WHENEVER THE ORIGINS of Ulster’s prosperity are discussed the linen industry is bound to be mentioned. The actual scale of the industry has been somewhat exaggerated yet it did stimulate economic growth which converted Ulster from the most backward province in Ireland in 1650 to the most prosperous in 1800. The higher standard of living it ensured was a key factor in the tremendous increase in population, so that by 1789 it was observed: ‘In many parts of the great manufacturing counties of Ulster, the people are so numerous as not to be able to procure milk for their families, or flax ground and depend almost entirely on markets for their oatmeal and other provisions.’2 The linen industry in Ireland depended for its prosperity on the fact that Irish linens entered England duty free while foreign linens were subject to high tariffs. Because of the low cost of living and low wages in Ulster it was possible for the industry to compete in the English market3 while its continental competitors were regularly excluded by frequent continental wars.
The growing demand for linen in England greatly boosted Ulster’s economy but the wealth it generated subsidised and bolstered up inefficient and unprofitable practices in agriculture: farming and the linen industry went hand in hand and the income from the linen industry enabled many tenants to take more expensive leases, forcing up the price of land through the free competition of the market.4 By the mid-eighteenth century there were many weavers in Ulster who spent most of their time at the loom, especially in the Lagan valley and north Armagh.5 In the more remote areas, however, earnings from spinning and weaving supplemented the poor returns from farming so that in such provincial centres of the industry as Ballymena, Coleraine, and Dungannon, professional weavers rubbed shoulders in the markets with the casual weavers, the farmers who wove in their spare time. Since bleaching at this time was confined to the summer months the drapers purchased most of their cloth in the spring. This meant the weaver had to concentrate on his loom just when his small-holding required much attention: small wonder that many contemporaries complained of the very low standards of arable farming6 and that the industry flourished most in the Lagan valley where dairy farming was the concern of the women folk. The implications of this domestic system and its effects on the rural community still require to be studied. One source for such an examination is a market book kept by a Dungannon linendraper, Thomas Greer, between October 1758 and September 1759.7
From the collection of Greer letters in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland,8 Thomas Greer emerges as an able but headstrong Quaker patriarch whose business prospered but at the expense of his fraternal relations with other Quakers. He was the great-grandson of an immigrant who had come to Ireland from Northumberland in 1653 and settled at Redford, near Grange, County Tyrone. He was born in 1724 so that he was in his thirty-fifth year when this market book was compiled. He was even then in a considerable way of business, as reflected in his total outlay in the period covered by the book of £2,054 for the purchase of linens (see Table 4.1). Although the total number of webs purchased, 1,061, was only a fraction of the ‘vast quantity’ of 3,000 pieces bleached by Barclay of Lisburn in 1766,9 it should be noted that 746 of these were double webs so that he bought the equivalent of 1,807 single pieces.10 At this time Greer did not possess his own bleachgreen and he sent his brown linens for bleaching to several other greens. There is evidence, too, that he dealt directly with Quaker merchants in London, Warrington, and Manchester, and from their letters it appears probable that he acted as their agent in selling North American flax seed, in buying linen yarn for the English market and brown linens for bleachers, and in providing cargoes of finished cloth for sale overseas.11 He became one of the foremost drapers in county Tyrone, for in 1782 he was chosen at an assembly of 437 linendrapers to be one of the two Tyrone representatives on the committee of Drapers for Ulster Province who opposed the new measures introduced by the Linen Board to regulate the industry.12
The market book is a record of the cloth purchased by Thomas Greer in the markets of Dungannon, Stewartstown, Coagh and Caledon (all in County Tyrone), Moneymore (County Londonderry), and in Armagh, Monaghan, and Cootehill (in County Cavan); all these markets except Monaghan and Cootehill lay within a radius of ten miles from Dungannon. In the book were noted the number of each web purchased with the name of the seller, the length claimed by the seller and the length measured by the draper, with the price per yard or, in the case of cheaper linens, per score of yards, and the price paid. It does not mention the quality or the kind of cloth he purchased although seven-eighth yard-wide linens were distinguished from the more common yard-wides. In the left-hand margin the webs were ticked off when checked and the total cash outlay was noted in the right-hand margin. It is clear that the book was written up at the office and not at the market; the entry for Stewartstown on 1st May followed the entry for Dungannon on 3rd May and the entries for both Caledon and Moneymore were made on 21st May. Indeed, attendance at several markets tended to produce some confusion in the numbering of the webs and from 21st February to 22nd March parallel columns of numbers record such adjustments. At least two people were concerned in compiling the market book, Thomas Greer and his younger brother, James (whose name or initials appear several times in the margin against his entries), and occasionally one of them finished the lists for a market after it had been commenced by the other. It is not completely accurate for, in reckoning the total amount spent, the figure for the sixth page (numbers 139–166) was omitted while that for the third page contains a slight inaccuracy.
Thomas Greer’s activities were dictated each spring by his need to purchase a sufficient number of webs for the summer bleaching. According to the market book, less than one tenth of his total requirements for the seasonal bleaching were bought before January since money laid out at this time was dormant. Serious activity commenced early in the new year when Greer and his other buyer or buyers began regularly to attend the weekly markets on Wednesdays in Stewartstown and on Thursdays in Dungannon. He depended on Dungannon for 60 per cent of all his purchases of yard-wide linen and for one third of all his seven-eighth yard-wide linens and on Stewartstown for another 40 per cent of narrow linens. About the 21st of each month Moneymore monthly market was visited instead of Stewartstown; it is not clear why he preferred to attend Moneymore instead of Stewartstown for he did not buy a large number of webs and their price was, if anything, a little higher on average. By the end of March there was a notable drop in the number of narrow (seven-eighth) linens purchased, from 62 in February and 89 in March to 19 in April and 30 in May. At the same time there was a corresponding increase in the purchase of yard-wide linens from an average of 78 per month in the first quarter of the year to 151 in the second quarter. This seasonal increase in demand alone would have forced up the price but it is clear that Greer, moreover, was concentrating on the purchase of better quality linens than in the early months of the year, for several visits were paid to a very good monthly market at Caledon, to the regular weekly markets of Armagh and Monaghan, and even one to Cootehill in County Cavan, about 30 miles away. Only 35 webs were bought in four visits to Armagh but 98 in Caledon and 86 in Monaghan. A rather surprising point is that Armagh market was never visited on the day following Caledon market and there is no evidence to suggest a regular circuit of markets except for the June visit to Cootehill and Monaghan. For Greer the buying season ended at the end of June; he attended only two markets in Dungannon in July and another single market there in September.
It was in March 1759 that a movement began among the linen-drapers to withdraw from the country fairs, especially in Counties Tyrone and Monaghan. So many new markets were being established in the towns and villages that they were no longer prepared to suffer ‘the inconveniences and loss for want of accommodation in country fairs’ which they condemned as ‘highly inconvenient and troublesome by means of the hurry and confusion to which they are liable several kinds of fraud and roguery have often been successfully practised’.13 It would appear from Greer’s market book that he was already pursuing such a policy except in the isolated instance of a visit to Coagh on Friday 9th March to purchase seven webs. Such a decision by the linendrapers, however, would have entailed a certain amount of contraction for the industry in the outlying areas unless dealers there were numerous and wealthy enough to assume the role abandoned by the drapers. These dealers or jobbers were disliked by authority in the shape of the Linen Board, because they were so often guilty of shady practices, but individual drapers were quite prepared to do business with them in the markets. It was against such a background of change that Robert Stephenson, the chief adviser to the Linen Board, urged that the expansion of the linen industry depended on regular visits by linendrapers to the outlying provincial towns in order to stimulate spinning and weaving. For this reason he thought that premiums should be offered by the Linen Board to those who would buy the largest quantities of linens in those markets where the industry was under-developed.14 Such a policy was adopted on local initiative in 1759 in Ballymoney, Broughshane, and even Coleraine. The impetus to trade that resulted from the payment of premiums is also reflected in the establishment of new markets, particularly that of Keady in south Armagh by Letters Patent granted to Trinity College, Dublin, on 13th March 1759 to hold a Friday market, and in the creation of three new fairs at Dungannon on the first Thursday in February, April and July.15
It is not possible from this market book alone to estimate how many people attended these markets, but an analysis of the lists of people who sold cloth to Greer has produced some rather surprising conclusions. In a region where weaving was extensively practised we might reasonably expect to find Greer dealing with a considerable body of regular clients, a number of whom might be dependent on him for regular employment; this latter phenomenon was widespread in the industry and had been noted in the North as early as 1737.16 Instead it was found that in Dungannon Greer bought a total of 559 pieces from 329 weavers, of whom 233 sold to him on only one occasion and 64 on only two occasions. Three men sold him 12 webs each and seven more a total of 48 webs; these were his regular customers. In Stewartstown and Caledon the situation was similar: 137 individuals sold him 169 webs in Stewartstown, and in Caledon he bought 92 webs from 72 persons. A certain number of individuals sold to him in more than one market; of those with whom he dealt in Dungannon, 14 turned up in Stewartstown, 3 in Moneymore, 9 in Caledon, 6 in Armagh, and 2 in Monaghan. Some of them may have lived convenient to two market towns but it is probable that some of them were dealers who purchased throughout the country: there were in fact four people whom he met in three separate markets. The pattern of purchases from individuals also indicates that some of them were either employers or dealers. Some of them sold several webs in a market while others appeared frequently within the period of three or four weeks required to weave a web of fifty yards.
It appears, therefore, that in the Dungannon area in 1759 the majority of the weavers were independent producers. Their independent status may have been secured by their ability to make a sufficient livelihood from farming or at least to provide their own flax.17 Moreover, the linen industry was booming (although 1758–9 did see the beginning of a temporary recession caused by the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War) and, by reason of the continuing strong demand for linens, independent weavers were in a relatively strong position. We have no contemporary evidence of the numbers of weavers or drapers that attended the markets nor of the amount of business done in them, but there must have been considerably more than the number of weavers who dealt with Greer because even in the final weeks of the season the majority of those who sold to him in the regular markets were new faces. It was estimated, however, in 1784 that the Dungannon market produced £1,500 per week and Stewartstown £800.18
The conduct of these markets did not differ substantially from any of the other Ulster markets. Weavers crowded around the stand of the draper where after a brief altercation the price was struck and the draper’s clerk initialled the web and noted the bargain in his book. Payment was traditionally made in cash as the weavers would not take bank notes. Greer’s book, however, provides an exception to the rule, for on a spare page he noted:
| 6 mo (June) 12 Thomas Brunhert drawn to my draft on John Barclay No. ( ) received. |
£15 0 0 |
| To cash | 4 5 5 |
| £19 5 5 | |
| By sundry Linnens see Entry if stands measure | 19 5 5 |
On 12 June Thomas Brunhert had sold Greer eight webs in Monaghan for £19 5s. 5d. and been paid partly in cash and partly by a promissory note. The other interesting point in this transaction is the phrase ‘if stands measure’. When Greer bought the eight webs from Brunhert he obviously did not measure them on the spot but paid Brunhert for the lengths specified minus the customary deduction of ‘yards’ or ‘half yards’. There was obviously an agreement that if the webs were deficient in length Brunhert would repay Greer for the deficiency or give him an allowance on a future purchase.
The measurement of webs in markets had always provoked ‘idle disputes between buyer and seller’, mainly because some of the drapers insisted on taking final yards and fractions of yards for nothing while others used their own systems of measurement. In a series of resolutions passed by linendrapers on 1st September 1758 and published in the Belfast News-Letter, they stated: ‘we are determined to have one yard to the single piece [of 25 yards] and two yards to the double piece [of 50 yards] on all brown linens bought by us in any of the aforesaid markets. And in order to make a sufficient recompense to the sellers of brown linens for said yards, and to prevent the many idle disputes arising between buyer and seller, at the time of measuring, we recommend to the Magistrates of said towns, to have all brown cloth yards cut to thirty six inches.’19 According to the market book Greer’s practice was to deduct one yard from a double piece and half a yard from a single piece. He did often take two yards from the double pieces and in a handful of cases he deducted three yards but his maximum deduction from the single pieces rarely exceeded half a yard. It is worth noting that he paid for the half yard, which was not by any means a universal practice among drapers at this period. Of course it would be dangerous to use this evidence to praise the standard of Greer’s business ethics for we do not know what his conception of a yard was or whether he had idiosyncrasies in his technique of measuring.
Webs were valued according to their fineness but we have no details of the quality of those bought by Greer. Stephenson noted in 1760 that ‘the south-east part of the county [of Tyrone] joining Armagh is entirely engaged in the manufacture of low-priced yard-wides from ninepence to thirteen pence per yard’;20 he had overlooked the considerable manufacture in this region of seven-eighth yard-wides which composed about 30 per cent of all the linens Greer purchased. In the markets linens were assessed by the draper in pence per yard or, in the case of linens worth less than one shilling per yard, in scores of yards. The latter practice meant that distinctions in quality could be made to a twentieth of a penny per yard whereas with linen worth more than a shilling, one farthing and very occasionally an eighth of a penny was the minimum difference. It is not surprising therefore that there was ‘a little altercation whether the price should be one half-penny or a penny a yard, more or less’ which appeared so useless to Arthur Young when he noted it in Lurgan market.21
The market book is a valuable piece of evidence about the prices paid to weavers around the middle of the eighteenth century and will be useful in any future survey of the standards of living they enjoyed. In 1763 even the drapers admitted that the weavers were poorly paid but they blamed foreign competition for the low price of webs and did not see any prospects of improvement. Robert Stephenson on the other hand does not appear to have shown a similar concern but bitterly attacked the growth of combinations among workmen; he laid on them the blame for the failure of the doulass, or coarse sheeting, industry in Dublin.22 It would appear however that a period of comparative prosperity for the weavers was beginning about this time and it probably lasted until the 1780s. But it depended so completely on the linen industry that, when the latter was challenged by cotton manufacturing, the spinners and weavers in the outlying areas were the first to be affected. Soon a very large population had no other means of dependence than the underdeveloped and under-capitalised farming industry. Irish agriculture failed to carry this huge burden and crashed in the Great Famine with terrible consequences.
An analysis of the market book of Thomas Greer to show his attendance at the markets and the extent of his purchases in each
1 First published in Ulster Folklife 13, 1967, pp. 54–60.
2 Stephenson, Robert, A letter to the Right Honourable and Honourable the Trustees of the Linen Manufacture (Dublin, 1789), p. 19.
3 The Dublin Society’s weekly observations, 1 (1737), 181, 233.
4 Ibid., 1 (1737), 181, 188.
5 Ibid., 1 (1737), 192. Confirmed by letter from Rev. Richard Barton, Lurgan, to Walter Harris, 27 May 1745 (Harris MSS, Armagh Public Library).
6 Ibid., 1 (1737), 181–8. Repeated by Arthur Young in 1776: see A Tour in Ireland (ed. A.W. Hutton, ) (2 vols, London, 1892), vol. 1, 113, 116, and especially his famous diatribe, vol. 2, 214–17.
7 Transcript in the Public Record Office of N. Ireland: T1127/4. Copied from an original in the possession of Miss Sheila Greer, Tullaghoge, Co. Tyrone.
8 Greer MS: D1044.
9 McCall, H., Ireland and her Staple Manufactures (Belfast, 1870, 3rd edn), p. 87.
10 Double webs were not made in the Belfast–Lisburn neighbourhood: Observations upon the Linen Trade humbly submitted to the consideration of the Right Honourable and Honourable The Trustees of the Linen Manufacture by the Drapers of Belfast (Belfast, 1763), p. 29.
11 Greer MS: D1044/16, 21, 45, 46.
12 Belfast News-Letter account of a meeting held at Armagh on Monday, 5 August 1782.
13 Belfast News-Letter, 24 March 1759 and 23 March 1762.
14 Stephenson, Robert, A letter to the Right Honourable and Honourable the Trustees of the Linen Manufacture (Dublin, 1759), pp. 22–4.
15 Belfast News-Letter. Many advertisements in the first half of 1759.
16 The Dublin Society’s weekly observations, 1 (1737), 192.
17 Arthur Young (op. cit., vol. 1, 122) was told in Armagh that 30 stone of flax, the produce of an acre, would make 20 pieces of linen, 25 yards long and a yard wide. A single piece was woven in ten to twelve days.
18 McCall, H., op. cit., p. 95, quoting from John Greer’s Report on the State of the Linen Markets of Ulster, 1784.
19 Belfast News-Letter advertisement of resolutions passed at the drapers’ meeting on 1 September 1758. See also Observations on the several Matters offered to the Linen Board as Materials for a Linen Bill … by the Linen Weavers and Manufacturers of the Towns of Belfast, Lisburn, Hillsborough, and Country adjacent (1763), pp. 30–39.
20 Stephenson, Robert, The Reports and Observations of Robert Stephenson made to the Right Honourable and Honourable The Trustees of the Linen Manufacture for the years 1760 and 1761 (Dublin, 1762), p. 90.
21 Young, Arthur, op. cit., vol. 1, 128.
22 Stephenson, Robert, Letter to the Trustees of the Linen Manufacture (1789), p. 27; but see also The Reports and Observations … for the years 1760 and 1761 (Dublin, 1762), pp. 101–3.
