[46]For the whole history of this industry, see The Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Galton, 1896.
[47]The London Tradesman, by Campbell, 1747, p. 192.
[48]The Trade of England Revived, 1681, p. 36.
[49]House of Commons Journals, vol. xix. pp. 416, 424, 481; The Case of the Master Taylors residing within the Cities of London and Westminster, in relation to the great abuses committed by their journeymen; An Abstract of the Master Taylors’ Bill before the Honourable House of Commons, with the Journeymen’s Observation on each clause of the said Bill; The Case of the Journeymen Taylors residing in the Cities of London and Westminster (all 1720). These and other documents relating to combinations in this trade have now been published in a useful volume (The Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Galton, 1896), with an elaborate bibliography.
[50]London, by David Hughson (1821), pp. 392-3; House of Commons Journals, vol. xxiv. Place MSS. 27799, pp. 4, 5. The Case of the Journeymen Taylors in and about the Cities of London and Westminster (January 7, 1745).
[51]Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1750, 1768.
[52]Place MSS. 27799—10; see The Life of Francis Place, 1771-1854, by Professor Graham Wallas, 1898; second edition, 1918. There is evidence of very similar organisation in other towns. At Birmingham, for instance, there was a systematically organised strike in 1777 against a reduction of wages, which lasted for some months (Langford’s Century of Birmingham Life, pp. 225, etc.; The Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Galton, 1896).
[53]A Declaration of the Estate of Clothing now used within this Realme of England, by John May, Deputy Alnager (1613, 51 pp., in B.M. 712, g. 16), a volume which contains many interesting pamphlets on the woollen manufacture between 1613 and 1753. Already in 1622, a year of depression of trade, we hear of numerous riots and tumults among the weavers of the West of England, notably those of certain Devonshire towns, who paraded the streets demanding work or food (Quarter Sessions from Elizabeth to Anne, by A. H. A. Hamilton, 1878, pp. 95-6). But there is as yet no evidence of durable combinations at so early a date.
[54]MS. Minutes, Court Book of the Clothworkers’ Company, December 10, 1675; August 16, 1682; Industrial Organisation of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by George Unwin, 1904, p. 199.
[55]History of Tiverton, by Martin Dunsford (Exeter, 1790).