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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

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

Author : Judy Z. Stephenson

Published in: Contracts and Pay

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The question and debate about processes of pre-industrial management are highly relevant to understanding organisation of the building industry in the long eighteenth century. As will be apparent by now, large institutions chose to pay middlemen, contractors, or entrepreneurs, a significant share of scarce public funds in order not to have to manage production. This chapter considers the activities of early modern business contractors to calculate their costs of operating.

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previous chapter Contracts and Ways of Working in the Building Trades

next chapter Contracts and Pay at St Paul’s Cathedral, and at the Office of the King’s Works

Marglin, ‘What Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production’.

Ibid., p. 62.

Pollard, Genesis, pp. 39–40.

Clark, Building Capitalism.

Knoop and Jones, The London Mason in the Seventeenth Century, p. 47; Lamoreaux Raff and Temin, ‘Beyond Markets and Hierarchies’.

Efficient use of such structures is sometimes treated within the economics literature as entirely modern, see for example Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting, pp. 120–122. Similarly in pp. 232–233, Williamson’s historical examples highlight the problem of embezzlement discussed by Hudson in West Riding. For the modern construction sector see Gruneberg and Ive, The Economics of the Modern Construction Firm, pp. 180–191.

Gregory Clark, ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209–2004’, his main agricultural source; LSE Archive, Beveridge Price History D:3/4/5, E:7b/8/9/10/24a/25 F:1/8/9 records a mixture of direct and contracted prices for labour throughout this period.

C. G. Powell, An Economic History of the British Building Industry, p. 33.

Campbell, ‘The Finances of the Carpenter in England’, p. 334.

Ibid., pp. 338, 360, in diabbato.

Wilson and Thompson, The Making of Modern Management, p. 4; Also see Berg, The Age of Manufactures, 1700–1820.

Harris, Industrializing English Law, pp. 1–13, 37–38.

Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, pp. 357–358.

Wilson and Thompson, The Making of Modern Management, pp. 6, 56 quoting Chandler, Scale and Scope, p. 235 and part III.

Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management, pp. 38–39, 47; Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, p. 353.

Wilson and Thompson, The Making of Modern Management, p. 56.

Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth 1270–1870, pp. 238–444.

Westminster Abbey Muniments 34513.

Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth Century England, p. 17.

The Duke of Portland’s involvement can be read in the Portland papers Volume X, the best collection is in the Wren Society, Volume XVI, under the heading of ‘Frauds and Abuses’.

See summary in Campbell, Building St Paul’s, Chap. 11 and p. 154.

Ibid., p. 86.

Ibid., pp. 158–161.

Ibid., p. 161.

Ibid., p. 160.

Lang, Rebuilding St. Paul’s After the Great Fire of London, p. 80.

This seems unlikely, as a glance as the table of contractors on the City Churches will attest, Jenings was contracting in varied contract forms elsewhere.

Campbell, ‘The Finances of the Carpenter in England’, p. 334.

Ibid., pp. 333–4.

Leybourn, A Platform for Purchasers, Guide for Builders, Mate for Measurers, p. 7.

Langley, The London Prices of Bricklayers Materials and Works, pp. viii–ix.

As described in Dahlman, ‘The Problem of Externality’.

British Library Ms 27587; The National Archives C 106/145; London Metropolitan Archives CLC – 227-15, MS00233.

A Thomas Roper worked as a mason at 22d. per day for Jelfe in the year 1734–1734. It is possible that the Roper acting as his agent in 1741–1743 is the same man but cannot be confirmed. See pp. 1–10 of BL MS 27587.

British Library, MS 27,587, Andrews Jelfe Letter Book, pp. 30–147.

Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business, Particularly Between 1660 and 1760.

For a discussion of how this went wrong see Campbell, Building St Paul’s, Chap. 11.

Westminster Abbey Muniments 34513, quoted p. 112 above.

TNA ADM 67/2, ADM 82/4.

Ayres, Building the Georgian City, Appendix II, pp. 234–235.

Bills at Bridge House in the 1740s were signed by the surveyor, George Dance, and some have an amount, 4d., assigned them.

Nisbet, A Proper Price, p. 34.

Campbell, ‘The Finances of the Carpenter in England 1660–1710’, p. 336.

Nisbet, A Proper Price, pp. 2, 26.

Ibid., p. 2.

LMA CLA/007/FN/04/001.

Campbell, Building St Paul’s, p. 154; Knoop and Jones, The London Mason, Appendices A–C, pp. 66–72.

Ibid., pp. 25–28.

LMA St Paul’s MS 25574, 25473.

TNA C 106/145, day books.

Ibid.; Knoop and Jones, The London Mason, Appendix C.

See LMA CLA/007/FN/04/19–27.

BL MS 27587, March 1734.

TNA C 106/145 also see Wren Society, Volume XVI, Fletcher appears in the bottom of the list of pay in several weeks in 1708, he is referred to as a foreman in the Wren Society account, but he is not present throughout Kempster’s books.

TNA C 106/145 and the marble sawing records at LMA CLC/313/I/B/003/MS25473.

Wallis, ‘Apprenticeship and Training in Premodern England’, pp. 832–861.

BL MS 27587, pp. 4–5.

BL Ms 27587, TNA C 106/145, day book. Jelfe’s accounts are fortnightly, Kempster’s weekly.

LMA CLC/B/227-175.

Guillery, ‘Cavendish Square and Spencer House: Neo-Classicism, Opportunity and Nostalgia’, pp. 75–96. Richard Wilson showed the percentage of the bills appearing in final accounts for country-house building in the same period was 4 to 4.5% in Wilson, ‘The Economic Impact of Building the English Country House 1660–1880’, p. 997.

TNA Work 6/46.

For lifting items see Campbell, ‘The Finances of the Carpenter in England 1660–1710’, p. 316.

Above, p. 92.

See Wren Society, Volume XVI, pp. 19, 51. There was a similar incident at St Martin in the Fields in 1721 referred to by Ayres, Building the Georgian City, p. 234.

Campbell, Building St Paul’s, p. 79; Ayres, Building the Georgian City, p. 163.

COL/CC/BHC/10/003.

Colvin et al., The History of the King’s Works, Vol. V, 1660–1782, p. 467.

Melody Mobus, ‘Survining Late Payments: The Strategies of Christopher Wren’s Masons from Burford’; Colvin et al., The History of the King’s Works, Vol. V, 1660–1782, pp. 39–46.

TNA WORKS 5 /56 Abstracts of accounts 1709–1726.

Westminster Abbey Muniments, 34513.

Campbell, Building St Paul’s, pp. 66–67, 73.

Ibid., p. 66.

Ibid., p. 67. See remittance records at CLC/313/I/B/014/MS25483/001.

Ibid., p. 69.

Colvin et al., The History of the King’s Works Vol. V, 1660–1782. ‘Financial Stress’, pp. 39–44.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 44.

Ibid.

Temin and Voth, ‘Private Borrowing During the Financial Revolution: Hoare’s Bank and Its Customers, 1702–241’, p. 545; Quinn, ‘The Glorious Revolution’s Effect on English Private Finance: A Micro History, 1680–1705’, pp. 593–614.

Westminster Abbey Muniments, 34513, 34514, 34518.

Campbell, ‘The Finances of the Carpenter in England 1660–1710’, p. 346, Appendix B.

TNA WORK 6/46 throughout and p. 47.

TNA PRO 106/145, also Mobus, ‘Survining Late Payments: The Strategies of Christopher Wren’s Masons from Burford’.

ADM 67/2.

Westminster Abbey Muniments 34517.

Thomas and Dimsdale (2017), ‘A Millennium of UK Data’, Bank of England OBRA dataset, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/statistics/research-datasets/a-millennium-of-macroeconomic-data-for-the-uk.xlsx?la=en&hash=73ABBFB603A709FEEB1FD349B1C61F11527F1DE4.

Quinn, ‘The Glorious Revolution’s Effect on English Private Finance: A Micro History, 1680–1705’; Temin and Voth, Prometheus Shackled: Goldsmith Banks and England’s Financial Revolution After 1700.

LMA ref. CLC/B/227-175, formerly MS00233.

A copy of the contract is in Strong’s account book LMA ref. CLC/B/227-175.

Middle Temple Archive MT.6/RBW.

LMA ref. CLC/B/227-175, formerly MS00233.

Campbell, ‘The Finances of the Carpenter in England 1660–1710’, p. 334.

Ibid., p. 341. Campbell, ‘Building a Fortune: The Finances of the Stonemasons Working on the Rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral 1675–1720’; Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1660–1840, p. 3.

Grassby, ‘The Rate of Profit in Seventeenth-Century England’.

LMA CL/007/FN/05/7, 8.

Mark Latham, ‘“The City Has Been Wronged and Abused!”: Institutional Corruption in the Eighteenth Century’.

Ibid., Table 1, p. 1044.

Ibid., pp. 1046, 1051; ‘The London Bridge Improvement Act of 1756: A Study of Early Modern Urban Finance and Administration’, pp. 166, 169, 171, 178.

LMA COL/CC/BHC/01/08, 11 May 1743, 1 June 1743, and 5 October 1743.

100

LMA CLA/007/FN/06/01/014.

101

LMA CLA/007/FN/05 (series), CLA/007/FN/04/03.

102

The final bill books for Bridge House are ‘audited’. Later books show that Wilmore was paid in lieu until his books were audited. CLA/007/FN/03 22–27, and CLA/007/FN/10/007.

103

COL/CC/BHC/10/006, 003 Bills Accounts and sundry papers includes purveyors bill for years 1718 to 1730.

104

See Fig. 7.1, p. 187 below.

105

LMA COL/OF/02/173.

106

Ibid., notes beside amounts are signed off by the surveyor.

Title: What did Bosses (in London Construction) do?
Author: Judy Z. Stephenson
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Contracts and Pay
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57507-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-57508-7

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57508-7_5

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