Mechanisation and Northampton’s shoemakers

The association between Northampton and shoemaking dates back to the 15th Century, when the 1452 Assizes regulated prices and weights for various trades included cordwainers (medieval name for shoemakers):
"The Assize of a Cordwainer is that he make no manner of shoes nor boots but of good neats leather and that it be thoroughly tanned."

Northampton’s access to the raw materials necessary to shoemaking was guaranteed by the large cattle market held in the town. Its central location also enabled a wide distribution network to be established; as a result shoemaking developed into the town’s major industry. By 1642, there were enough shoemakers in Northampton to secure a very large order.

In that year, a group of 13 shoemakers, led by Thomas Pendleton, obtained a contact for 600 pairs of boots and 4,000 pairs of shoes to be used to equip the army going to Ireland. The existence of the order is known to us because the shoemakers had difficulty getting paid for their work and were still complaining about non-payment in 1651 – link to Legacies Legends Northampton article.

The 1841 Census lists 1,821 shoemakers in the town. At this time clues are evident, hinting the transformation taking place in the town’s shoe industry. Some shoemakers were beginning to be described as manufacturers, as opposed to shoemakers. These manufacturers would normally employ a large number of shoemakers, supplying materials and collecting the finished product from shoemakers, and then selling on to buyers.

As mechanisation and the factory system became accepted practise in fellow industries, Northampton’s shoemakers began to fear the onset of machinery. They perceived mechanisation as a threat to their craftsmanship and livelihood. The nature of the town’s shoemaking industry meant that a smooth transition from artisan’s workshop to employee’s factory was not on the cards.

Craftsman v machine
In the 19th Century, the process of making shoes had differed little from earlier centuries. Charles Mahor described how a hand shoe worker worked in the 19th Century:
"All the raw parts – soles, insoles, uppers, welts – come in skips, and my cousin and me, we used to fetch it… The women closed the uppers on a closing machine donstairs and then took them upstairs to the shoemaker.”

Shoemakers worked individually, collecting raw material from a manufacturer and then returning the finished product in return for payment. The work was carried out by hand, usually in a workshop in the shoemakers’ own home. Other family members, including wives and children, were often engaged in assisting the shoemaker.

Therefore, shoemakers enjoyed a largely autonomous, independent position. They decided themselves what days and hours they worked, often deciding to work on Sunday in order to have more cash to spend in the pub on Sunday night. The habit of taking off Monday, St Monday, is testimony to the freedom enjoyed.

As shoemakers effectively ran their own business, they had to keep business records and conform to measurements to ensure shoes fitted correctly. This high level of literacy combined with the fact that many had been granted freeman status meant that any perceived infringement on their autonomy and flexibility would be vigorously opposed.

In 1857, when the first machines for shoe production appeared in Northampton, the town’s shoemakers feared that there would be massive unemployment and that those who managed to keep their job would be forced to work in a factory. The idea of having their working lives controlled by someone else and having set working hours was totally alien to their way of thinking. A battle was inevitable between Northampton’s shoemakers and shoe manufacturers.

Fighting the onset of mechanisation
In November 1857, the shoemakers held a meeting to discuss the introduction of machinery in the production of boots and shoes. The Northampton Mercury carried an account of the meeting, from which the following quotations are taken. At the meeting, Mr Wilder, a shoemaker, identified that the purpose of the meeting was to: “check the introduction of machinery, which was bound to bring ruin on them all”.

The meeting had been precipitated by the construction of a “monster warehouse” in the town which the shoemakers feared was going to “ride rough shod over them all unless they came forward in time”. The shoemaker feared that owners of the new warehouse intended to use it as a factory. In the words of Mr Pell, a shoemaker at the factory:
“that operations were to be confined within its walls and that machinery was to be used here.”

The owner of the warehouse, Mr MP Mansfield, denied this was the case but the shoemakers remained unconvinced and pledged to resist the introduction of machinery. In April 1858, the Northampton Boot and Shoe-makers Mutual Protection Society was formed to oppose mechanisation. A strike fund was created and links were forged with Stafford’s shoemakers who were already engaged in a dispute with their manufacturers over the introduction of machinery. Battle lines had been drawn in Northampton, each side waited to see who would blink first.

The strike
In February 1859, the manufacturers of Northampton issued a statement confirming the shoemakers worst fears: machines to close shoe uppers were to be introduced:
“That in consequence of Sewing Machines being extensively used un the Cities and Principal Towns in the United Kingdom, so as seriously to affect the demand upon the Wholesale Houses any further delay in the introduction of them, by the Manufacturers of Northampton, would be permanently injurious to the interest of the trade generally. And in accordance with this conviction, it was decided to introduce the Machine Sewn Tops simultaneously into their respective Trades.”

Union emblem
Emblem of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Rivetters and Finishers
© Courtesy of J R Betts - Raunds & District History Society
The reaction of the Mutual Protection Society was to call a strike, urging as many shoemakers as possible to leave Northampton and seek work elsewhere. However the strike was unsuccessful and failed to rouse the town’s shoemakers. It transpired that the Northampton shoemakers did not have any objection to the introduction of machines so long as they did not threaten their jobs. By the middle of May 1858, it was all over and sewing machinery had a permanent role to play in the production of Northampton’s shoes. By 1864, there were 1500 closing machines in the town.

Just as business was returning as normal for Northampton’s shoemakers, further changes were in store. In Northampton’s Campbell Square, the construction of Isaac, Campbell and Co’s factory was completed in 1859. The company intended all of the shoemakers it employed to work inside the factory instead of at home – as was the norm. In order to convince the stubborn shoemakers, the company published an appeal.

This appeal included appeasements designed to entice the shoemakers, as well as the very strictures which they wanted to avoid at all costs. Women were to have separate workshops with female superintendents while married women could continue working from home. Children could be apprenticed and the shoemakers could appoint their own overseers. The company wanted these appeasements to prove that:
“the system we propose is not ‘the factory system’. It is a carefully considered system of constant, orderly, regulated work, without an of the bad features which have made the factory system distasteful to you;”

However, the fixed wages and hours represented an end to the workers’ autonomy. The Isaac Campbell and Co’s factory failed, but others were to replace it. In 1861 the Turner Brothers took over, four years later they were producing 100,000 pairs of shoes a week using steam engines: the factory had arrived.

The transition form workshop to factory was one that took place in many industries in the 19th Century. As transport links sprung up and a distribution network developed, the manufacturers in Northampton’s shoe industry spied an opportunity for profit. Mechanisation was a means of maximising production and therefore profits. The nature of the Northampton shoe industry meant that this modernisation was perceived as a threat to the shoemakers’ autonomy and independence and even threatened their livelihood. Their reaction was in the same spirit as the Luddites, though no physical damage was wrought upon the machinery, their introduction was fiercely opposed. When it emerged the jobs were not immediately being lost through the introduction of machinery, their adaptation became widespread.

The next logical step for the industry’s manufacturers was to entice shoemakers into huge workshops, or factories, where work could be regulated and uniform. Hand techniques and home working did persist in Northampton late into the 19th Century. There was still plenty of work for hand shoe makers and most firms employed nearly as many out workers as they did factory hands. The dispute of 1857-9 marked the beginning of a period of change, not the transition itself. As more efficient machinery was developed, the economic viability of hand workers was reduced.

Twenty years after the mechanisation dispute, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in 1878 said that:
“The visitor to Northampton will at once be reminded by the leather aprons and grimy faces which haunt the streets that he is in the land of shoemakers.”

However this ‘land of shoemakers’ was experiencing fundamental changes in working practices that would change the nature of the shoemaking industries. As is evident, the 1857-9 dispute only marked the beginning of this period of change, and traditional hand techniques lingered on into the 20th Century.

This article was prepared from material provided by the Shoe Collection, Northampton Museums and Art Gallery.

BBC - Mechanisation and Northampton’s shoemakers