The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England

353 Pages·1982·6.606 MB·English

by  Neil McKendrick

The Birth of a Consumer Society
The Commercialization of
Eighteenth-Century England
Neil McKendrick, John Brewer
and J. H. Plumb
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington
Copyright© 1982 by Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher. The Association of American University
Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only
exception to this prohibition.
Manufactured in (treat Britain
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
McKendrick, Neil.
The birth of a consumer society.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Consumers—England—History—18th century. 2.
Consumption (Economics)—England—History— 18th cen­
tury. 3. Leisure—England—History—18th century. 4.
England—Economic conditions—18th century.
I. Brewer, John, 1947- . II. Plumb, J. H. (John
Harold), 1911- . III. Title.
HC257.E5M37 306’.3’0942 82-47953
ISBN 0-253-31205-1 AACR2
Contents
Notes on the Authors vi
Preface Neil McKendrick vii
Introduction. The Birth of a Consumer Society: the Commercialization 1
of Eighteenth-Century England Neil McKendrick
PART I: COMMERCIALIZATION AND THE ECONOMY
Neil McKendrick
1. The Consumer Revolution of Eighteenth-Century England 9
2. The Commercialization of Fashion 34
3. Josiah Wedgwood and the Commercialization of the Potteries 99
4. George Packwood and the Commercialization of Shaving: The Art
of Eighteenth-Century Advertising or “The Way to Get Money
and be Happy” 145
PART II: COMMERCIALIZATION AND POLITICS
John Breioer
5. Commercialization and Politics 197
PART III: COMMERCIALIZATION AND SOCIETY
J. H. Plumb
6. The Commercialization of Leisure 265
7. The New World of Children 286
8. The Acceptance of Modernity 316
Index 335
Notes on the Authors
Neil McKendrick graduated with a ‘starred’ first in History at Cambridge
in 1956. He was elected into a Research Fellowship at Christ’s College in
1958, and is now Fellow, College Lecturer, and Director of Studies in
History at Gonville and Caius College. He has been a University Lecturer
in Cambridge since 1961. He edited Historical Perspectives: Studies in
English Thought and Society (1974), and has contributed to E. M. Carus-
Wilson, Essays in Economic History (1962), D. S. Landes, The Rise of
Capitalism (1966) and M. Teich and R. Young, Changing Perspectives in
the History of Science (1973). He is general editor of the Europa Library of
Business Biography and has published extended introductions on the theme
of ‘The Luddite Interpretation of History’ in the first four volumes—R. J.
Overy, William Morris, Viscount Nuffield (1976), Clive Trebilcock, The
Vickers Brothers (1977), P. N. Davies, Sir Alfred Jones (1978), and Roy
Church, Herbert Austin (1979). He is also general editor of the Europa
History of Human Experience in which the first three volumes on Crime,
Death and Marriage have so far appeared. He is, perhaps, best known for
his work on Josiah Wedgwood and the Industrial Revolution.
John Brewer graduated with a ‘starred’ first in History at Cambridge in
1968. He was elected into a Research Fellowship at Sidney Sussex College
in 1969. He was visiting Professor at Washington University, St. Louis in
1972-3. He was an Assistant University Lecturer in History at Cambridge
from 1973-6. He became Associate Professor at Yale in 1976, and is now
Professor of History and Literature at Harvard. He published Party Ideology
and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (1976), and edited (with
John Styles) An Ungovernable People (1980). He is, perhaps, best known
for his work on John Wilkes and popular politics of the eighteenth century.
J. H. Plumb graduated with the first First in History achieved from Leicester
University in 1933. He was elected into a Research Fellowship at King’s
College, Cambridge in 1939, and a Fellow of Christ’s College in 1946. He
was successively Lecturer, Reader and Professor at Cambridge. He is now
Master of Christ’s College and Emeritus Professor of Modern English
History. He has been visiting Professor at Columbia, New York City and
Texas Universities. He has published England in the Eighteenth Century
(1950), Chatham (1953), The First Four Georges (1956), Sir Robert Walpole,
vol. I (1956) and vol. II (1960), Men and Places (1962), The Growth of
Political Stability in England, 1675-1725 (1967), Death of the Past (1969),
In the Light of History (1972), Royal Heritage (1977), Georgian Delights
(1980) and many other works. He is General Editor of the Fontana History
of Europe and the Hutchinson History of Human Society. He is, perhaps,
best known as a scholar for his work on Sir Robert Walpole and early
eighteenth-century politics.
Preface
This book was conceived at a meeting of the Caius historical society—a body
sometimes more noted for its critical rigour than for its creative vigour—when
after a paper by Professor Brewer, it became clear that the three authors of
this book had all, at different times, been working separately in Cambridge
on different aspects of the commercialization of eighteenth-century England.
Neil McKendrick’s work on Wedgwood had drawn attention in the early
1960s to the commercial revolution which Wedgwood and Bentley had
achieved in their own industry;1 Professor Plumb in the early 1970s had
drawn attention to the commercialization of leisure in his Slenton Lecture;2
and finally Professor Brewer’s work on Wilkes had revealed parallel devel­
opments in the political world.3
To draw together the work of three scholars—one working primarily in
economic history, one (on this occasion) in social history, and one in political
history—is more unusual than it should be. To do so in a monograph which
hopes to stimulate more research in an exciting but little publicized field,
and which is inevitably more speculative than definitive in some areas is
possibly more adventurous than it should be. But all three contributors have
done further recent work in this field4 and are convinced that they have
jointly identified an important and neglected historical phenomenon. They
feel that it deserves both greater recognition and more detailed attention. If
by jointly publishing some of the results of their past and recent research
they can establish the former and encourage the latter they will be more
than satisfied.
Even if they fail to achieve either of these modest ambitions, there are
consolations to be found in this essay in co-operation. For it is comforting
to note how much of the work of scholars operating within ostensibly separate
(and all too often mutually hostile) historical disciplines can fruitfully
overlap. And it is difficult to deny that when the authors’ three separate and
1 Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth Century Entrepreneur in Salesmanship
and Marketing Techniques’. Economic History Review, 2nd series, XII, no. 3 (April I960),
pp. 408-33. (Reprinted in Essays in Economic History, ed. E. M. Carus-Wilson, vol. Ill
(1962), pp. 353-70; ‘The Discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the Neo-Classical
Revival’, Horizon, vol. IV, no. 4, March 1962, pp. 42-75; 'Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas
Bentley: An Inventor-Entrepreneur Partnership in the Industrial Revolution’, Transactions
of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 14 (1964), pp. 1-33.
1J H Plumb, The Commercialization oj leisure in Eighteenth Century England (The
Stenton Lecture). The University of Reading, 1973.
* John Brewer, Parly Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession oj George III. (Cambridge,
1976).
* Neil McKendrick, ‘Home Demand and Economic Growth: A New View of the Role of
Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution’, Historical Perspectives: Studies in
English Thought and Society, ed. Neil McKendrick (London, 1974), pp. 152-210; J. H.
Plumb, 'The New World of Children in Eighteenth Century England’, Past and Present, no.
67, (1975), pp. 64-95, The Pursuit of Happiness (Yale, 1977). and Georgian Delights
(London, 1980).
vii
BIRTH OF A CONSUMER SOCIETY
tentative probes into the darkness of the past are brought together, the
spotlight they produce illuminates the problem more brightly and throws the
whole subject into sharper relief than their individual beams of light could
ever have done alone. This is not to suggest that the authors have attempted
to focus exclusively on a single aspect of their chosen century. The individual
spotlights dance away to reveal, if only partially, other problems lying slightly
off-centre on the academic stage, and to offer glimpses of yet others even
deeper in the shadows of ignorance and unexplored archives. Individually
at least (and outside the confínes of this book) efforts are being made to
bring them into focus and into the spotlight too.
Some of what is offered here is admittedly in the nature of preliminary
studies. As is so often the case, the English critic can offer a more elegant
guide to the art of the disarming preface than the historian can, and it is
with gratitude that I borrow from Professor Steiner his definition of 'working
papers* or 'position papers’, as exercises in which scholars 'put forward a
point of view, analysis or proposition’ in a form which while it attempts to
be inclusive and is certainly assertive, is nonetheless 'explicitly provisional*.1
Some parts of this book have some claim to be authoritative, others are
published specifically to solicit 'correction, modification, and that collabora­
tive disagreement on which the hopes of rational discourse depend’.1
Neil McKendrick
Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge.
‘George Steiner, On Difficulty (Oxford, 1978). Preface.
INTRODUCTION
The Birth of a Consumer Society
The Commercialization of Eighteenth-century England
by
Neil McKendrick
‘The English of those several denominations [Peasants
and Mechanics, Farmers, Freeholders, Tradesmen and
Manufacturers in Middling Life, Wholesale Dealers,
Merchants and all persons of Landed Estates] have better
Conveniences in their Houses and affect to have more in
Quantity of clean, neat Furniture, and a greater variety,
such as Carpets, Screens, Window Curtains, Chamber
Bells, polished Brass Locks, Fenders etc., (Things Hardly
known abroad among persons of such Rank) than are to
be found in any other Country of Europe ... were an
inventory to be taken of Household Goods and Furniture
of a Peasant, or Mechanic, in France, and of a Peasant,
or Mechanic in England, the latter would be found on
average to Exceed the former in Value by at least three
to one.’
JOSIAH TUCKER
Introduction
There was a consumer revolution in eighteenth-century England. More men
and women than ever before in human history enjoyed the experience of
acquiring material possessions. Objects which for centuries had been the
privileged possessions of the rich came, within the space of a few generations,
to be within the reach of a larger part of society than ever before, and, for
the first time, to be within the legitimate aspirations of almost all of it.
Objects which were once acquired as the result of inheritance at best, came
to be the legitimate pursuit of a whole new class of consumers.
What men and women had once hoped to inherit from their parents, they
now expected to buy for themselves. What were once bought at the dictate
of need, were now bought at the dictate of fashion. What were once bought
for life, might now be bought several times over. What were once available
only on high days and holidays through the agency of markets, fairs and
itinerant pedlars were increasingly made available every day but Sunday
through the additional agency of an ever-advancing network of shops and
shopkeepers. As a result ‘luxuries’ came to be seen as mere ‘decencies’, and
‘decencies’ came to be seen as ‘necessities’. Even ‘necessities’ underwent a
dramatic metamorphosis in style, variety and availability.
Where once material possessions were prized for their durability, they
were now increasingly prized for their fashionability. Where once a fashion
might last a lifetime, now it might barely last a year. Where once women
had merely dreamed of following the prevailing London fashions, they could
now follow them daily in the advertisements in the provincial press, and
actually buy them from the ever-increasing number of commercial outlets
dedicated to satisfying their wants and their needs. Where once consumers
eager for new fashions were dependent on the chance of rumour and the
impressions of gossip, they could now rely on the accurate details of the
illustrated fashion print or ring the changes for themselves on the endless
combinations made possible by the English fashion doll; instead of what a
quick eye and a retentive memory could glean from the dress of the rich or
a visit of the fashionable, there were now precise details minutely recorded
in the pages of the fashion magazines for a new and larger market to pore
over. Where once the ability to wear such fashions was limited to the very
few, now rising real family incomes brought them increasingly within the
reach of the many.
1
BIRTH OF A CONSUMER SOCIETY
All these changes took place within the confines of the eighteenth century.
The result of these changes for those engaged in making and selling objects
for the person and for the home were revolutionary. And those making and
selling such consumer goods had not only responded to those changes; they
had, as a result of their earnest commercial endeavours, played a substantial
and a positive role in bringing them about. They had helped to release and
to satisfy a consumer boom of major proportions.
This is not to suggest, of course, that the desire to consume was an
eighteenth-century novelty. It was the ability to do so which was new. The
ferocious pursuit of getting and spending has a long history. The feverish
pursuit of fashion is just as ancient. Extravagant patterns of consumer
behaviour can be easily traced back to antiquity; and one does not need to
trouble post-seventeenth century Europe for the most grotesque examples of
conspicuous consumption. But in the past the acquisitive part of society was
a tiny one. Its indomitable pursuit of possessions satisfied more than personal
greed and personal whim. It signalled more than simple, or even ornate,
extravagances. It served important social and political functions too. Rich
clothes, fine furs and precious gems, for instance, could mark the divinity of
a king, and radiate the splendour and standing of his court. They could
underline the exclusive status of the nobility, or the professional status of
lawyers, doctors, and the educated élite. To preserve those distinctions
sumptuary laws might be required to reinforce the effects of poverty, to
buttress the conservative effects of custom, to insist on the unavailability of
a desired cloth, to prevent commercial cunning from bringing it within the
reach of those who aspired to wear it.
The barriers to a consumer society were therefore numerous and effective.
To overcome them required changes in attitude and thought, changes in
prosperity and standards of living, changes in commercial technique and
promotional skills, sometimes changes even in the law itself. Above all it
required the commercialization of society—the process with which this book
is mainly concerned. That process was so pervasive that to do justice to it
requires that it be followed beyond the world of advertising and selling,
beyond the world of fashion and credit. It needs to be pursued into the
political world of eighteenth-century England, into the commercialization of
leisure, and of childhood, and into the world of invention and creation, where
unabashed by any sense of the plenitude of Nature men deliberately sought
to create new and improved species and exciting novelties with which to
delight the eye, to exhibit one's taste and to assert one’s wealth. The avowed
intention was to proclaim one’s ability constantly to improve on the old and
the inherited, and of course, to swell the demand for what was new and
exciting and modern.
The changes in attitude encompassed major political, intellectual and
social adjustments as well as the more obvious economic realignments. To
demonstrate the revolutionary nature of these changes, it will be necessary
2