Trade & Commerce

Table des Monnaies, Poids et Mesures en usage a Guernesey, published by Frederick Clarke

In the mid-19th century Frederick Clarke produced in his establishment in the States Arcade this little booklet, attempting to distil in four pages the labyrinthine system of weights and measures at that time employed in the island. Its difficulty was compounded by the sheer number of currencies that island merchants and traders had to deal with. The information is taken literally from schoolmaster Thomas du Frocq's Nouveau Precepteur of 1818, which is a (mainly) applied mathematics primer of tortuous complexity and much greater length.

Boots and shoes

Receipt made up in 1796 by the shoemaker John Edwards for the footwear of Carteret Priaulx and his brothers. Anthony Priaulx, a 'bad boy,' wore out his dancing shoes as he was 22 at the time. The brothers, sons of Thomas Priaulx and Rebecca Le Marchant, were: the oldest, Carteret (1758-1822), Thomas (1762-1844), John (1768-1829), and Anthony, the youngest (1774-1820). A J T Edwards was a shoemaker in the Commercial Arcade in Guernsey in 1841. He had a large family; the census gives him as being born in England c 1800, and his wife Charlotte, aged 33, as also born in England. From a Scrapbook of receipts in the Library.

Daniel de Lisle Brock and the Corn Bill, 1835

'The depression in the price of agricultural produce may be ascribed to various causes: pretty certain it is, however, that neither legal or illegal importations of foreign corn are of the number and still more certain it is that the Channel Islands can have no connexion with any of these causes.'  From a Letter from the Deputies of Guernsey and Jersey to Lord Verulam, Colonnade Hotel, Charles Street, 6th May, 1835.

Pages