An occupational analysis of the worsted industry, circa 1700-1851. A study of de-industrialization in Norfolk and the rise of the West Riding of Yorkshire

Keith Sugden

The thesis was completed in 2015 and the degree awarded in January 2016.

This thesis is an occupational analysis of the textile industry in England and Wales, circa 1700-1851, with particular emphasis upon the worsted manufacture in Norfolk and in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The historiography is reviewed, and the primary sources utilized in the study are discussed. These sources include testamentary evidence, freemen lists, poll books, newspaper reports, and Quarter Sessions records from the eighteenth century, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century marriage and baptism records, and the 1851 census. All of the sources are problematic, not least because of the relative paucity of female occupational data. Other than the 1851 census, the embezzlement records lodged with the Quarter Sessions or taken from newspaper reports, and some marriage records after mid-1837, all of the sources concern adult males only. Another concern is that some records, for instance, testamentary evidence, freemen lists, and poll books, have a bias towards the elite and thereby are unrepresentative of the male population. The Norwich Quarter Sessions recognizances have a bias towards shopkeepers, innkeepers, and labourers. These shortcomings are acknowledged. To minimize their effect, the sources have been used in conjunction, to supplement each other and provide as accurate a picture of occupational structure as is possible.

This study establishes the location and geography of the textile manufacture in 1813-20 and in 1851. It places the worsted industry in a comparative context with the other yarns (Maps 1-4). It is well known that that the English textile industry shifted from southern counties to the north-west sometime during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. That southern counties of England de-industrialized is not in dispute. Historians have previously examined the causes and have studied a number of factors. This study builds upon these earlier works. It notes that in 1700, the worsted industry in Norfolk, and particularly in Norwich was, along with that in Devon, the chief centre of the English worsted manufacture. At this time, the industry in the West Riding was nascent. It notes too, that sometime over the following 100 years or so, the Norwich industry collapsed and that in the West Riding rose to prominence. The occupational primary sources used in this thesis allow temporal change to be tracked with a precision that has perhaps not been possible hitherto. They show that the decline of Norwich was initiated several decades before spinning and weaving were mechanized in the West Riding. The Norwich industry declined several-fold from at least as early as the 1760s (For example, see Figures 1 and 2). By the end of the century, the West Riding parishes of Halifax and Bradford, in particular, had risen to prominence.

A number of potential causal factors are examined. For instance, the impact of the availability of relatively cheap coal in the West Riding is considered to have likely played a role in the collapse of the Norwich industry, at a time before steam power became important in spinning and weaving. In addition, the Norwich industry faced direct competition not only from West Riding worsted manufacturers but also from printed cottons manufactured in Lancashire. The latter became particularly significant after 1774 when the manufacture of all types of cotton cloth in England was legalized and the ban on calico printing lifted. Also, in Lancashire and the West Riding a strong textile belt of cotton, worsted, and wool manufacture and commerce developed, with transport and communication links between the places of manufacture, connected in turn to the ports of Liverpool in the west and to Hull in the east. In East Anglia, however, a network of producers did not develop. The trade came to be reliant upon the Norwich manufacturers. There is no sense that a significant merchant group developed in the city until it was too late. By the time the Norwich manufacturers attempted to become less reliant upon London merchants, the West Riding producers had already risen to prominence. The Norwich industry came to have little national significance, although it did remain of local importance into the mid-nineteenth century.

Map 1: The spatial concentration of adult men employed in textile manufacture in England and Wales, 1813-20 (n = 192,532)

Source and funding: See Map 4.

Map 2: The spatial concentration of adult men employed in worsted manufacture in England and Wales, 1813-20

Source and funding: See Map 4.

Map 3: The spatial concentration of adult men employed in wool manufacture in England and Wales, 1813-20

Source and funding: See Map 4.

Map 4: The spatial concentration of adult men employed in cotton manufacture in England and Wales, 1813-20

Source and funding: Occupations of fathers recorded in the Baptism Registers of England and Wales. 1813-20. Data collected and held by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge, funded by two grants from the ESRC awarded to L. Shaw-Taylor and E. A. Wrigley, namely: 'The changing occupational structure of nineteenth century Britain' (RES-000-23-1579), and 'Male occupational change and economic growth in England 1750-1851' (RES 000-23-0131). The maps are constructed from a dataset by A. E. M. Satchell, P. M. Kitson, G. H. Newton, L. Shaw-Taylor, L., and E. A, '1851 England and Wales Census Parishes, Townships and Places (2006)', and created with funding from the ESRC [RES-000-23-1579], the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy.

Figure 1: The change in the percentage of Norwich freemen who were worsted weavers, 1720-1819 (n = 3,003)

Sources: Percy Millican, The freemen of Norwich 1714-1752 (Norwich, (1952). J. K. Edwards, 'The economic development of Norwich 1750-1850, with special reference to the worsted industry', (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1963), 20-23, Appendix I. S. Howell and K. Howell, 'Norwich freemen 1752-1981: An analysis of trades', (Unpublished transcription, Norfolk Record Office, 1999), [Accessed: October 2012].

Figure 2: The change in the percentage of Norwich worsted weavers accused of assault, 1721-1820 (n = 414)

Sources: Norfolk Record Office, NCR Cases 11a, 11d, 11e, and 12b.