Introduction

Early Bournemouth in its commercial success may have had a negative impact on a category of business in rural Greater Westover. Young shoemakers, resident in a part of this area, appear to have built a commercial combine based on ties of kinship and friendship. Successful at first, its members later drifted away leaving only one in place: William Marshall. Hardly any of the next generation showed an interest in its continuation.

The combine and its success

Social and commercial unions in parallel

Genealogical analysis shows that three young shoemakers achieved kinship links as well as common business interests. John Lawford (1819-1853), a Redhill shoemaker, married Ann Marshall. William Marshall, Ann’s brother (1821-1895), from Holdenhurst, also worked at the lathe, married to a local shoemaker’s sister. Mary Lawford, John’s sister, married James Hammerton (1818-1879), a shoemaker from perhaps near Southampton. The census placed him in Holdenhurst (1841), Muscliff (1851) and Redhill thereafter. The marriages occurred between 1838 and 1841. Before the decade’s end, John Fry, once an apprentice of James Hammerton, also married into the wider Marshall family, located by the census in Holdenhurst during this period. For the next twenty years these men, resident in the Holdenhurst area, all made a living by shoemaking. Their commercial union, running in parallel to their social connections, perhaps benefitted from tool sharing or skill bartering. Their combine may have enjoyed a measure of category control.

Combined success

Their collective action could have stifled competition – records show only one other shoemaker in the immediate area, Charles Collins – as well as maintaining price levels. Charles Collins stayed in the area, but left shoemaking, not sticking at the same occupation. John Sommerville, a shoemaker at Great Dean (1851), worked as a labourer for the next two decades. John Bishop, a bootmaker at Wick, moved to Christchurch, then Wimborne, always in footwear. Even Charles Tanner, William Marshall’s likely brother-in-law, had become a gardener by 1871. Their departures imply that the footwear makers, united by married kinship, may have achieved some success against competition, but examination of their later careers suggests that forces outside shoemaking proved too strong in the end. For early Bournemouth, villages in the area supplied its economy, dairy products for example. Later, however, for such other products as footwear, the direction of this commercial relationship may have changed.

Changes beyond control

Economic and social trends

According to the 1851 census and a directory of that year, the number of shoemakers in rural Greater Westover far outnumbered those in early Bournemouth. The 1861 census, however, recorded around a dozen shoemakers living in Bournemouth. They outnumbered the surviving combine by four times: William Marshall, John Fry and one other. After another decade, Bournemouth’s footwear makers had increased to around 30. Now only William Marshall and one of the other two remained at their workbenches. The population of the rural villages had changed little, but Bournemouth had undergone significant growth. Furthermore, by the middle of the nineteenth century, technology had begun to mechanise footwear production. Sewing machines enabled much quicker combination of a shoe’s components than possible by hand. The mechanisation also made affordable the production of different left and right shoes, instead of an item that might fit either foot. Nevertheless, machines needed capital and operational scale.

Implications

Hence the social and economic context framing the resort and its rural villages had altered after the combine’s foundation. Rural impoverishment and population trends may have reduced volume opportunities from village residents. An established shoemaking category in Bournemouth may have threated the syndicate’s market also. The town’s shoemakers would have produced footwear suitable for urban use, even fashion for affluent visitors: a different market. Nevertheless, perhaps they could have turned their hand to rural footwear if they saw the opportunity. Travel between villages and town would have increased during this period. Furthermore, the appeal of working as a rural shoemaker may have lost any lustre as early Bournemouth’s town culture stretched ever nearer the villages. A town, growing so fast, represented a much wider range of economic and social possibilities than the villages. Different jobs, partners from far away. The protective needs that had spawned the combine perhaps grew redundant.

The vaporisation of a kinship commercial force

Founders

John Lawford passed away at an early age: not seeing his thirty-fifth birthday, dead in 1853. John Fry, the youngest of the four, had given up the trade by 1871, still in his forties. He appears to have followed his brother-in-law into the gardening occupation. The 1861 Census located both his brother-in-law and his father-in-law in John Fry’s house. Perhaps other social factors encouraged his choice. Furthermore, such a job may have proved easier on his fingers than sewing together recalcitrant pieces of leather. James Hammerton continued as a shoemaker but died before reaching sixty (1879). As discussed, the combine appears to have extinguished competition and discouraged younger men.  Apart from Winton settlers, an early Bournemouth suburb, almost nobody in rural Greater Westover started a shoemaking business. William Marshall had had a pair of workers and an apprentice according to the 1851 Census, but none noted in subsequent records.

Children

William Marshall and Elizabeth Tanner had a prolific marriage, at least a dozen children, most surviving, but in only one case a shoemaking kinship connection occurred. Their children’s adult lives illustrate well the social and economic changes of the time. One son became a butler, a daughter married another. This son married a French lady in Paris, perhaps making his life abroad. His other sons found work in early Bournemouth’s developing built environment: painters, a bricklayer, a carpenter. Two of them married teachers, born in Stroud and Wandsworth. A daughter married a painter. Three of the other daughters appeared to have married the same man: a blacksmith who left a sizeable estate, Mark James. Only one married a shoemaker, Tom Sweeper, a Wiltshire man, working in Christchurch. William Marshall stuck to his last until the end in 1895, leaving a modest estate, his kinship-combine dissipated by uncontrollable forces.

Takeaway

In the isolated world of 1830s’ rural Greater Westover, a commercial combination based on marriages may have seemed to offer promise. Yet early Bournemouth’s steady growth and, perhaps, general cultural changes may have prevented it from delivering long term wealth.

References

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