APPENDIX C—
CREDIT PATTERNS FROM BANKRUPTCY RECORDS

The table below is based on the bankruptcy docket-books for the calendar years 1711–15 (PRO B4/1–2). The first stage in bankruptcy proceedings was for a creditor to establish a claim against an alleged bankrupt and for a docket of bankruptcy to be struck. These were recorded in the docket-books which, from 1710, give the name, address and occupation of the debtor and of the creditor, normally just one creditor owed at least £100 but sometimes two or more. There were more dockets than bankruptcies since they were often struck as a measure of insurance and a creditor would not necessarily push the matter any further if he could find a better method of proceeding (Pressnell (1956) p. 445; Ashton (1959) pp. 113–14). There are also other problems, such as duplication, renewed commissions and partners who were named as individuals as well as partners. In the analysis, all duplications and renewed commissions (very common in 1715) have been removed and partners treated as one debtor, not counting the individuals separately. Occupations cause problems too. Many people described as gentlemen were actually merchants or wholesalers, as can be seen when they sued more than one person and were given a different description. Livery Companies are also sometimes given as occupations, sometimes accurately, sometimes obviously not, such as the mercer who sued two bankrupts, one a copper merchant and the other a brazier. In all, there were 1094 debtors recorded in the docket-books for these five years, 637 from the metropolis, and there were 825 separate London creditors. Of the latter, 76 sued two different bankrupts, 17 sued three, 2 sued four and 1 each sued five, seven and nine different bankrupts. The last five super-creditors were the linen-draper Robert Macmorran (4), the hosier Christopher Topham (4), the Blackwell Hall factors Smith & Wallington (5), the linen-drapers Yonge & Lloyd (7) and finally the great wine merchant Manasses Whitehead, who sued eight London tavern-keepers and a merchant in these five years.

The source is an attractive one for fairly impressionistic insights into the credit relationships existing in various occupations and can also be used as a general data bank on business. It has been used on several occasions in the book, in Chapter 2 in an analysis of the credit relationships between London and the provinces, in Chapter 4 to provide some indication of the proportional importance of partnership in business and in Chapter 6 to provide one way of trying to estimate the relative significance of women in business. Insights from the data have also been used in the general discussion of occupations in Chapter 2. Analysis of the pairs, of bankrupt and creditor, provides some idea of the direction of credit in business and indeed, as one first flicks through the docket-books, one's eye immediately picks out some delightful examples of economic logic, such as the whalebone-cutter who sued a whalebone-seller or the diamond-cutter who sued a Westminster jeweller (B4/1 pp. 35 & 89). In the table below are set out the occupations of the creditors of some of the commonest London debtor groups. There are lots of oddities, some of them no doubt due to the problems of occupational labels mentioned above and some of them certainly because the creditor who sued out the commission of bankruptcy was a person who had loaned money to the debtor rather than given him trade credit. Nevertheless, there are sufficient patterns apparent to justify such conclusions as silkmen normally gave credit to silk weavers and weavers to mercers, rather than the other way round.

See pp. 127–30 for a further discussion of bankruptcy.

London and the Provinces

In Tables c.2–4 below, the same material has been analysed in order to examine the credit relationship between London and the provinces.

London creditors were named for just over a third of the 457 provincial debtors in 1711–15, while the only two provincial centres which really show up as sources of credit from this analysis were Bristol and Exeter, whose citizens sued 36 and 24 provincial debtors respectively. Both cities had well-defined geographical regions of credit. Exeter's influence was confined almost entirely to Devon and Cornwall but with a few debtors to the east, as far as Portsmouth. Bristol had a much larger hinterland, mainly in the counties of the Severn Valley and on both sides of the Bristol Channel, but stretching as far as Chester to the north and Oxford to the east. Few other cities had any debtors outside their own counties, though one can see the beginnings of northern distributing centres which were soon to be very important, such as Manchester and Leeds.

Londoners sued debtors from 41 English and Welsh counties and Tables c.2 and c.3 show clearly what function the metropolis played in the provision of credit to the provinces, a function which was dominated by the provision of trade credit to textile retailers and to a lesser extent retail food and drink outlets. Other functions which one might have expected to have been important, such as the provision of credit to provincial industry and to the wholesale distribution of agricultural products, make a very poor showing in the figures.

When the reverse flow of credit is looked at, a very different picture emerges. In all, 94 non-Londoners sued 73 London debtors, but the

number of creditors was swollen by the 14 separate clothiers who sued the Covent Garden woollen-draper James Douxsaints in 1715. If they are left out, then the occupations of the other 80 creditors were as in Table C.4. Here one can see that the direction of credit in agriculture and provincial industry tended to be more from the provinces to London than the other way round, several of the provincial merchants being also probably concerned with the flow of industrial products to London such as the nine from Leeds, Manchester, Exeter and Norwich. However, what is most striking about the table is that over 40 per cent of the provincial creditors could be described as investors, this injection of country funds being a vital fuel for the London business machine.