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O rd e r N u m b e r 1345989

Reconstructing the social a nd architectural landscape of Southwark, Philadelphia, 1795— 1800

Herrick, Pamela, M.A.

U niversity o f Delaware, 1991

300 N. Zeeb Rd.

Ann Arbor, MI 48106

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RECONSTRUCTING THE SOCIAL AND ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE OP SOUTHWARK, PHILADELPHIA, 1795-1800

by

Pamela Herrick

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the deqree of Master of Arts in Early American Culture

June 1991

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OF SOUTHWARK, PHILADELPHIA, 1795-1800

Approved.

A ppro v e d .

Appr o v e d .

by

Pamela Herrick

Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee

dL~.

_________

Jam^s

Ic.

Curtis, Ph.D.

Djfreciior of Winterthur Program in Early Ataerican Culture

Cj2u&Cz.

____________________

Carol E. Hoffeckej,j Ph.D.

Acting Associate^Brovost for Graduate Studies

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGU R E S... iv LIST OF T A B L E S ... v A B S T R A C T... vi

Introduction

SOUTHWARK IN THE 1 7 9 0 ’S ... 1 Chapter

1 THE PEOPLE OF SOUTHWARK... 11 2 THE ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE OF SOUTHWARK... 45 3 THE ORGANIZATION OF THE URBAN LANDSCAPE... 67 Conclusion

SOUTHWARK’S URBAN CENTER... 93 Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCE MATER I A L ... 95 SECONDARY SOURCE MATER I A L ... 96

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1. Detail, "Plan of the City of Philadelphia and its

Environs,” by John Hills, c. 1798... 9 2. "The City & Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware

River from Kensington," W. Birch, publisher,

1 8 0 0 ... 30 3. "(Philadelphia from Kensington)," by John James

Barralet, Watercolor, 1 7 9 6 ... 31 4. "Preparation for War to defend Commerce. The

Swedish Church Southwark with the building of the Frigate Philadelphia," engraved by W. Birch & Son, 1 8 0 0 ... 32 5. An example of mariner's g a r b ... 33 6. The merchant in his counting house... 34 7. The merchant overseeing a scrivener and

stevedore... 35 8. Women at work in a tobacconist's shop... 36 .9. A woman sewing books in a bookbinder's s h o p ... 37

10. "Bank of the United States, in Third Street,"

W. Birch S Son, engravers, 1799... 57 11. "Christian St above Front 1868," John Moran,

photographer, c. 1 8 9 0 ... 58 12. "Queen Street, c. 1856," John Moran, photo

gr apher... 59 13. "603 Penn St.-1868," John Moran, photographer 60 14. "Swanson Street, 1856," John Moran, photographer.. 61

iv

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LIST OP TABLES

1. Maritime Trade Occupations for Southwark... 38

2. Occupational Class Divisions for Southwark... 39

3. Craft Production in Southwark... 40

4. Southwark’s Most Common Occupations... 42

5. Building Materials for Southwark and Philadelphia... 62

6. Southwark's Non-residential Buildings... 63

7. The Occupational Structure of Swanson Street... 84

8. Average Values of Assessed Properties... 85

9. Average Square Footage of First Floor Living Space for Assessed Properties... 85

10. Dwelling Types on Assessed Properties... 86

11. Comparison of Property Value for Tenant and Owner-Occupied Properties... 86

12. The Occupational Structure of Front Street... 87

13. Occupational Class Percentages by Street... 88

14. The Occupational Structure of Second Street... 89

v

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This paper investigates the demographic and architectural landscapes of Southwark, Philadelphia, in the 1790's and suggests the inter-relationship of the human and built environments in an urban area.

Employing the method* of limited prosopography, this study draws on a database representing all taxable properties and reported residents of Southwark. Three street directories and two property tax lists were entered into two computer databases, one for demographic data and the other for architectural data. The two databases were merged yielding a comprehensive body of data on

individuals in Southwark, and revealing patterns of

housing, occupation, and gender interpreted in relation to the topography of the urban district.

Findings include the observation that occupational class and housing conditions were closely linked and

organized across the streetscape in relationship to prominent work sites. Waterfront maritime trade and inland craft production were pivotal to the architectural and demographic organization of Southwark.

vi

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Introduction SOUTHWARK IN THE 1790'S

In the closing years of the eighteenth century, Philadelphia neared the end of a decade of economic

prosperity which had attracted people to the port city in great n u m b e r s . The vigorous maritime commerce of the 1790's propelled the Philadelphia port ahead of competing eastern seaports in both volume and profit. Driven by the promise of jobs, people poured into the city and the

outlying districts of the Northern Liberties and

Southwark. Immigration accounted for more than one-third of the population bloom with migration from the

countryside making up the rest.* Philadelphia's

population had grown from 42,500 in 1790 to nearly 70,000 by 1800.2

By the late summer of 1799, the sixth in a

succession of yellow fever epidemics that ravaged the city throughout the decade heralded the end of the period of prosperity. While Philadelphia's citizenry succumbed to the disease, ship captains held their cargo-laden vessels

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Delaware River, wharves and counting houses stood empty while merchants, traders, and the city's wealthier

families fled to the open air of the countryside.

Philadelphia's laboring poor stayed behind in the city where they suffered the compounded hardships of raging fever and loss of work. The port remained closed until late 1799 when the first frosts killed off the fever- carrying mosquitoes. Suffering great losses in human and commercial life, Philadelphia marked the end of the decade where this study begins. The yellow fever was a defining moment in the city's history illustrating the social and economic class divisions of Philadelphia's citizenry. The same divisions were apparent in housing conditions and occupational status. It is the interplay of housing and occupational status across the urban landscape which is the focus of this paper.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the intersection of High Street running from the Delaware River westward and Front Street running north and south along the waterfront marked the commercial and social center of Philadelphia. The intersection of High and Front Streets was the hub of the urban landscape and the seat of much of Philadelphia's mercantile economic power.

High Street divided William Penn's gridded street plan

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through its midsection marking the center of the

streetscape. The axis which it formed with Front Street at the water represented the convergence of Philadelphia's most developed north-south corridor with the planned

center of the city.

Just outside of this commercial core was a

"middling" landscape of smaller homes and businesses run by men and women of the working class. Beyond the

middling landscape at the edges of urfcun development, open land and affordable housing attracted laboring

Philadelphians, craftsmen, and farmers. This description of the urban landscape represents a simplified scheme into which a great deal of diversification and deviation from

these generalities must be built. It does, however, describe the over-arching organization of the urban environment.

How, then, do the yellow fever epidemics of the 1790's and this model of the urban landscape suggest the social structure of Philadelphia? During the peak of the epidemics, the strategies which the city's rich and poor used to combat the fatal disease reshaped the character of urban life. As mercantile families vacated their large homes at the commercial core of the city, these streets stood empty without the usual commercial and social

traffic which comprised the daily lives of wealthy m en and

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center at Front and High Streets, residents fled to the homes of family and friends or to lodgings outside of Philadelphia. Those who could not afford to leave

weathered the epidemic in the city staying near jobs where they still might work. Unlike the core of the city where large homes stood empty, in the surrounding blocks the decision to flee the fever was made house-by-house based on financial resources. There was no mass exodus in these city blocks. Philadelphia's poor laboring class who

ringed this "middling" landscape from the Northern

Liberties to Southwark had little alternative but to stay at those near-subsistence jobs which were left to them.

Though the streets were empty in the blocks where laboring people lived, behind each door families waited for the

fever to pass and nursed their fallen during their final days. This last group suffered the greatest losses, both in human lives and financial security.

Under the duress of the yellow fever epidemic, the arrangement of classes of people across the urban

landscape and the boundaries between those classes are clear, but how, on a daily basis, did the distinctions between occupational classes play themselves out over the

streetscape of Philadelphia? By examining the inter

relationship of class-defining issues such as occupational

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status, gender, and quality of housing, this study reveals patterns of domestic and work life across an urban

landscape. The district of Southwark just south of Philadelphia proper is the subject of this study.

Situated at the edge of a rapidly developing urban center at the close of the eighteenth century, Southwark's

demographic and architectural composition suggests the character of urban life at the margin of the city. The human and built landscapes of Southwark were shaped by the district's eastern waterfront along the Delaware River and its northern border with Philadelphia proper (Figure 1).

Within this geographical organization, the issues of work, gender, and housing determined an individual's place in the landscape.

Using the technique of "limited prosopography", • Southwark's urban landscape has been reconstructed based on information recorded in the Philadelphia street

directories for 1798 and 1799, the 1798 Direct Tax for Southwark East, and the Philadelphia City and State Tax of 1799.* Together these records yield a near comprehensive body of data describing the trades and commercial

occupations plied in Southwark and the domestic and

commercial buildings which populated the landscape. The focus of data from these sources is eastern Southwark, the area east of Third Street and south of South Street. East

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district during this period in which Fifth Street marked the western limit of the urban environment.

The people living and working along the Delaware River in Southwark in the late 1790's have been

characterized as poor men and women seeking affordable housing at the edge of the city, far from its commercial

center, yet within walking distance its jobs.3 This

characterization must be qualified on two counts. First, it suggests an orientation within the urban landscape which this paper calls into question. It describes a group of people on the outside looking in. It assumes that the people of Southwark looked to the intersection of High and Front Streets as the commercial, political, and social center of their community. In this model of the urban landscape, those living at the fringe had only transitory access to the "center." They walked to it for jobs, returning at night to their small homes on the fringe, or they walked through its streets purchasing

goods in its shops and carried them home to Southwark. In both cases, Southwark residents passed through but held no permanent place in the center of the urban landscape.

The second point on which the characterization of Southwark as a fringe community must be qualified is the assumption that the district had no center of its own.

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Though it is true that the houses lining the streets of Southwark were generally smaller and less valuable than those in Philadelphia, providing affordable accommodations for laboring people, it would be inaccurate to suggest that most of Southwark's residents walked from these houses into the center of Philadelphia for jobs and

consumer goods. In fact, Southwark had its own commercial and social center, secondary to High and Front Streets, yet central to the organization of Southwark.^ Along the district's shoreline several blocks south of Philadelphia proper, wharves and counting houses, m e r c h a n t ’s homes, taverns, craftsmen’s shops, and small storefronts marked the commercial and social center of Southwark. It is this secondary hub of commerce that Southwark's residents

looked to first, before traveling northward to High and Front Streets.

This study is driven by material culture theory which stresses the significance of the material world in shaping cultural experience. Material culture historians have often "put the objects first" in the study of

historical cultures. This is, in part, a reflection of the material culture historian's method, and, in part, an affirmation of the place of objects in understanding and interpreting culture. As the field of material culture matures, however, this self-conscious centrality of the

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that reevaluation. Rather than beginning with a

discussion of the objects, or the buildings of Southwark, this paper begins with the people of Southwark. By

placing the people first, it reaffirms the goal of all material culture studies, to understand human culture and not simply the material part of that culture. The people

of Southwark did not understand their world strictly in terms of the buildings lining its streets. They lived in a complex urban environment where domestic life and work shaped the urban landscape and structured life experience.

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Figure 1. Detail, "Plan of the City of Philadelphia and its Environs," by John Hills, c. 1798.

Photo-lithograph by Thomas Hunter, Phila., 1881.

(Courtesy, The Winterthur Library: Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera)

64

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1. John K. Alexander, "Poverty, Pear and Continuity: An Analysis of the Poor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," in The Peoples of Philadelphia: A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class L i f e , 1790-1940, edited by Allen F. Davis and Mark H. Haller, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973), 14.

2. Ibid.

3. Billy G. Smith, The "Lower Sort": Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 201-203.

4. Cornelius William Stafford, The Philadelphia Directory for 1798 (Philadelphia, 1798); Cornelius William Stafford, The Philadelphia Directory for 1799 (Philadelphia, 1799);

James Robinson, Robinson's Philadelphia Register and Street Directory for 1799 (Philadelphia, 1799); City of Philadelphia, Department of Records, State & County Tax Assessment Ledgers, Southwark District East-17 99, Reel 44;

National Archives Microfilm Publications, United States Direct Tax of 1798: Tax Lists for the State of Pennsylvania, Microcopy No. 372, Roll 3.

5. Alexander, 18.

6. Totals of the recorded residents on Southwark's streets, based on the street directories and the Direct Tax, suggest that the density of population on the district's east-west streets was greatest several blocks south of South Street, the district’s border with Philadelphia proper. The City Tax shows a steadily increasing number of taxable dwellings farther from the Philadelphia border which supports findings from the street directories.

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Chapter 1

THE PEOPLE OF SOUTHWARK

In the late 1790*s, life in Southwark centered on the district’s waterfront. Even residents at the western edge of the urban district lived only five streets from the wharves and counting houses lining the Delaware River.

Whether they worked along the Southwark shoreline, or not, the people of tke district looked to the waterfront for imported goods and fashions, markets for their businesses, and news from other ports. The masts of ships docked at the wharves filled the eastern skyline from any vantage point in Southwark (Figure 2). Not only did ships exert a

constant visual reminder of maritime trade, but those living close to the wharves heard crews shouting orders over the thud of barrels and crates hoisted onto decks as the large hulls were filled with cargo. Heavy carts laden with goods heading to and from the wharves rumbled past the windows of small houses crowding the district's streets adding to the clamor of the port. With the sights, sounds, and smells of the wharves ever-present,

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even those uninvolved in trade knew the port as an

integral part of their lives. Many gathered news of other cities from letters carried aboard ship and through the oral reports of mariners traveling the waterways. Others plied the wharves inquiring after jobs as stevedores

loading cargo. Shopkeepers followed newspaper

advertisements to the wharves to meet incoming ships and peruse the goods on board. Here, they bargained for barrels of foodstuffs and spices, such as currants or

raisins, or for household goods like crates of iron pots and china.* After securing a fair price, they hired carts to haul the goods to their shops. The volume of

Southwark's maritime business and the work-life it engendered permeated daily life in the district.

It would be inaccurate, however, to describe Southwark as only a maritime district. Though the waterfront had a strong impact on the quality and

character of the urban environment, other factors also shaped the experience of daily life. While shipping heavily utilized the physical and human resources of the area, other businesses in Southwark defined smaller work sites focused on craft production. With one-third of its reported populace working in the maritime trades and one- quarter in craft production, these smaller work sites of

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13

Southwark had a powerful impact on the men who labored in them, on their families, and on the larger community.

In order to understand better the relationship between work and daily life, work has been defined in terms of four components: worker, work site, work activity, and product. Taken together, the four defined the experience of working lives, but their influence extended beyond the boundaries of the work place and into the community.

A work site, or the arrangement of buildings, tools, and raw materials on a plot of land, transformed the built environment in its vicinity. Southwark's ship building industry provides a vivid example of this

transformation. Ship yards changed the face of the waterfront. Wharves and land-fill extended the area of work into and over the water, reshaping the natural

shoreline and asserting the presence of working people at the river's edge (Figure 3). Shipwrights erected stocks to cradle the keels of new ships thereby extending the working landscape up into the air and increasing its visibility far beyond the work site (Figure 4). Kegs of bolts and barrels of caulker's pitch sat in sheds or under tarps with large piles of lumber used to frame and plank keels.3 The work site of shipwrights was open to the eyes of all passers-by, and it visibly altered the riverfront landscape.

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The workers who used the buildings and equipment comprising a work site often played different roles in the work process. To continue with ship building, the men who

owned ship yards and the me n who built ships were all called "shipwrights." Their jobs, however, differed significantly. To an owner, a ship yard represented a financial investment entailing both risks and rewards. It brought economic, social, and, perhaps, political status to him and his family. And, it demanded his time and skill as a master craftsman and business manager. To an employee, a ship yard was the place where he practiced his craft in exchange for a wage. His investment in ship

building was the time applied to learning his craft. If he grew discontent with working conditions at one yard, he could move to another. Ship building demanded cooperation between craftsmen, so that ships could be built

efficiently and without injury to the work crew. Thus, a ship yard represented different relationships to work for its many workers.

The work activity, or the process, associated with an occupation often carried with it sensate qualities

w h ich pushed the "presence" of the work site into the surrounding landscape. This is best described through example. Sights, sounds, and smells emanated from the ship yards of Southwark. Masts rocked in the eastern

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15

skyline where riggers and sail makers outfitted ships for service. Shipwrights climbed over the stocks hollering to one another over the din of hammering and sawing. The thud of heavy beams falling into place punctuated their cries. The odor of caulkers* hot pitch drifted toward houses at the water. Together, the sights, sounds, and smells of the yards reminded those living nearby that shipwrights were at work.

Lastly, the product of work often earned

practitioners of an occupation a reputation based on the nature of the goods produced or on the work activity itself. Butchers were a loathsome presence on urban streets because of the offal of animal slaughter. They sold beef, pork, and lamb quarters chiefly in rented market stalls among other food vendors and slaughtered

animals on their urban lots.4 In Philadelphia proper, the offense of slaughtering caused legislation forcing

butchers out of the most congested urban areas. As a group, butchers were castigated for the product, or more specifically the by-product, of their work.

Thus, the four components of work, the work site, worker, work activity, and the product, shaped the lives

of people working in or living near Southwark's many occupational sites whether butchers' or ship yards. With

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its strong maritime trade and craft traditions,

Southwark's work life influenced the daily life of its populace.

Over one-third of Southwark's reported residents earned their living along the waterfront as mariners, ship builders, traders, and regulators of trade (Table 1). By far, the largest number of these men were mariners. How, then, did the work site, workers, work activity, and product of the merchant marine effect daily life in Southwark? Strictly speaking, captains, pilots, and mariners worked on ships, but when these commercial vessels docked at Southwark's wharves, that work site expanded beyond the bounds of the ship. Sea captains and the pilots and mariners they commanded used Southwark's waterfront as an adjunct to their sea-going work site.

The wharves, counting houses, and streets of the district filled with mariners when ships entered the port. While captains planned cargoes with ship owners, supervised the maintenance and provisioning of the ship, and hired

additional crew, mariners fanned out over the streets of Southwark. In effect, the waterfront businesses serving maritime commerce became the work sites of mariners in p o r t .

The work activities which drew mariners from their ships centered around moving cargo and preparing to sail.

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17

On board, mariners emptied cargo-holds, and with

stevedores and day laborers, they transferred the goods to vehicles headed to the district's storehouses. Mariners charged with ship maintenance collected supplies such as rope, hardware, and sail canvas from craftsmen and

chandlerers along the river. Other crew stowed food on board for the next sail. As these orders for provisions and supplies were filled and hauled to the wharves,

Southwark's mariners engaged shop keepers, craftsmen, and carters in their seafaring work-life and extended their work site into the district's streets.

Business was not the only thing that took mariners into the streets and shops of Southwark. Between voyages, local mariners went home to their families at the end of the work day, while their shipmates lodged in the numerous boarding houses and taverns along Swanson and Front

Streets. As mariners spent their wages on lodging, clothing, food, drink, and tobacco, they crossed the threshold of many of Southwark's boarding houses, shops, and taverns. Tavern keepers recognized these men as seafarers, by their manner of dressing and speaking

(Figure 5). Mariners were described as, "a distinct class of men," by Edward Hazen in The Panorama of Professions and Trades in 1839.5 Clearly, the mere presence of a mariner evoked the seafaring life. In other words, the

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presence of the worker evoked the work. When mariners disembarked their ships, they extended the impact of that finite work site into the surrounding urban landscape.

Merchants formed the third group of Southwark’s maritime workers, directing the flow of goods in and out

of the district's wharves and store houses. From the floor of his counting house, a merchant looked out over the wharf where mariners and stevedores moved cargo (Figures 6,7). Walking his business compound from wharf to store house and directing employees represented the supervisory component of a merchant's work activity.

Supervision drew him out of the counting house and onto ‘ the larger work site. The organizational center of the work site, however, was the counting house. Here,

merchants struck deals with suppliers and buyers,

negotiated transport with ship owners and captains, and kept records of their transactions. Through the counting house flowed a parade of business men engaging the

merchant in trade. On a work site as complex as a wharf lot where unskilled laborers worked next to skilled seafarers, the counting house was the domain of the merchant and the site of his most complex work in trade.

The merchants, mariners, and ship builders who composed a substantial segment of Southwark's working population were not the only residents who profitted from

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1 9

maritime trade. Traffic along Swanson and Front Streets provided a steady market for men and women owning

businesses near the wharves. With a transient labor force of mariners, young craftsmen, and laborers' drawn to

shipping, the demand for lodging and food was great.

Farmers bringing crops to the port, rural store keepers and peddlers buying stock for their businesses, and craftsmen buying materials and shipping finished goods swelled the numbers temporarily lodging in Southwark. A concentration of taverns, inns, and boarding houses on Front and Second Streets sheltered and fed the men drawn to the water by business.

Women, and widowed women in particular, kept many of these lodgings near the wharves.® They provided

domestic services to wage-earning dock workers who were either young and unmarried or separated from their wives by their occupation.^ Thus, the work activity of women who kept boarding houses, either alone of with their husbands, was domestic maintenance. They opened their homes to boarders, cooking, cleaning, and washing laundry

for them as they did for family members. It is not surprising to find a large number of widows supporting themselves by selling domestic services near Southwark's w h a r v e s .

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Strictly speaking, boarding house keepers produced no product as members of a service industry. Yet, without the domestic support of this female work force, the

transient segment of Southwark's maritime labor force could not have worked in the district. The shelter,

meals, clean clothing, and occasional nursing which these women sold to men in the maritime trades kept these

workers healthy, and in turn, productive. The product of this women's work was the steady supply of laborers fit to work for merchants and sea captains in maritime trade.

Though they were not paid directly by these merchants and sea captains, and they did not work in open view of the counting house floor, many Southwark women earned their wage from maritime trade.

The essential role played by women lodging

Southwark's maritime work force was hidden by the domestic site of their work. Like most Southwark women, keepers of boarding houses labored at home. Compared with the

outdoor work of shipwrights and mariners, their work had little impact on the urban landscape. Laundry hanging behind their homes, waste water poured into the streets, and cooking odors emanating from boarding house kitchens were virtually indistinguishable from residences without boarders. . The wage-earning labor of women keeping

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2 1

boarding houses was completely integrated into the ever

present backdrop of domestic work in the urban district.

Though the shipping industry in Southwark employed shipwrights, mariners, merchants, and boarding house

keepers and, in turn, shaped the urban environment, at the close of the eighteenth century, a much broader range of work experiences influenced the character of daily life in

Southwark. Moving inland, away from the visible symbols of maritime trade, Southwark was composed of men and women earning their livings as craftsmen, shopkeepers, and

unskilled laborers. What impact did the range and quantity of these occupations have on daily life in

Southwark? An examination of the four components of work, the work site, worker, work activity, and the product, will suggest how these occupations shaped the lives of those who worked at them and those who lived near them.

In order to understand the relative importance of occupational classes to the structure of Southwark, the occupational taxonomy proposed by Stuart Blumin in his study of the urban middle class has been applied to

ft

Southwark's demography. Blumin divides working people into four categories, high non-manual, low non-manual, skilled manual, and unskilled manual workers. These four groups roughly equate with merchants, retailers,

craftsmen, and laborers, respectively. In Southwark,

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craftsmen, of the skilled manual labor category comprised over four in ten of Southwark's recorded workers, making them the largest occupational group in the district (Table

fl

2). The shops in which these craftsmen plied their trades produced goods ranging from furniture to leather breeches, and the effect of these production sites on the urban environment was profound (Table 3).

The work of shipwrights was just one example of a craft tradition which shaped the character of Southwark.

Blacksmiths, house carpenters, coopers, tailors, and their neighboring craftsmen sent an array of sights, sounds, and smells into the streets where they worked. The blacksmith shop, in particular, graphically illustrates the influence of skilled manual labor on a small corner of the urban landscape.

Off Front Street on Meade Alley, Samuel Jones ran a smith shop in which he and his journeyman, Charles

Hargesheimer, w o r k e d . T h e street was one of Southwark's narrow alleys lined with small houses where many mariners owned humble homes. Though both me n called themselves

"blacksmiths" in the city street directories, the two

enjoyed very different relationships to their work. Jones was a master craftsman with the responsibilities of an artisanal entrepreneur. He invested capital in tools and materials. He rented property for his shop. He trained

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23

younger men in smithing. And he sold his goods to the public. In the same shop Hargesheimer worked for a wage, and perhaps board, and bore no entrepreneurial

responsibility. Though both were "blacksmiths," smithing held different responsibilities for each man.

Jones and Hargesheimer worked from a three-room house adjacent to an open lot on a densely developed residential street. Jones used the first floor as an

office and store, and Hargesheimer lived with his wife and young daughter in the two small rooms above it. Though Jones may have stored some of his bar iron, finished wares, tools, and fuel in the cellar or garret of the

Heade Alley house, piles of iron and coal likely cluttered the yard under rough sheds or tarps.15

The presence of a s m i t h ’s yard set between houses on a narrow street like Meade Alley altered the character of the environment. Even a narrow side-street set back from the commotion of Front and Swanson was not free from the influence of craft production. In Southwark, work and home life were integrated. As they worked at their anvils in the yard beside the small house, Jones and Hargesheimer sent acrid coal smoke and the rhythmic clang of hammers into the air on Meade Alley. Less than thirty feet away, neighbors in the small houses lining the alley shared the noise and smell of the s m i t h s ’ yard. In this and other

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work sites without walls, work activity permeated the urban environment.

While all trades practiced in Southwark in the 1790's can be understood in terms of the work site, worker, work activity, and product, some crafts were additionally affected by external forces such as seasonal

loss of work. Carpenters, bricklayers, shipwrights, and other tradesmen laboring outdoors worked in rhythm with the seasons, dependent on good weather for steady income.

The bricklayers who built so much of Southwark's new housing suffered lost wages when freezing weather, which kept mortar from curing, prevented them from working.

When the Delaware River froze in winter, Southwark's wharves closed leaving mariners without work. Many who sat idle in the cold months filled in with jobs requiring little skill to tide them over.^ Just as the cessation of outdoor work marked the beginning of an unproductive

winter for some trades, the resumption of work in spring marked the beginning of a new work season. Work sites

which sat quiet and empty in the cold with no workers, no activity, and no products once again brought work life to urban streets. On April 7, 1786, Jacob Hiltzheimer, a Philadelphia gentleman, noted in his diary that he,

went to a raising frolic at Robert Erw i n ’s. The company dined in the new house this day raised on Market Street, near Seventh Street. It is

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25

only one month this day since Erwin begun [sic]

digging the cellar....

When the cellar was excavated in March, Erwin's house was one of the first building starts heralding the new

building season.

Another external force which affected a

craftsman's work was the social respectability which some crafts afforded their practitioners. The silversmiths, jewelers, and goldsmiths supplying luxury items to their urban clientele worked with materials of inherent value.

The respect afforded these craft traditions grew out of the craftsman’s high level of skill, the value of his materials, the emphasis on style in his goods, and the

often ceremonial value of his wares to their owners. A silver teapot in the latest Federal style represented a significant investment in plate and a commitment to the importance of the tea ceremony. For the silversmith who fabricated it, the wealthy client who bought it, and the women who served tea with it, the object was a sign of social standing. Through their dealings with

Philadelphia's wealthier clientele, silversmiths,

goldsmiths, jewelers, watch makers, and the district's lone limner, earned a much higher social standing from their work than the majority of craftsmen. Utilitarian wares made by potters, coppersmiths, and brush makers did

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not earn for them a similar place in the eighteenth- century social hierarchy as the makers of luxury items.

While some crafts practiced in Southwark held

social-class associations, others had very specific gender associations. W o m e n ’s work centered largely on

manufacturing clothing, keeping lodgings, and making or selling food.J The women of Southwark practiced crafts which were formalized extensions of domestic work. Like their male counterparts, seamstresses and mantua makers trained in the artisan system as apprentices,

journeywomen, and mistresses, but these women were exceptions. Most women who worked in craft production held marginal positions requiring no formal training.1^

One of these women was Margaret Faunce who worked as a

"segar maker" for a tobacconist in Southwark. The Panorama of Professions and Trades describes rolling delicate cigars as w o m e n ’s work, and an engraving of a tobacconist's shop depicts women huddled in stalls along the wall rolling cigars (Figure 8). In the same trade book, a women is depicted sewing books in a bookbinder's shop. Catherine Willey of Southwark listed this as her occupation in the city street directories (Figure 9).

These women and others like them lacked the status and financial autonomy provided by formalized craft training.

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2 7

Thus far, the discussion, of Southwark's occupational structure has focused on two groups in Blumin's taxonomy, high non-manual merchants and sea captains and the very large group of skilled manual craftsmen of the district. Two groups remain, low non- manual shopkeepers and unskilled laborers. The four

components of work which have been used to understand the complexity of craft production's impact on the urban

environment do not apply as neatly to shopkeepers and laborers in the service industry. Their work did not

aggressively reshaped the district's shoreline or fill the streets with laden carts, but it did contributed to the character of daily life in Southwark.

By far, the largest category of retail

storekeepers in Southwark were grocers who, as a group, slightly outnumbered the mariners living in the district (Table 4). Over one-hundred grocers kept stores in an urban area approximately fourteen blocks square. This density suggests that many were very small and served a highly local clientele. The impact of groceries on city streets was more subtle than craft workshops, yet they represented a network of social interaction in the

district. Local women entered shops in the front rooms of grocers' houses more often than they patronized any other business in the district. The flow of foot traffic

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through a grocer's shop made it a center of news akin to the district's taverns.

Working men and women relegated to the category of unskilled manual laborers often held marginal positions on work sites which rewarded low skill with low wages. Men listed simply as "labourers" in the street directories moved from ship to ship unloading cargo, dug cellars and hauled stone on construction sites, or drove carts laden with firewood and coal. They provided the backbone on work sites where craftsmen with greater skill performed more complicated tasks. Women without craft training or the capital to open a small store turned to washing and peddling in the streets. Most of these women were widows, but married women also took these jobs to supplement

family income, especially when their husbands were

*7

seasonally unemployed.1 Largely unrecorded were women in domestic service as nurses, cooks, and servants. Though they earned half the wages of men, laboring women

experienced greater security than their male counterparts because domestic work did not threaten seasonal loss of

10

wages. Men and women working as day laborers and

domestic servants exerted little direct impact on their work environments though they controlled the pace and quality of their work. Laboring men operated at the

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2 9

fringe of complex work sites, and laboring women worked in domestic settings out of public view.

In the realm of street life, however, some of these unskilled men and women shaped a distinct work environment for themselves. Hucksters and peddlers

carting food and petty merchandise through the streets of Southwark brought commerce to the curb. With their cries, they called women out of their homes and into the streets where they bargained for merchandise. Others, like the

oystermen, stationed themselves on busy intersections at the waterfront and raised their voices above the clamor of trade to attract passers-by and men working at the water's edge. These unskilled laborers were a visible and audible part of the district's foot traffic and shaped the urban environment as clearly as did the shipwrights,

blacksmiths, and house carpenters of the district.

The evidence for Southwark suggests that work shaped daily life in the district on many levels.

Maritime trade, craft production, shop keeping, and day labor fit together to shape an urban environment in which work had a powerful impact on laboring men and women, on their families, and on the larger community. The sights, sounds, and smells of the work place permeated the streets of Southwark matching the pace of daily life with the pace of work.

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Copyrighted materials in this document have not been filmed at the request of the author.

They are available for consultation, however, in the author’s university library.

P.30-37:

Figures 1-9

University Microfilms International

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3 8

Table L. Maritime Trade Occupations for Southwark.

(Source: Street Directories)

Cases with occupation = 1751 or 80.7% of the total database.

Occupation: Number of cases:

Sea captain 170

Mariner 110

Pilot 25

Shallopman 5

Stevedore 5

Seaman 4

Waterman 2

Total crews of ships: 321 = 18.3% (n=1751)

Shipwright 48

Rope maker 17

Ship carpenter 14

Sail maker 13

Mast maker 12

Rigger 8

Ship builder 7

Caulker 6

Ship joiner 5

Boat builder 4

Block maker 3

Wharf builder 2

Total ship construction: 139 = 7.9%

Merchant 125

Trader 6

Ship chandler 4

Corn chandler 1

Total traders: 136 = 7.8%

Measurer of grains 3 Inspector of goods 3

Harbor master 1

.Total trade regulators: 7 = .4%

Total maritime occupations:603 = 34.4%

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Table 2. Occupational Class Divisions for Southwark.

Occupation: Number: Percentage:

Unskilled manual 169 9.6%

Skilled manual 751 42.9%

Low non-manual 356 20.3%

High non-manual 408 23.3%

Unemployed widows 67 3.8%

1751 100.0%

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4 0

Table 5. Craft Production in Southwark.

(Source: Street Directories) n=1751

Occupation: N umber:

Tailor 84

Shoemaker 75

Seamstress 20

Cordwainer 13

Hatter 12

Mantua maker 5

Weaver 4

Breeches maker 2

Plain worker 2

Milliner 1

Total clothing: 216 = 12.4%

House carpenter 59

Brick layer 16

Painter & glazier 15

Carpenter 4

Plasterer 4

Nailor 3

Dealer in hardware 1

Plane maker 1

Well-digger 1

Total construction: 104 = 6.1%

Blacksmith 33

Cooper 22

Tanner 3

Pump maker 1

Total other goods: 59 = 3.4%

Cabinetmaker, joiner 18

Whitesmith 5

C u t 1er 4

Ironmonger 4

Comb maker 3

Windsor chair maker 3

Potter 2

Brass founder 1

Brush maker 1

Chair maker 1

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3. continued.

Occupation: Number:

Coppersmith 1

Inlayer, carver 1

Paper hanger 1

Tin plate worker 1

Turner 1

Upholsterer 1

Soap boiler 1

Total household goods: 49 = 2.8%

Goldsmith 4

Silversmith 3

Watch maker 2

Jeweller & hairworker 1

Limner 1

Total luxury items: 11 = .7%

Saddler 3

Coach maker 3

Wheelwright 3

Harness maker 1

Total transportation: 10 = .7%

Total craftsmen: 449 = 25.6%

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4 2

Table 4. Southwark's Most Common Occupations.

Occupation: Number: Percentage:

Sea captain 170 9.7% '

Widow 169 9.7%

Merchant 125 7.1%

Grocer 114 6.5%

Mariner 110 6.3%

Tailor 84 4.8%

Shoemaker 75 4.3%

House carpenter 59 3.4%

Laborer 58 3.3%

Shipwright 48 2.7%

Tavern keeper 38 2.2%

Shopkeeper 37 2.1%

Boarding house 37 2.1%

1124 64.2% (

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1. These goods were typical of advertisements placed in newspapers by eighteenth-century captains and ship owners from the mid-Atlantic region based on a reading of the Prime Pile, Decorative Arts Photographic Collection, Winterthur Library.

2. Based on the Street Directories, 34.4% of Southwark residents with reported occupations worked in maritime trades and 25.6% worked in craft production.

3. Edward Hazen, The Panorama of Professions and Trades (Philadelphia: Driah Hunt, 1830), 100-103.

4. Ibid., 37.

5. Ibid., 108.

6. Based on the Street Directories, 23 of 37 keepers of boarding houses reported for Southwark were women. Of these 23, 15 were widows. Southwark tavern keepers totaled 38 of whom 12 were women, and half of these women were widows.

7. Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 54-64. Blackmar describes the transition from the integrated household economy associated with craft production to a wage-labor system in which wages purchased housing and domestic services. She finds that dock workers, in particular, labored outside a craft workshop system and used their wages for housing in boarding houses.

8. Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class:

Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38-44.

9. The Street Directories from which this occupational classification was compiled are an accurate record of persons providing goods and services, but they under-report

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4 4

the class of unskilled manual laborers. African Americans and women, in particular, often went unrecorded. The high percentage of skilled craftsmen in Southwark must be balanced against a population of uncounted day laborers.

10. B. and T. Kite, eds. Kite's Philadelphia Directory for 1814 (Philadelphia, 1814).

11. U.S. Bureau of Census, Fourth Census of the U.S., 1820:

Philadelphia County, National Archives Record Group 29, M-33, Roll 109.

12. Based on examination of the first-floor interior of the surviving building, its was finished as a home and not as a work s h o p .

13. Smith, 145-146.

14. Jacob Cox Parson, e d . , Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzheimer of Philadelphia, 1765-1798 (Philadelphia: Press of William F. Fell & Co., 1893), 83.

15. Of 139 women recorded by occupation in the Street Directories, 31.7% made and sold clothing, 25.9% kept lodgings, and 9.4% made or sold food. The next largest group of working women were the 3.6% in education.

16. Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 15.

17. Smith, 111-112.

18. Ibid., 112.

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THE ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE OF SOUTHWARK

In the closing years of the eighteenth century, the buildings lining the streets of eastern Southwark from Second Street to the waterfront differed from the

buildings lining similar streets in Philadelphia proper to the north. Southwark’s houses were generally smaller, more modestly finished, and less valuable than houses within the city limits. Compared with the predominantly brick architectural landscape to the north, more of

Southwark was built of wood (Figure 10). Southwark's main thoroughfares resembled the architectural landscape found primarily in Philadelphia's alleys and secondary streets where small dwellings sat behind the larger houses facing the city's main streets. The smaller scale and greater density of Southwark's built environment distinguished the district from Philadelphia. Merchants, mariners,

craftsmen, and shopkeepers residing in the district lived and worked in a more densely populated urban environment than most of their Philadelphia neighbors to the north.

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4 6

In comparing Philadelphia and Boston in 1790, Noah Webster wrote of Philadelphia,

how fatiguing it is to pass thro [sic] this town! Such a sameness in the whole! no variety!

when you haye seen one street, you have seen the whole town!1

Webster must not have visited Southwark. Small houses set close to the street, some built of brick and some frame, some painted and some weather-worn, contributed to the architectural irregularity which characterized the district. With roof-lines varying from one to three stories and facades intermittently pushing past their neighbors toward the street, its architectural landscape presented a series of broken lines down its vistas.

Workshops, stables, and sheds shared the street with dwellings, undeveloped lots, and kitchen buildings set back from the street all contributing architectural variety to the streetscape.

In the late 1790's, undeveloped lots were common on Southwark's streets, particularly those a block or two from the Delaware River. These open lots and narrow passages between buildings revealed glimpses of the small

tenements, kitchens, bake houses, wash houses, sheds, privies, and other back buildings that were an integral part of each property (Figure 11). Here, in the alleys and yards off busy streets, stood the greatest variety of buildings in the district. The facades that urban

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