Most people were paid in coins, and they would buy whatever they needed with coins. Anyone contracted for a year, such as servants and agricultural workers, were usually paid just once or twice over that period, but large quantities of coins were needed for day-labourers and for factory workers who were paid weekly or monthly. When he was at Reeth in Yorkshire, Charles Fothergill learned about problems paying the lead miners: ‘The wages of this class of labourer are good and are generally paid monthly…this is occasioned by the scarcity of small change which must be obtained if the men are paid weekly. The men in consequence with their families are obliged weekly to go in debt to the shops for their necessary provisions.’11
The official mint could not meet the demand for lower-value coins because of obsolete machinery and methods, and so private companies began to issue farthing, halfpenny and penny tokens as small change. From 1787 the Anglesey Copper Mines Company issued copper tokens – around three hundred tons over the next three decades. Other companies followed, and as these tokens proliferated, shopkeepers and traders used sorting boxes to arrange them by the names of the different issuing companies. Businesses were quick to realise the potential of tokens for advertising and propaganda, which resulted in numerous designs and inscriptions, and sets of tokens bearing portraits of famous people, buildings and other features were aimed at collectors. Tokens from various sources were encountered every day, as the traveller John Byng found in Derbyshire: ‘at the turnpike, I was surprised to receive in change the Anglesea, and Macclesfield half-pence; a better coinage, and of more beauty than that of the mint, and not so likely to be counterfeited’.12 These tokens had been issued by the Anglesey company and by Roe and Company, which was a Macclesfield copper company. In 1817 the Government prohibited the manufacture of tokens and ordered issuing companies to redeem them, the only exceptions being tokens of the Sheffield and Birmingham workhouses.
The wars were a continual drain on England’s gold reserves, threatening the stability of the economy and hindering commerce. Fears of invasion also caused the hoarding of gold and a run on banks, and by February 1797 the situation was so serious that the Bank of England stopped redeeming its promissory banknotes in coin. This worrying news reached Woodforde in Norfolk on 1 March: ‘Mr. Custance with his son Willm. made us a morning visit, informed us, that a proclamation from the Privy Council had been issued, to stop paying in cash at the Bank of England for some time, fearing that if not stopped, there would not be…enough to transact necessary and urgent business. On that account, all country banks have done the same, and are at present shut up.’13
There was immediate opposition in Parliament, and the playwright and MP Richard Brinsley Sheridan derided the Bank of England as ‘an elderly lady in the city’. James Gillray made use of this idea in a cartoon termed ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’, a nickname for the Bank that has persisted. The shortage of coins brought some industries to a standstill, and the radical writer and historian John Blackner related what happened in Nottingham where he was living: ‘In 1797, the refusal of the Bank of England to pay its notes in cash [coins] in February was attended with the most serious consequences to Nottingham and its vicinity, by causing an immediate stoppage of a great number of [knitting] frames for want of cash to go on with, nor could the ordinary business of the town be carried on, until one or both of the then banking-houses had issued out a quantity of seven shilling tickets.’14 In mid-March that year, Woodforde wrote anxiously: ‘There being little or no cash stirring and the country bank notes being refused to be taken, create great uneasiness in almost all people, fearful what consequences may follow. Excise officers refuse taking country notes for the payment of the several duties. Many do not know what to do on the present occasion having but very little cash by them.’15
The Bank of England did have sufficient reserves and was now authorised to issue banknotes for £1 and £2, where previously it could not issue them below £5. Once the new paper currency was found to be convenient, the panic subsided. The drain on gold reserves was abated, and although banknotes were not officially legal tender, they effectively became token money.16 Problems did recur, as William Holland discovered in July 1810: ‘I walked to [Nether] Stowey to change a bank bill [banknote] for cash but no cash to be had and I would not take any country bills, there being a run on the banks at this time, and I would not part with what is good for what is doubtful.’17 In case they proved to have no value, he had refused to accept smaller banknotes.
What did ease the coin shortage was the capture in naval battles of Spanish silver dollars, which were circulated as legal currency after being overstamped. Woodforde, who liked to collect unusual coins, commented in late March 1797: ‘Went up to Betty Carys [his local shop] this evening and got of her two Spanish dollars, having our Kings Head in miniature stamped on the neck of the King of Spain, alluding to the great victory over the Spanish fleet [Battle of St Vincent], lately, by Sr. Jon. Jervis. They are made current now in England and go for 4s/9d. I gave Betty for the two O.9.6.’18
It was not long before counterfeit dollars were being produced, and the increase in paper money also made banknotes a prime target for forgers. Many forgeries were the work of foreign prisoners-of-war, as one newspaper reported in 1810:
A great number of Bank of England forged notes and counterfeit seven shilling-pieces are now in circulation in Plymouth and its neighbourhood: several persons detected in uttering them were taken into custody on Saturday night. They are supposed to be the manufacture of French prisoners, whose ingenuity this way is very astonishing. Several of the one-pound notes had been sold at one shilling each.19
The main method of putting counterfeit coins and notes into circulation was through the retail trade, and the magistrate Patrick Colquhoun said that many criminals, gamblers, hawkers and pedlars left London in the spring, ‘carrying with them considerable quantities of counterfeit silver and copper coin, by which they are enabled…to extend the circulation by cheating and defrauding ignorant country people’.20 London with its many shops also suffered. In 1815 James Hill appeared before a magistrate ‘charged with having passed several counterfeit sixpences, knowing them to be so. It appeared that the prisoner had gone into many shops in the neighbourhood of Kentish-town, and purchased trivial articles, in payment of which he tendered the sixpences.’21
A popular way of sending one-guinea gold coins in the post was to hide them beneath the wax seal of a letter, while banknotes could be slipped inside. Because the mail contained cash and banknotes, robbing unarmed post-boys proved lucrative, and so in 1782 the Post Office advised sending banknotes in two separate halves. This led to serial numbers being duplicated on banknotes, one at each end, so that the two halves could be matched and presented to a bank. The practice of duplicate numbers continues today.22 As a precaution, Holland sent his banknote halves on separate days to the surgeon who had treated his wife’s leg at Bath: ‘I called at [Nether] Stowey and deliver’d a letter to Mr Paddock directed to Mr Baynton with banknotes in it for the cure of my wife’s leg which (by the by) is not perfectly cured, and the sum required is large, no less than thirty pound and a multiplicity of expences besides.’23 Then a week later: ‘I have been very busy in writing letters and inclosing halves of notes for Mr Baynton for the cure of my wife’s leg, if it may be call’d so, for I do not think it is quite well.’24
Most people obtained goods and services locally and paid in cash. Living close to the busy city of Norwich, just 8 miles from Weston Longville, Woodforde had accounts with many tradesmen and merchants there. Norwich was a sizeable place, with a population of some 36,000 in 1801, and on special trips Woodforde settled outstanding bills and bought or ordered anything else that was needed, as in June 1780:
To my barber Mileham gave 0: 1: 0
To his boy for bringing down my wig, gave 0: 0: 2
I went to Freemans shop and bespoke some furniture
To 4 Pappa-marche [papier-mâché] decanter stands of Baker p
d. 0: 7: 6
To snuffer stand of ditto paid 0: 1: 6
To a small burning glass of do pd 0: 1: 0
To 2 small combs and cases of do pd 0: 1: 2
To Miss Bell, mantua maker, for Nancy, pd. 1: 4: 6.25
Those with money could purchase goods in London, and even Jane Austen’s household had tea supplied direct from the city to Chawton.26 In 1782 Carl Moritz was amazed by London’s huge range of shops:
It has a strange appearance, especially in the Strand, where there is a constant succession of shop after shop, and where, not infrequently, people of different trades inhabit the same house, to see their doors, or the tops of their windows, or boards expressly for the purpose, all written over from top to bottom, with large painted letters…there is hardly a cobbler, whose name and profession may not be read in large golden characters by every one that passes. It is here not at all uncommon to see on doors, in one continuous succession, ‘Children educated here’, ‘Shoes mended here’, ‘Foreign spiritous liquors sold here’, and ‘Funerals furnished here’.27
Outside the major towns and cities, temporary market stalls were far more common than shops, and most towns and even large villages had weekly markets for fresh produce. Woodforde was fortunate to have Betty Cary’s shop nearby, but for such retailers there was no modern system of distribution and supply. ‘As posterity may be ignorant what a bag-man is,’ John Byng explained, ‘let them learn that he is a rider, who travells, with saddle bags, to receive of shop keepers a list of what goods are wanting from manufactories, and wholesale dealers; and to collect the debts.’28
In London and elsewhere, pedlars sold all kinds of goods in the streets, from fruit and vegetables to cooked food, milk, shellfish and flowers. Really poor street traders might be part-time beggars, selling the lowest-value items such as matches. Woodforde found it convenient to buy from pedlars who obtained their merchandise in small quantities from manufacturers and sold door-to-door. In May 1780 he noted his recent purchases: ‘To a man (whose name was Pedralio an Italian and who is the manager of the fire works at Bunns Gardens at Norwich) and who makes thermometers and barometers and carries them about the country, called at my house this morning with some of them and I bought one each for which I paid him 1.16.0.’29 One of the most awkward household purchases was firewood and coal. William Holland in Somerset had an account with a local coal merchant: ‘Hawkins brought in his bill for coal this day, which I paid,’ he wrote in January 1802. ‘I believe he has not charged one load, which I shall inquire into. He is a very civil, honest man.’30 This was praise indeed from Holland, as he was normally highly critical of most people.
Households and the steam-driven industries were ever hungry for coal – literally the power behind the Industrial Revolution. The conversion from manual labour to steam-driven machines led to increased coal production, which in turn led to a demand from the coal industry for steam engines for pumps and winding gear. The improved steam engines were also used for manufacturing, which brought about the factory system of working that replaced many cottage industries. Although coal was mined elsewhere in England, the predominant source was ‘sea coal’, an old term for coal mined in north-east England, while ‘coal’ tended to mean charcoal.
The export hub for sea coal was Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a large port surrounded by countless mines and associated industries. A traditional folk song from there begins:
As I cam thro’ Sandgate, thro’ Sandgate, thro’ Sandgate,
As I cam thro’ Sandgate, I heard a lassie sing,
Weel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row,
Weel may the keel row, that my laddie’s in.31
The Sandgate, taking its name from the Sand Gate in the city walls, was a street in Newcastle forming the heart of the community of keelmen, and the ‘lassie’ was very likely to sing ‘well may the keel row that my laddie’s in’, because their income depended on it. A ‘keel’ was a small boat that carried a load of around 20 tons of coal from the mines down the River Tyne and then transferred it to the seagoing ships known as ‘colliers’. During a visit to Newcastle in November 1787, the surgeon Lionel Gillespie was impressed by the industry’s scale:
The coals are brought down the river in flat vessels called keels and the number of those employed is immense, each of them carries three men and a boy or old man. These vessels are sail’d, row’d, dragged or poled along the river, and sometimes two or three of these means are put in practice at one and the same time, for as the keelmen are pay’d by the trip, the incentive to industry is strong.32
Thousands of keelmen were employed on the Tyne river, who Frederick Eden described a few years later: ‘Keelmen, (of whom 6000 or 7000 are constantly employed in navigating keels with coal, from the collieries on the Tyne to Shields,) are paid from 15s. to 20s. a week. Sailors, in time of war, are paid, from 6 to 11 guineas, for a voyage to London, which is often performed in a month, or less.’33 As the mines were clustered close to the port, land transport costs were minimised, giving Newcastle its supremacy and resulting in the phrase ‘taking coals to Newcastle’, meaning a pointless exercise.
When Louis Simond was at Newcastle in 1811, he was surprised that the coal was exported: ‘The continent of Europe draws from England, notwithstanding the war, a quantity of coals…said to amount to £500,000 or £600,000 a year. Some are exported to the West India islands, and the inhabitants of the larger seaport towns of the United States warm themselves almost entirely with English coals, cheaper than the wood of their forests.’34
At all stages, the transportation of coal involved gruelling manual labour, sometimes coupled with considerable danger. Frequent accidents occurred in the loading and unloading of the coal, and the sea passage down the east coast saw numerous shipwrecks. The mines themselves held the greatest risks, and newspapers carried countless depressing reports of pit disasters. Even without explosions, though, coal mining was hazardous, with many miners killed or injured in accidents and roof falls. Simond chanced going down one mine:
The mode is rather alarming. The extremity of the rope which works up and down the shaft being formed into a loop, you pass one leg through it, so as to sit, or to be almost astride on the rope; then, hugging it with both arms, you are turned off from the platform over a dark abyss, where you would hardly venture if the depth was seen. This was 63 fathoms (378 feet). One of the workmen bestrode the loop by the side of me, and down we went with considerable rapidity. The wall of rock seemed to rush upwards, the darkness increased, the mouth above appeared a mere speck of light. I shut my eyes for fear of growing giddy, the motion soon diminished, and we touched the ground…Each of us had a flannel dress and a candle, and thus proceeded through a long passage, rock above, rock below, and a shining black wall of coal on each side.35
Conditions were more brutal down the mines than those endured in most other occupations, particularly as the amount of wages depended on the amount of coal produced. Simond observed how it was cut: ‘The ceiling of [the main road is]…high enough for a man to stand upright, while the side streets are no higher than the stratum of coals (4½ feet), therefore you must walk stooping. The whole extent of the mine is worked in streets intersecting each other at right angles, 24 feet wide and 36 feet asunder, leaving solid blocks 36 feet every way.’36 This was the ‘pillar and stall’ method, which extracted about half the available coal. It was so-called because the coal was mined from areas called ‘stalls’, leaving large rectangular pillars of coal to support the roof. The other common method of mining was the ‘long wall’. First, a shaft was dug following the coal seam. Then one side of the shaft was cut away by the miners who dumped the waste rock on the other side of the shaft. This helped to support the roof as the ‘long wall’ of the shaft moved sideways through the coal seam.
There were frequent roof falls, as happened to young Josh Gibson, who in about 1796 started working ‘in a pit at Shipley [Yorkshire] when seven years old; drove a pony until he was above nine, when h
e then went behind, and was hooked to the waggon with a belt. He found it hurt him much…when about 12 years old he was crushed bad by the roof falling.’37 For the men, women and children who worked down the mines, there was often little alternative employment. In Scotland the miners were virtually slaves until an Act of Parliament came into force in 1775.38 South of the border, in the northern counties of England, a similar situation prevailed, with the miners commonly hired on a yearly basis. They signed a bond agreeing to work without strikes or absences, and in return were paid a premium that could be relatively high. In 1795 Frederick Eden thought that the wages of the miners around Newcastle were generous:
Pit men earn from 1s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. a day; on an average, about 16s. a week; besides which, they are allowed rye from their masters, at 4s. the bushel. Notwithstanding these high wages, they are seldom richer than their neighbours. They use a great deal of butcher’s meat, during the three or four first days of the week; but, towards the close of it, as their earnings of the preceding week become nearly exhausted, they are generally obliged to live more frugally and abstemiously.39
Miners did break their bond from time to time, and mine owners would advertise for their capture, as in the Newcastle Journal in 1777:
PITMEN ABSCONDED.
Whereas Thomas Norton, aged about 35 years or thereabouts, and Thomas Green, aged 46 years or thereabouts, colliers, lawfully bound and hired to work at Byker-hill colliery from the 9th day of October 1776, to the 9th day of October 1777, have unlawfully absented themselves from the said colliery:– Notice is hereby given, to all Coal-owners, their agents, or others, not to employ the said persons, or they will be prosecuted as the law in that case directs; and any person giving information where they may be apprehended, to Mr Joseph Hunter, at Byker-hill, shall be well rewarded.40
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