Messrs Cardwell, Birley And Hornby: Stock and Ledger Books

Scope and Content

Six folio volumes of Messrs Cardwell, Birley and Hornby (after 1798 known as Birley and Hornby), cotton manufacturers of Blackbum, Lancashire, namely:

  • /1: Stock book, 1768-1792;
  • /2: Stock book, 1793-1798;
  • /3: Stock book, 1813-1858;
  • /4: Stock book for the Orrell mills at Stalybridge, north-east Cheshire, 1821-1834;
  • /5: Private ledger (indexed), 1793-1799;
  • /6: Private ledger (indexed), 1798-1810.
The stock books list and value the firm's stocks of raw cotton, yarn, warps and cloth. Cloth is identified by type, and whether it is bleached or not. The stock books permit studies of price changes in the cotton industry over several decades as a result of technological change. Inside the front cover of no. 3 is a note that this stock book was produced as evidence in the case in Chancery, Thomas Hornby Birley, Herbert Birley and Henry Birley v. Richard Birley and others, January 1847.

These volumes are accompanied by Wadsworth's notes on the contents, arranged under the headings pedigrees, raw cotton, linen yarn, warps, festers, piece goods, clients and traders, profits and tradings and sundries.

Bibliography

The Cardwell, Birley and Hornby records were a key source for C. Knick Harley, 'Cotton textile prices and the industrial revolution', Economic History Review, vol. 51, no. 1 (1998), pp. 49-83.