BYGONE INDUSTRIES OF THE PEAK: BOOT AND SHOEMAKERS
This is one of a series of articles published in
The Peak Advertiser, the Peak District's local free newspaper, on 13th March 2000 (p1 & p7), and
reproduced by kind permission of its author, Julie Bunting.
The series is now available as a fully-illustrated paperback, published in 2006
by
Wildtrack Publishing of Sheffield (ISBN 1-904098-01-0) See also this
Review by Alan Jacques.
BYGONE INDUSTRIES OF THE PEAK: BOOT AND SHOEMAKERS
Our series on bygone industries is brought to an end with a trade
which was interdependent on so many of the others, literally at
ground level. A good pair of boots or shoes made all the
difference to everyday life whether in the workplace or not. And
they had to last. In poorer families, and not all that long ago,
many people had just one pair of shoes to their name and for
children that usually meant hand-me-downs, often a pair of
boots.
Nobody had to go far to buy footwear, a village of any size was
likely to have a resident shoemaker. Even the leather was usually
local, obtained from the nearest tannery, as at Stoney Middleton
where there seems to have been a commercial connection between
bootmakers and Grindleford tannery.
In the 1830s Bakewell had up to forty shoemakers; Tideswell,
Winster and Matlock Bath each had seven, Hope three, Bradwell
three, Hathersage and Calver each had two. By 1857 Bakewell
supported only eight but more than twenty were in business at
Wirksworth, nineteen at Matlock, thirteen at Ashbourne, seven
each at Baslow, Eyam, Winster and Hartington and six at both
Bradwell and Bonsall. One-man businesses met the needs of
numerous hamlets and villages including Priestcliffe, Brough,
Little Longstone, Tissington, Two Dales and Over Haddon.
As the century wore on, the strong tradition of shoemaking of
Eyam and Stoney Middleton expanded into family concerns employing
relatives and neighbours working with simple machinery.
Production then expanded into factories, set up in former textile
factories as well as purpose-built buildings. Smaller associated
factories were established at Bradwell and Hathersage, providing
outwork for women who machined uppers in their homes. There was
no shortage of either cottage or factory workers, the majority
being women and girls on piecework, hand-working and machining
together five or six segments of uppers at ninepence for a dozen
completed pairs. Employers were loathe to pay for gas lighting so
workers often had to work by the light of candles which they had
to buy for themselves. The women grew round-shouldered and
developed poor eyesight, while severe breathing problems affected
those involved in the final buffing and scouring of leather and
brass rivets, when the air was thick with particles of
sand-paper, leather and fine brass. Men were employed for heavy
cutting work, originally by hand with a sharp knife until
machinery was introduced. Sole and heel pieces were stamped out
by heavy machinery which invariably claimed at least one finger
or thumb from every operator, the price of cutting a dozen pieces
of leather per minute. Lads as young as thirteen spent long
monotonous hours inking boot edges - up to a thousand pairs a day
for four shillings per week.
The Stoney Middleton factories produced only mens' heavy working
boots, including army boots during the First World War, while
Eyam specialised in women's and children's shoes and slippers. In
1910 the two villages shared three wholesale boot, shoe and
slipper manufacturers, all providing essential jobs even though
the workers of 1913 were paid only £1 for a 63-hour week, half
the national average for the trade. With just a half-hour dinner
break, the shoemakers of Eyam barely had time to run home, bolt
their food and run back to work.
Inevitably small manufacturers began to face competition from
larger concerns and the subsistence wages and long hours were
drawing attention from the trade union movement. At the risk of
immediate dismissal from their jobs, many workers became members
of the Boot and Shoe Operatives Union; on taking up the post of
secretary of the Eyam Branch in January 1918, Bill Slater was
sacked by his employers, Ridgeway Bros. Furthermore, bosses
declared that they would not ask for exemption from call-up for
any employee of military age who had joined the union. Attempts
at all negotiations with employers were fruitless and a strike
was called on 28 February 1918 involving seven footwear firms.
Six months later - by which time £1,566 had been paid out at Eyam
in strike pay, out of a national total of £1,589 - the continuing
dispute was raised in parliament but dragged on until 1920
without reaching the union's objectives, though there had been
some headway at Stoney Middleton. The concluding union report
read: 'We are relying on a Government Bill to make law a 48 hour
week and a minimum rate of wages agreed by the Association of
Employers and Workmens Union.'
Production resumed, continuing at Stoney Middleton into the
1970s, some time after it had ceased at Eyam. (Related items of
local origin are on display at Eyam Museum.) Meanwhile, most
smaller shoemakers had bowed to big business. In some villages,
Longnor being typical, the end came with the falling demand for
quarrymen's boots, a necessity which had supported many workshops
in the Peak well into the 20th century.
© Julie Bunting
From "The Peak Advertiser", 13th March 2000.
© Copyright Julie Bunting, GENUKI and Contributors 1995-2008, &c.
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[Created 8 May 2003. Last updated 10 Mar 2009 - 10:37 by Rosemary Lockie]
