powered frame were applied to wool. Silk and cotton manufacture
led the way in using new machinery because they were recently
imported industries so not bound down by tradition and legal
restraint. Yarn production so improved that weavers became very
prosperous. Cards with metal teeth were challenging the use of
wood and horn cards with thistles on them in carding wool.
Merchants who traveled all over the world and saw new selling
opportunities and therefore kept encouraging the manufacturers to
increase their production and improve their methods. Factory
owners united to present suggestions to Parliament.
Manufacturing broke loose from traditional confines in several
ways. To avoid the monopolistic confines of chartered towns, many
entrepreneurs set up new industries in Birmingham or Manchester,
which grew enormously. Manchester had no municipal corporation and
was still under the jurisdiction of a manor court. It sent no
representative to the House of Commons. All over the country the
Justices of the Peace had largely ceased regulating wages,
especially in the newer industries such as cotton, where
apprenticeship was optional. Apprenticeship lapsed in many
industries, excepting the older crafts. Several legal decisions
had declared seven years practice of a trade as good as an
apprenticeship.
Apprentices still lived in their masters' houses and were still
treated as family members. The regulations of the Cutlers' Company
remained in force as its masters used their great manual skill to
make cutlery in their own homes with the help of their children
and apprentices. Trades in some towns which had guild regulations
that had the force of law hung on to their customs with
difficulty.
Although there were few large factories in the country under
effective management of a capitalist, trade unionism was beginning
as two distinct classes of men were being formed in factories. The
factory owner was so high above his workmen that he found himself
on the same level as other capitalists, the banker, who gave him
credit, and the merchant, who gave him customers. Journeymen in
factories could no longer aspire to become masters of their trade
and no longer socialized with their employers. Hard and fast rules
replaced the freedom of the small workshops. Each worker had his
allotted place and his strictly defined and invariable duty.
Everyone had to work, steadily and without stopping, under the
vigilant eye of a foreman who secured obedience by means of fines,
physical means, or dismissals. Work started, meals were eaten, and
work stopped at fixed hours, signaled by the ringing of a bell.
Factory hours were typically fourteen hours or more. Organized
resistance, as usual, began not with those most ill-treated, but
with those men who had some bargaining power through their skills.
Wool-combers, who worked next to a charcoal stove where they
heated the teeth of the comb, were the most skilled of the cloth
industry were hard to replace. Since they were nomadic, they
quickly organized nation-wide. They agreed that if any employer
hired a comber not in their organization, none of them would work
for him. They also would beat up and destroy the comb-pot of the
outsider. In 1720 and 1749, the Tiverton wool-combers objected to
the import of combed wool from Ireland by burning Irish wool in
clothiers' stores and attacking several houses. They had strike
funds and went on strike in 1749. Their bloody brawls caused the
military to intervene. Then many of them left town in a body,
harming the local industry. The earnings of wool-combers was high,
reaching from 10s. to 12s. a week in 1770, the highest rate of a
weaver.
In 1716, the Colchester weavers accused their employers of taking
on too many apprentices. When the weavers organized and sought to
regulate the weaving trade, a statute was passed in 1725 making
their combinations void. Strike offenses such as housebreaking
and destruction of goods or personal threats had penalties of
transportation for seven years. Still in 1728, the Gloucester
weavers protested against men being employed who had not served
their apprenticeship.
When the journeymen tailors in and around London organized, a
statute made their agreements entering into combinations to
advance their wages to unreasonable prices and to lessen their
usual hours of work, illegal and void, because this had encouraged
idleness and increased the number of poor. Tailors' wages are not
to exceed 2s. per day and their hours of work are to be 6 a.m. to 8
p.m. for the next three months, and 1s.8d. per day for the rest of
the year. A master tailor paying more shall forfeit 5 pounds. A
journeyman receiving more shall be sent to the House of Correction
for 2 months. Justices of the Peace may still alter these wages
and hours depending on local scarcity or plenty. Despite this
statute, the journeymen tailors complained to Parliament of their
low wages and lack of work; their masters called them to work only
about half the year. There was much seasonal fluctuation in their
trade as there was in all trades. The slack period for the tailors
was the winter, when the people of fashion retired to their
country estates. After their complaint, their wages then rose from
1s.10d. per day in 1720, to 1s.8d.- 2s. in 1721, to 2s.- 2s.6d. in
1751, to 2s.2d.- 2s.6d. in 1763, to up to 2s.7 1/2 d. in 1767, and
to 3s. in 1775. Foremen were excluded from wage control. When they
complained of their long hours, which were two hours longer than
the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. of most handicraft trades, their hours were
reduced in 1767 by one hour to 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and their pay was
set at 6d. per hour for overtime work at night during periods of
general mourning, e.g. mourning for a deceased courtier. Their
work hours were lowered another hour to 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in 1768.
The stocking frame-knitters guild, which had been chartered in
1663, went on strike to protest the use of workhouse children as
an abuse of apprenticeship which lowered their wages. They broke
many of their frames, which belonged to their employers, to limit
their number.
In 1749, combinations to advance wages, decrease hours of work, or
regulate prices were declared void for journeymen dyers,
journeyman hot pressers, all wool workers, brickmakers and
tilemakers, journeymen servants, workmen, laborers, felt and hat
makers, and silk, linen, cotton, iron, leather, and fur workers in
and around London. The penalty was prison or hard labor at a House
of Correction for three months without bail. In 1756, Justices of
the Peace were to determine the rates of wages of wool workers
according to numbers of yards. But this was repealed the next year
to prevent combinations of workers. Wage agreements between
clothiers and weavers were declared binding. Clothiers not paying
wages within two days of delivery of work were to forfeit 40s.
In 1763 the silk weavers in east London drew up a scale of wages,
and upon its being rejected, 2000 of them broke their tools,
destroyed the materials, and left their workshops. A battalion of
guards had to take possession of the area. In 1765, the silk
weavers marched on Westminster to stop the import of French silks.
In 1768, the weavers rebelled against a 4d. per yard reduction in
their wages, filling the streets in riotous crowds and pillaging
houses. After the garrison of the Tower came, the workmen resisted
with cudgels and cutlasses, resulting in deaths and woundings. The
throwsters [those who pulled the silk fibers from the cocoons of
the silk worms and twisted them together to make a thread] and the
handkerchief weavers also became discontent. A battle between
soldiers and silk weavers at their meeting place resulted in
several men on both sides being killed. In 1773, wages and prices
for the work of journeymen silk weavers in and around London were
designated to be regulated by the Mayor and Justices of the Peace.
Foremen were excluded. No silk weaver was to more than two
apprentices or else forfeit 20 pounds. Journeymen weavers entering
into combinations shall forfeit 40s. This statute satisfied the
weavers, but they formed a union to ensure that it was followed.
In 1750, 1761, and 1765, there were strikes which stopped the work
of the coal industry and harbor at Newcastle for weeks. In 1763,
the keelmen formed a combination to force their employers to use
the official measure fixed by statute for the measurement of loads
of coals.
The book "Consideration upon the East-India Trade" dating from
1701 advocated free foreign trade. It argued that the import of
goods from India not only benefited the consumer but also the
nation, because it was a waste of labor to use it in producing
goods which could be bought cheap abroad. This labor could be
better put to use in new industries, at easily learned plain work.
Also the low cost of imported goods would motivate the invention
of machines in the nation which would be even more efficient in
manufacturing these goods. But English manufacturers were still
suspicious of free trade.
Making beer and distilling gin from barley were widespread. The
pastimes of gambling and drinking were popular with all classes.
In the trades, this was promoted by the uncertainties of life and
work and a general sense of instability. Many London tradesmen
started their day with a breakfast of beer, bread, and cheese, the
traditional breakfast of countrymen. Gambling and dissipation
reduced some London men with good businesses to destitution, the
work house, or street begging. Drunken gentlemen played pranks
such as imitating a woman in distress or throwing a person in a
horse trough. Some innkeepers had "straw houses" where customers
who were so drunk they were unable to walk home could sleep in
fresh straw. A person could get drunk for a few pence. Gambling
with cards was a popular pastime after dinner. Cricket matches
were played by all classes instead of just by humbler people;
there were county cricket matches. Gentlemen often took their
coachmen with them to public events such as cricket matches.
Tennis was a sport of the wealthy classes. Billiards, chess, and
games with cards or dice were played, especially in alehouses.
There was horse racing on any open ground to which people brought
their horses to race. Jockeys tried to unseat each other. Hunting
of rabbits and then foxes replaced deer hunting. Bird and duck
hunting was usually with flint lock guns instead of hawks, as the
hedges provided cover from hawks. There was fishing with line,
hook, and bait. Watching the hanging of felons, about 35 a year in
London, was popular, as was going to Bedlam to watch for a fee the
insane being flogged. People went to the Tower to try to get a
glance at a famous prisoner looking through a window or taking a
walk along the battlements. Besides the grand pleasure gardens for
gentry, there were lesser pleasure gardens in London for working
families, which offered fresh air, tea, beer, swimming, fishing,
courting, bowling, and cheap entertainment. Running, vaulting, and
leaping were still popular in the countryside. Fairs had
amusements such as fire swallowers, ventriloquists, puppet shows,
acrobats, jugglers, animal performances, pantomimes, boxing,
dwarfs, and albinos, but less trading. In 1769 was the first
circus. Circuses included feats of horsemanship and clowns. There
was also eating and drinking competitions, foot races, football,
archery, some wrestling, and some bowling on greens or alleys. In
winter there was ice skating with blades and sliding. The right of
public access to St. James Park became entrenched by the 1700s.
There was sailing, rowing, swimming, and hopscotch. George III
made sea-bathing popular and it was supposed to be good for one's
health. There was steeple chasing as of 1752. Horse-racing was
given rules. On Sunday, there was no singing, music playing,
dancing, or games, but the Bible was read aloud, prayers were
said, and hymns were sung. Sabbath-breakers were fined by
magistrates. Men often spent Sunday in a tavern.
In general, commodity prices were stable. But when harvests were
poor, such as in 1709 when there was famine, and between 1765 and
1775, bread prices rose. The price of wheat in London, which since
1710 had been between 25s. and 45s., rose to 66s. in 1773. Then
the poor engaged in food riots. These riots were often accompanied
by mob violence, burning, and looting of grain mills, shops, and
markets. The English economy was so dependent on foreign trade,
which had trebled since the 1710s, that the slightest disturbance
in the maritime trade threatened the English with starvation. In
many localities the men in need of parochial relief were sent
around from one farm to another for employment, part of their
wages being paid from the poor rates. The poor often went from
parish to parish seeking poor relief. Settled people tended to
fear wandering people. Parishes sought to keep down their poor
rates by devices such as removing mothers in labor lest the infant
be born in the parish. So a statute was passed that a child born
to a wandering woman may not have the place of birth as his
settlement, but takes the same settlement as his mother. Another
device to prevent others from establishing settlement in a parish
was for its farmers to hire laborers for only fifty-one weeks.
Also, some apprentices were bound by means other than indenture to
avoid settlement. Laborers who came to work in industries were
refused settlement and sent back to their original parishes
whenever they seemed likely to become dependent on the rates.
Statutes then provided that a parish must give settlement to
apprentices bound for forty days there, not only by indenture, but
by deed, writings, or contracts not indented. In 1722, parishes
were authorized to purchase houses in which to lodge or employ the
poor and to contract with any person for the lodging, keeping,
maintaining, and employing of the poor. These persons could take
the benefit of the work, labor, and service of these poor, which
would then be used for the relief of other poor. The poor refusing
such lodging could not then get relief. Many of the poor starved
to death. The propertied classes turned a blind eye to the
predicament of the poor, opining that they were idle or could save
more and did not need higher earnings.
Charitable organizations gave to the poor and set up all day
Sunday schools to set wayward children on a moral path. The Sunday
schools could accommodate children who worked during the week.
Punishment of children by parents or others could be by whipping
or even sitting in stocks. About half of the people were dependent
on poor relief or charities.
Desertion by a man of his family was a common offense. Parishes
providing upkeep for the family sent men to find the errant
husbands. The parish would ask unmarried mothers who was the
father of their child and then force him to marry her or pay for
the upkeep of the child. He often made a bargain with the parish
to release him of his obligation for a sum of money paid to the
parish. But many young parish children died of neglect, and later,
parishes were required to list children under four to aid in
accounting for them. Divorces were still few and expensive, but
increasing in number; there were more 60 in this period. It was
easier for a man to get a divorce for one act of adultery by his
wife, than for a wife to get one for habitual unfaithfulness.
Vagrants and other offenders could be committed to Houses of
Correction as well as to county gaols, because of the expense of
the latter.
Crime was exacerbated by orgies of liquor drinking by the common
people, especially between 1730 and 1750, the sale of which did
not have to be licensed as did ale. In 1736, it was required that
retailers of brandy, rum, and other distilled spirituous liquors
be licensed and to pay 50 pounds a year for their license, because
excessive use had been detrimental to health, rendering persons
unfit for useful labor and business, debauching their morals, and
inciting them to vices. Only persons keeping public victualing
houses, inns, coffee houses, alehouses or brandy shops who
exercised no other trade were allowed to obtain a license. This
excluded employers who had sold liquors to their journeymen,
workmen, servants, and laborers at exorbitant prices. Street
vendors who sold liquors had to forfeit 10 pounds. A duty of 20s.
per gallon was imposed on the retailers. There were riots in
London against this statute and its new duties. There had been a
tremendous growth in liquor drinking, which did not stop but went
underground after this statute. In 1753, a penalty of 10 pounds or
hard labor for two months was made for selling spirituous liquors
without a license. Also licenses were restricted to people who
were certified by four reputable and substantial householders to
be of good fame and sober life and conversation. Sellers had to
maintain good order in their premises or else forfeit 10 pounds.
About 1754 only innkeepers, victualers, and vendors paying rent
of at least 200 shillings could sell gin at retail. The punishment
for the second offense was whipping and imprisonment. That for the
third offense was transportation. About 1754 only innkeepers,
victualers, and vendors paying rent of at least 200 shillings
could sell gin at retail. The punishment for the second offense
was whipping and imprisonment. That for the third offense was
transportation. In 1751, additional duties were placed on
spirituous liquors to discourage immoderate drinking going on by
people of the meanest and lowest sort to the detriment of the
health and morals of the common people. In 1761, these duties were
again raised. In 1768, officers were authorized to seize all
horses, cattle, and carriages used to transport foreign spirituous
liquors for which duties had been evaded. In 1773, the penalty for
selling without a license was raised to 50 pounds, which could not
be mitigated below 5 pounds. Half the forfeiture was to go to the
suer.
The informer system for enforcing laws had its drawbacks.
Informers were not trained and were sometimes retaliated against
for informing. Sometimes this meant being tortured to death.
Sometimes there were schemes in which a leader of thieves, would
take a profit in the stolen goods by posing as a good citizen who
tracked down and returned them to the owners for a fee. Also he
might inform on his companions to get the reward for informing or
to punish a troublesome one. Sometimes the owner of goods was
involved in a fake robbery. An effort in 1749 to turn the whole
haphazard system of informers, into a specialized organization for
the detection and apprehension of criminals had caused a mob to
form and make threats; Englishmen associated a police force with
French tyranny. Nevertheless, about 1750, Sir John Fielding, a Bow
Street magistrate, and his half-brother picked men to police the
street under the direct control of the Bow Street magistrates.
This first police district made an impact on the increasing
violence of the times. In 1753, a proposal before Parliament to
have a national census was also defeated by public fear of liberty
being curtailed by having to make account of the number and
circumstances of one's family and giving out information that
could be used by enemies both in the realm and abroad.
Though grammar schools were endowed for the education of local
poor boys, they sought fee-paying sons of gentlemen. They now
taught arithmetic as well as reading and writing. Translation and
reading of Latin was still important, e.g. Aesop's Fables, Virgil,
Cicero's Letters, Caesar's Commentaries, Horace, Pliny, Juvenal,
Ovid, Livy, and Plautus. The "Eton Grammar" book replaced the
"Royal Grammar" as the standard for Latin and English grammar. The
boys lived in boarding houses superintended by "dames" or older
boys. There were usually two boys to a bed. There was bullying and
initiation ceremonies such as tossing small boys up from a held
blanket or having younger boys run naked in the snow. There were
occasional rebellions by the boys and fights with the townspeople.
Flogging with a birch or caning with a rod until blood was drawn
from the bare buttocks was the usual punishment. There were some
national boys' boarding schools such as Eton, Winchester, and
Westminster. In these schools, boys could mix with sons of rich
and powerful people, thus establishing important connections for
their adult life. But there was more bullying of small boys by
large boys at these schools and the smaller boys became menial
servants of their seniors. Occasionally there were student riots.
However, most grammar schools were not residential. Because the
grammar schools were limited to boys, many boarding schools for
girls were established. Tradesmen's daughters were often sent to
these to learn to act like ladies. Most upper class girls were
taught, at home or at school, English, writing, arithmetic,
drawing, courtly dancing, needlework, music, and French.
Dissenting academies were established for those who did not pass
the religious tests of the grammar schools. Pencils were now in
use.
Sons of gentlemen usually took "The Grand Tour" of the continent
before going to university. These tours lasted for months or
years, and always included Paris and a Protestant French
university. The students went in groups with tutors. The chief
purpose was now cultural, instead of practical. On these tours
there was often misbehavior such as drinking and fighting. In
1720, Travelers Checks were developed for those on the Grand Tour.
The universities began to teach science. The new professorships at
Cambridge University were: chemistry, astronomy, experimental
philosophy, anatomy, botany, geology, geometry, and Arabic. Ideas
in geology challenged the Bible's description of the creation of
the world and there was a controversy over the origin and nature
of fossils. In 1715, a large pointed weapon of black flint was
found in contact with the bones of an elephant in a gravel bed in
London. Oral and written examinations began to replace
disputations. Few professors lectured.
Dissenters were excluded from universities as well as from offices
and grammar schools. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were open
only to members of the Church of England, so other universities
were established for dissenters. They taught geography,
mathematics, science, physics, astronomy, mechanics, hydrostatics,
and anatomy. At Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard Universities,
students in science were relegated to different instructors,
buildings, and degree ceremonies than students in literature, who
often looked down on them as socially and intellectually inferior.
The Inns of Court had ceased to provide residence. The period of
education at law school at the Inns of Court was now reduced in
1760 from seven to five years for ordinary students and to three
years for graduates of Oxford or Cambridge Universities. The
textbooks were: "Doctor and Student" by Christopher Saint-German
(1518) and "Institutes of the Laws of England" by Thomas Wood
(1720). Most landed families tried to ensure that at least one
member of the family in each generation was educated at the Inns
of Court after going to Oxford or Cambridge. In 1739, attorneys
formed a "Society of Gentlemen Practitioners in the Courts of Law
and Equity". In order to earn a living, most attorneys had to
attach themselves to some great patron and serve his interests. So
it was hard for an ordinary person to find an impartial attorney
or to find any attorney willing to contest a powerful family.