CONTRACTS and PAY Work in London Construction 1660–1785

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY

CONTRACTS AND PAY Work in London Construction 1660–1785

Judy Z. Stephenson Palgrave Studies in Economic History

Series editor Kent Deng London School of Economics London, UK Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and enrich our understanding of economies and economic phenomena of the past. Te series covers a vast range of topics including fnancial history, labour history, development economics, commercialisation, urban- isation, industrialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in world economic orders.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14632 Judy Z. Stephenson Contracts and Pay Work in London Construction 1660–1785 Judy Z. Stephenson Bartlett, University College London London, UK

ISSN 2662-6497 ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Economic History ISBN 978-3-319-57507-0 ISBN 978-3-319-57508-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57508-7

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Tis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG Te registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgements

Tis book was researched during my doctoral studies in the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science 2012–2015. If it were not for the intellectual generosity and loyal stewardship of Patrick Wallis, my supervisor and mentor, the evidence and ideas within would not have got very far. Overturning established ideas in scholarship is arduous and anxiety inducing at the best of times. Trough some quite hard ones his disciplined support made it possible. Gerben Bakker, Chris Minns, Oliver Volckart, Max Stefan Schulze, Michael Aldous, Tobias Vogelsang, John Gent, Pat Hudson, Stephen Broadberry, Kent Deng, Peter Sims, Tim Leunig, and Linda Sampson all provided mentorship, encouragement, cama- raderie, or advice that helped a controversial idea become reality, and I am very grateful for all their help. Bruno Blonde, Heidi Deneweth, James Campbell, and my longsufering examiners, Jane Humphries and Jeremy Boulton, did much to improve the arguments and presentation. All errors, typos and misconceptions are mine. I thank the staf of the London Metropolitan Archive, Te National Archives, Christine Reynolds at Westminster Abbey, Lesley Whitelaw at Middle Temple and Jennifer Torp at New College, Oxford for

v vi Acknowledgements their time and insight, and the privilege of viewing and handling their immaculately maintained and, often, very beautiful records. I am indebted to the Economic History Society who provided me with a badly needed Ph.D. bursary in 2013 and a wonderful fellowship at the IHR in 2015–2016. Colleagues at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure helped me improve some of the context and arguments, whilst those at Wadham College, Oxford provided a happy intellectual home in the latter stages, and I thank Carol Richards and her family for endowing the David Richards fellowship in economic history there. My children, Belle and Arthur, provided the best discipline and distraction any author could ask for. It is, of course, dedicated to them, with the wish that they may one day fnd as much professional fulflment and support as I have in researching and writing it. Contents

1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History 1

2 Te Market for Building 35

3 Contractors 65

4 Contracts and Ways of Working in the Building Trades 79

5 What did Bosses (in London Construction) do? 107

6 Contracts and Pay at St Paul’s Cathedral, and at the Ofce of the King’s Works 141

7 Pay at Bridge House, Westminster Bridge, and Middle Temple 173

8 Contracts and Pay in Construction in the Long Run 201

vii viii Contents

9 Conclusions and Further Notes on Understanding Early Modern Contracts and Pay 223

Bibliography 239

Index 253 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Gilboy’s wage series for London 1700–1787 11 Fig. 1.2 Schwarz’s craft and labour wage series for London 1700–1800 13 Fig. 1.3 Boulton’s wage series for London 1661–1721 16 Fig. 1.4 Comparison of three series, craft d. per day 16 Fig. 1.5 Comparison of three series, labourers d. per day 17 Fig. 1.6 Allen and Gilboy, London craftsman’s d. per day 24 Fig. 1.7 Allen and Schwarz, London craftsman’s d. per day 25 Fig. 1.8 Allen and Boulton, London craftsman’s d. per day 25 Fig. 1.9 Allen and Gilboy, London labourer’s d. per day 26 Fig. 1.10 Allen and Schwarz, London labourer’s d. per day 26 Fig. 1.11 Allen and Boulton, London labourer’s d. per day 27 Fig. 2.1 Middlesex deeds registered by year 48 Fig. 5.1 Likely roles under large mason contractor of-site 117 Fig. 5.2 Likely roles under large mason contractor on-site 117 Fig. 5.3 Discount of Edward Strong’s Bills Greenwich Hospital 1698–1708 showing actual percentage discount on each bill and 10 bill MAV 133 Fig. 6.1 Amount of day bills and task/measure/other bills at Westminster Abbey 1713–1715 in £ 164

ix x List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Wrought with the gin, frst team number of men and tides worked October 1745–January 1749 187 Fig. 7.2 Wrought with the gin, second team, number of men and tides worked October 1745–January 1749 187 Fig. 7.3a ‘Gin men’s team’s tide work at Bridge House April 1755–April 1766 189 Fig. 7.3b ‘Gin mens’s tide work at Bridge House April 1755–April 1756 189 Fig. 7.3c ‘Gin mens’s tide work at Bridge House April 1755–April 1756 190 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Eighteenth century London sources for wages in London 8 Table 3.1 Mason’s contracts at St Paul’s Cathedral 69 Table 5.1 Calculation of operating margin for ‘extraordinary’ day work 136 Table 5.2 Operating margin for contractors supplying weekly labour at Bridge House—ordinary work 138 Table 6.1 St Paul’s charge out rates for day work in d. 146 Table 6.2 Day rates Kempster team St Paul’s 1700–1702 150 Table 6.3 Day rates 1708, Kempster team, by hierarchy found in books 152 Table 6.4 Mason’s day rates on the columns (from “An account of masons time it was at the columns”) 153 Table 6.5 Levels of skill and ranges of day rates paid in Kempster team 154 Table 6.6 Percentage diference between Boulton series and Kempster pay per day for craftsmen 157 Table 6.7 Carpenters on day work, quarterly accounts, St Paul’s, 1696–1700 (quarterly averages of total numbers of men observed and modal days worked) 160 Table 6.8 Average number of days worked for all men 160

xi xii List of Tables

Table 6.9 Average number of days worked per annum by day rate paid 161 Table 6.10 Average number of days worked by craftsmen in a week when on site 161 Table 6.11 Average numbers of days worked by length of employment with Kempster 162 Table 6.12 Labourers days worked per week 52 weeks Sept 1712–1713, and 40 weeks March 1714–January 1715 164 Table 6.13 Ofce of King’s works, charge out rate ranges for craft and labour in d. per day 168 Table 7.1 Pay at Bridge House in 1661 177 Table 7.2 Land Carpenter’s bill for 3rd October 1685 180 Table 7.3 Tomas Wise, Mason’s bill for 3rd October 1685 181 Table 7.4 Sample of Sparruck’s summer and winter bills 1722 185 Table 7.5 Mason’s team day rates found in Jelfe letter book, May 1734–March 1735 197 Table 8.1 Nominal annual wage income in £ based on pay per day or other unit of measurement and varying units per annum 218 Table 8.2 Craftsmen’s revised Welfare ratio’s London, where the nominal wage is defated by 20% 220 Table 8.3 Labourer’s revised Welfare ratios for London, where the nominal wage has been defated by 30% 220 1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History

Troughout history, construction workers have not only built many of the landmarks of modern day London but, unknowingly, given us the building blocks for the methods most widely used to evaluate the economic performance of the past. Economic historians have a long been interested in the pay of construction workers. Just as masons, carpenters, and plumbers proliferate in the account books of old institutions and among wage regulations and statutes of boroughs and sessions across England, building workers and their labourers appear regu- larly in all discussions of work and wages, in urban and rural history. From the end of the nineteenth century, economic and social historians began to use builder’s recorded ‘day wages’ to represent an average non-agricultural worker’s pay in studies of long run wage trends. By converting this ‘average wage’ into a long-run data series, they created infuential estimates of living standards, ‘welfare ratios’, GDP and national output, economic growth rates, human capital or skill levels, and associated labour supply and demand.1

1By way of current example see; Van Zanden, ‘Te Skill Premium and the Great Divergence’, pp. 121–153; Allen, ‘Te Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices’, pp. 411–447; Clark, ‘Te Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209–2004’, pp. 1307–1340.

Our knowledge about the trends and comparative features of early modern European economies may rely on builder’s wages, but those wages were gathered without much reference to how the construction industry actually developed throughout the early modern period.2 Tis book will show, with hard evidence, that the empirical base for our understanding of early modern wage earning and the organisation of the construction industry in England should be revised. It argues that builders’ wages are a poor proxy or data set for estimating living standards and real wages in the very long run, but that there is much to be learned from a closer look at the construction industry in this period. It ofers a new narrative for economic historians to understand and interpret the construction industry in early modern England that draws on established architectural history and on a broadly conceived trans- action cost tradition in economics and business history. Whilst frmly rooted in broad economic history narratives, it brings new case studies from new sources to light which will be of interest to construction, business and social historians. For some, this new narrative will appear unusual. It does not talk much about guilds, corporations, customs, apprentices, and trades. Te unit of analysis is, for the most part, the contract, the ‘frm’, and the worker within it. Te analysis challenges some established narratives, ideologies, and practices, but the method is wholly rooted in archival evidence.

The Creation of Statistical Wage Series

How did builder’s pay come to be the measure of the historical ‘average’ wage? One of the primary reasons is the lack of any other sources. Students of early modern economic and social history are frequently told about the scarcity of wage records. Te records of most organisations before the mid nineteenth century do not contain wage books. Tey are heavy with bills, vouchers, acquittances, and payments.

2Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth 1270–1870 is the frst output based (as opposed to real wage based) study of long-run economic growth in England. 1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History 3

Any references to wage payments tend to be irregular and fragmen- tary. Court and sessions records, the sources of so much rich economic and social information, often refer to the payment or non-payment of ‘wages’, but rarely tell us how much those wages were. In England, a seminal contribution to historical wages and prices was made by J.E. Torold Rogers in the late nineteenth century.3 Rogers’ aim was a defnitive history, or a full account of prices and wages. Te introduction to the fnal volume highlights how huge an undertaking this was. Te task may have been long and arduous, but the methodology was simple. Rogers sourced the recorded prices of goods, com- modities, materials, produce, and labour across the United Kingdom over a span of six centuries. Identifying institutions that were likely to have very long-run records—such as Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, Westminster Abbey, the Inns of Court etc.—he noted the units and prices at each location at various dates in the long run. Te results were displayed in list form, categorized by type of good, in seven volumes, with the last volume made up of two parts. Old organizations have both old buildings that need maintenance and an occasional requirement for new accommodation, and so tend to have a lot of building accounts. Rogers’ data set had almost continuous records of carpenters, masons, bricklayers, and labourers, and many for plumbers and glaziers too. Rogers’ records are acknowledged, rightly, as completely accurate, but it is easy for the modern researcher to not appreciate his life’s work as much as they might. Te information given is listed by year, by type of good, and then place, but the observations are given in note form with idiosyncratic abbreviations for the quantities and other information. Anyone who wants to use the information must re-transcribe the data, and then convert the measures or units into standard form before comparing or utilizing the data further. As no names or other account information are usually given, it cannot be ascertained whether long-term contractual considerations afected prices. For instance, when bread or coal was purchased by Westminster Abbey at the same price per loaf or cauldron in two separate years, it is

3Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England. 4 J. Z. Stephenson not clear if it was sold to them by one or various vendors.4 Regarding wages, Rogers’ unequivocal fnding was that from 1563 to 1824 the authorities and employers conspired to ‘cheat the English workman of his wages’, and ‘were engaged in grinding the English workman down to the lowest pittance’.5 At the end of the nineteenth century, the role of wages in understanding the economy more broadly continued to be developed in a statistical, rather than historical or theoretical, manner. Arthur Bowley is considered the father of modern statistics by many. We may also con- sider him father of the modern historical wage series. Bowley was concerned with wages and real wages as expressions of national output, and to this end he assigned huge importance to the calculation of a national ‘average’ wage over time. Te key barrier to this was, as it remains, lack of data but Bowley proposed the solutions which defned the approach of economists and historians for another century. Te most natural method, he said, would be to calculate the total amount paid in wages and divide by the number of workers. Since this data was not readily available, he advocated calculation of the mode, the observation of the most common or prevailing wage rate, which he acknowledged could be misrepresentative, or the median, the wage earned by the man where equal numbers of men are paid at ‘above and below that wage’. He acknowledged that the distribution around an average might be difcult to estimate.6 Crucial to either method is the issue of its ‘representativeness’ of the average. In this regard, Bowley relied on two assumptions, both of which were to become infuential. Te frst was theoretical—the law of one price, or in this case, wage:

…in spite of this apparent want of connection between the wages of one class of men and another there are very distinct causes which make the following law hold:- at the same time and in the same place the wages for equal efort

4Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages: Te History of English Labour, pp. 159–197, 326–357 discusses labour and wages in the long run in context. 5Ibid., p. 398. 6Bowley, Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 21–23. 1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History 5

of men of the same capacity are equal to one another; or more generally, the wages throughout the country of equal degrees of skill are equal at any given time. If this is so we shall fnd it useful to watch the change of the rate paid for a certain degree of skill even though the number of persons paid at this wage may be a very small proportion of the total number doing similar work.7

In other words, if the law of one wage or price holds, as a simple neo- classical perspective in economics asserts it does, then we can assume that persons of the same or equivalent skill, or productivity, in the economy will be paid the same amount. If this is assumed, then it is not necessary to collect a data set of all wage earners in order to understand or model all earners. All one needs to know is a person’s wage, and his place within the distribution of skill or wages. Te law of one price remains to the present day the bedrock of many authors’ work on wages of the past, although it is rarely explicitly stated. Te second assumption has been just as important. Although Bowley’s numbers for the nineteenth century utilised sources from agriculture, shipyards, textile, cotton, and iron industries for the long run, after some empirical testing of existing data taken from the likes of Eden’s ‘State of the Poor’ and McCulloch’s statistics, Bowley decided that the rate of change of pay in the building trades, specifcally bricklaying, would ‘serve as an indication’ of rates of change elsewhere. Tis was justifed on the grounds that there had been no technological change in the business of bricklaying over the centuries.8 From 1770, he took rates from Rogers and the McCulloch Trade Directory (which reported Greenwich Hospital price rates), and from the later nineteenth building builders’ price books for London, and declared them representative of a worker for whom technological change could not account for wage or productivity increases.9 Subsequent authors have mostly taken

7Ibid., p. 18. 8Ibid., pp. 59–63. Bowley cautioned that rates in building trades had been steady where other trades were rising in 1877–1891, but still felt that bricklayers and other building trades were indicative in the long run, p. 63. 9See also Eden, Te State of the Poor; McCulloch, A Dictionary, Practical, Teoretical and Historical of Commerce and Commercial Navigation. 6 J. Z. Stephenson this to mean representative of the average worker. Since Bowley, because the records of large building projects are usually well archived, and the skill and activities of builders have been assumed to be reasonably uni- form across Europe, builders’ wages became the proxy for the average, representative urban, skilled and unskilled manual wage throughout the ages. In 1956, Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila Hopkins used such nominal wage series to compile probably the most infuential data-set ever in economic history: a long-run analysis of ‘the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders’ Wage-Rates’.10 Although they cautioned that their series was not that of a real wage it has always been treated as such.11 Te series, still used and cited today by anyone who wants to show insight into the living standards of the past, enshrined the role of builders in the determination of the wages and living standards of the past. Both the methods used to calculate a basket of goods, and the prices of goods within it have been revised and added to since 1956, but the wage fgures have changed surprisingly little. Te most up to date London real wage series was constructed in 2001 by Robert C. Allen as a part of a comparative study of the divergence of wages and prices across Europe and the globe in the eighteenth century. Gregory Clark has compiled long run real wages for both urban, and rural, agricultural sectors on a composite basis for the whole of England from similar sources.12 Te nominal wage fgures that both Allen and Clark have used come from a surprisingly small set of sources.

10Phelps Brown and Hopkins, ‘Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders’ Wage-Rates’, pp. 296–314, based on ‘Seven Centuries of Building Wages’, pp. 195–206. Tey credit the work of Gustav Stefen (1901) in identifying long run trends, although did not draw on his work for the eighteenth century, Ueber die Kaufkraft der Löhne erwachsener männli- cher Arbeiter in England während des Durchbruches des Fabriksystemes (1760–1830). 11Ibid., p. 296. 12Allen, ‘Te Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices’, pp. 411–147; Clark, ‘Te Long March of History’, pp. 33–38; ‘Te Condition of the Working Class’, pp. 1307–1340. 1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History 7

Nominal London Wage Series

For eighteenth century London, only four series of nominal wages have ever been produced: those of B.L. Hutchins; Elizabeth Gilboy; Leonard Schwarz; and Jeremy Boulton.13 Hutchins’ fgures, published in 1899–1900, have never been widely used, although they were from a large-scale, important source—the Ofce of the King’s Works at the Tower of London. Te other three have been used by multiple authors and they form the bulk of the series constructed by Allen for international comparison.14 For the period prior to 1609, the series comes from Steve Rappaport’s study of sixteenth century social structure in the city.15 Te main sources and chronological coverage of the three best known and most used archival-based series created for London 1650–1800 are listed in Table 1.1. Tey are all studies of building craftsmen and labourers in London and they have some considerable overlap, commonalities, and gaps or omissions. For instance, Schwarz’s sources replicate one part of Gilboy’s (Greenwich Hospital). Boulton’s data provides the only sources on London earning between 1609 and 1700. All subsequent authors draw on these data. For instance, in his 2001 comparative wage study, Allen used Schwarz, Boulton, and Gilboy for London wage fgures.16 For south-east England, he used Phelps Brown and Hopkins.17 Phelps Brown and Hopkins had used Gilboy’s suburban fgures and some from Torold Rogers, who in London had pretty much the same sources as Gilboy—Westminster Abbey and Greenwich. A few years after them, Deane & Cole’s seminal ‘British Economic Growth’ also used Gilboy. Botham and Hunt’s 1987 paper on wages used Gilboy,

13Hutchins, ‘Notes Towards the History of London Wages’ (1899), pp. 599–605; ‘Notes Towards the History of London Wages’ (1900), pp. 103–104; Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth Century England; Schwarz, ‘Te Standard of Living in the Long Run’, pp. 23–41; Boulton, ‘Wage Labour in Seventeenth-Century London’, pp. 268–290. 14See Allen’s compiled data set at https://www.nufeld.ox.ac.uk/people/sites/allen-research-pages/, http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/data.php#europe. 15Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds: Te Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London, pp. 123–160. 16Allen, ‘Te Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices’, Appendix 1, p. 345. 17Phelps Brown and Hopkins, ‘Seven Centuries of Building Wages’, pp. 195–206. 8 J. Z. Stephenson

Table 1.1 Eighteenth century London sources for wages in London Author Archival sources Years covered Elizabeth Gilboy 1934 Westminster Abbey, Greenwich 1700–1787 Hospital, Southwark and Middlesex sessions Leonard Schwarz 1985 Middlesex session, Greenwich Hospital 1700–1860 Jeremy Boulton 1996 Middle Temple, Carpenters Company, 1574–1721 Charterhouse while referring briefy to Schwarz, as did Feinstein in his 1998 paper on living standards.18 Lindert and Williamson’s earlier work on living standards also used Gilboy. J.L. Van Zanden’s infuential papers on comparative wages and skill use wages taken from John Chartres 1986 study on living standards, which is in turn, solely a moving average of Gilboy’s 1934 data.19 An infuential paper by Broadberry and Gupta from 2006 comparing wage levels and productivity between England and Asia used Gilboy (as well as Allen’s 2001 revision of Gilboy’s material).20 Te dominance of these data series, particularly that created by Elizabeth Gilboy, is clear. Tis might not have been the case if authors had known more about the context and background behind the data sets, and their relative methodological underpinnings.

Gilboy’s Sources, Methodology, and Findings

Elizabeth Gilboy was a Harvard economist. She is known for early work on a theoretical and historical perspective of demand and consumption as causal factors in economic growth.21 In 1930 or thereabouts,

18Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688–1959: Trends and Structure; Feinstein, ‘Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain’, pp. 625–658; Botham and Hunt, ‘Wages in Britain During the Industrial Revolution’, pp. 380–399. 19Lindert and Williamson, ‘English Workers’ Living Standards during the Industrial Revolution’, pp. 1–25; Van Zanden, ‘Wages and the Standard of Living in Europe, 1500–1800’, pp. 175–197; Chartres, ‘Food Consumption and Internal Trade’, pp. 168–195. 20Broadberry and Gupta, ‘Te Early Modern Great Divergence’, p. 12. 21Gilboy, ‘Te Propensity to Consume’, pp. 120–140; ‘Demand as a Factor in the Industrial Revolution’. 1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History 9 she came to England to gather material for her doctoral research into ‘Wages in England in the Eighteenth-century’. Given the technology and resources available to her at the time, her achievement in just a cou- ple of years—a comprehensive list of day rates from sites throughout England—is considerable. She toured the whole country and gathered data for building craftsmen and labourers. Her London sources were Westminster Abbey, Greenwich Hospital, and the Middlesex and Surrey Sessions, and her data were taken from account books and bills. From these, she transcribed day rates for craftsmen and labourers in all the building trades in London from 1700 to 1787. Published in 1934, the book was for many decades the defnitive study of eighteenth-century wages in England. Te discussion within which the data were presented focused on considerations of the consumption and aspiration of eighteenth-century workers. Gilboy was interested in demand-side explana- tions of growth in the eighteenth century, and the idea that the factory system needs a market sufciently developed to consume what it pro- duces was one of the guiding themes of the text.22 Gilboy’s series display notable features that have since been associated with all discussions about eighteenth-century wages. First, her published data showed a very high degree of uniformity in the day wage fgures presented.23 Te day rates were virtually all the same and seemed to show that all crafts, no matter what level of skill, were paid virtually the identical rates for decades without any change. When one realises that many of the small variations in the fgures are actually the product of the calculation of an average of two fgures 2d. apart, this becomes even more striking. She noted that “the stability of wage rates over a considerable number of years was shown by the fgures for any one place throughout the century, and consequently the lack of continuity does not invalidate the course of the rates”.24 In other words, she viewed the wage rates as so set or stable that if she did not have data for any given years she felt she could confdently interpolate the same rate as before

22Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth Century England, p. 239. See the discussion pp. 236–243. 23Ibid., pp. 8, 254–292. 24Ibid., p. 250. 10 J. Z. Stephenson or after. By interpolating or repeating data based on the previous year, Gilboy calculated what she called “a simple arithmetic average” of the fgures she found for each year, and in some cases the mode.25 Given its uniformity, the method of calculating the average probably did not bias the series.26 Te trends that she noted for the course of wages for labourers was a gradual increase to 1734 and then a stable position until the last decade of the century.27 Craft wages did not rise at this time but varied before 1734. She wrote about craftsmen as a cohesive group and the wage rates as something they received from a single market for their skill where a given rate prevailed, for instance:

Paviours… rates increased to 3s. 4d. in 1763. Te plumbers got 2s 6d from 1700 to 1707 without a break. Te bricklayer’s rates rose more sharply on the whole. Although there was a sharp temporary increase to 3s. in 1704 the rate dropped back to 2s. 8d. in 1706, and then went permanently up to 3s. in 1718.28

She commented on the organization of workers and their wages. She explicitly noted that workers were employed by contractors, some of whom had long relationships with their institutional clients, but she dismissed the idea that the wages she had transcribed represented any- thing except the pay a worker would have received.29 She noted that the building trades were among the ‘better paid trades’.30 What is less clearly stated in the book is that Gilboy’s sources give her data a very large bias to projects designed and managed by Sir Christopher Wren. Tese were large, fne, stone-built, publicly funded

25Ibid. 26Ibid. Also see pp. 10–11, and pp. 18–19, 250, and note p. 13, “Tere can be little error in the assumption that the rates remained the same when the data are missing. Te stability of the rates is evident from the Abbey Figures”. 27Ibid., p. 9. 28Ibid., p. 9 and see whole of discussion pp. 9–13. 29Ibid., pp. 16–17. 30Ibid., p. 19. 1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History 11

40 38 36

y 34 32 30 Lab 28 26 Cra

wage in d. per da 24 22 20 18 1700 1704 1708 1712 1716 1720 1724 1728 1732 1736 1740 1744 1748 1752 1756 1760 1764 1768 1772 1776 1780 1784

Fig. 1.1 Gilboy’s wage series for London 1700–1787 (Source Gilboy [1934])

projects, with a high degree of specialist craft skill such as carving. Given this, it is hardly surprising that the wages she found look com- parably high when set against other sources. She found a craftsman’s rate of predominantly 3s. (or 36d.) a day from 1718 to 1776, as can be seen in Fig. 1.1. Gilboy was clear that the wage series that she reported was for journeymen’s wages, yet she did not discuss levels of skill that such a categorization must imply, declaring that the issue could not be worked out through the account books themselves.31 Her appendix, however, fully listed craftsmen’s and labourers’ day rates by trade. Te series showed that a prevailing rate of 36d. a day for craftsmen in 1720 declined somewhat in the late 1730s but returned to previous levels and remained broadly constant until 1778. Finding labourers at 20d. a day at the turn of the century, Gilboy reported a 24d. per day rate for them from 1736 to the end of her series in 1787.

31Ibid., pp. 15–17. 12 J. Z. Stephenson

Schwarz’s Sources, Methodology, and Findings

Leonard Schwarz, known for his research on all aspects of work in London in the eighteenth century, published a London nominal and real wage series in 1985 under the auspices of a discussion of long- run living standards. In the context of an argument that sought to assert that wage rates in cities with international trade would have been similar, comparable, or correlated, he raised the question of representativeness of builders again, but reassured his readers that contemporary literature put them in an average position.32 Tis rationale is often used by historians to justify the use of builders’ rates—citing other economic historians use of them as representative and noting a contemporary source. Te ‘London Tradesman’, written in the 1740s as a career guide for middle class parents, is frequently this corrob- orating source, but it quotes rates 15–20% lower than Gilboy for craftsmen.33 Schwarz proposed that the movement of wages in this period should be viewed as related to that of other large cities with international trade. But in presenting such a long run set of data he found, in a more marked manner than Gilboy, that living standards in London had fallen signifcantly over the period under question. Much of his attention and analysis is given over to the diference between the price series of Phelps Brown and Hopkins and Lindert and Williamson.34 He also rehearsed Woodward’s argument about income from allot- ments and other employment.35 He showed there was a rapid increase in the nominal wage after 1792. Overall, like Gilboy, Schwarz observed stability or stagnation in nominal wage rates over the long term, with no meaningful increase in day rates between 1736 and the late 1770s. From 1700 to the late 1780s, he showed an overall increase of roughly 20% for craft and labour. However, on considering the

32Schwarz, ‘Te Standard of Living in the Long Run’, pp. 26, n. 14, 15. 33Campbell, ‘Te London Tradesman’. 34Schwarz, ‘Te Standard of Living in London’, pp. 27–28. 35Ibid., p. 33; Woodward, ‘Wage Rates and Living Standards in Pre-industrial England’. 1 A Short History of Builders’ Wages in Economic History 13

40 38 36 34 32 30 Cra 28 26 Labour

wage in d. per day 24 22 20 18 1700 1705 1710 1715 1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 1780 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1785 1790 1795 1800

Fig. 1.2 Schwarz’s craft and labour wage series for London 1700–1800 (Source Schwarz [1985]) price data, he found a 9.5% decrease in a bricklayer’s real wage from 1750 to 1760, and a 14.2% decrease from 1760 to 1770. Schwarz’s declared source was bricklayers’ and carpenters’ bills retained in the Middlesex sessions papers, and in a separate note, McCulloch’s series on Greenwich.36 He did not state whether his fgures were means, medians, or modes but the text suggests that they may have been modes.37 He found that London rates difered somewhat from Greenwich ones.38 No specifc bills or sites or names were given by him with the data. In fact, he presented two series; one for carpenters and one for bricklayers. He did not give the number of observations, and my own review of the MJ/SP Middlesex sessions papers he referred to found a very small number of bills with recorded wages, and no accounts.39

36McCulloch, A Dictionary, Practical, Teoretical and Historical of Commerce and Commercial Navigation. 37Schwarz, ‘Standard of Living’, p. 26, I surmise they are modal fgures from the following— which is all that is given on methodology; “Even for the years before 1820 bills could not always be found, necessitating careful judgement when flling the gaps. Figures for these years have been interpolated, using previous trends and builders’ price books as a basis for estimation and are incorporated in the series presented”. 38Ibid., p. 26. 39Ibid., n. 10, 11, 12. 14 J. Z. Stephenson

Tis suggests that most of the data came from Greenwich. When com- bined, in places they are sometimes more than 10% lower than Gilboy’s composite series, which supports the idea that they are mostly Greenwich fgures. I have represented it here by simply calculating a mean average of the bricklayers’ and carpenters’ rates Schwarz gives, see Fig. 1.2.

Boulton’s Sources, Methodology, and Findings

In 1996 Jeremy Boulton ofered an entirely new series for craftsmen’s and labourer’s wages for the seventeenth century.40 Boulton noted the existing paucity of knowledge of the topic and, in contrast to the previous authors, he was wholly explicit about methodology. His sources (bills again) were from a wider range of locations and organisations than either Gilboy or Schwarz had used. Boulton drew on material from the Carpenters’, Stationers’, Tallowchandlers’, Drapers’, Grocers’, Bakers’, and Cooper’s Companies’ warden’s accounts, as well as from Charterhouse, St Tomas’s Hospital, and St Martin in the Fields. Te greatest proportion of his data was from Middle Temple. Boulton is the only scholar who acknowledged the signifcant varia- tion in rates recorded. He included scatter diagrams to show that there was a wide range of day wages found in his sources.41 His methodological approach for dealing with this variance, or range of rates was to use the modal daily wage rate for each year in the series:

Te approach adopted here has been to eliminate, as far as possible, subjective judgment as to the prevailing rate and for every year, where possible, the modal rate has been selected as the wage prevailing in any one year. Such a treatment has the advantage that stability is not built into the system (the result of select- ing a ‘prevailing’ rate) but is clearly still at the mercy of the distribution of rates encountered in the manuscript material, of skill and status diferences within crafts, and of changing rates between summer and winter.42

40Boulton, ‘Wage Labour in Seventeenth-century London’, pp. 268–290. 41Ibid., pp. 276, 277. 42Ibid., p. 275.