The ‘Executive’ of Dundee, by Henry Harwood, 1821

The ‘Executive’ of Dundee, by Henry Harwood, 1821

Textiles

Scottish royal burghs were centres of craft manufacture and trade, governed by their merchants and artisans through the town council or ‘executive’. The privileges and responsibilities of craft workers were vested in incorporated bodies, known as trades houses, that regulated craft entry through apprenticeships, set wages and prices, supported the widows and orphans of its members and also had rights to sit on the town council. The city of Dundee had nine incorporated trades – the baxters or bakers; cordiners or shoemakers; skinners or glovers; tailors; bonnetmakers; fleshers; hammermen; weavers; and dyers. The character of these crafts, with their strong sense of community, reflected a local emphasis on textile processing and clothing manufacture. By the mid eighteenth century, with new technologies of production and expanding markets, the controls that were exercised by traditional craft elites through their trade houses were waning.

This is a famous print, reproduced in a number of versions, whose satirical intent is clear from the less than flattering representation of the individuals depicted. It was painted by a local artist, Henry Harwood and engraved in Edinburgh against a background of frequent accusations of town council corruption in Dundee and major disputes over control of the harbour.

The men who make up the ‘executive’ are stood in the High Street in front of the Trades Hall. To the right is the Merchant’s Hotel, on the corner of Castle Street. Just below the hotel is the shop occupied by George Rough, a glover, who is depicted sixth from the right. The shop on the left, selling crockery and cutlery, had belonged until recently to Alexander Riddoch, merchant, who had dominated the council of Dundee for almost forty years. There are members of the weaving trade represented, along with a tailor, bonnetmaker, baker and shoemaker. The Deacon of the Dyers, James Cathro, son of a shoemaker, is the squat figure wearing an apron stood third from the left. Though often having a family background in the skilled trades, most of these men were long separated from the daily necessity of making a living from their craft. The Deacon of the Weaver Trade, Robert Mudie, was the son of a weaver and practiced the trade in youth, but through self-education became a schoolteacher at Dundee Academy and was later a writer and journalist.

Burgh reforms in the early 1830s gave power to new economic elites and skilled artisans shifted their institutional allegiances and collective identities towards trade unions. The old trade houses, including the nine incorporated trades of Dundee, maintained their ceremonial and philanthropic roles in Scottish burgh life throughout the nineteenth century and beyond, though many of the trades they represented had all but disappeared.

Museum Services, University of Dundee