A Quite Difficult Question

[vox]

Leather dicks

It's 1811 and you are popping out to buy leather dicks for the 'prentice

Where are you ?

What are you buying ?

Who are you going to pay for the dicks ?

[Vox can't play on this one ... I think he knows already ...]

No-one seems to be having a stab at Richard's question.

I'm suffering from disappearing posts as well now.

I'm sure I posted this not long ago. Is it here twice?

[SteveHB]

No-one seems to be having a stab at Richard's question.

I'm suffering from disappearing posts as well now.

I'm sure I posted this not long ago. Is it here twice?

No vox

the post before yours is Gramps Sep 21 2009, 06:19 PM

[dunsbyowl1867]

No-one seems to be having a stab at Richard's question.

I'm suffering from disappearing posts as well now.

I'm sure I posted this not long ago. Is it here twice?

A google result - will this do?

"Suppose we take a view of the principal parts and notice a few circumstances, beginning with the lobby nook (the old Town Hall near the Church gates). There you would find stalls set out to the best advantage, with Lord Mayor boots and shoes well dubbined up and made as pliable as the price, varying according to quality and size.

At the bottom of High street you might have been accommodated with a pair of "leather dicks" (breeches) for either yourself or 'prentice lad, at Davenport's; or have gone to Ellis Grant's stall at the top of the market within the chains.

You could have found old Milly Lowther's fish stall at the top of Pudding lane (King street), and Molly Rawson's fish stall, facing Change alley end; Old-book John selling "Week's Preparation," &c., facing up High street; and Billy Wright mending old buckles, or matching the one that was left after one was lost, facing Hartshead; the old women with their meal tubs, with their great coats and leather pockets, selling meal by the peck; and now and then a lad saying,

"Dame, will yo gie me a bit o' meal if yo pleasen?"

"Aye, lad, tak thee a bit."

Meal was 5d. per peck. New shoe stalls were plentifully arranged facing the front shops at the top of the Shambles, the dealers crying,

"Now, can I suit you with a pair, they are home-made uns; come, try these on, oi think they'll about fit you; they looken yore size."

The gaol was thronged with visitors until nine o'clock. There was one prisoner in each room above and below who solicited the passers-by to "remember the poor prisoners." The one above had a tin box supported by a string; and the other in the lower room, with his hand through the window, held a similar box for the low court prisoners. The reader will not suppose that the streets were brilliantly lighted; and it was with difficulty a passenger could see his road from one lamp to another. When off market day, and the shops were closed, and the stalls taken away, the little "pinkning" light of the oil lamps was disgraceful. At Christmas Eve the pawnbrokers were cried to get extra hands to assist in taking out the pledges; none were taken in.

[RichardB]

A google result - will this do?

"Suppose we take a view of the principal parts and notice a few circumstances, beginning with the lobby nook (the old Town Hall near the Church gates). There you would find stalls set out to the best advantage, with Lord Mayor boots and shoes well dubbined up and made as pliable as the price, varying according to quality and size.

At the bottom of High street you might have been accommodated with a pair of "leather dicks" (breeches) for either yourself or 'prentice lad, at Davenport's; or have gone to Ellis Grant's stall at the top of the market within the chains.

You could have found old Milly Lowther's fish stall at the top of Pudding lane (King street), and Molly Rawson's fish stall, facing Change alley end; Old-book John selling "Week's Preparation," &c., facing up High street; and Billy Wright mending old buckles, or matching the one that was left after one was lost, facing Hartshead; the old women with their meal tubs, with their great coats and leather pockets, selling meal by the peck; and now and then a lad saying,

"Dame, will yo gie me a bit o' meal if yo pleasen?"

"Aye, lad, tak thee a bit."

Meal was 5d. per peck. New shoe stalls were plentifully arranged facing the front shops at the top of the Shambles, the dealers crying,

"Now, can I suit you with a pair, they are home-made uns; come, try these on, oi think they'll about fit you; they looken yore size."

The gaol was thronged with visitors until nine o'clock. There was one prisoner in each room above and below who solicited the passers-by to "remember the poor prisoners." The one above had a tin box supported by a string; and the other in the lower room, with his hand through the window, held a similar box for the low court prisoners. The reader will not suppose that the streets were brilliantly lighted; and it was with difficulty a passenger could see his road from one lamp to another. When off market day, and the shops were closed, and the stalls taken away, the little "pinkning" light of the oil lamps was disgraceful. At Christmas Eve the pawnbrokers were cried to get extra hands to assist in taking out the pledges; none were taken in.

Approximately perfect !

[Had to put some returns in there; eyes must be on the blink ...]

John Davenport Leather seller, Market Place (Holden's 1811) or http://www.sheffieldrecordsonline.org.uk/

[RichardB]

Hopefully this will keep you thinking for a while ...

When the application when in to make and maintain a Navigable Cut or Canal from Wheat Field, Kimberworth (owned by Mr Samuel Kirk) where was it to terminate ?

Who was the owner of the land (I'll give you the fact that it was called Wicker Croft)

and which boozer did he run ?

[i got the information online and for free; no special books or subscriptions].

Wicker_Croft.pdf

[RichardB]

It remained closed due to argument.

"Originally built on the outskirts of the town, on land bounded by Pinson Lane (later Pinstone Street) and Alsop Fields (later to become Norfolk Street) The building of St Paul's Church was funded by public subscription in 1720 and 1721 with the first stone being laid in 28th May 1720. The dome was added in 1769

It was made possible by a gift of £1,000 and the promise of £30 a year for the Minister from Robert Downes, a Sheffield goldsmith, in return for him and his heirs having the right to appoint the minister, and it was to be a Chapel of Ease to the Parish Church. The then Vicar of Sheffield objected on the grounds that since it was a Chapel of Ease to his church he had the right to appoint the Minister. At the same time the Patron of the Parish Church, William Jessop, claimed that as such he should automatically be Patron of St. Paul's.

The argument continued for nearly twenty years, during which time the church remained locked and unused. Things were brought to a head in 1739 when Robert Downes threatened to open the church, as he was legally entitled to do, " as a meeting house for Protestant Dissenters".

As a result a compromise was agreed under which the Vicar was to be the Patron, but the first Minister was to be Robert Downes nephew, John Downes.

And so the church was actually consecrated on 2nd May 1740, twenty years after the laying of the first stone"

www.chrishobbs.com

Additional/complimentary information :

THE ORIGINS OF THE SILVER TRADE lN SHEFFIELD.

© 2000 Edward J Law.

It is suggested that a goldsmith who was working in Sheffield in the l6th century would be enriching the hilts of knives, which had been produced in the town at least from the 13th century^1. Another goldsmith in the town in the first half of the 18th century, may also have been working in relation to the staple cutlery trade. Robert Downes, of Sheffield, goldsmith, probably the same Robert Downes who in 1711 was assessed to the Highway Rate in respect of a house and shop in the Market Place², was already a wealthy individual when in 1719 he provided £1,000 for the erection of St Paul's Church and an endowment of £30 per annum for the minister's stipend³.

Downes' "bountiful charity" resulted in a situation almost beyond belief. In the formal instrument relating to the founding of the church⁴, a chapel of ease to the Parish Church, it was noted that Downes would have the nomination of the minister in his hands, and the first incumbent was to be his kinsman Joseph Downes. The establishment and building of a substantial church does not go forward unnoticed, but no sooner had St Paul's been built than the Vicar and the Patron of the Parish Church objected to Downes' right of presentation to the living. If that were not disgraceful enough they persisted in their objection for nineteen years, a period during which no service was conducted in the new church. It is difficult to imagine how such a situation could endure so long. Perhaps it was just stubborness on both sides. The impasse was finally addressed on 30th April 1739 when Downes applied to the Quarter Sessions to have the building registered as a meeting place for Protestant Dissenters⁵. Was it his own piety and evident love of the established church which prevented him from taking this step somewhat earlier? With the possibility of losing the church entirely the Vicar and Patron of the Parish Church entered into negotiations with Downes with the result that St Paul's was consecrated in July 1740 with another of his kinsmen, John Downes, the first curate.

Little is known of Robert Downes. Hunter⁶ noted that he was the grandson of John Downes and great grandson of Robert Downes. The combination of names and occupations suggests a connection with a London goldsmith, John Downes "son of Robert Downes of Sheafold in the County of York cutler^7" who was apprenticed in 1681.

[SteveHB]

Hopefully this will keep you thinking for a while ...

When the application when in to make and maintain a Navigable Cut or Canal from Wheat Field, Kimberworth (owned by Mr Samuel Kirk) where was it to terminate ?

Who was the owner of the land (I'll give you the fact that it was called Wicker Croft)

and which boozer did he run ?

[i got the information online and for free; no special books or subscriptions].

The PH was the Reindeer

on Castle Foulds

[vox]

Godfrey Fox

The Rein Deer

REMINISCENCES OF SHEFFIELD

R.E.LEADER

CHAPTER VIII.

STREETS, SHOPS, WELLS, AND MARKETS.

There were stirring times at the prison in I79I, when the

rioters who burnt the library of Vicar Wilkinson, at Broom

Hall, and set his stacks on fire, attacked the gaol, destroyed the

doors and windows of the house of the gaoler, Godfrey Fox,

and liberated the prisoners.+ This was the Godfrey Fox who

had been landlord of the Rein Deer, at the top of Waingate.

Being unsuccessful there, the Duke of Norfolk made him

" gaoler and liberty bailiff," in succession to one Matthew

Pollard, also landlord of the Norfolk Arms. Fox was succeeded

by Thomas Smith, constable.

=========

REMINISCENCES OF SHEFFIELD

R.E.LEADER

CHAPTER

FROM CHAPMEN TO MERCHANTS - FROM PACKHORSES TO COACHES

Godfrey Fox,

who, in I779, built the Rein Deer Inn at the bottom of Bull

Stake (where the Royal Hotel now stands

.

[RichardB]

Just here to add spice to your life ...

Name the family that lived on all four sides of the Infirmary :

Cross Bedford Street

Upperthorpe Road

Albert Terrace Road

and Montgomery Terrace Road

just keeping you sweet.

-------------

My Thanks to Steve for the map cobbled together from bits of old jigsaw, tin-hats and Marry-Me-Quick wrappers.

[RichardB]

Just here to add spice to your life ...

Name the family that lived on all four sides of the Infirmary :

Cross Bedford Street

Upperthorpe Road

Albert Terrace Road

and Montgomery Terrace Road

just keeping you sweet.

-------------

My Thanks to Steve for the map cobbled together from bits of old jigsaw, tin-hats and Marry-Me-Quick wrappers.

Spice, sweet, Marry-Me-Quick, I guess they weren't decorators or tripe-dressers then ...

[RichardB]

Which Sheffield History member could have been a member of the Sheffield Gangs if he/she had been born at a suitable year ? He/She was born somewhat too late but the name fits perfectly ...

[RichardB]

Surname - F????r (Keep it clean )

[DaveH]

Surname - F????r (Keep it clean )

Fowler?

[RichardB]

Fowler?

Yessum, which one; you've done the difficult bit ...

[DaveH]

Yessum, which one; you've done the difficult bit ...

That wasn't the difficult bit Richard it was the "keeping it clean" bit lol

[RichardB]

Who had a "Ramble through Sheffield with Bet Bouncer" ? (Poem)

[RichardB]

Who had a "Ramble through Sheffield with Bet Bouncer" ? (Poem)

I'll leave this one here for the masochists but I believe it may be unanswerable without access to a specific text. My apologies, I try to set questions that can be answered with internet access (and maybe a hint or two); this one doesn't want to play.

For the masochists; Keep going; you're getting really, really close lol

[RichardB]

10 House Points for this one.

---------------------------------

Please define/discuss "The Stuffing System" or "Taking Up" as carried out in Sheffield in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Consideration will be given for details regarding the implementation of the system and its impact on local population, traders, manufacturers, example of prices etc.

---------------------------------

I sense a certain amount of swearing and head-scratching in Portugal maybe ...

More : Truck System

EXAMINER, 26 DEC., 1830, PP. 820-1</h3> In response to a correspondent, “W.M.J.,” whose letter is incorporated in the article, Mill here continues the argument of No. 67. The article, headed as title, is in the “Political Examiner,” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘Truck System’ in the Examiner of 26th December 1830” (MacMinn, p. 14). The part of the article following the quotation in full of W.M.J.’s letter is enclosed within square brackets (here deleted), which perhaps imply a different authorship; however, there is no other evidence to support such a conclusion.

we have received a clever letter, signed W.M.J., which, among other observations on our article of last Sunday, relating to the truck system, contends that we were mistaken in considering the payment of wages in goods as a means of economizing the circulating medium. “There is a manufacturer in Sheffield, for instance,” says our correspondent, “who pays his wages with drapery goods; but in doing this, how can he be said to dispense with the use of money? If he does not want it to pay wages with, he wants it to pay for the drapery goods with; and there cannot be any difference in the amount, except that which goes to himself for profit.”

This is plausible, but unsound. The wholesale transactions of one dealer with another employ very little money. They take place upon credit, either by means of bills of exchange, or mere entries in the books of the several dealers. When these mutual credits come to be liquidated, money is used to pay balances, and nothing more. The great demand for money is for the retail transactions; and there can be no doubt that when the employer of labour can contrive to feed and clothe his men by one great purchase, instead of leaving the men to do it by a hundred little purchases, the circulating medium is greatly economized.

Besides, even if it were true that the Sheffield manufacturer wanted money to pay for the drapery goods, as supposed in our correspondent’s hypothesis, he is allowed by law to make this payment in paper. Now, paper performs all the functions of currency, without costing any thing, or absorbing any portion of capital which might else be productively employed. But the manufacturer cannot by law pay his labourers in paper, because bankers may not issue paper of a sufficiently low denomination.1 Even, therefore, if the truck system did not economize the currency, it would still serve to economize the only costly part of the currency. It is, as our correspondent partly seems to perceive, a substitute for paper money, "the wisdom of the legislature having thought fit to interdict the more convenient medium.

Our correspondent challenges us to declare our opinions on the subject of currency. We should have done so ere this if we had deemed the occasion favourable, and if we were not, from experience, fully aware that the public attention cannot be advantageously directed to more than two or three great subjects at a time. Now, when we are no longer cursed with a currency, which, being inconvertible into cash, subjected the amount of the circulating medium to the uncontrolled discretion of a close corporation, we deem the question between a paper and a gold circulation to be of immeasurably less importance than is attached to it by most writers on either side of the controversy, and probably by our correspondent.

To the Editor of the E

"Sir,"

As a real admirer, I speak sincerely, not in the ordinary cant of newspaper correspondents, of the principles of your journal, I have seen, with pain, your diatribe against the House of Commons for the manner in which it entertained Mr. Littleton’s measure against the truck-system;2 a measure which, as a real friend to the manufacturing labourers, I am actively and zealously engaged in promoting. On their behalf, I request of your impartiality a little space in your columns for this humble effort to counteract what I believe to be the very mischievous tendency of your observations. Allow me to observe, that the conduct of yourself, and other political economists in this matter, is a parody on the foolish maxim�"“Fiat Justitia Ruat Coelum;”3 that you in effect say, abandon not one iota of our stern principles, whatever may be the consequences. In this rigid unbending adherence to a favourite theory, you forget that you are sacrificing the end to the supposed means, and lose sight of the very basis of all your science,�"the greatest happiness of the greatest number. What has the House of Commons done? What does it propose to do? Many thousands of labourers complain of the frauds and oppressions they suffer from the truck system, not sufferings arising from the low rate of wages, but frauds and oppressions, which the workmen of truck-masters groan under, peculiar to themselves, and which are not shared by the workmen of money-paying masters in the same manufactures in the same districts. To prevent this fraud, we require, that is, we ask for no more than that all contracts between master and workman shall be made, and shall be paid in a medium which does not admit of fraud, and in which the magistrate can understand the rights of, and administer justice between, the parties; instead of in any system of barter, in which it is impossible for the magistrate to know the value that passes between the parties, and consequently impossible for him to do justice to him that is defrauded and oppressed. This is no great restriction on the liberty of contracts. For the truck-master may still keep his store instead of his Tommy-shop, still add the profits of the retailer to those of the manufacturer,�"the law merely interfering to provide that the wages of the workman shall be paid in that value which alone the [sic] can ascertain, leaves him to have any dealings he pleases afterwards to have with his master. The continuance of the system has produced a violent discontent, hourly increasing: the money-paying masters, unable to compete with the truck-masters, must either follow the same system, adding immensely to this discontent, or, what many of them would do, stop their works, and turn their men adrift, denouncing the truck system as the cause. The consequence would be, the instant rising of the men, in riots first directed against truck-masters and their property�"and where afterwards, who could calculate? What force could check, what concessions or reasons would soothe or control a mob of a hundred thousand persons, flushed with riot and success, and justly complaining of the apathy of the government and Parliament to their sufferings and complaints? The consequences to the kingdom, who could foresee? What character the mob would assume, or what designs it might be led to entertain? And yet there are political economists who would incur this, rather than yield one iota of their theories, and blame the government for not partaking the same strange temerity.

Is there any thing new or wrong in the principle of legislation which would interfere with contracts, when the consequences of those contracts may be so prejudicial to others, to the community?

The table of the House of Commons groans with proofs, the experience of centuries shows that the Truck System invariably leads to the grossest frauds; and there is nothing either new or strange in the principle of law that prohibits contracts between parties, even when the parties are perfectly free agents, where those contracts are injurious to public morality.

But the workman is not a free agent. A workman once entered into the employment of a master is not free; his poverty, the lowness of his wages, the law of settlement, render it impossible for him to leave his service, to remain one, two, or three weeks idle, to travel to other parishes in search of an employer;4 and he is obliged, therefore, to submit to the exactions and frauds of an oppressive and fraudulent master. The workman is not upon equal terms�"And why is he not? Because of the law of settlement, and because of those corn laws, and tithe laws5 which create a factitious, not a natural superabundance of population, and cause the workman’s poverty as effectually as if they were enacted for the express and avowed purpose. We do not wish to controul the laws of nature by acts of parliament; but we do wish, by act of parliament, to relieve the workman from some of the evils of the undue advantages which other acts of parliament have given his employer; and which we are not able to repeal.

You say that the effect of the law would be to lower wages. How is the truck-master’s paying in money, instead of in goods, to make the money-paying masters who are still the majority (thank Heaven!) reduce their wages to their men? How is the necessity of purchasing more gold for the extra circulation to diminish the sale of iron, or the quantity of employment which the masters would have to give? If the present masters’ capital is unsufficient, of course other capital would flow into the trade to make the supply equal to the demand. If more gold be required for circulation in consequence, (which is very doubtful considering the amount of capital that lies idle) it would, I admit, cost the country at large something to get that gold. But is that a price we should hesitate to pay, to get rid of a system which defrauds, oppresses, and degrades the workman, and which has brought the midland counties to the verge of a fearful convulsion? Assuredly not.�"At all events, to permit paper, and not to permit truck, would be the proper way to get rid of that burden.

W.M.J.

In the last sentence our correspondent has, in our opinion, approached to the true practical conclusion. “To permit paper,” with proper securities for the solvency of the issuers, would effectually abolish the truck system: “not to permit truck,” would then be superfluous legislation. Paper-money is the most commodious, and might be made the safest of all modes of economizing a costly medium of exchange. It is found so in Scotland, where the securities against its abuse approach to the utmost limit of completeness and perfection yet reached by any human institution. From the day when the Legislature, instead of fortifying the small-note circulation by the proper securities, thought proper to abolish it, Parliament has been engaged, as was foreseen and foretold at the time, in an incessant and constantly recurring warfare against all manner of worse modes of effecting that which a properly regulated paper-money accomplishes in a good mode. The truck system is one of those worse modes; and it is worse, simply because, as our correspondent observes, it increases the difficulty of enforcing contracts, and holding parties to the terms of their bargain.

<a name="a_813796">That it is attended with this inconvenience, we have no doubt; but that it can therefore be a cause of impoverishment to the labouring classes in general, we cannot admit. We request the attention of our correspondent to a simple argument. If the truck-master, after paying nominally two shillings a-day to his men, cheats them of sixpence a-day by overcharges in the prices of goods sold at his store, it is evidently the same thing as if he gave to each of them eighteen-pence a-day, and no more. Now, is it not evident, that by giving only eighteen-pence a-day, either directly or indirectly, he is enabled to employ, with a given capital, a greater number of men? And as it is not denied that he now employs men to the full extent of his capital, is it not clear that, if compelled to give two shillings a-day, he must throw a part of his labourers out of employment? The competition of those extra labourers, who would be altogether unemployed if the manufacturer were forced to give really adequate wages, is the true cause which compels the working people to accept wages that are not adequate. To abolish truck would not raise their real wages to the standard of their nominal ones, but would lower their nominal wages to the level of their real ones; and even lower, unless, by the introduction of paper, the necessity were spared of converting productive capital into idle gold and silver.

We have only room further to assure our correspondent, that he wrongs us in supposing that we are tenacious of a general principle without regarding specific consequences. Every general principle that is worth a rush, foresees and provides for all possible consequences; but a man who is not absurdly confident in his own foresight, looks carefully into details, as we always do, not only to avoid error in the application of his principles, but also to guard himself against latent errors in the principles themselves.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_sta...l&Itemid=27

[RichardB]

For your amusement only :

Who was Tantia Topee and what is the connection to Sheffield please ?

[vox]

Tantia Topee

He was one of the Indian Mutiny leaders.

A tenuous link -

Elisha Parker (saw grinder from Dore) had his work sabotaged by someone using Tantia Topee as a pseudonym.

What Elisha Parker's "work" was I can't find out up to now.

Still trying.

[vox]

Ah ! now I see.

Elisha Parker defied the Saw Grinders union during The Sheffield Outrages.

The work which was sabotaged was obviously his saw grinding work.

For some reason I had in mind it must have been some kind of literary work.

[RichardB]

Ah ! now I see.

Elisha Parker defied the Saw Grinders union during The Sheffield Outrages.

The work which was sabotaged was obviously his saw grinding work.

For some reason I had in mind it must have been some kind of literary work.

Grand Stuff, don't mention William Broadbent (Publican and "Old Smeeton") to Dunsbyowl, we can string him along for days !!! lol

[RichardB]

1816-17

John Abell, Dwarf Houses.

That's it, no occupation, just "in the neighbourhood" of Sheffield - other entries include Heeley, Wadsley, Stannington - so not that far out.

Got me completely stumped.

[RichardB]

Not sure how difficult this is, but here goes ...

During The Sheffield Outrages of the 1860's people were threatened with "Rattening" whereby drive belts and the suchlike were removed until they paid their Union its dues (this prevented them from working). It was said "Mary Ann" had done the deed, so, who was "Mary Ann" of Rattening fame please ?

(Usual "experts" please PM me, see if any newer Members can get this one)

[vox]

Not sure how difficult this is, but here goes ...

During The Sheffield Outrages of the 1860's people were threatened with "Rattening" whereby drive belts and the suchlike were removed until they paid their Union its dues (this prevented them from working). It was said "Mary Ann" had done the deed, so, who was "Mary Ann" of Rattening fame please ?

(Usual "experts" please PM me, see if any newer Members can get this one)

PM Duly sent.