OLD PLYMOUTH . UK
www.oldplymouth.uk
 

WHO WAS WHO IN OLD PLYMOUTH

WILLIAM SHEPHERD

The first Mr William Shepherd in Plymouth apparently hailed from Northampton and towards the end of the 17th century he introduced the trade of woollen manufacture to the Town.  The business continued for the next three or four generations of the family, during which they also became fellmongers (making leather for gloves and other garments), Neats-foot Oil makers and glue manufacturers.

Mr Llewellyn Jewitt tells us that according to Burt's "Review of the Commerce of Plymouth", published in 1814, the grandson of the founder, another Mr William Shepherd, 'seems to have been one of the greatest benefactors ever possessed by the Port; for beside keeping regularly at work six or seven looms in private houses in Plymouth, and the business done immediately under his own eyes at the manufactories, he had branches of the trade at Ashburton, Totnes, Buckfastleigh, Tavistock, and other places within a circuit of 25 miles, which altogether employed 4,000 men, women and children, to whom he paid every week from £1,200 to £1,500 for wages'.

About 1,800 people were employed in Plymouth and adjacent places, of which about 800 were spinners, 600 were washers, spoolers, warpers and tuckers, 300 were weavers and the remainder were all woolcombers.

Worth gives us some additional information about the wages paid to the wool workers.  There were about 60 woolcombers earning 15 shillings a week; 800 spinners being paid 3 to 5 shillings per week; 300 weavers getting 9 shillings a week; an unknown number of weavers and tuckers on 15 shillings, while the spolers (spoolers) and children received 3 shillings every week.  Some of the children collected their work in the morning and returned the completed jobs that evening for sixpence.

It is said that after computing his annual profits at Christmas he would divide a tenth part of them among the poor.  He regularly assisted tradesmen of good character with occasional loans and frequently lectured his employees on religious and social matters.

Mr William Burt, who published a "Review of the Commerce of the Port of Plymouth" in 1814, recorded: 'The baizes and cloth manufactured from coarse wool, not disposed of in Plymouth, or the neighbourhood, were sent to North America, in exchange for tar and turpentine (which were taken by the manufactory of tar, oil of tar, pitch, and rosin (resin?), at Stonehouse, lately belonging to Lusombe and Co., masts, etc.  On the breaking out of the first American war, this extensive concern began to decline; and though a magnificent procession of the woolcombers at Plymouth took place in 1783 on the return of peace, and the business was continued after Mr Shepherd's death by his sons with sufficient success to warrant hopes of its reviving, yet the whole has mouldered away or been dispersed into distant quarters, except one solitary remnant - a small serge manufactory, carried on by Mr Codd, in Old Town'.

They also established a line of six coasting vessels at Plymouth to transport his goods to London for onward sale to the East India Company.

Only one document seems to have survived in the Plymouth Archives (accession number 1/720/289) referring to Mr William Shepherd of Plymouth, who was described in it as a 'baymaker' or maker of baize.  In November 1755 he wanted to use Higher Mill Field and the leat passing through it for the washing of wool.