicas sobre los Frutos, Comercio, Fábricas y Minas de España, i (Madrid: Imprenta de Benito Cano, 1787), p. 347.
  • The term prendero (and the femenine prendera) derives from prenda, which in Spanish means both garment and pledge, probably because of the widespread use of garments as security for payment of debt. However, we cannot consider the prenderías fully equivalent to the English pawnshops. Although dealing with the same kind of items, the former were not the only — not even the main — pawning agencies for the labouring classes in Madrid, as will be discussed below. For London pawnshops, see Lemire, ‘Consumerism in preindustrial and early industrial England’.
  • The earliest reference to these female ‘clothes brokers’ is dated to 1641. However, they were probably already active during the second half of the sixteenth century. See Consejos, 1641, book 1,226, p. 248, Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Madrid. See also M. D. Ramos Medina, Casas de Negocios y Comerciantes en el Madrid de los Austrias (1634–1700) (Madrid: UNED, 2004).
  • Fondos Contemporáneos, Ministerio de Hacienda, 1757, book 7,463 bis, AHN.
  • Soubeyroux, ‘Pauperismo’, pp. 45–64; Nieto Sánchez, Artesanos, pp. 436–44.
  • Llopis Agelán and García Montero, ‘Precios y salarios’, p. 304. Other calculations made for the period between 1750 and 1799 reach a similar result, estimating that the purchasing power of building labourers decreased by 41 per cent. See López García, El Motín, p. 201.
  • Inventario de la tienda de Gabriel Bover, 15 September 1758, prot. 18,998, p. 150, Archivo Histórico de Protocolos de Madrid (AHPM).
  • Inventarios de las tiendas de Ángela Rodríguez y Francisco Casimiro de Medina, 30 December 1780, prot. 20,249, not paginated and 6 June 1780, prot. 19,143, p. 452, AHPM.
  • Baratillos, a term more common in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century administrative documentation than in later periods, might not have been a unique feature of Madrid. See, for example, the Mercado de la Liendre (literally, ‘nit’s market’) in Burgos, which was visited by Gustave Doré in the nineteenth century, and the ‘unlawful and riotous’ assemblies of unlicensed dealers in old clothes around Rosemary Lane in eighteenth-century London. G. Doré and C. Davillier, Viaje por España, ii (Madrid: Anjana Ediciones, 1982), pp. 357–61; Lemire, Dress, Culture and Commerce, p. 102.
  • Plaza de la Cebada (‘Barley Square’) was the location of the annual fair of San Mateo, which assembled sellers from Madrid and further parts of Castile and Aragon, dealing mainly in esparto and earthenware. Both the old clothiers and the used clothes dealers put up stands in this fair, too.
  • Barahona López, Sánchez Nieto, ‘La formación de un mercado de trabajo’, pp. 152–54. The ‘poor and pitiable’ female linen workers of Paris displayed their products in a similar fashion at the centre of Les Halles, ‘causing the guild considerable headaches’. See J. G. Coffin, ‘Gender and guild order: the garment trades in Paris’, The Journal of Economic History, liv, no. 4 (1994), p. 774.
  • Consejos, 1786, bundle 1,120/7-8, AHN. In Madrid, a number of these peddlers came from France, as did some members of the ‘old clothiers’ guild, as mentioned in note 13. For the role of peddlers in the circulation of light clothes and other petty commodities across Europe, see L. Fontaine, History of Pedlars in Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
  • For a history of El Rastro, see J. A. Nieto Sánchez, Historia del Rastro. Los Orígenes del Mercado Popular de Madrid, 1740–1905 (Madrid: VisionNet, 2004).
  • These auctions had originally been held at Plaza de Santa Cruz, by the walls of the Court Prison, which was also the seat of the Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte (city council court). We know that some licensed baratillos and clothes brokers’ stalls clustered round these auctions in the 1640s (see Fig. 1). Consejos, 1641, book 1,226, p. 248 and 1646, book 1,231, pp. 513–14, AHN.
  • Consejos, 1738, book 1,325, pp. 350–53, AHN.
  • Ibid., 1787, bundle 2,807/27, AHN.
  • B. Lemire, ‘Peddling fashion: salesmen, pawnbrokers, taylors, thieves and the second-hand clothes trade in England’, Textile History, i, no. 22 (1991), pp. 67–82.
  • As in the rest of Europe, clothing became a sort of supplementary currency, a ready source of cash in emergencies. See Lemire, Dress, Culture and Commerce, p. 145; Lambert, ‘Cast-off wearing apparel’, p. 16.
  • Popular credit networks in early modern Europe have been explored by economic and social historians. Some important approaches are C. Muldrew, ‘Interpreting the market: the ethics of credit and community relations in early modern England’, Social History, xviii, no. 2 (1993), pp. 163–83; M. M. Rocha, ‘Entre nosaltres n’hi ha prou amb la paraula: les xarxes de credit no formal des d’una perspective històrica’, Recerques, xxxix (1995), pp. 171–90; B. Lemire, R. Pearson and G. Campbell eds, Women and Credit: Researching the Past, Refiguring the Future (Oxford: Berg, 2001); M. Carbonell Esteller, ‘Using microcredit and restructuring households: two complementary survival strategies in late eighteenth-century Barcelona’, International Review of Social History, xlv (2000), pp. 71–92; L. Fontaine, L’économie Morale, Pauvreté, Crédit et Confiance dans l’Europe Préindustrialle (Paris: Gallimard, 2008); V. López Barahona, ‘Estrategias de supervivencia y redes informales de crédito entre las clases populares madrileñas del siglo XVIII’, in J. A. Nieto Sánchez and J. Hernando eds, La Historia como Arma de Reflexión. Estudios en Homenaje al Profesor Santos Madrazo (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, forthcoming).
  • Declaraciones de pobre de Francisco Moráez y Pedro de la Francesa, 26 August 1702, prot. 24,786, p. 101 and 18 August 1703, prot. 24,786, p. 122, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de José Martínez, 7 November 1752, prot. 24,799, p. 183, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de María Gómez, 17 October 1703, prot. 24,786, p. 154, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Diego Osorio, 9 August 1720, prot. 24,791, p. 106, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Manuela Rodríguez, 12 February 1754, prot. 24,799, p. 29, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de María Manuela Gil, 2 July 1754, prot. 24,799, p. 106, AHPM.
  • The Montes originated in fifteenth-century Italy as Franciscan foundations. See C. M. Travaglini, ‘Il ruolo del Banco di Santo Spirito e del Monte di Pietà nel mercato finanziario romano del settecento’, in C. M. Travaglini ed., Banchi Pubblici, Banchi Privati e Monti di Pietà nell’Europa Preindustriale. Amministrazione, Tecniche Operative e Ruoli Economici, ii (Genova: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1991), pp. 617–39. The role of the Montes in the survival strategies of women in eighteenth-century Barcelona is examined by M. Carbonell, Sobreviure a Barcelona. Dones, Probresa i Assistència al Segle XVIII (Vic: Eumo, 1997). The Madrid Monte served as a model for those established in the Spanish-American colonies. See M. T. Muñoz Serrulla, ‘Francisco Piquer y la Creación del Monte de Piedad de Madrid (1702–1739): Moneda, Espiritualidad y su Proyección en Indias’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2004).
  • Those who most benefited from these auctions were the used clothes dealers, old clothiers and some other artisans such as hat makers, who made use of certain velvet garments for their manufacturing. See J. López Yepes, Historia de los Montes de Piedad en España. El Monte de Piedad de Madrid en el Siglo XVIII (Madrid: Confederación Española de Cajas de Ahorro, 1971).
  • Declaración de pobre de María Antonia García, 22 August 1738, prot. 24,795, p. 108, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Felipa Elizondo, 14 October 1779, prot. 24,814, p. 299, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Alfonso Pérez, 15 October 1753, prot. 24,799, p. 100, AHPM.
  • R. Sarti, Vida en Familia. Casa, Comida y Vestido en la Europa Moderna (Barcelona: Crítica, 2003).
  • Declaración de pobre de Manuela Palacios, 30 March 1736, prot. 24,795, p. 29, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Manuela Crespo, 8 June 1720, prot. 24,791, p. 97, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de María Serrano, February 1752, prot. 24,799, p. 21, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Manuela Crespo, 8 June 1720, prot. 24,791, p. 97, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de María Bonilla, 18 January 1720, prot. 24,791, p. 8, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Juana Salinas, 15 August 1722, prot. 24,791, p. 91, AHPM.
  • Declaración de pobre de Mariana Fernández, 25 January 1766, prot. 24,805, p. 366, AHPM.
  • Barahona V.López, El Cepo y el Torno. La Reclusión Femenina en el Madrid del Siglo XVIII (Madrid: Fundamentos, 2009), p. 64.
  • Soubeyroux J., ‘El encuentro del pobre y la sociedad: asistencia y represión en el Madrid del siglo XVIII’, Estudios de Historia Social, nos 20–21 (1982), pp. 126–41.
  • Consejos, bundle 9,407, AHN.
  • On begging in eighteenth-century Madrid, see López Barahona, El Cepo, pp. 85–111.
  • Ibid., p. 140.
  • Gracia y Justicia, 6 September 1757, bundle 804, Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Valladolid.
  • Inventario de Pedro Casimiro de Medina, 6 June 1780, prot. 19,143, p. 444, AHPM.
  • Inventario de Ángela Rodríguez, 30 December 1780, prot. 20,249, not paginated, AHPM.
  • Between 1740 and 1760 capes grew from 22·5 to 26·3 per cent of all garments stolen in Madrid during that period: Consejos, 1740–60, books 2,788–2,792, AHN.
  • Gracia y Justicia, 10 December 1753, bundle 804, AGS.
  • Eco U., ‘El hábito hace al monje’, in U. Eco et al. eds, Psicología del Vestir (Barcelona and Madrid: Lumen, 1976), pp. 7–23.
  • Roche D., La Culture des Apparences. Une Histoire du Vêtement (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 1989); C. Fairchilds, ‘The production and marketing of populuxe goods in eighteenth-century Paris’, in Brewer and Porter eds, Consumption and the World of Goods, pp. 228–47.
  • For a thorough analysis of the Spanish controversy over luxury, see F. Díez, Utilidad, Deseo y Virtud. La Formación de la Idea Moderna del Trabajo (Barcelona: Península, 2001), pp. 103–64.
  • For a recent insightful discussion of petimetras, majas and fashion in early modern Spain, see R. Haidt, Women, Work and Clothing in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011).
  • Consejos, 1780, book 1,373, p. 802, AHN.
  • As the eighteenth-century writer Diego Torres Villarroel explained to the spirit of Francisco de Quevedo, who lived in the previous century, during an imaginary walk around Madrid: ‘The Rastro women [rastreras] and the melon sellers [meloneras] dress in those finest embroideries that in your time were made for the worship of temples and sacred images… With what in your time was a prince’s dress, today we would not have enough to wrap up a cook’. D. Torres Villarroel, Visiones y Visitas de Torres con don Francisco de Quevedo por la Corte (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1976), p. 130.
  • For example, see McKendrick, Brewer and Plumb eds, The Birth of a Consumer Society; C. Shammas, The Pre-industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); C. Shammas, ‘The decline of textile prices in England and British America prior to industrialization’, Economic History Review, xlvii, no. 3 (1994), pp. 483–507; Lemire, Dress, Culture and Commerce; M. Berg and H. Clifford eds, Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
  • See, for example, L. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London and New York: Routlege, 1988), p. 193; P. Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (London: Methuen, 1989), p. 269; Shammas, The Preindustrial Consumer, p. 293; M. Berg ed., Mercados y Manufacturas en Europa (Barcelona: Crítica, 1995), p. 28; Lemire, Dress, Culture and Commerce, p. 124.
  • Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour; B. Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England, c. 1600–1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
  • See, for example, Torras and Yun eds, Consumo; M. García and B. Yun, ‘Pautas de consumo, estilos de vida y cambio político en las ciudades castellanas a fines del Antiguo Régimen’, in J. I. Fortea Pérez ed., Imágenes de la Diversidad. El Mundo Urbano en la Corona de Castilla (ss. XVI–XVIII) (Santander: Universidad de Cantabria, 1997); L. Torra Fernández, ‘Cambios en la oferta y la demanda textil en Barcelona (1650–1800)’, Revista de Historia Industrial, no. 22 (2002), pp. 13–43; M. Vicente, Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Early Modern Atlantic World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); F. Ramos Palencia, Pautas de Consumo y Mercado en Castilla, 1750–1850. Economía Familiar en Palencia al final del Antiguo Régimen (Madrid: Sílex, 2010); and most recently M. Navarro ed., Comprar, Vender y Consumir. Nuevas Aportaciones a la Historia del Consumo en la España Moderna (Vàlencia: Universitat de Vàlencia, 2011).
  • Cruz J., Corbacho J.C.Sola, ‘El Mercado madrileño y la industrialización en España durante los siglos XVIII–XIX’, in Torras and Yun eds, Consumo, pp. 335–54. See also A. Guerrero Mayllo, Familia y Vida Cotidiana de una Elite de Poder. Los Regidores Madrileños en Tiempos de Felipe II (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1993), esp. ch. 5; and J. Cruz, Gentlemen, Bourgois, and Revolutionaries: Political Change and Cultural Persistence among the Spanish Dominant Groups, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). As in the rest of Europe, the social reach of probate inventories, which provides the main body of evidence for studies of early modern consumerism and material culture, is highly skewed towards the wealthier portion of the population.
  • In England, although the pauper inventories of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reveal a moderate improvement in the lives of the poor, ‘the picture that emerges is by no means an optimistic one’. See T. Hitchcock, P. King and P. Sharpe eds, Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (New York: Saint Martin Press, 1997), p. 183.
  • The role of Madrid’s court in the diffusion and mutability of fashion dated back at least to the sixteenth century, when a Japanese bureaucrat expressed his astonishment at ‘the variety of their costumes, a matter on which they are so unsteady that every two years turn up in a different fashion’. See F. Braudel, Civilización Material, Economía y Capitalismo. Siglos XV–XVIII, i (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1984), pp. 270–76. It has been argued that the expansion of consumer industries and the development of a culture of appearances originated in this period. For France, see R. Fox ed., Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce (Paris: University of Oxford (UK) and Anthony Turner, 1998). For a pioneering and acute analysis of ersatz luxury production and consumption in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Spain, see J. A. Maravall, La Cultura del Barroco. Análisis de una Estructura Histórica (Barcelona: Ariel, 1975).
  • As remarked by J. Brewer and R. Porter, ‘Introduction’, in Brewer and Porter eds, Consumption and the World of Goods, p. 5.
  • Vicente, Clothing the Spanish Empire, pp. 81–82.
  • Consejos, 1784, book 1,374, pp. 481–88, AHN.
  • Escritura de obligación de Feliciana del Prado, 19 December 1764, prot. 17,499, p. 767, AHPM.
  • In 1783 a Royal Order banned the manufacture and sale of these items because they were allegedly harmful to health. Consejos, 1783, bundle 1,288/II, AHN.
  • The couple was accused of the robbery of 6,000 reales. Pleitos criminales, 1790/91, box 0325·0007, Archivo de la Real Chancillería de Valladolid (ARCHV), Valladolid.
  • P. Rodríguez de Campomanes, El Fomento de la Industria Popular. La Educación Popular de los Artesanos (Oviedo: Grupo Editorial Asturiano, 1991, first published 1774–75), pp. 162–63.
  • López Barahona, El Cepo, p. 139.
  • Ibid., pp. 140–41.
  • Declaración de pobre de Manuel Botello, 3 March 1767, prot. 24,806, p. 33, AHPM.

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