A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England

by Edwin A. Pratt

"Their Corn comes up in great quantities out of Lincoln, Nottingham and the East Riding; their Black Cattle and the Horses from the North Riding, their Sheep and Mutton from the adjacent Counties every way, their Butter from the East and North Riding, their Cheese out of Cheshire and Warwickshire, more Black Cattle also from Lancashire. And here the Breeders and Feeders, the Farmers and Country People find Money flowing in plenty from the Manufactures and Commerce; so that at Halifax, Leeds and the other great manufacturing Towns, and adjacent to these, for the two months of September and October a prodigious Quantity of Black Cattle is sold.

"This Demand for Beef is occasioned thus: the usage of the People is to buy in at that Season Beef sufficient for the whole Year which they kill and salt, and hang up in the Smoke to dry. This way of curing their Beef keeps it all the Winter, and they eat this smoak'd Beef as a very great Rarity.

"Upon this foot 'tis ordinary for a Clothier that has a large Family, to come to Halifax on a Market Day, and buy two or three large Bullocks from eight to ten Pounds a-piece. These he carries home and kills for his Store. And this is the reason that the markets at all those times of the Year are thronged with Black Cattle, as Smithfield is on a Friday, whereas all the rest of the year there is little extraordinary sold there."

We have here full confirmation of what I have already said as to the way in which people in former days provisioned their houses in the autumn for the winter months, during which the roads would be impassable and food supplies from outside unobtainable.

The trading conditions of the period are shown by the accounts of the once-famous cloth market of Leeds given, in his "Ducatus Leodiensis; or the Topography of Leedes," by Ralph Thoresby (1715), and, also, in his "Tour," by the ever-picturesque Defoe.

Thoresby, who speaks of "the cloathing trade" as being "now the very life of these parts," tells us that the Leeds cloth-market was held on the bridge over the Aire every Tuesday and Saturday down to June 14, 1684, when, for greater convenience, it was removed to Briggate, the "spacious street" leading from the bridge into the town. Already, in Thoresby's day, Leeds was the manufacturing capital of the district, and he speaks of its cloth-market as "the life not of the town only but of these parts of England."

Defoe, in his account of the market, describes it as "indeed a Prodigy of its kind, and not to be equalled in the world." He tells how, making their way to Leeds at an early hour in the morning from the surrounding district, the "clothiers," each bringing, as a rule, only a single piece of cloth, assembled at the various inns, and there remained until the ringing of a bell, at seven o'clock in the summer, or a little later in the winter, announced that trestles, with boards across them for the display of the cloth, had been duly fixed in the roadway, and that the market had opened. Thereupon the clothiers, without rush or haste, and in the most solemn fashion, would leave their inns, and step across the footpath to the "stalls" in the roadway. Standing quite close to one another, they then put down their cloth on the boards, which would soon be completely covered with rolls of cloth arranged side by side. While the clothiers were so engaged, the merchants would have left their houses, entered the market, and begun their inspection of the goods displayed for sale, so that within fifteen minutes of the ringing of the bell the market would be in full operation. When a merchant saw a piece of cloth which suited his requirements he would lean across the boards, and whisper in the ear of the clothier the price he was prepared to give, this practice of whispering being adopted in order that the other clothiers standing immediately alongside should not hear what was said. The clothier agreed or disagreed, without any attempt at "bargaining." If satisfied with the offer, he would instantly pick up the cloth, and go off with it to the merchant's house, where the transaction would be completed. Within less than half an hour the clothiers would be seen thus leaving the market; in an hour the business would be over, and at half-past eight the bell would be rung again, to announce that the market had closed and that there must be no more sales. Any clothier who had not sold his cloth would then take it back with him to his inn.

"Thus," says Defoe, "you see Ten or Twenty thousand Pounds value in cloth, and sometimes much more, bought and sold in little more than an hour.... And that which is most admirable is 'tis all managed with the most profound Silence, and you cannot hear a word spoken in the whole Market, I mean by the Persons buying and selling; 'tis all done in whisper.... By nine a Clock the Boards are taken down, and the street cleared, so that you see no market or Goods any more than if there had been nothing to do; and this is done twice a week. By this quick Return the Clothiers are constantly supplied with Money, their Workmen are duly paid, and a prodigious Sum circulates thro' the Country every week."

It is no less interesting—and, also, no less material to the present inquiry as to the influence of transport conditions on trade—to learn how the cloth purchased in these particular circumstances was disposed of in days when travel through the country was still attended by so many difficulties.

The supplies intended for home use were distributed in this manner: Leeds was the head-quarters of a body of merchants who were in the habit of going all over England with droves of packhorses loaded up with the cloth which had been bought in the open-air market, as already described. These travelling merchants did not sell to householders, since that would have constituted them pedlars. They kept to the wholesale business, dealing only with shopkeepers in the towns or with traders at the fairs; but they operated on such a scale that, Defoe says, "'tis ordinary for one of these men to carry a thousand pounds value of Cloth with them at a time, and having sold it at the Fairs or Towns where they go, they send their Horses back for as much more, and this very often in the Summer, for they chuse to travel in the summer, and perhaps towards the Winter time, tho' as little in Winter as they can, because of the badness of the Roads."