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Patronage, Paternalism, and Welfare: Masters, Workers, and Magistrates in Eighteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Douglas Hay
Douglas Hay
Affiliation:
York University
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Extract

Paternalism is a construct that continues to be used by historians of eighteenth-century English society. As an explanatory or exploratory term it does resonate with some of the inflections in the sources, particularly those dealing with the mediation of class relations by the prototypical country gentleman justice of the peace, that denizen of countless novels, and the subject of much historical research over the last thirty years. Paternalism, in the sense of a putative concern for the welfare of the working poor, provided they kept within bounds, was certainly the announced creed of many better- and lesser-known philanthropic gentlemen of the period, and we can find (apparent) plebeian celebrations of the belief:

God bless Lord Dudley Ward

He knows as times been hard.

He called back the sodgermen,

And we'll never riot again,

Na boys, no boys, no the brave Dudley boys.

Type
Patronage, Paternalism, and Company Welfare
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 53 , Spring 1998 , pp. 27 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1998

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References

NOTES

1. I first heard this song sung with gusto and wit by Roy Palmer at Edward and Dorothy Thompson's dinner table. See Songs of the Midlands, ed. Palmer, Roy (Wakefield, 1972), 88;Google Scholara different version is quoted in Thompson, E. P., “Patrician Society, Plebian Culture”, Journal of Social History 7 (1974): 398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. On Dudley and Ward's benevolence in the context of riot, see Aris' Birmingham Gazette, Gazette, June 8, September 21, September 19, and October 26, 1795; January 6, May 5, and September 15, 1800; and February 23, 1801. On the ingratitude of his miners, see note 24 below.Google Scholar

3. For a discussion of a wider range of sources, see Hay, Douglas, “Master and Servant in England: Using the Law in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, forthcoming in a volume of studies on private law and inequality edited by Willibald Steinmetz.Google Scholar

4. The statutes include 7 Geo. I st. 1 c.13 (1720); 9 Geo. I c.27 (1722); 12 Geo. I c.34 (1725); 2 Geo. II c.36 (1729); 13 Geo. II c.8 (1740); 20 Geo. II c.19 (1747); 22 Geo. II c.27 (1749); 6 Geo. III c.25 (1766); 17 Geo. III c.56 (1777); and 32 Geo. III c.57 (1792). There are several editions of Statutes at Large.Google ScholarIn Runnington's New Edition of Ruffhead's Statutes at Large (London), these statutes appear in vol. 5 (1786), 232–34, 329–30, 435–17, 448–51, 525–27; vol. 6 (1786), 136–39, 253–54, 424–30, 587–88; vol. 7 (1786), 552–60; vol. 12 (1794), 255–59.Google ScholarSuch legislation not only covered breaches by the worker but “regulated the trade” with clauses dealing with apprenticeship, maximum (and sometimes minimum) wages and wagesetting, combination, embezzlement of materials, and indeed any of the common points of conflict in the industry. Conflict was recognized between masters and journeymen, between those who had served a full apprenticeship and those who had not, and between large capitalists who wanted to hire the latter in opposition to small masters who wanted the older structures of the trade respected. All such clauses referred back to the Statute of 1562 in the sense that it provided the interpretive structure, often the spirit, and sometimes direct inspiration for parts of the statutes dealing with respective trades. For a general discussion and further references, see Hay, Douglas and Rogers, Nicholas, Eighteenth-Century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (Oxford, 1997), chaps. 6–9; and Hay, “Master and Servant in England”.Google Scholar

5. Imprisonment for breach formerly had been done under a vagrancy statute of 1609,7 James I c.4; Runnington, , Statutes at Large, Vol. 3 (1786), 74–76.Google Scholar

6. 12 Geo. I c.34 (1725, woolen trade); 7 Geo. I st 1 c.13 (1720, tailors).Google Scholar

7. 6 Geo. III c.25 (1766).Google Scholar

8. 20 Geo. II c.19 (1747); 32 Geo. III c.57 (1792). The Proclamation Society was named after and intended to implement the reforms of a proclamation by George III against vice and immorality in 1787. The proclamation itself was the product of moral entrepreneurship.Google Scholar

9. Birmingham City Archives (hereafter BCA), Boulton and Watt Collection, 529, K. v. Thomas Bury, brief for prosecution. Boulton also gave this as one reason for a capital prosecution of 1789. I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance of Nicholas Kingsley, Rachel Sampson, and the Birmingham City Archives.Google Scholar

10. Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO), ASSI 5/109 Lent 1789, indictment of Joseph (alias George) Wood.Google Scholar

11. BCA, Boulton and Watt Collection, Parcel, B., Boulton, Robinson to Watt, James, 03 5, 1801.Google Scholar

12. Aris' Birmingham Gazette, 12 14, 1789, 02 8, 1790; BCA, Matthew Boulton Papers (hereafter MBP), 275, nos. 102, 104: Draft resolutions of a meeting of 19 11, and “Facts …” Boulton was actively involved, and Watt, in spite of some opposition, sat on the committee: MBP, 150, Matthew Boulton to Watt, James Jr., 12 26, 1789, and MBP, 310, Boulton to G., 01 14, 1790.Google Scholar

13. An Appeal to Manufacturers on the Present State of Trade (Birmingham, 1795); MBP, 275, “Facts …” (1789). The laws of settlement determined the one parish legally obliged to relieve a poor person.Google Scholar

14. An Appeal to Manufacturers. The internal quotation is from Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London, 1776), book 1, chapter 10, 175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. MBP, 310. Garbett, Samuel to Boulton, Matthew, 11 5, 1795.Google Scholar

16. Destitution was mentioned as a threat in the button trade in November 1790; Aris' Birmingham Gazette, 11 15, 1790.Google ScholarIt seems likely that Boulton withdrew from button making shortly after April 1789. At the time of further threats of riot by the white metal button makers in early 1792, whose hostility to Boulton was clear, he attributed it to “Ignorance and Envy”, complaining that he was being used as a scapegoat by the masters in the trade who had lowered wages on the grounds that the price of copper had risen due to Boulton's heavy purchases for coining. He also protested that “I have declined the trade of White Metal Buttons which is the article so much affected by the rise of metals, and that in which the rioters are employed.” MBP, 151, Boulton to Wilson, Thomas, 02 15, 1792, also quoted but misdated 02 26, 1792Google Scholarin Dickinson, Henry W., Matthew Boulton (Cambridge, 1936), 144–45.Google ScholarIt seems likely that in this self-justification Boulton simply chose to ignore the fact that he had withdrawn from being a considerable employer and dealer in the trade himself and that this was a contributing factor in the button makers' anger. He took steps similar to those he took in 1790, noting that he was “well guarded by justice, by law, by men, and by arms.” See also Aris' Birmingham Gazette, 02 20, 1792. Boulton was active in the later campaign to prevent the misrepresentation of the quality of gilt and silver buttons through an act of 1796.Google Scholar

17. BCA, Boulton and Watt Collection, Boulton to Watt, 05 27, 1790.Google Scholar

18. Rose, R. B., “The Priestley Riots of 1791”, Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. MBP, 310, Samuel Garbett to Boulton, 05 30, 1790.Google Scholar

20. See Money, John, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1800 (Manchester, 1977), 12–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCarles's supporters also obtained the post of clerk to the privy seal, which at his request was given to his son; MBP, 310, Garbett to Boulton, 03 9 and 15, 1794 (nos. 146, 147).Google Scholar

21. PRO, HO 42/68, Powys, Edward to Yorke, Charles, 09 15, 1803.Google Scholar

22. Hay, “Master and Servant in England”.Google Scholar

23. Aris' Birmingham Gazette, December 27, 1784; January 3, 1785; January 28, 1788.Google Scholar

24. Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford, Q/SO, Translation Sessions 1767: PRO ASSI 5.77, Staffs. Lent 1767; Edington, Robert, Essay on the Coal Trade (London, 1803), 25;Google ScholarPRO. SP 36/4, quoted in Hammond, John L. and Hammond, Barbara, The Skilled Labourer, 1760–1832 (London, 1919), 14–15.Google ScholarThe last quotation concerned a 1765 dispute of the Tyne and Wear colliers. The following discussion of workers' protests relies on Hay and Rogers, Eighteenth-Century English Society, 31–36 and chaps. 8–11;Google ScholarStevenson, John, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700–1870 (London, 1979).Google Scholar

25. On this correspondence between Portland and Haden, and the latter's support for traditional controls on markets, see Hay, Douglas, “The State and the Market: Lord Kenyon and Mr. Waddington”, Past and Present (forthcoming);Google Scholaron the crisis at the end of the century see Wells, Roger, Insurrection: The British Experience (Gloucester, 1983),Google Scholarand Wells, Roger, Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England, 1793–1801 (London, 1988).Google Scholar

26. This estimate is based on the fact that the proportion of committals to total master and servant cases averages five percent in the notebooks of justices doing business similar to Haden's. See Hay, “Master and Servant in England”.Google Scholar

27. Wolverhampton Chronicle, 10 30, 1811.Google Scholar

28. Cheshire Record Office, Chester, notebook of Thomas Allen, JP and mayor. 03 5, 1823 to 06 24, 1825. The volume was rebound at some time, with signatures misplaced; the pages have been reordered chronologically for the following account.Google Scholar

29. 1821 Census, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 15 (1822), 35–36;Google ScholarSylvester, Dorothy, A History of Cheshire (London, 1971), 87–90.Google Scholar

30. Servant plaintiffs won nineteen, lost three, and settled fourteen cases; master plaintiffs won thirty, lost three, and settled eighteen. Cheshire Record Office, Notebook of Thomas Allen.Google Scholar

31. Hay, “Master and Servant in England”.Google Scholar

32. Ibid..

33. Cheshire Record Office, D 4992/ 1, Broadsheet, “To the Mechanics and Working Classes of the Borough of Macclesfield”, Allen, Thomas, Green, Park, 10, 1825.Google Scholar

34. Fulford, Roger, Samuel Whitbread, 1764–1815: A Study in Opposition (London, 1967);Google ScholarRapp, Dean, “Social Mobility in the Eighteenth Century: the Whitbreads of Bedfordshire, 1720–1815”, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 27 (1974): 380–94;Google ScholarDictionary of National Biography, Vol. 21 (London, 1937–1938), 24–28.Google Scholar

35. Samuel Whitbread's Notebooks, 1810–11, 1813–14, ed. Cirket, Alan F., vol. 50, Publications of the Bedfordshire Record Society (Bedfordshire, 1971).Google Scholar

36. Master plaintiffs won sixteen of twenty-three cases, servant plaintiffs twenty-eight of forty-three. Ibid.

37. Ibid., cases 330, 331, 367, 373.

38. Ibid., case 774.

39. Ibid., cases 126, 200, 206.

40. The law report of the case is R. v. Hoseason, 14 East 605, in East, Edward Hyde, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of King's Bench, vol. 14 (London, 1812); “Battersby” in the report. The following account is based largely on the affidavits filed in King's Bench. For prosecution: PRO KB 1/36/4, Mich 52 Geo III no.1: David Raven, November 7, 1811, with record of conviction and warrant of committal; Generel Batterbee, November 6, 1811: Thomas Goodwin, November 7, 1811; Henry Bell, November 8, 1811; James Jarvis, November 9, 1811 re service of rule 4 Nov. For defense: KB 1/37 Mich 52 Geo III no.2 #111: Thomas Hoseason, November 26, 1811; The Revd John Cross Morphew, November 25, 1811; George Bookless, November 26, 1811; Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, Bart., November 23, 1811: William Bentinck, November 26, 1811; Dr. Charles Brown, November 23, 1811; John Monteath, November 26, 1811. KB 21/49 Mich 52 Geo III, rule nisi 712; order that on payment of taxed costs by Hoseason to prosecutor or his attorney, rule to be discharged, 744.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., affidavit of Henry Bell.

42. Ibid. The defense evidence is in substantial if not complete agreement about the facts of the case but emphasizes the gentleness of the assaults on Batterbee and Hoseason's conviction that he was acting legally.

43. Hay, “Master and Servant in England”.Google Scholar

44. Cirket, ed., Samuel Whitbread's Notebooks, cases 44D, 939, 1069, 206; affidavit of David Raven (see note 40 above).Google Scholar

45. Press accounts of the case have been found in the National Register, December 8, 1911; Sun, November 28, 1811; Morning Chronicle, November 23, 1811; Pilot, November 28, 1811; and The Times, November 28, 1911 (the last two accounts are identical).Google Scholar

46. Bell is identified as an attorney in The Pilot, 11 28, 1811.Google Scholar

47. East, Reports of Cases Argued, R. v. Hoseason, 14 East 605.Google Scholar

48. Ibid.

49. The Times, 11 28, 1811; Morning Chronicle, 11 28, 1811; Bell's Weekly Messinger, 12 1, 1811.Google Scholar

50. Ellenborough's own notes of the evidence mark this argument with an underline and an X: Harvard University Law School, Cambridge, Mass., MS 5096, Ellenborough MSS, Notebook 560, no.290, p.137, Pas. 1810-Hil 1812; microfilmed as Notebooks of Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough, English Legal Manuscripts Project, Stage VI, Harvard Law School, Section V, H-1929.Google Scholar

51. The penalties of the statutes of 1747 and 1766 were insufficiently distinguished, in Ellenborough's view; East, Reports of Cases Argued, vol. 14, 608.Google ScholarBurn, Richard, The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (London); Ellenborough was probably citing the 21st ed. (1810).Google Scholar

52. Lowther v. The Earl of Radnor,Google Scholarin East, , Reports of Cases Argued, vol. 6 (1806), 113. The case actually concerned a claim for wages; Ellenborough also noted the virtues of the Act in providing “a speedy, easy, and cheap mode of recovering their wages when they amount to a small sum”.Google Scholar