Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722Defoe, Daniel
History
Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
It is impossible to describe all the parts and circumstances of this fair
exactly; the shops are placed in rows like streets, whereof one is called
Cheapside; and here, as in several other streets, are all sorts of
trades, who sell by retail, and who come principally from London with
their goods; scarce any trades are omitted—goldsmiths, toyshops,
brasiers, turners, milliners, haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers,
pewterers, china-warehouses, and in a word all trades that can be named
in London; with coffee-houses, taverns, brandy-shops, and eating-houses,
innumerable, and all in tents, and booths, as above.
This great street reaches from the road, which as I said goes from
Cambridge to Newmarket, turning short out of it to the right towards the
river, and holds in a line near half a mile quite down to the river-side:
in another street parallel with the road are like rows of booths, but
larger, and more intermingled with wholesale dealers; and one side,
passing out of this last street to the left hand, is a formal great
square, formed by the largest booths, built in that form, and which they
call the Duddery; whence the name is derived, and what its signification
is, I could never yet learn, though I made all possible search into it.
The area of this square is about 80 to 100 yards, where the dealers have
room before every booth to take down, and open their packs, and to bring
in waggons to load and unload.
This place is separated, and peculiar to the wholesale dealers in the
woollen manufacture. Here the booths or tents are of a vast extent, have
different apartments, and the quantities of goods they bring are so
great, that the insides of them look like another Blackwell Hall, being
as vast warehouses piled up with goods to the top. In this Duddery, as I
have been informed, there have been sold one hundred thousand pounds
worth of woollen manufactures in less than a week’s time, besides the
prodigious trade carried on here, by wholesale men, from London, and all
parts of England, who transact their business wholly in their
pocket-books, and meeting their chapmen from all parts, make up their
accounts, receive money chiefly in bills, and take orders: These they say
exceed by far the sales of goods actually brought to the fair, and
delivered in kind; it being frequent for the London wholesale men to
carry back orders from their dealers for ten thousand pounds’ worth of
goods a man, and some much more. This especially respects those people,
who deal in heavy goods, as wholesale grocers, salters, brasiers,
iron-merchants, wine-merchants, and the like; but does not exclude the
dealers in woollen manufactures, and especially in mercery goods of all
sorts, the dealers in which generally manage their business in this
manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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