Scotland's Regional Print Economy in The
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Scotland’s regional print economy in the nineteenth century Helen Sarah Williams A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Edinburgh Napier University, for the award of Doctor of Philosophy May 2018 Abstract Scotland’s regional print economy in the nineteenth century Printing has been one of Scotland's most significant industries since it was introduced over 500 years ago but remained for much of the period, a local industry. The Scottish publishing and printing industries in the nineteenth century left many documentary traces, but most research has concentrated on large urban centres such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, with regional centres of print production all but ignored. In the nineteenth century, these local print economies served the business, administrative, political and leisure needs of an increasingly urbanised Scotland. My research is focused on the operation of the support structures and networks which developed among operative printers in Scotland's regional print centres from around 1830 to the end of the nineteenth century. As a case study I have selected the Royal Burgh of Dumfries, the most important market town in south-west Scotland, which was also a stop on the route between central Scotland and the industrial centres of Lancashire, and further south to London. A local printing industry developed during the eighteenth century, and by 1830 Dumfries was the home of a range of businesses in the printing and allied trades. The examination of the local print economy investigates the businesses and organisations engaged in print production and distribution in the local area, the technologies which were in use, and the material record of the town. The individual 'print trade lives' are considered in some detail, looking at the range and variety of career patterns in the industry. The options for a larger study of print networks based on trade records are also considered. Sources for the study include local and regional trade society records, business records, trade journals and other publications, and contemporary (mainly local) newspapers. It also draws on technological manuals and other secondary material in Edinburgh Napier University's Edward Clark Collection. Helen Williams 29 January 2018 Contents Page Acknowledgements i List of Tables and Figures ii Note on conventions iii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Scope of the study 3 Structure of the thesis 5 Scotland: industries and technologies 6 Print trade history 9 Modelling a print economy 14 Print networks 17 Print trade operatives 20 The geography of print 26 Summary 29 Chapter 2: Sources and methods 30 Setting the limits: temporal 31 Setting the limits: geographical 33 Defining print economies and print centres 35 Trade sources: archival 36 Trade sources: print 40 Sources for business 43 Newspapers and other local sources 45 Official sources 47 Reconstructing print trade lives 48 Outcomes 51 Summary 54 Chapter 3: Context 56 Conditions of life in nineteenth century Scotland 56 Mobility 60 Commerce and industry 62 Working lives 63 The demand for print 68 Workers organisations 74 Print technologies 77 Summary 85 Chapter 4: Print trade structures 86 The printing business 86 Earliest print trade organisations 87 Trade mobility 89 Typographical benefit societies 91 Scotland and the Northern Typographical Union 1832-1836 96 General Typographical Association of Scotland 1836-1844 98 National Typographical Association 1844-1847 102 The formation of the Scottish Typographical Association 103 Scottish Typographical Association 1853 onwards 105 Trade journals 111 Other print trade organisations 113 Other organisations 115 Summary 118 Chapter 5: The regional print economy of south-west Scotland 119 South west Scotland in the nineteenth century 119 The regional print economy: origins and growth 124 The regional print economy in the nineteenth century 126 The regional print centre: Dumfries 133 The business of printing 138 The material record 144 Distribution of print 147 Employers and employees 148 Civic celebrations and print 153 Summary 155 Chapter 6: Print trade lives 156 ‘The trade’ 156 Printers on the move 160 The founding delegates 162 Dumfries printers in the mid-nineteenth century 167 WC Craw, David McAdam, Charles Balieff, Joseph Russell, Samuel Welsh 168 Robert M’Dowall 171 Moses Wardrop 173 Adam Richardson 177 Dumfries Branch, Scottish Typographical Association 180 Neil Sharp 182 David Moffat 184 John Gallacher, James Hardie 185 Walter Miller, John Wemyss, John Connor, Aitken Wishart 185 Summary 188 Chapter 7: Conclusion 189 Appendix 1: Dumfries Typographical Association: membership lists 193 Appendix 2: Newspapers produced in Dumfries & Galloway in the 19th century 215 Appendix 3: Dumfries print employers 1825-1896 218 Appendix 4: Glossary 221 Bibliography 223 Acknowledgements I would like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisors, Professor Alistair McCleery and Professor David Finkelstein for their encouragement and support throughout this project. Thanks are also owed to Dr Emily Alder, panel chair, and to the staff of Merchiston Library, Edinburgh Napier University, particularly Marian Kirton. Special thanks are due to Graham Roberts, Archivist at Dumfries and Galloway Council, and all the staff in the Local Studies and Archives department at the Ewart Library in Dumfries who were generous with their time and interest. I would also like to thank the staff of the A K Bell Library in Perth, the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, the National Records of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, and especially all. I would also like to thank the Trustees of the Scottish Printing Archival Trust, for encouraging my interest in the heritage of the printing industry in the first place and their support and interest for the duration of this project. A grant of £500 from the Printing Historical Society supported some of the research in the archives in Perth and Dumfries. There are many others, too numerous to list here, who have discussed aspects of my research with me, and offered encouragement and support during this research and I am grateful to them all. Without support from family members this would not have been completed: Ruth and Eleanor have offered encouragement from a safe distance, as has Susan (who has been there herself). Ian and Simon, who have lived with the project from the beginning, have been both encouraging and tolerant and deserve the most thanks of all. i List of Figures and Tables Figures Page Figure 1: model for ‘situated knowledges in book history’ 17 Reproduced with permission from Professor Sydney Shep. Figure 2: meeting attendance register 1860-64 38 GD25/2, reproduced with permission, Ewart Library, Dumfries. Figure 3: South-west Scotland in 1841 120 Extract from Scotland with all the railways. Edinburgh: W Lizars. Reproduced with permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland. Figure 4: advertisement, Dumfries Times, 29 October 1834, p.1 158 Reproduced with permission, Ewart Library, Dumfries. Figure 5: section through a printing machine, by Adam Richardson 178 DGH 1/6/6/9, reproduced with permission, Ewart Library, Dumfries. Figure 6: Neil Sharp, Scottish Typographical Journal, October 1911, p.186 183 Reproduced with permission, Edward Clark Collection, Edinburgh Napier University. Table Table 1: age profile of Dumfries Branch membership, 1892 181 ii Note on conventions Where details of births, marriages and deaths are given, these are derived from parochial records or statutory certificates unless otherwise stated. In the text, sums of money are spelled out in words except for those involving both shillings and pennies, which are expressed in the form 2s 6d (two shillings and six pence), or pounds, shillings and pennies, which are expressed in the form £1 2s 6d. Within quotations from contemporary archive sources, the form used has been transcribed directly so inconsistencies are reproduced. The sum of four shillings, for example, can be found in the archival sources in all the following forms: 4s; 4/0; 4/-; 4/. iii Chapter 1 Introduction Printing has been one of Scotland’s most significant industries for over 500 years, introduced to Scotland from France 1507-1508, under a licence granted to Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar by James IV. Despite the union of the crowns at James VI of Scotland’s accession to the English throne as James I, the overall development of the trade remained distinct from that of England and Wales: the Stationers’ Company in London controlled the trade in England, but had no influence in Scotland. However, the spread of print production was similarly influenced by state controls over who could operate a printing press and over what could be printed. The techniques and technology of print therefore spread slowly through Scotland over the 250 years following its first introduction to Edinburgh, and only fifteen Scottish ‘printing towns’ have been identified previous to 1750, including regional centres such as Dumfries, Perth and Stirling. The scale of the industry grew rapidly thereafter, and the number of printing locations had more than doubled in the following fifty years up to 1800. By 1900 more than 200 towns were, or had been, home to at least one printing business (National Library of Scotland 2017). During the eighteenth century, in addition to a general expansion in the print trade, the size of individual workshops also increased although advances in printing technologies were few. This changed in the early years of the nineteenth