4. The Long Hundredweight

The multiples of the pound were originally, like its divisions, in a sexdecimal series, with an alternative series to bring in the hundredweight, i.e. the true Cwt.

16	lb.	1 stone
16	stone	1 wey	=	256	lb.
2	weys	1 quarter	=	500	lb.	approximately
8	„	1 ton	=	2000	lb.	„
16	„	1 last	=	4000	lb.	„

The approximative relation of the quarter, strictly speaking of 512 lb., mattered but little, as it applied to corn-measure, in which the measured quarter, 8 bushels, varied from 500 lb. for wheat of 62-1/2 lb. to the bushel, to 512 lb. for heavy wheat of 64 lb. to the bushel. The arrangement was convenient for the corn-trade and could not give rise to fraud; and the main object of all laws on weights and measures should be to prevent fraud, especially in retail trade.

This convenient arrangement was altered in the times of Edward I and Edward III. The former King found the Cwt. of 100 lb. with a quarter of 25 lb. and a sixteenth = 6-1/4 lb. as its nail or clove. In his Acts there is mention of the 100 weight, the 1000 weight, the 2000 weight. But by the Ordinance of Measures 31 Edw. I, 1302, a distractingly obscure statute, no less than three different weights are ordered for the stone:

A stone for lead of 12 lb.

A London stone of 12-1/2 lb., one-eighth of the true Cwt.

A stone for groceries of 8 lb.; and 13-1/2 stone to make a Cwt. of 108 lb.

And the ‘fotmal’ of lead is to be 6 stones of 12 lb. but less 2 lb., ‘which are 70 lb. making 5 stones.’

Here then we see, besides a 12 lb. stone for lead,

(a) The true Cwt. of 100 lb. divided into quarters and nails.

(b) A transitional Cwt. of 108 lb. in 13-1/2 old half-stones of 8 lb.

The Cwt. (centena) of 108 lb. seems to have been preparatory to the Cwt. of 112 lb. mentioned in this Ordinance (if it be not a later interpolation) and established later by Edward III. It preserved, for a time, the ancient half-stone of 8 lb., but by the inconvenient process of making 13-1/2 of these as the Cwt.; probably to prepare the merchant for a new Cwt. of 112 lb. first in 14 stones of 8 lb. and then in 8 stones of 14 lb.

This is the Cwt. which has come down from Edward III to the present day, against which trade has had to struggle more or less successfully ever since, and which torments the schoolboy with sums in tons, cwts., qrs. and lb.

To this day the old Stone of 16 lb. or its half, the Clove of 8 lb., still continues in use. The butcher’s and fishmonger’s stone is 8 lb., and cheese is sold, in most parts of England, by the 16 lb. stone, as it was five or six centuries ago. In 1434, by 9 Henry VI, it was ordered that the Wey of cheese should contain 32 cloves, yet we learn from Arnold (1500) that the weight of Suffolk Cheese is xij score and xvj lb., the same weight as the wey (16 × 16 = 256 lb.), and Recorde (1543) says that for butter and cheese ‘a clove containeth 8 lb. and a wey 32 cloves which is 256 lb.’ By 10 Anne (1712) a barrel of soap is to contain 256 lb., i.e. a Wey.

The Plantagenet 14 lb. stone is used for flour and potatoes, &c., but the load, the modern form of the wey, is 18 stone of 14 lb. = 252 lb., evidently an approximately near substitute for the 16 × 16 lb. = 256 lb. of the Wey, there being until quite recently no lawful weights allowed above 7 lb. but in multiples of that weight. The load, like the wey, has the advantage of being equal to 4 bushels of heavy corn at 63 lb., so that it is half of the Quarter and an eighth of the wheat-chaldron or ton-measure.

What was the reason for the Plantagenet Cwt.? for the inconvenient unit, rightly rejected by our brethren in North America, and in several colonies?

Edward I’s intermediate Cwt. of 108 lb. seems to show that it was intended to bring our Cwt. up to that of foreign countries using Troy pounds, 108 lb. being very close to the French and Flemish quintal (Arabic cantar) of 100 Troy lb. The wool-trade with Flanders, the dominion of the Plantagenets in France, may have been the motives for this increase.

The hypothesis that the Cwt. was made 112 lb. so as to be equal to 100 long Troy lb. of 16 Troy ounces, is excluded by the ratio of averdepois to long troy being 100 to 109·7 and also by the new Cwt. dating at least from the time of Edward III, when the royal lb. was still Tower, not Troy, with a ratio to averdepois of 100 to 128; and it was certainly not of 16 ounces.

The only lawful multiples of the Imperial pound were, until quite recently, those of the stone series:

7 lb.	. .	a clove.
14 lb.	. .	a stone.
28 lb.	. .	a quarter-Cwt.
56 lb.	. .	a half-Cwt.
112 lb.	. .	a Cwt.
2240 lb.	. .	a ton.

And the only lawful weights were those of 56, 28, 14, 7, 4, 2, and 1 lb.

I have had some personal experience of the inconvenience of these weights. For years I had to weigh recruits and other soldiers, recording their weights in pounds with this inconvenient set of weights. To get the weight of a man of 152 lb. I had to reckon 2 × 56 lb. + 28 + 7 + 4 + 1 lb. Errors were necessarily frequent when many weighings had to be rapidly done, so I had a set of decimal weights made—20, 10, 5 lb.—and all trouble ceased. But these weights were not lawful, at least for trade purposes.

There was, however, another lawful unit, the Cental, that is, the original English Cwt., brought back to England from North America by the corn-trade. Commerce demanded the recognition of the Cental and got it in 1879.

In 1902, the tobacco-trade in Liverpool, annoyed at the inconvenience of the lawful units of weight, as inconvenient for the wholesale tobacco-warehouse as for my military purposes, moved the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce to get the Board of Trade to allow them to use a half-cental weight; a whole cental, the only lawful unit of the kind, being too heavy for handling. In reply to this request, it was suggested that a nest of weights, 28 + 14 + 7 + 1 lb. = 50 lb. might be used. To this the tobacco-trade objected, and after correspondence, the use of a 50 lb. weight was granted. Then they requested permission to use smaller fractions of the cental, in fact a decimal series of 20, 10, 5 lb. And they obtained it. So, thanks to the perseverance of the Liverpool tobacco-merchants and Chamber of Commerce, the decimal fractions of the Cental are now lawful weights, and no one need use the inconvenient 14 lb. stone series.