The authorities were exasperated that he declined to pay even lip-service to the class structure, and went so far as to claim that all men and women are equal. To give tangible form to his thoroughly modern message, Fox addressed everyone as ‘thou’, not the more respectful ‘you’ that others used to acknowledge the upper classes. He rejected any outward signs of status or authority. Regardless of wealth, a person should dress simply, with restraint and without extravagance. As for the doffing of hats to indicate respect for those of higher rank, in his Journal he made his position completely clear: a Quaker kept his hat on.
In 1649 Fox crossed one magistrate too many, and was thrown into jail in Nottingham, ‘a pitiful stinking place, where the wind brought in all the stench of the house’. The following year he was jailed for blasphemy in Derby, where a Justice is believed to have been the first to use the term ‘Quaker’, to mock Fox and his followers. He scoffed at the idea expressed in their meetings that they should remain silent until moved to speak, ‘trembling at the word of God’. Despite its origins as a term of abuse, the name ‘Quaker’ soon became widespread.
Fox was imprisoned several times, but the Quaker movement continued to gain momentum. It is estimated that during the reign of Charles II, 198 Quakers were transported overseas as slaves, 338 died from injuries received defending their faith, and 13,562 were imprisoned. Among them were some of Richard and George’s fore-bears, including one Richard Tapper Cadbury, a wool comber who was held in Southgate prison in Exeter in 1683 and again in February 1684.
By the end of Fox’s life in 1691 there were 100,000 Quakers, and the movement had spread to America, parts of Europe and even the West Indies. Fox had established a system of regular meetings for Friends to discuss issues and formalise business: the regional Monthly Meeting, the county Quarterly Meeting and a national Yearly Meeting. Key decisions made at these meetings were written down, and these records became known as the Advices. By 1738 they had been collated by clerks, transcribed in elegant longhand, and bound in a green manuscript volume, Christian and Brotherly Advices, which was made available to Friends’ Meetings across the country. This set out codes of personal conduct for Friends, under such headings as ‘Love’, ‘Covetousness’ and ‘Discipline’. A section on ‘Plainness’, for example, encouraged Quakers to cultivate ‘plainness of speech, behaviour and apparel’. A Friend’s clothing should be dark and unadorned; even collars should be removed from jackets, as they were deemed too decorative.
The strict rules of the Quakers dictated that anyone who married outside the society had to leave. Consequently, Quaker families tended to intermarry, resulting in a close-knit community across Britain of several thousand families. Generations of Quakers had come through years of persecution and suffering with a sense of solidarity, and these bonds were also forged by friendship, marriage, apprenticeships and business. As the Industrial Revolution was gathering speed, this solidarity and self-reliance generated a new spirit of enterprise. At a time when there was no such thing as a national newspaper, the Quakers meeting regularly in different regions across Britain enjoyed a unique forum in which to exchange ideas.
In 1709 Abraham Darby, a Quaker from Shropshire, pioneered a method of smelting high-grade iron using coke rather than charcoal. His son, Abraham Darby II, improved the process, replacing the traditional horse pumps with steam engines to recycle water, and refining techniques for making quality wrought iron. The Darbys manufactured the world’s first iron bridge, iron railway tracks and wheels at their foundry at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Their roaring furnaces drew visitors from miles around to observe the striking spectacle of flame, smoke and machine. The younger Darby’s daughter wrote in 1753 that the noise of ‘the stupendous bellows’ was ‘awful to hear’.
Such advances fuelled the development of the iron industry, which drove the wheels of the Industrial Revolution. In Sheffield, the Quaker inventor Benjamin Huntsman developed a purer and stronger form of cast steel. The Lloyds, a Welsh Quaker family, moved to Birmingham to create a factory for making iron rods and nails. In Bristol, a Quaker cooperative launched the Bristol Brass Foundry. By the early eighteenth century Quakers ran approximately two-thirds of all British ironworks.
Railways accelerated the pace of change, and a Quaker was responsible for the world’s first passenger train. In 1814 a meeting with the engineer George Stephenson inspired Edward Pease, a Quaker businessman, to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and on 27 September 1825 the first steam-hauled passenger train travelled twelve miles to Stockton on what became known as the ‘Quaker Line’. Numerous Quakers were involved in financing and directing railway companies. Even the railway ticket and stamping machine was devised by a Quaker, Thomas Edmonson, as was the timetable itself, Bradshaw’s Railway Times, devised by George Bradshaw.
There seemed no limit to the number of new ideas from Quaker businessmen. Chinaware, originally imported by the East India Company, sparked developments in pottery and porcelain. In Plymouth, William Cookworthy introduced a new way to make fine china using Cornish china clay. In Staffordshire, Josiah Wedgwood launched his pottery business. Enduring shoe businesses were founded by Quakers: K shoes in Kendall by John Somervell, and James Clark in Street in Somerset established the firm that still bears his name. The Reckitts started their business in household goods, while the Crosfields were soap and chemical manufacturers whose company evolved into Lever Brothers. The roll call of Quaker entrepreneurs resounds through the centuries, with names like Bryant and May, who designed a safer form of matches; Huntley and Palmer, who started a biscuit business in Reading; and Allen and Hanbury, who developed pharmaceuticals.
Banking too was built on Quaker virtue. At a time of little financial regulation, according to the writer Daniel Defoe the activities of many eighteenth-century financiers were ‘founded in Fraud, born of Deceit, nourished by Trick, Cheat, Wheedle, Forgeries, Falsehood’ (not totally dissimilar to some twenty-first-century banks, some might argue). The Quaker traders stood out as being quite different. Customers learned to rely on typical Quaker attributes: skilled bookkeeping, integrity and honesty served up by sober Bible-reading men in plain dark clothes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, local Quaker businesses began providing a counter in their offices that offered banking services. By the early nineteenth century this practice had blossomed into seventy-four Quaker banks, one for almost every large city in Britain: James Barclay formed Barclays Bank in London, Henry Gurney established Gurney’s Bank in Norwich, Edward Pease formed the Pease Bank in Darlington, Lloyd’s Bank was started in Birmingham, Backhouse’s Bank grew across the north, Birkbeck flourished in Yorkshire, the Foxes set up in Falmouth, the Sparkes in Exeter, and many more. By the time Richard and George Cadbury were born, Quaker banks, founded on a unique and trusted set of values, formed a solid network across the country.
Underpinning all this, the core Quaker beliefs and traditions, and the independence of spirit that went with them, flourished. As its members’ banks and businesses grew, the Society of Friends continued to exchange views in meetings across the country. The stoic independence, self-discipline and questioning rebelliousness fashioned over a century was now channelled into the spirit of enterprise that fuelled the furnaces and mills of the Industrial Revolution.
But there was something else unique that guided Quakers in business from the earliest days of the movement. The original Christian and Brotherly Advices of 1738 included a section on ‘Trading’. This highlighted situations that a Friend might encounter in business, and how to deal with them. It marks the foundation of business ethics built on truth, honesty and justice: values that would form the basis of Quaker capitalism.
Central to the advice was that a Quaker must always honour his word:
• That none launch forth into trading and worldly business beyond what they can manage honourably and with reputation among the Sons of Men, so that they may keep their word with all Men; that their yea may prove