St. Paul daily globe., 1885-07-26
THE ENGLISH NORTHAMPTON.
Seat Of the Great Shoe NIanufacture
Described.


Philadelphia Press.
There is rapidly arising from the ancient
center of the British boot and shoe trade a
Nineteenth Century NORTHAMPTON, A
Northampton with better streets and good
parks, with handsome railway station. a
decorated Gothic town hall, mechanics
institute, free library, opera house, corn
exchange, detached villas of white
and red brick, and rows of
comfortable twO-story cottages for
the more thrifty of the mechanics who have
made the town famous for centuries. This
Is the Northampton one sees when passing
on the main line of the London & North
western railway. The old town is full half
mile from the station. and to alight and
spend few days at the old George Inn,
which Daniel DefOe described in 176O as
looking more like palace than an inn
and costing about e2, 900 building" and in
meandering through the Shoemakers' quar-
tiers one will come away with very differ
ent idea of the place.
To learn how many of the ShOemakers
live one should explore Grafton, Harding,
Crispin, Scarletwell, Campton, Frances
and Castle streets, and Spring, Sawpit.
Chalk, Pike and Quart Pot lanes. Here, in
the narrOweSt and most forlorn-lOOking
streets, splashed with slops and Uttered
with garbage. are dwellings which almost
battle description. Little miserable plaster
houses, with the plaster falling off in spots,
giving them blotchy, mottled ap-
pearance; speckled houses of reddish
brown and yellow Ochre. Houses
with tiny doors not more than five feet
high. actual measurement, with such bits of
rooms and damp-lOOking cellars at the
back, i'll which hammer away the celery
white cOmpleXioned shOemakers Houses.
too, that look like the houses children
draw, with the frame of the door sprawl
ing out at the bottom and the windows
stuck in at random; houses with many
gables; houses with red tiles and gray stone
and drab slate roofs. Paint, whitewash,
brOwnwaSh and yellOwwaSh all seem to have
been used to give variety to the color Of
the houses OF SnObOpOliS, the lower hall of
some of the buildings on the better streets
being painted black. But there was moth
ing fresh and clean about all this paint and
wash. such as one is accustomed to see in a
Northern German or Dutch town; on the
contrary, it was mUsty, mildewy and de-
caying, like the houses themselves in the
workingmen'S quarters of the town. Dirty
children quarrelling, Squatting on the curb
stones in rows like roasting, draggle- tailed
IONl, VI HuUulcu COSttLer OH uOOrSCeDS
holding Sickly babies; viXenish women and
beerish men, in and out of low publics-
these are some of the salient features of
Northampton proper.
An air of boots and shoes pervades the
whole town. The bulk of the work is done
in the mean cottages of the operatives, and
this conversion of the home into q work
shop destroys entirely hOmelikeness. The
frame of the small front door on either side
has black, greasy patch, caused by the
constant rubbing of the strings of boots
and faggots of upperS that are carted in
and out of the house in the course of the
year. The door itself has o similar
blackened appearance and oftentimes
the walls of the front room.
These, together with the constant tapping
as of some one making collins, are the signs
of the half workshop, half homes of North
ampton shoemakers. On the afternoon of a
day just preceding day of rest, or ma
tiOnal holiday, the working population seem
to be carrying boots and shoes of all kinds
and in all conditions, from the stacks of
soleless uppers to the bag or bundle of fin
iShed shoes. Pallid, unShayen men with
short clay pipes, smeared faces and smudgy
aprons, hasten to the factory with strings
of boots ready for the finisher.