by Mark Palmer
The three boys’ father lived until he was almost 70, and by the time of his death in 1831 he had become a pillar of the Quaker establishment. In his later years, Joseph Clark I was not a well man. He had suffered a stroke and walked with an uncertain gait, but he continued to preach, seemingly oblivious to his deteriorating health. According to Roger Clark, his audience at Friends’ meetings found him ‘quite unintelligible’ and:
… in a family meeting such as Street was at that time, no one could be found to deal plainly enough with the dear old man, and it was finally left to a Q.M. [Quaker Meeting] Committee with Bristol Friends on it, set up for the purpose, to explain to him that his Ministry was no longer effective… [but] we remember him as a kind old man who, when we were taken to see him, would shuffle across the room to get us sugar plums, and to set the cuckoo clock a-cuckooing for our amusement.
During his long, devout life, Joseph Clark I developed strong bonds with several wealthy Quaker families such as the Gilletts, Players, Metfords, Sturges and Palmers. For Cyrus and James, his two younger sons, these were to prove important contacts over the next few decades
By the 1820s, Street’s population had risen to 800, but it remained largely isolated from the main centres of business and only 60 or so people were still employed in the once busy textiles industry. London was a sixteen-hour carriage journey away, while Bristol required eight hours of riding, and it wasn’t until the opening of the Glastonbury-to-Highbridge canal in 1833 that new businesses in Street began to get established.
Cyrus Clark was a ‘most imaginative and lively personality with a penchant for trading and manufacture’ says George Barry Sutton in his book C. & J. Clark, 1833–1903: A History of Shoemaking. Certainly, he was an industrious young man. In 1821, he had gained enough experience in fellmongering (the removal of sheep’s wool from hides in preparation for tanning), tanning and woolstapling (the buying of wool from a producer, followed by grading and then selling on to a manufacturer) to form a partnership with his cousin, Arthur Clothier, whose family had been in woolstapling since the seventeenth century.
Cyrus was only 21 when he entered into this partnership with Clothier – and it turned out to be a short-lived collaboration. In 1825, they went their separate ways, with Arthur retaining the more profitable tanning side of the business and Cyrus concentrating on the fellmongering and woolstapling. Generally speaking, 1825 is therefore regarded as the year in which the company that eventually became Clarks was founded, even though the formal partnership between Cyrus and James did not happen for a further eight years. It was also in 1825 that Cyrus married Sarah Bull, daughter of John Bull, a local glove manufacturer. They were to have four sons and a daughter.
One of the reasons Cyrus had no qualms about breaking up with Clothier was that he had developed his own sideline that was to prove highly successful. His idea had been to make sheepskin rugs from some of the skins instead of pulling the wool off. This was a process that swiftly lent itself to a variety of other consumer goods. For example, offcuts were made into strips that were ideal for mops, while softer skins were adapted to make chamois-leathers and housemaids’ gloves.
James, meanwhile, received a sound Quaker education that included some years at Sidcot School, in Winscombe, North Somerset, a co-educational establishment founded in 1699 for the children of Friends. But he was an unhappy schoolboy. In fact, his whole education made him miserable. Before attending Sidcot, he had been sent away, aged seven, to a mainly girls’ Quaker school in Bridgwater, where there was only one other boy boarder. As James described it in an unpublished autobiography written for the benefit of his children:
Although I was not unkindly treated … I cried myself to sleep every night and crying again when I woke in the morning till the vacation came. Sidcot was little better. I never met with more depraved characters, so utterly lost to all that was good, as some few of the older boys, who tyrannised and exercised the worst possible influence over their younger companions.
He left aged sixteen, and his father resolved to apprentice him to a chemist in Bath. James hated the idea.
I begged so earnestly not to leave home, saying I did not care what business I was apprenticed to so that I could live at Street, that in accordance with this wish I was apprenticed to my brother Cyrus … I was greatly pleased with this arrangement, for having all my life lived in the country I could not bear the idea of the confinement of city life, or indeed of any sort of confinement.
The founders of a shoemaking dynasty: brothers James and Cyrus Clark
And so, on 22 March 1828, the seventeen-year-old James went to work for his brother Cyrus. He also lived with Cyrus and Sarah in a house that had belonged to John Bull, Cyrus’s father-in-law. It was next to the outhouses where Bull made his gloves – premises that later would become the first Clarks factory.
The terms of James’s five-year apprenticeship were unequivocal. They are recorded in an informal history of the company written by James’s eldest son, William S. Clark:
I have the indenture of apprenticeship which provides that ‘Cyrus Clark in consideration of a premium of £80 paid to him and of his giving him faithful service in every way will cause James Clark to be taught and instructed in the arts of a Tanner, Sheepskin Rug Manufacturer and Fellmonger’. James was ‘bound not to contract matrimony while apprenticed’ and ‘shall not play cards, dice tables or other unlawful games … Cyrus Clark engages to find James Clark sufficient meat, drink and lodging’ and my grandfather Joseph Clark covenants to find his son, James Clark, ‘sufficient clothes, mending and washing and medical and surgical attendance’.
James seemed perfectly content with all of that. As William put it:
James Clark always remembered with gratitude the extreme kindness with which he was treated by him [Cyrus] and by his wife, my Aunt Sarah, the latter being more like a mother or an elder sister to him than a sister-in-law.
There was no mention of a stipend. But within a remarkably short period, there was no need for any such arrangement. Keen to earn some money and achieve a degree of independence from his brother, James asked Cyrus to let him have some of the short wool skins that were unsuitable for the manufacturing of rugs. He then came up with the idea of cutting those skins into wool-lined slippers. At first, he did the cutting himself and employed a man called Esau Whitnell, a skilled local shoemaker, to make the slippers for him. Whitnell, who walked with a heavy limp because one leg was shorter than the other, lived in a ramshackle thatched cottage close to the Toll Gate at the end of the village. James wrote:
Having no allowance of pocket money… my brother allowed me to get some slippers made of our short-wooled sheepskins, tanned with the wool on, and to cut out and prepare them for socks for ladies’ and gentlemen’s shoes … the slippers were made up by a village shoemaker and after a time other sorts of wool-lined slippers were added, till eight or ten men were pretty fully employed on them, my part of the working being attended to after working hours.
The story propagated by H. F. Scott-Stokes in his 1925 book, Clark, Son and Morland Ltd: Centenary Notes and Reminiscences, is that Cyrus at first showed little interest in his brother’s entrepreneurial flourish. Rather, he ‘turned to the serious business of the factory and never gave the matter another thought’. In fact, Cyrus’s private ledger shows that he was willing to give his brother long credit and some additional cash advances to expand his slipper business. Cyrus even began experimenting with different kinds of slippers and shoes himself, and in October 1831, while James was on a sales trip to Manchester, he wrote an enthusiastic letter to his brother:
We have much improved the slippers. The plan we now adopt is to take a white skin rather long in the wool, and then skim the top off it, by this means we get it perfectly white. We then use that skin for the bordering. By this means we cover stitches and we have a beautiful fringe round each, so that those thou now hast are not a fair sample – and we do the same with the brown by choosing a handsome colour prime mat and sk
im off the black tips.
In the same letter, he encouraged James to seek out new ideas and not come back empty-handed from his travels – ‘now if thou see anything which thou consider an improvement, either boots or shoes, buy it and bring with thee’.
James’s first dedicated salesman was a cousin and friend from Sidcot School, Charles Gilpin, who went on to become the Liberal MP for Northampton. Gilpin at the time was an apprentice to his father, a woollen draper in Bristol. The deal these cousins brokered was that Charles could keep any profit he made from the sale of slippers as a means of supplementing his meagre income.
Increasingly, as James went about the country selling Cyrus’s rugs, he found that there was growing interest in the slippers, which by now were known as ‘Brown Petersburgs’ or simply ‘Brown Peters’. The name remains a mystery. In Kenneth Ponting’s Sheep of the World there is no breed or type of sheep called Petersburg, although there were clear connections between the British and Russian courts in the 1830s, and trade with Russia was strong. The late John Thornton, an authority on old footwear, who in the 1980s was head of the Boot and Shoe Department at Northampton College of Technology, once suggested that the name could have been chosen simply because it was evocative of a cold climate.
Brown Peters were soon joined by other classes of slippers on James’s showcard, and he also introduced lambswool socks, some hand-welted boots and a few shoes. James may have been occupied in his workshop, but he was also busy travelling, having gone on the road at the age of eighteen. The riding was arduous, but the drinking with fellow commercial travellers was clearly far more debilitating. At one point, he heeded Cyrus’s advice and restricted himself to what he called a ‘modest’ four glasses of port after dinner, but by 1831 Cyrus and James were finding it ‘difficult indeed to bear witness at the commercial table’ and abstained from alcohol from there on.
The making of sheepskin rugs remained straightforward. Skins were tanned with the wool on them and, according to William S. Clark:
… the colour afterwards struck a dark brown with limewater … afterwards the dressing of the skins with alum and salt was introduced and the skins were dyed in various colours.
Shoe manufacturing, on the other hand, was going through a huge transformation with the introduction of ‘ready-mades’ in addition to more expensive bespoke shoes. All shoes were made on a last – a shaped piece of wood or metal around which the shoe is built – but ready-mades involved a universal last rather than one made especially for a particular individual. And it was not until the 1850s that there was a clear distinction between left- and right-footed shoes in the ready-made market.
Exactly when ready-mades were first introduced is unclear, but, as George Barry Sutton noted, a firm of shoemakers in Northampton produced 2,500 pairs of boots for Cromwell’s army in 1648 using a uniform last. Similarly, a shoemaker in London testified before a Parliamentary Committee in 1738 that he employed 162 people ‘from eight to eighty’ to produce footwear to supply the Plantations in Ireland and elsewhere overseas.
A Clarks showcard of 1890, showing the main factory site in Street at that time, as well as a small inset view of the works in 1840.
Unlike Northampton, which had a dedicated street of cordwainers (as shoemakers were known), and other towns known for their footwear, such as Norwich, Leicester and Kendal, Street had no pedigree in shoe production. Esau Whitnell was the sole shoemaker in 1829, but such was the energy of Cyrus and James that by 1841 there were 24 apprentices or junior shoemakers. Working conditions were cramped and not unlike the sweatshops of London, but it was these outworkers who changed Street from a sleepy village into a thriving town.
James Clark completed his apprenticeship in 1833, by which time he had saved £70. This was the year Cyrus and James officially worked out their business arrangement, setting themselves up almost as equal partners under the name C. & J. Clark, which would trade mainly in rugs, socks, slippers and shoes. The capital in the business amounted to £2,240, of which Cyrus’s contribution was £1,170 – the net value of his rug and skin trade – and James’s was £1,070. James raised £1,000 as the balance of his investment by mortgaging land left to him by his father, who had died two years previously in 1831.
Sales for the first six months of the partnership were £1,760. 4s. 1d. for rugs and £812. 8s. 5d. for shoes and socks. The net profit was £640.
2
Living beyond your means
QUAKERS TOOK A DIM VIEW of debt. It represented the irresponsibility they stood so implacably against. Consequently, the Society of Friends’ monthly meetings stressed the words of Epistle 1754 – guidance emanating from headquarters in London of that year – about how they should be ‘properly watchful’ over fellow Quakers and ‘early to caution all against running beyond their depth and entangling themselves in a greater multiplicity of trade and business than they can extricate themselves from with honour and reputation’. Being ‘properly watchful’ over others was a persistent theme within Quaker circles in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Specific guidelines of this kind were relayed to clerks and read out at regional and local meetings. They were updated at irregular intervals in response to developments in the financial and industrial world. Applying the teachings of Christ to the workplace were essential, and in the event of money troubles, you were expected to seek advice from more experienced Friends – and to be candid about your predicament. For example, in the words of Epistle 1692:
All friends that are entering into trade, or that are in trade, and have not stocks sufficient of their own to answer the trade they aim at, be very cautious of running themselves into debt, without advising with some of their ancient and experienced Friends among whom they live.
The Friends’ Meeting House in Street, built in 1850.
Those who did incur debts were encouraged to wipe the slate clean as soon as possible. Failure to pay a debt was seen in Epistle 1735 as ‘the great scandal and reproach of our holy profession’ and Friends were warned to give ‘timely caution to any such as either break their promises or delay payment of such debts, or otherwise render themselves suspected’. And woe betide those who were in debt but continued to enjoy the trappings of a comfortable life, ‘it being exceedingly dishonourable for any to live in ostentation and greatness at the expense of others’.
Cyrus and James Clark grew up well-versed in these fundamental Quaker principles. And they would have learned at length about the character and behaviour of the Quakers’ uncompromising founder, George Fox – who had happened to be apprenticed to a Nottingham shoemaker prior to his spiritual awakening in 1643.
Quakers were stoical in their response to provocation and persecution. In 1661, following the suppression of a violent Fifth Monarchist uprising (one of several non-conformist movements) led by Thomas Venner, Fox had issued the Peace Testimony, which officially committed the Society of Friends to pacifism and non-violence under all circumstances. ‘The spirit of Christ will never move us to fight a war against any man with carnal weapons,’ he wrote.
A turning point for Quakers came within months of the accession of William and Mary in the form of the Toleration Act of 1689, which was designed to be ‘an effectual means to unite Their Majesties’ Protestant subjects in interest and affection’, according to Charles Braithwaite’s respected Quaker history, The Second Period of Quakerism.
Fox died in 1691 – two years after this breakthrough – but had lived long enough to see positive results from his battles with Church and state, and a system was in place whereby Quakers knew what was expected of them, professionally and personally. Men and women should worship God directly and not through any intermediary, whether it be a priest or religious organisation. Personal religious experience was what counted. How you lived your life was more important than any prescribed system of belief and you were wholly responsible for your own actions. Redemption must be found on earth. The Kingdom of Heaven resided within the soul of all men and women, and
was not merely a safe haven to which you were invited in the afterlife.
The closest Quakers came to a constitution or written code was the so-called ‘Advices and Queries’, which were circulated at the London Yearly Meeting. The overriding principle of these edicts was that Quakers should embrace the simple life. An allegiance of trust should always be maintained between Friends. They should work hard, support each other and be beyond reproach in their business affairs. Honesty was paramount. They must share any success with others, striving at all times for the common good.
By 1697, Quakers were enjoying considerable financial success. ‘They have Grip’d Mammon as hard as any of their Neighbours; and now call Riches a Gift and A Blessing from God’, scoffed one of their detractors, Charles Leslie, in The Snake in the Grass; or Satan Transformed into an Angel of Light, published in London in 1697.
Some 150 years later, at least 74 banks had been founded by Quakers, their influence way out of proportion to their numbers, which never exceeded more than 30,000 in Britain except in the latter part of the seventeenth century. There is an argument that Quakers did well because they hailed mainly from middle-class families (and certainly Fox could be described as a man with access to independent means), but nothing can detract from their resourcefulness, innovation, graft and public-spiritedness.
Their progress became something of a business phenomenon. A Quaker, Edward Pease, was inspired to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1814, which was to become known as the ‘Quaker Line’. Railway ticket and stamping machines were invented by a Quaker, Thomas Edmonson, as was the timetable known as Bradshaw’s Railway Times, created by George Bradshaw. The Reckitts, a Quaker family, went into the household goods business, while the Crossfields were soap and chemical manufacturers whose firm led eventually to the formation of Lever Brothers.