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Sara Pennell & Jon Stobart, "Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with both of the authors of a book published by Bloomsbury in 2026 titled Auctions and the Consumption of Second Hand Goods in Georgian England. Which takes us into a really key part of the sort of 18th and 19th century, which, which is obviously a ways back in time, but in many senses is actually quite similar to today because we still have secondhand goods, many of us, you know, whether it's Facebook Marketplace or Vinted or a charity shop, like that's still very much a part of how loads of us buy things, consume things. I'm thinking obviously, especially of like uni students, for instance. But that's something that was also true in Georgian England, which is maybe not a connection we often make between then and now, but. But how they went about it is a bit different. Right. Auctions are not so much what we talk about today, but is the subject of our discussion in this episode. So I'm very pleased to welcome both of the authors, As I said, Dr. Sarah Pannell and Professor John Stobart to the podcast to tell us about their book. Sarah and John, thank you both so much for being here.
- [01:16]
B
Thank you for having us.
- [01:18]
A
Could we start off with some introductions? Perhaps John, you'd like to go first?
- [01:22]
C
Sure. I'm John Stobart. I'm a professor of history at Manchester Metropolitan University and a long standing interest in consumption, retailing, shopping, and this is a sort of an outcome from that long interest.
- [01:40]
B
And I'm Sarah Pennell. I'm now an independent scholar, but I've been working mostly on food and the material cultures of food in the 17th and 18th centuries. That sounds like a ways away from auctioning, but. But perhaps we'll get to the route I travelled to get to this point in a bit.
- [02:07]
A
Yes. In fact, I would love to go there to some extent now in terms of how you two came together to write this book particularly.
- [02:16]
B
Yes. Well, I was invited many moons ago by John to contribute a chapter to one of his earlier books on the theme of secondhand circulation and retail in early modern Europe. And from that we realized that we both had interests in the secondhand sector. Mine came through the purchasing of kitchen equipment, which was a really big part of the second hand market in household goods. So we then sort of tried to get some funding, failed. But we realised in the end that we had enough material and wanted to put this Together to present what we hope is an alternative and important contribution to debates around consumption and retail in the Georgian period.
- [03:15]
C
Yeah, I think that's really nice. It's a sort of a triumph over adversity, as it were. We don't need funding. We can write a good book regardless of that. And I think particularly the focus on auction allows us to do an awful lot in terms of challenging some of the maybe misunderstandings about secondhand in this sort of period and the broader kind of emphasis on newness and on fashion and on novelty, which kind of pervades the literature on the 18th century and particularly on consumption.
- [03:50]
B
And I think there's a practicality too in that we both bring different things to the table. John is very much hotter on the quantitative material than I am, and I'm perhaps a little bit more touchy feely in my approach. So I think together, you know, we are a sum greater than the parts.
- [04:12]
A
Yeah, that definitely sounds like the good makings of a team. And I'd love to pick up on this sort of myths and misunderstandings aspect, John, that you just mentioned, because one of the things that I especially enjoy in books, kind of regardless of what period of history they're looking at, is when they're doing some myth busting. So can you tell us about what some of those misunderstandings are that you're both pushing back on in this book?
- [04:35]
C
Sure. There's the broad emphasis on kind of novelty and fashion that I mentioned a moment ago, and therefore a need to look more at things like secondhand exchange in order to get a better idea of the kind of the how, the why, the what of people's consumption of what they bought, what they owned during this period. But particularly within what's been written about the second hand trade at this time, there are two things that we're kind of pushing back on. The first is the misunderstanding that people bought secondhand goods essentially because they couldn't afford to buy new things. It's a kind of a financial necessity argument. And that's a kind of a thing that links into supply side problems. Manufacturers aren't able to produce enough new goods to satisfy demand at prices that people can afford. So they're forced to buy secondhand things because that's all that's available, that's all they can afford. So that's one thing that we're kind of arguing against. And that specifically turns on a kind of a debate within the clothing industry that there's a sector of the population who are relatively wealthy. They're increasingly driven by Ideas of fashion and ideas of novelty and what they're then disposing of gets picked up by a poor section within society who are kind of living off the remains of this kind of set of prime consumers, as it were. And we're arguing that really isn't the case, particularly with household goods. It just doesn't work like that at all. And the second kind of myth, or the second thing we're trying to challenge here is that secondhand exchange is something that was there in early modern times, through the 18th century maybe persisted a little bit, but by the 19th century it's fading away because industrial revolution, there's lots of new goods available. People just don't need to buy secondhand things anymore. So they don't. And again, in reality, we're saying it's very different from that. Secondhand household goods particularly continue to be bought and sold. Auctions happening right the way through to the present day. They're not maybe as important as they were in terms of auctions, but there are auctions they continue through. So there's those two ideas that we've really been kind of pushing back on.
- [07:10]
A
Okay, that's very helpful to have laid out because that clarifies very much kind of the overarching arguments of the details that you include in the book to kind of help us see how that is very much the case. And Sarah, to your point earlier, you both go about this in sort of a variety of different ways. We have some quantitative stuff. We have, as you said, some sort of touchy feely things, but we're also looking kind of at some big picture aspects, like the entire sort of sector of this part of the economy. We're also drilling down into some very sort of individual objects as well. And certainly there's interludes in the books, in the book about, as I said, right, individual objects. So going from the big right down to the small. Can you tell us maybe what those objects are and why you chose those to feature?
- [07:57]
B
Yes, well, that was a fun part of the book. We wanted to be able to use a set of objects and texts to, as you say, drill down into some of the key features of, of how and why people and objects engaged in this secondhand circulation. We chose the objects on the basis of them sort of representing a range of the sort of materials we were using, from text and images to the actual objects themselves. So we've got an auction catalogue which was one of our key sources from the Reverend Tonnings Sale. The nice thing about that auction catalog is it's Annotated with the prices that were realized at the sale. So you get a sense of, you know, what was, what was for sale, the status of the goods being sold. And John will talk about that, I'm sure, in a bit, but also how the sale went, which is, you know, a key part of the success or failure of auctioneering as a. As a trade in this period. We've got the, you know, the iconic writing desk of Jane Austen, one of two she is believed to have owned. But the nice thing about that is that we can trace it to an extent in the business records of the auctioneer, cabinet maker, etc. John Ring, who supplied the Austin household. So we get there a relationship between the type of consumer. George Austin, Jane Austen's father, you know, was a clergyman who had to show a front of respectability, but was often not very well, you know, had difficulties with income flow. Let us say we have a trade card and we talk a lot about how auctioneers presented themselves, presented their services to potential clients and buyers through the expanding media of advertising. Our fourth object is a fabulous table purchased at one of the most legendary auction sales of the period, one of the Fonthill sales. This is a big, lavish sale of goods from Fonthill Abbey in that we're able to look at the more elite purchases at auctions, why they're going to auctions, what they're buying, why they might be buying it. And it's also shedding a light the more elaborate auctions that are going on at the same time. We're interested in a much more sort of quotidian auction practice, both in cities like London and in the provinces. Our fifth object is a. Is a painting of an interior which still pretty much survives, but features a sofa in Thomas Carlyle's house, which fortunately we have the correspondence of his wife, Jane Carlisle, and her talking about trying to find a secondhand sofa. The secondhand sofa she buys, how she pimps it, if you will, to make it fit into their lifestyle. And again, that's looking at the, you know, what resources she had, where she was looking for that secondhand sofa. We were able to identify who she purchased it from. And also, you know, you know, her joy in some respects at being able to find this bargain, but also make it a comfortable and personal item within her household.
- [12:12]
A
I mean, those objects alone, even just the quick introductions to them you've given us there really goes a long way towards dispelling these myths. John, you mentioned earlier of kind of, this is something people only do when they're desperate, right? You Know, being excited about a sofa doesn't really sound like desperation, so that's helpful to have established. And clearly we need to talk more about these auctions, right, because they're coming up sort of multiple times in our conversation. So perhaps talking about those sort of quotidian ones. Sarah, as you mentioned, can we talk about kind of how second hand household goods were sold at this point? Like, where were these auctions happening? When was it happening? Like, I had kind of assumed going into the book that it would be sort of after someone died. But is that the case? What do these look like?
- [12:57]
C
So I think if we take the last of those questions first, the when they happened. Probably most auctions are after somebody has died. So they're kind of, they're post mortem auctions. And the circumstances there can vary quite tremendously as to how wealthy or how relatively poor a person might be and therefore the sorts of goods that might be there. But there are other reasons why an auction might take place. I suppose the three obvious ones are bankruptcy. So if somebody's declared bankrupt and they're kind of realizing their assets in order to pay off creditors, and we see those being advertised in the press, there are what we call distraint auctions where somebody isn't able to pay their rent, so their goods are sort of seized and sold off underneath them, as it were, entirely involuntary. And those are some of the more distressing events, obviously for very clear reasons, I think. And there are also auctions where they seem to have happened simply because somebody was moving house, always giving up housekeeping, and maybe in effect retiring and going living with a relative. So they didn't need their house, their household goods, so they were being sold off at that point. So there are various reasons that might prompt an auction. But I think the kind of the post mortem situation is by far the most common in terms of other sort of mechanisms for secondhand exchange. The auctions I think we've focused on, and that's because we think they're particularly important, particularly revealing of processes. But there are various other options available as well. Pawn brokers selling unredeemed pledges, private transactions, some of them very, very informal, some of them advertised in the newspapers. But auction's very much the principal mechanism, especially I think, for household goods.
- [15:10]
A
Okay, yeah, that's definitely helpful to understand. When you say advertised, what does that mean? Like, how well known were these auctions? Was it sort of buried in the back pages or was it something that like would show up in popular cartoons and literature as sort of a thing everyone knew about.
- [15:28]
C
So I think there's. There's two questions there, aren't there, Miranda. One is how they might be advertised. And I can say more about that presently, or I can say that now, but they're advertising newspapers. And very often the advertisements are sometimes even on the front page of newspapers. These are not things that are kind of hidden away in the depths of a newspaper. There's plenty of information there. But also, auctions are a very familiar part of everybody's life. Somebody's been involved in an auction, they visited an auction. Friends or family have been involved as well. So they're very familiar things. And they're very familiar things from literature, from kind of visual portrayals as well. And that's certainly something which focused very much in the first chapter of the book, which Sarah might want to say a little bit more about.
- [16:26]
B
I think it's important to recognize that auctions were not a brand new phenomenon in the 18th century. But what is happening across the period that we're looking at is a cementing of auctioneering as a recognizable part of everyday life, if you will. We know that because it's beginning to seep into some of the literary and cultural texts and images that were popular. And you only use a setting like an auction or particular auctioneers in those cartoons or novels or poems because they're going to be recognisable to your reader or viewer. So auctions are becoming part of the cultural language, if you will, of 18th century England. Yes, the dominant sort of setting is the London auction and the famous passages in Fanny Burney's novels, particularly Evelina, where the beau monde are going to an auction just to sort of while away the languorous hours of the leisured classes. But we also see the auction appearing in satirical cartoons, particularly around crunch points in the relationship between the Crown and the state. The Crown and people you know about selling off of the assets of the Crown. Very famous cartoon in 1762, around the young George III's management of his household, for example. But we also get more positive representations of the auctioneering process through, as I've said before, things like trade cards, which are not as common as the adverts John was talking about in newspapers, but are part and parcel of that expansion of media that people are consuming, consuming in ways that they didn't in the beginning of the 17th century, and which are familiarizing them with the language of retail, the language of persuasion, and in which auctioneers are also representing themselves as a. I'm using this term somewhat anachronistically but professional service. And one of the important things we wanted to get across is the book was that, you know, although auctioneering as a practice existed long before the 18th century, auctioneers as a professional service is a new thing in the 18th century. These are new men and they're mostly men, although there are some nice female examples in Scotland who are becoming a service for people in a way that a hairdresser was a service, or an attorney or a solicitor was a service. And it's quite interesting to see those self representations in trade cards in particular to understand that growth of sort of where are they positioning themselves as, you know, professional men in this very Changeable environment in 18th century England of what it was to be genteel or to be, you know, respectable, to be credit worthy as well.
- [20:24]
A
Yeah, I think this is a really interesting aspect of it because as you've mentioned, right, auctioneers show up in caricatures. But that's obviously like by definition a sort of overly generalized portrait of the profession. And given, as you mentioned, sort of how much things were changing, like who actually were these people? Like how did one become an auctioneer? If it's sort of developing differently than it had been as a profession? What were the pathways into it?
- [20:49]
B
Yes, I think it's something that.
- [20:53]
A
We.
- [20:53]
B
Were really keen to explore. Where are these people coming from? So the earliest, what we might call professional auctioneers are emerging in the late 17th century and they are selling, it seems, art and books. But actually we drill down a little bit and realize that someone like Thomas Millington, who is often regarded as one of the first auctioneers, between his second hand book selling, for which he's most renowned, he was also dabbling in general sales of household goods in London. So you have got somebody who is sort of realizing that actually, you know, the way he is selling one commodity could work for another commodity. And I think that's important in the sort of what we were we looked at in terms of, you know, where did some of our later auctioneers that we look at in detail come from? And we were keen also to look at those auctioneers outside of the London bubble. So there are some very famous auctioneers, obviously there is James Christie, he is, you know, the auctioneer of auctioneers. But we were able to trace the careers of several other provincial auctioneers. And what's interesting about them is that they're coming out of other trades or combining auctioneering with at least one other trade. And the popular ones we identified were furniture making or cabinet making, undertakers and upholders. Now That's a, those are terms. So an undertaker is obviously somebody who dealt in funerals and managing post mortem situations in households. And that often included appraising the goods of the deceased person. And it's a small step then to saying, well, I've given you some valuations on these goods. Would you like me to sell them for you? Upholders were originally dealers in mostly bedding. They were the people who made and sold mattresses and your sort of upholstered goods. Again, because there was a lively secondhand market in those goods, they perhaps saw an opportunity to move into this burgeoning auction environment. But we've also got some quite random combinations. I think we found one, you know, there's one that's an auctioneer and a coal merchant, for example. So I think it was about sort of thinking, if you were a, you know, a prospective auctioneer, thinking about how you might combine what you're doing now with this new, new type of. Not new type, but a, you know, different type of retail and how that might serve your local economy. And in the case of one of our case studies, James White, who was an auctioneer in early 19th century Dorking, he definitely spotted a gap in the market in the, the first couple of decades of the 19th century and filled it very, very well for over 100 years.
- [24:27]
C
And I think it's quite interesting how entrepreneurial, again, rather anachronistic term perhaps, but how entrepreneurial some of these auctioneers are. One of the interludes, we focus on the trade card of David county, who's an auctioneer and sworn appraiser. So again, it's that kind of two jobs in one, but very closely linked. But he's also offering some interesting services for his potential clients in as much as he says on his trade card that he will advance money on security of the goods he's going to sell, so the person will get money in advance of the sale. So the risk is almost on the auctioneer rather than on the, on the seller. So they're quite kind of enterprising in that sense.
- [25:16]
A
Yeah, that is really interesting to see kind of so far back in time that we may not think that these things are happening, but clearly they are. What then is sort of the business of auctioneering? I mean, we've mentioned trade cards, we've mentioned kind of having the multiple jobs, but like, say you are one of those auctioneers, like how does that business actually work?
- [25:35]
B
So obviously you have to start by finding goods to sell, otherwise you cannot sell them. And again, John just mentioned David Cowty in that, you know, that he was a sworn appraiser appraising goods, which was part of the process, particularly in post mortem situations, tied up with the submission of probate. So in estates worth more than five pounds, you should have an inventory made of your goods that gave a valuation of your goods and chattels. So appraisers are the people who come into households and do that for you. That also gives you an entree into perhaps offering to sell the goods. But obviously, you know, as John mentioned earlier on, there were other situations in which people sought to give up housekeeping, retire to a smaller property. And in those situations, you know, obviously they are looking for somebody responsible to sell the goods that they don't want to take with them and to obviously achieve the best possible price for those. And that's one of the mechanisms we need to sort of think about here, is that, you know, you could sell directly to in a private transaction for a, you know, agreed price, no auction necessary. That was quite. That was. That did happen. But obviously there is an allure to the auction process that you might get more from your goods because of the bidding process. And I'm sure we've come to, you know, the environment of the auction, what it was like to attend one in a little while. So the auctioneer, you know, has secured the goods, then he needs to advertise that he is taking, he's undertaking this sale. That's where the newspaper adverts come in. It's where also in more provincial sales, it's still quite common to advertise sales through handbills handed out in the marketplace on market day, posted up on walls. We've got some very good examples of those from the James White Collection down in Dorking and also actually cried. So the town crier, we think of that as a sort of oldie worldy figure. But the town crier is still a very active part of the communication systems of Georgian England. So the town crier would cry the sale. He would tell the people in the marketplace that a sale was going on in seven days time at the house of Joe blocks down the road. Then also the auctioneer has to hope that the sale is going to go well because otherwise he's not going to make any money out of it. After 1777, I think I've got that right. There is a duty to pay on auctions by the auctioneer to the state. So there's that to pay out. Obviously the vendors or the vendor's family are expecting some return and there is commission to be charged and that varies, but it's around 5% of the goods sold. So you want to have a good sale so that you're going to actually make some money because you've made, you've, you've had expenses as the auctioneer. You've paid for those handbills, you've paid for the crier, you've paid for the catalogues, you're going to pay for some entertainment at the auction. Auction. So you want them, you know, return. And that's where the, if you like, the performative aspect of auctioneering comes in. To be a good auctioneer you need to have, as I'm sure we're all familiar with, if we watch Flog it or Bargain Hunt the patter, you need to be able to rouse the attending crowd to want to bid on the items that are up for sale. So it's a really interesting mixture of sort of, you know, very sort of hard headed business, if you will, the advertising, you know, ensuring that the goods are, you know, there and you know, ready for sale. But also theater in the, in the business of auctioneering.
- [30:29]
A
Yeah, that is a really interesting combination. And as you said, of course it has to actually sell things. So what sorts of items tended to work best to sell at an auction? And of course that's probably not something that's kind of the same over the whole period you look at. So does that change?
- [30:45]
C
To an extent we can certainly see some changes, but because a lot of the sales are what we might now term house clearances. So it's pretty much everything that the person owned is being sold, not generally clothing. These household auctions don't often include clothing, but other than that they cover almost all the contents within a house. So bedsteads and feather beds, chests of drawers, chairs and tables, household linen, sofas, curtains, carpets, tableware, kitchenware, brewing equipment, garden furniture, cucumber frames. The list's endless. And what changes there are tend to reflect changes in the sorts of things that people would have in their home. So as homes change through the course of the 18th and into the 19th century, so of course the things being sold off, when those households are kind of broken up and, and dispersed in this way, they change as well. And I think we've focused on various things in the book to sort of emphasize this transition, this change over time. And I maybe highlight just a couple of those here. The first comes in terms of things that reflect a shift in sort of domestic social practices. That's to do with comfortable, convenient rooms, places that are good to sort of socialize in. In a relatively informal way. And that becomes increasing, a kind of a mode of domestic behavior in the kind of third quarter of the 18th century, particularly towards the end of the 18th century. So as a result of that, what we see in auctions in the late part of the 18th century, when those kind of households are being broken up, sold off, are things like occasional tables, little Pembroke tables, things like that, sofas, easy chairs, carpets, things that make the room comfortable and convenient. And they'd be in a parlor or a drawing room, I suppose. And alongside that we see a growing number of pianos which are central, particularly in the early part of the 19th century. Central to a lot of domestic sort of sociability. Classically, the daughter will play the piano, somebody will sing. That's the kind of the evening's entertainment. And of course card tables, because playing cards is another essential form of entertainment for the evening. And not necessarily gambling, just playing cards, maybe for token amounts of money. But having a special table, specialist card table, would be important for doing that. So there's those sorts of new things start to emerge in the sales as they become more important within people's homes. The second kind of transition or the second new thing we see is in terms of some new types of raw materials. And I think a good example of that is the wood from which furniture is made. So in the early 18th century, the amount of furniture that's being sold that's made from walnuts and mahogany is about equal. They'll appear in maybe half the sales that are advertised each by the end of the 18th century. Walnut's very much fallen out of fashion, seen in very, very few sales, whereas mahogany is pretty much ubiquitous, almost to the point that it's not worth mentioning that the furniture is mahogany. You just know it will be. And what we do see then is the introduction or you start to see mentions of other forms of tropical hardwood. So rosewood, Brazil wood, zebra wood, satin wood, things that are just a little bit different from mahogany. Distinguishing your house, some of the people's, because you've got something that's slightly different. So those sorts of things come in and I think reflecting wider changes in taste, but also in world trade, the shipping over the Atlantic, particularly of these sort of hardwoods. So mahogany and all of the woods coming from the Caribbean and South America and are changing the way in which furniture is made, the ways in which rooms appear. And that feeds through to sales. So the type of things maybe isn't changing too much. Certainly the materials and certainly the emphasis in their Use is changing and we see that, as I said, in the auctions, they're selling what people own, so as what people own changes. So of course the sales do as well.
- [36:13]
A
Yeah, that's really interesting to think about because I think some of those changes sort of would make sense even just from watching period dramas, for instance, around, as you said, they kind of dot or playing the piano type thing. But thinking about sort of what things are made out of might otherwise slip under the radar. Which makes this kind of investigation very helpful. When you mentioned, though, the kind of number of things that could be at an auction, like it did sound like quite a long list. So how did potential customers know what the options were? Did they just sort of turn up to an auction and wander around? Like, how did that work? Maybe if you went and you knew, oh, there's going to be a card table, great. But like, how did the sort of customers know what the options were and sort of decide whether or not to attend based on that?
- [36:57]
C
So as Sarah was saying this before, the auctions were advertised in a number of ways. So Sarah was mentioning the criers and the handbills, and particularly handbills will give some information about the nature of the goods that are available. But it's really the newspaper advertisements that do a little bit of that, because they will not only say where an auction is taking place or when it is taking place, and often, as you've said, they're long lists of goods. So often these sales are two or three, sometimes seven, eight days if it's a particularly large household that's being dispersed. So the newspaper advertisements will tell people when and where they'll say who the auctioneer was, because that kind of gives an idea of the quality maybe of the auction. They also sometimes tell you who was the previous owner, because again, that might reassure about the quality. Then they also have a sort of a, if you like, a summary of the things that are available, so people get an idea of the kinds of things that might be there. But I think crucially, in terms of the question you are asking is that they then give information about where catalogues are available. And with the duty coming in, there was also an obligation to produce catalogues for any sort of anything like a substantial sale. So catalogs are always available, usually from the auctioneer, sometimes from bookshops, sometimes from inns, particularly in provincial country house sales, shall we say, they're very often available at inns as well. And of course, the auction catalogs provide a huge amount more detail in terms of what's available. Generally, they're organized room by room. So as a potential auction goer. You can almost walk around the house and see the rooms in your mind. Obviously, you can see the rooms and what they contain. Which is really useful, I think, in terms not only of I want a card table. Are there card tables there? But what is the card table placed alongside in the catalogue. And therefore in the room? So I want a card table. Oh, they've also got a Pembroke table. Maybe I ought to have a Pembroke table as well. Which is a little kind of side table. So they're useful in terms of promoting the sale as a whole. The sale of particular lots. But maybe also the association between certain lots. And therefore encouraging people to go along. And as Sarah was saying, the more people you have going along to a sale. That the keener the sale is likely to be. There'll be more bidding. The price will go higher. And everybody wins as a result. The auctioneer gets the higher payment. The family that's selling the things gets a higher return. So there's really quite a lot of information available. And of course, we shouldn't forget that probably most people who go to an auction. Have been to an auction in the past. So they kind of know what sorts of things are available, how it's going to work. They can probably read the catalogues and advertisements. To get an idea of the relative quality of things. And whether this is an auction that I want to go to. So there's really quite a lot of information available.
- [40:55]
B
The other thing to add in there is many auctions are actually taking place in situ. So in the house of the gentleman leaving off housekeeping. Or in the house of the late Earl of whatchamacallit. So you've. You've got the possibility, particularly in. In larger centers. To go and look before the auction takes place. And actually wander around these spaces. Seeing the items in situ as well. So there's that vicarious journey through. Through the catalogue. But if you're able to, you can. There was. There were usually at least a couple of weeks between. Of viewing the goods before the auction took place. And I think it's important to note that this is again, part of the business of the auctioneer is if they can sell in situ. That reduces their cost. They do not have to take the goods somewhere else. They do not have to store them. There's some interesting little details about the people they have to employ. To make sure the goods don't get stolen from the house in question. But again, it's part of perhaps the appeal of going to an auction is you're doing a little bit of possibly sort of house viewing as well. There are auctioneers who of course do develop their own auction rooms. James Christie is the obvious example in Pall Mall. But that's quite a late development and really only the most prestigious auctioneers are offering, you know, their luxurious auction rooms for the sale of goods. And that would possibly be more for those, you know, sort of more elite items would be sort of packaged up to go to sale at Christie's auction room.
- [43:02]
A
I mean, this all sounds very much like an experience. And Sarah, you mentioned earlier sort of entertainers sometimes in theater. So would someone go to an auction even if they weren't going to buy anything? Like, was this just kind of a thing someone might do on a random day if they felt like it?
- [43:19]
B
Oh, absolutely. You know, we've got stories of people, you know, taken from, you know, some interesting sources from the Old Bailey criminal court records, for example, say, you know, I just happened to be walking past, there was an auction taking place. I went in, it was raining, you know, that sort of thing. And it was a spectacle. It was a spectacle because obviously you have got the objects there, you've got the, you know, the patter of the auctioneer. You've got the thrill of the beards, you know, ringing out around the room. You know, it's quite quick fire stuff. Even though these auctions are often taking place over several days, you might want to attend just to watch the paintings go up for sale or you might want to be, you know, go and see, you know, you know, what the bedding of the Countess of, you know, Dover looked like. So they are sort of events for, I suppose you might even call it sort of, you know, material voyeurism. But they are also events, community events. So if we move outside of cities like London, you know, those, the more provincial and rural auction sales are something that, you know, attracts people because there's, you know, beer and tobacco on offer. There's, you know, a degree of community support going on, particularly in those cases that John mentioned earlier where the goods are being sold because the family's in need or a distraint sale, you know, the community will come along and bid for items to ensure that there is, you know, a return for the, you know, the bereaved family. They are, you know, events in which, you know, you can, I mean, a bit like going to a feint, I suppose. You know, they're about coming together, supporting the community, you know, buying something you might not want. There's A. You know, there's a lovely portrayal of an auction in George Eliot's Middlemarch. You know, although it was written in 16 in the 1870s, it's, you know, depicting a community in the 1830s. And you see the interaction which she acutely understands between, you know, the rather bumptious auctioneer Borthrop Trumbull and the people he is persuading. And, boy, does he persuade them to buy things they really don't want or need. You know, offender, you know, a. A tray of, you know, bits and.
- [46:10]
C
Pieces.
- [46:13]
B
And, you know, there's a tent set up on the lawn for refreshments. You know, it's a big deal in Middlemarch.
- [46:21]
A
Yeah, that definitely sounds like a very full day out or even days out. So thank you for giving us a sense of kind of what it would have been like to experience auctions at this point. I certainly found that an intriguing and surprising aspect of reading this book, to really be sort of taken back in time in that way. Is there anything else about this book, anything that surprised either of you that we want to add in, or anything else you hope readers take away from it that we want to conclude our discussion with?
- [46:51]
C
I think one of the key things comes sort of in the last chapter of the book where we talk about the motivations for people attending and buying from auctions. So there is this. This sort of social aspect to them. Absolutely. But we return in that chapter, I think, to think about this kind of myth that people are buying secondhand things because they have to, from financial necessity. And I think you'll have got the idea from what we've been talking about over the last few minutes that that clearly is the case in some instances, but very often there are lots of other reasons that people are buying things secondhand. This idea of getting a bargain, I think, is particularly important. So you're not buying secondhand because you need to. It's the only way you can afford to buy something. But because you're getting something that's better value, in a sense, you get something, a good quality item at a fraction of the cost that it would be when new. Of course, that involves you being able to judge both the quality of the item and the price that you're happy to pay. And we've got some nice examples of people who go along to auctions. Parson Woodford, he's a vicar in rural Norfolk. He goes along to an auction and buys two items, but doesn't buy a third because the price went higher than he was willing to bid. And That's a really important aspect of this notion of getting a bargain or being thrifty, that you need to know when not to bid as well as when you do bid. So thrift, a bargain is an important kind of motivation. And I think also we find that secondhand goods, particularly certain sorts of secondhand goods, provide you with an opportunity to distinguish yourself. You've got things that are not just kind of run of the mill. That might come in terms of collectible things like books or paintings, but it might also come in terms of certain sorts of porcelain chinaware. And we see descriptions of things being old and rare appealing to this idea of, oh, I could get something that's a little bit different, not quite antiques and the antique market, which develops kind of early part of the 19th century. But it's things that people can buy that distinguish themselves. It's a little bit like a lot of people buying these days, vintage things that they're not just mainstream run of the mill things. It's a little bit different. And there are those sorts of motivations, I think, visible in what people are buying at these auctions as well.
- [49:50]
B
I think we also, you know, the people are buying more things. I mean, this is the simple version of the consumer revolution argument, isn't it? People are gathering in their households more stuff. But in order to make that stuff sort of legible, you. You want to, as John said, you know, create some distinction. But what I found interesting was the degree to which people might be sort of cycling through stuff. They're not just buying it once and then leaving it to, you know, a later generation. They might sell it off and replace it with something newer, more modern or neat or genteel. So we shouldn't underestimate the appetite amongst particularly middling consumers for, you know, primping, if you will, their household interiors without having to go through a wholesale change and without having to pay top dollar. And I think also we should nevertheless still understand that goods, furniture, bedding, et cetera, held a value that's important. We might not consider that today that, you know, that our household goods have a value that we can realize. But I think across the period that we're looking at, that is still a very important factor, you know, both in terms of people selling their stuff at auction, but also people going to buy. They want to purchase something that still holds value. So if they then choose to sell it on again, they're going to not have, you know, purchased a dud.
- [51:49]
A
Yeah, that's definitely a key element to add. So thank you each for Putting that in. And there's so many links, I think, to kind of still how people think today about buying things, which is always fun to see across such a span of time. Moving on then, though, from this book, as a final question, are either of you working on anything at the moment you'd like to give us a sneak preview of?
- [52:11]
B
I am working on a book very different about the 17th century and about women who worked, but who were educated. So your middling educated woman who could read, write, perhaps speak a, a bit of French, play a musical instrument. What were they doing? How were they earning a living? So I'm looking at school mistresses, I'm looking at upper servants in elite households, you know, and looking at the, the, the, the life histories of some women who made these roles, you know, a career rather than as a stopping point before they got married and had children and families. So that's what I'm working on at the moment.
- [52:58]
C
And I'm kind of taking auctions on holiday with me in terms of extending this kind of interest in auctions and secondhand into the Caribbean and looking at auctions in Jamaica as part of the more general domestic material culture, supply chains, consumption practices within urban society, mostly in 18th century Jamaica. Again, trying to push back against some of the stereotypes of very brash, tasteless planters, very moneyed, and looking at some of the more inverted commas, ordinary people that are populating Jamaica, in particular Kingston during this time.
- [53:51]
A
Well, both of you certainly sound like you have interesting projects to be getting on with. And of course, while you are doing that, listeners can read the book that we've been discussing titled Auctions and the Consumption of Secondhand Goods in Georgian England, published by Bloomsbury in 2026. Sarah and John, thank you both so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [54:09]
B
Thank you very much for having us.
- [54:11]
C
Thank you indeed. Thank. You. Sa.