Assembling the Property Market in Imperial Britain, C. 1750-1925 By
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Assembling the Property Market in Imperial Britain, c. 1750-1925 by Desmond Fitz-Gibbon, A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor James Vernon, Chair Professor Thomas Laqueur Professor Paul Groth Fall 2011 Assembling the Property Market in Imperial Britain, c. 1750-1925 © 2011 by Desmond Fitz-Gibbon Abstract Assembling the Property Market in Imperial Britain, c. 1750-1925 by Desmond Fitz-Gibbon Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor James Vernon, Chair “Assembling the Property Market in Imperial Britain, c. 1750-1925” examines how the market for British property was made over the course of a long nineteenth century. I argue that while land had long been subject to commercial interests, the institutions and practices configuring its exchange changed over time and in ways that reflected larger cultural transformations in the meaning of marketable property. The very idea of a “property market” did not enter common discourse until the second half of the nineteenth century, and, rather than see this as simply a new way of representing already existing practices, I suggest that, in fact, the concept of a coherent property market was entirely new and that it had arisen over the previous century and within the context of Britain’s broader social, commercial and imperial transformations. This property market depended, moreover, upon a variety of new spatial, cultural and material practices that brought the buying and selling of land into greater public view. One way it became possible to see the market, for example, was through the practice of market agents, such as auctioneers and estate agents, whose ranks swelled throughout the nineteenth century and whose newfound knowledge of the market bolstered their claims to professional status. These professionals and other property interests built new facilities modeled on other commodity exchanges that made it possible to imagine a single national market and that provided a venue for negotiating the cultural meaning and social relations of marketable property. They designed new methods for gathering, analyzing and reporting market information and for communicating to the wider public the coherency of the market and its relationship to society and politics. Finally, they conceived new legal and bureaucratic mechanisms, such title registration, for securing more efficient real property transactions. In each of these developments the status of property as a commodity was always in question and depended as much upon the coordination of people, places and things as it did on any single idea of what it meant to buy and sell land and houses. Finally, this dissertation seeks to broaden historical understanding about what it means to speak of a market for property in Britain and more generally. It proposes a more contingent notion of markets and explores some of the multiple ways in which they 1 have evolved out of and been sustained by the local coordination of space, people and things. In this way, it opens an agenda for considering how cultural histories of the economic might contribute to larger inquiries into the relationship between economy and society in the modern world. 2 Dedicated to Geoffrey Oliver Corson Fitz-Gibbon and Alexander Wright Corson Fitz-Gibbon i Table of Contents Illustrations iii Introduction: Locating the Property Market v Acknowledgements xx 1. The “Headquarters of the real estate market”: Geographies of Property Exchange, 1808-1918 1 2. The “Unnamed Profession”: Auctioneers, Estate Agents and the Culture of Property Market Relations 33 3. Market Calculation and the Property Market Press, c. 1850-1920 68 4. States of Marketability: Title Registration and the Commoditization of Property 99 Conclusion: Towards a Property Market “for the Million” 134 Bibliography 142 ii Illustrations Figures 1. Frederick Napoleon Shepherd, View of Garraway’s Coffee House, Change Alley, 1873. Watercolor on paper. Used by permission of the City of London, London Metropolitan Archives (Main Print Collection, Pr.133/CHA) 7 2. Map showing the locations within the City of London of Garraway’s and the Auction Mart (in Bartholomew Lane and Tokenhouse Yard). 10 3. Thomas Higham, View of the Auction Mart, Bartholomew Lane with street scene, 1817. Engraving on paper. Used by permission of the City of London, London Metropolitan Archives (Main Print Collection, Pr.51/BAR(1)). 11 4. Augustus Charles Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson, Interior view of the hall in the Auction Mart, Bartholomew Lane, 1811. Aquatint on paper. Used by permission of the City of London, London Metropolitan Archives (Main Print Collection, Pr.51/BAR(1)). 13 5. “The Auction Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, London,” The Builder (December 7, 1867), 891. 19 6. Auction and House Agency Licenses, 1780-1930. 41 7. “The Auctioneer,” in Kenny Meadows, Heads of the People, or, Portraits of the English (London: Robert Tyas, 1840). 52 8. “A Choice of Agents,” in George Robert Sims, Living London: its work and its play, its humour and its pathos, its sights and its scenes (Cassell and Company, 1902). 55 9. W. Brunton, “House Hunting,” London Society (July, 1867), 21. 57 10. “Is Your Filing System ‘In-the-Rut’?,” Advertisement for Lyle Company filing cabinet, in R. Ernest, How to Become a Successful Estate Agent (London: Ernest and Co., 1905), backpages. 61 11. “Two Units of the System,” Advertisement for Lyle Company property index cards, in R. Ernest, How to Become a Successful Estate Agent (London: Ernest and Co., 1905), backpages. 62 12. Orders to view for Robert W. Fuller, Moon & Fuller, 1907 (John Johnson Collection, University of Oxford c. 171/1 Auctions 1). 64 13. Orders to view for Westmore & Young, c. 1890s (John Johnson Collection, University of Oxford c. 171/1 Auctions 1). 65 14. Photograph of the Estates Gazette linotype and case room, c. 1908 (Estates Gazette, Fiftieth Birthday Supplement, June 20, 1908, 15). 85 15. Photograph of the Estates Gazette publishing office, c. 1908 (Estates Gazette, Fiftieth Birthday Supplement, June 20, 1908, 15). 86 16. Sample land certificate, in Robert Wilson, Outlines of a plan for adapting the machinery of the public funds to the transfer of real property: respectfully inscribed to the president and council of the Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law (London: Thomas Blenkarn, 1844), 26. 107 iii 17. Sample dock warrants, in Robert Wilson, Outlines of a plan for adapting the machinery of the public funds to the transfer of real property: respectfully inscribed to the president and council of the Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law (London: Thomas Blenkarn, 1844), 63. 108 18. Sample book of reference for proposed title registry, in Robert Wilson, Outlines of a plan for adapting the machinery of the public funds to the transfer of real property: respectfully inscribed to the president and council of the Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law (London: Thomas Blenkarn, 1844), 53. 111 19. Front cover of a Land Certificate, 1902 (H.M. Land Registry) 130 Tables 1. Auctioneers, Estate and House Agents by London Postal District, 1862 and 1900 (Sources: Henry Allnutt, The Auctioneers', Land Agents, Valuers, and Estate Agents' Directory: Showing the Principal Auctioneers, Land and Estate Agents Throughout the Kingdom, (London: Estates Gazette, 1862); Diary & Directory for the use of Surveyors, Auctioneers, Land and Estate Agents, for 1900 (London: Frank P. Wilson, 1901)). 28 iv Introduction: Locating the Property Market This dissertation refutes the assertion of one nineteenth-century observer, who wrote to the Estates Gazette in 1895 and complained that the very idea of a property market “is absolutely a misnomer.” Writing under the pen name “an Old Hand,” this correspondent argued that neither word in the phrase applied to the sale of land and houses, but particularly the word “market,” “which implies not only a place in which dealings in a special commodity are carried on, but where current quotations affecting such a commodity are the actual prices at which the same may be dealt in.” London in 1895 had no shortage of these so-imagined real markets, and, to prove the comparison, an Old Hand quickly listed three of the more obvious real markets dealing in stock, corn and cotton. These markets, he stressed, were “all recognized places where buyers and sellers, either themselves or through their brokers, congregate and deal on definite prices, fixed as regards the article itself, but fluctuating according to circumstances and conditions.” Compared with these examples, the property market seemed to disappear entirely, leaving an Old Hand to ask, somewhat rhetorically: “[W]here is the so-called 'Property Market?'--and what of its quotations?”1 Declining to answer the question directly, however, an Old Hand instead elaborated on where the market could not be found. It could “certainly not” be found at the Auction Mart in Tokenhouse Yard, for example, an institution established in 1808 to act as a central marketplace for real property. The “Mart,” as the auctioneers who frequented its salerooms affectionately knew it, developed its reputation over the course of the following century, becoming, as another journal put it in 1895, the “headquarters of the real estate market.” Unlike the Stock Exchange, however, which enjoyed a de facto trading monopoly, the Auction Mart registers managed to record only a sizable fraction of the total sales carried out each year in England. A great many transactions took place outside of its metropolitan chambers and in the private offices and trading rooms of provincial agents. This important limitation was enough for an Old Hand to all but dismiss the Auction Mart’s significance as a marketplace. It simply did not fit the ideal model of a closed exchange.