BEYOND THE SHOP

Acquisition and Exchange Outside the Formal Market

2 April 2008

University of Wolverhampton

 PROGRAMME

 ABSTRACTS

 REGISTRATION FORM

 INFORMATION AND MAPS

PROGRAMME

The workshop will take place in the Stephenson Room, University of Wolverhampton Science Park. For more information, click here 

11.00 - 11.30 Welcome and coffee

11.30 - 12.00 James Davis, Queen's University Belfast,  Finding evidence for second-hand marketing in late medieval England

12.00 - 12.30 John Hinks, University of Leicester, On the margins of the book trade in early modern England

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch

13.30 - 14.00 Vivienne Richmond, Goldsmiths College, ‘Quite a novelty in Pinner’: The jumble sale in late nineteenth-century England

14.00 - 14.30 Margaret Cooper, University of Birmingham,  ‘24 [sept. 1766] a doz: of pidgeons … six pidgeons’: a social network of food

14.30 - 15.00 Coffee

15.00 - 15.30 Shelley Tickell, University of Hertfordshire, ‘We are pester’d by these creatures’ – shoplifting prevention in eighteenth-century London

15.30 - 16.00 Round-table Discussion

ABSTRACTS

Margaret Cooper, University of Birmingham

‘24 [sept. 1766] a doz: of pidgeons … six pidgeons’: a social network of food

E-mail: coopers.2@talktalk.net

The major source of my thesis is an unpublished 154-page account book kept between 1764 and 1769 by the widow of a Worcestershire physician. A database designed to meet the challenge of its heterogeneous and richly-detailed text affords exploration of a number of themes relevant to acquisition beyond the formal retail market, including charitable and gifting practices, and an element, before the widow’s move to the town, of self-sufficiency. Food looms particularly large in the manuscript, and this paper uses an analysis of the context of food acquisition – the what, when, where and by whom – to examine one particular household’s social network of food revealed in the manuscript by a distinctive linguistic pattern. It suggests the network is underpinned by considerations other than food or money and thus distinguishable from an ‘informal economy’. The examination of the food network addresses its relationship to the larger formal market, and enters the debate on town versus country by considering the impact of the household’s move from obscure hamlet to industrialising town. Finally, it looks briefly at dining out and suggests its incorporation in the network as its most exclusive, and excluding, expression.

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James Davis, Queen's University Belfast

 Finding evidence for second-hand marketing in late medieval England

E-mail: james.davis@qub.ac.uk

The consumption habits of medieval villagers and townsfolk, many of them of moderate means, probably required the services of petty traders, pedlars, tinkers, and hucksters, who retailed cheap goods from the roadside or door-to-door. These goods would have included locally-produced tableware made from pottery or wood, old brass cooking pans, secondhand clothes, and low-quality belts, buckles, and purses. Was this trade in secondhand and low-quality goods a significant economic activity in late medieval England? If so, was such trade sanctioned or ignored by lords, urban authorities and the state? Or did such marketing exist only beyond the auspices of formal market controls? These secondhand transactions were not consistently recognised within trade regulations and toll lists, but this may imply only that they were of little interest to the authorities. It certainly does not provide irrefutable evidence that such transactions had little role in medieval marketing. However, the extent of this role, and to what degree such trade was circumscribed by medieval authorities, is difficult to quantify given the paucity of the documentation. All elements of the internal trade of medieval England are hard enough to uncover from the fragmentary sources that survive. Comparatively, secondhand and low-quality marketing lies almost fully below the documentary parapet. Nevertheless, the trade in low-grade and/or secondhand goods is an area that should be considered further by historians of medieval marketing, even if the gaps in the evidence mean that much remains unknowable. This paper will suggest several potential avenues of investigation, which may allow us to uncover more about these lower-tier commodity markets, their vendors and customers, and the attitudes of the market authorities towards them.

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John Hinks, University of Leicester

On the margins of the book trade in early modern England

E-mail: jh241@le.ac.uk

The proposed paper will look at how books and other texts were distributed in ways that were separate from the mainstream book trade. The activities of chapmen, book pedlars and news-men, and their sources of supply, will be outlined. The various reasons for marginal or even secret distribution of texts will be considered, along with the relationship between the book trade ‘proper’ and people working on its fringes. The paper will then move on to a case study of two ‘underground’ pedlars of Catholic books and artefacts apprehended in Leicester in the early seventeenth century. One of them, Richard Crosland, is a particularly interesting case because the record of his interrogation in 1604, and the list that was made of his books and pictures, have survived in the Borough Records of Leicester – rare evidence for this kind of activity. A second case, Widow Stanley (1616), is also discussed. In addition to books and devotional items, she was carrying letters and messages, which suggests that such pedlars formed part of a vital underground communication network for the beleaguered Catholic community of Jacobean England.

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Vivienne Richmond, Goldsmiths College

‘Quite a novelty in Pinner’: The jumble sale in late nineteenth-century England

E-mail: hss01vr@gold.ac.uk

Clothing was a constant and pressing issue for the poor in nineteenth-century England. Good clothing was essential to respectability and, moreover, a key element in the construction of both individual and community identities. But it was also expensive and many people relied on charitable assistance to stock their scanty wardrobes. This assistance, however, was often larded with attempts at moral reform including the supply of only utilitarian clothing. Most clothing charities were attached to the Church, and as attendance numbers declined and women began to take a greater part in other aspects of public life, it became increasingly difficult to find volunteers to sew for the poor. As raising money for Church maintenance and repair also became simultaneously more difficult, new means of fund-raising were sought. In the 1880s the jumble sale, seemingly an American import, like the boot and garage sales of the late twentieth century, was introduced and became an immediate and enduring success. Jumble sales provided a solution to both the problems of raising money for the Church and assisting the poor, for whom they offered an opportunity to acquire a wide range of cheap clothing, free from the moral strictures and prohibitions on ‘finery’ of previous charitable schemes. 

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Shelley Tickell, University of Hertfordshire

‘We are pester’d by these creatures’ – shoplifting prevention in eighteenth-century London

E-mail: S.G.Tickell@herts.ac.uk

Among the many adversities faced by eighteenth-century London retailers, Defoe portrayed shoplifting as looming large. Whilst the Old Bailey witnessed a constant stream of offenders, these indictments reputedly represented only a fraction of the shoplifters operating in the capital. Yet the traders’ cries of ruination which drove through the 1699 Shoplifting Act do not sit easily with the exponential growth in the retail sector over the succeeding century. In fact prosecution was only the most prominent of a wide range of strategies and tactics practised by shopkeepers that enabled them to effectively manage and control the depredations of shoplifters. Drawing on the wealth of behavioural evidence in Old Bailey trial transcripts, this paper reveals how eighteenth-century retailers reactively responded to the stratagems of their adversary, progressively adopting a series of measures to reduce shrinkage. Some of the physical devices and surveillance techniques used to protect their stock have a surprisingly modern resonance. Operating competitively within a common cultural environment, shopkeepers and shoplifters both sought to capitalise on the opportunities available for gain. However the scales were consistently tipped in favour of the retailer, disclosing some unexpected synergies between marketing techniques and stock protection.

INFORMATION

The workshop will take place in the Stephenson Room, University of Wolverhampton  Science Park, Wolverhampton, on Wednesday 2 April 2008.

The workshop venue can be found in the University of Wolverhampton Science Park’s 'Technology Centre' building (marked PA on the 'Science Park' map). On arrival, please make your way to the Reception, where you will be directed to the Stephenson Room. Coffee will be available in the Stephenson Room between 11.00 and 11.30.

The Science Park is situated on Glaisher Drive, just off the Stafford Road (A449). It is a 30-minute walk from Wolverhampton city centre. If you are travelling by road, see the 'Regional' map. If travelling by public transport, see the 'Wolverhampton' map.

Car park spaces are available on site, and buses 532 and 533 run every 10 minutes from the bus station and along the Stafford Road to a stop just outside the Science Park. The buses depart from stand Q at the bus station, and a single ticket costs £ 1.10. Please note that drivers do not give change! (Buses 503, 504 and 506 will also take you from the bus station to the Science Park, but via a slightly less direct route). The bus station is located a couple of minutes' walk from the railway station. Simply follow the road out of the station, across the bridge, and you will see it on your left.  A taxi rank can also be found outside the railway station.

The Science Park's web-pages can be found at: http://www.wolverhamptonsp.co.uk/FrameIndex.htm

If you need to contact Laura Ugolini during the workshop, please leave a message with the Science Park’s reception. The number is: 01902 824007.

Further information for visitors to the University of Wolverhampton, including maps and travel links, can be found here

More general information about Wolverhampton can be found on the Visitor Information Centre’s web-pages, at http://www.wolverhampton.tic.dial.pipex.com

To register, please fill in the Registration form and send to the address below, with the payment.

The fee is £ 9. Cheques should be made payable to 'the University of Wolverhampton', and sent to the address below. Most credit card payments are also fine. For further information please contact the address below (but please do not send your credit card details).

For further information, please contact Dr Laura Ugolini, HAGRI / HLSS, Room MC233, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, WV1 1SB, UK.E-mail:  L.Ugolini@wlv.ac.uk