Maitland: ‘Hub of the Hunter’ and ‘Capital of the North’ in the mid-1800s
The front page of the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser on Wednesday, 7 January 1852, tells a story about what Maitland had become by the middle of the nineteenth century. It was to all intents and purposes the only town of any note north of Sydney, and the Mercury was the only newspaper being published in the huge territory of northern New South Wales. Through the Mercury, Maitland served this massive area, from which the paper derived news and advertisements.
The reach of Maitland in 1852
The evidence of this orientation towards the far-flung regions of NSW is clear from the Mercury’s list of its ‘agents’ in 1852. It was an indicator of the ‘trade area’ or ‘hinterland’ of Maitland at that time.
The agents would have been business connections and correspondents contributing stories to the Mercury. Many on the list were operating from Hunter Valley locations including Cassilis, Murrurundi, Merriwa, Muswellbrook, Scone, Wollombi, Singleton and Jerrys Plains. Some were closer to Maitland, including Hinton, Raymond Terrace, Paterson, Clarence Town, Stroud and Newcastle, the last of which in the early 1850s had barely a quarter of the population of West Maitland, East Maitland and Morpeth combined. Taken together, the Maitlands and Morpeth were the ‘hub of the Hunter’ and the centre of the economy of the region. High St was the core of the Maitland empire.
A list of the Maitland Mercury’s agents, 7 January 1852.
Then there were agents from across the Great Dividing Range. These were listed in Tamworth, Armidale, Coolah, Coonabarabran, Carroll, Mudgee, Tenterfield and Tabulam and on the inland rivers - the Barwon and the Namoi, the Gwydir (the Moree area) and the Macintyre (which would soon become part of the border with Queensland). Closer to the coast there were agents on the Manning (Taree), the Macleay (Kempsey), the Hastings (Port Macquarie) and the Clarence (Grafton).
There were also agents well into what in 1859 became the separate colony of Queensland - on the Darling Downs (the Toowoomba area), in Ipswich, in Warwick and as far north as Gayndah, more than 300 kilometres north of Brisbane. Maitland had a trading role which extended far beyond the Hunter Valley: hence the title ‘Capital of the North’.
News items came from several of these places and their vicinities. On 7 January 1852’s front page alone there were items emanating from Dungowan (near Tamworth) and near Glen Innes: they were about horses which had been stolen or had strayed. Their owners wanted them back, and advertising in the Mercury was a potential means of achieving that goal.
The Mercury’s reach was parallelled by the reach of many retailing and wholesaling businesses, by businesses providing services of many kinds, and by a range of manufacturing and trade concerns catering to the needs of a far-flung clientele. This reach demonstrated the importance of Maitland as the second city of NSW in the middle of the nineteenth century. In commercial terms it dominated northern NSW. People from west of the Great Dividing Range came from great distances to spend their wool cheques, especially after the penetration inland of the railway line from the 1870s made travel so easy by comparison with the horse and cart in earlier times.
The link to Sydney
The advertisements for retail items in that 7 January edition of the Mercury also showed how strongly Maitland was tied to Sydney. Sydney firms advertised a range of wares from cordials and liqueurs to summer hats, and black and linseed oils.
But the longest list of items was from RM Robey of George St, Sydney: it took up more than a fifth of the front page and amounted to the full repertoire of a department store of the time. Included were dozens of items of ironmongery, earthenware and glass along with drugs, chemicals, tools, wine and sherry. All these things could be shipped from Sydney to Morpeth, after which they wound up in the shops of West Maitland. Many items would then be transported from those shops by cart and later rail to the distant corners of Maitland’s enormous hinterland.
High St
At EP Capper & Sons, the department store of the times and Maitland’s equivalent of Sydney’s Anthony Horderns, it was said you could buy anything from farm equipment to household furniture and kitchenware. As the interior of the colony was settled for farming and the railway developed from the late 1850s, people came to Maitland to shop from considerable distances - indeed from hundreds of kilometres away. They patronised Cappers and other emporia and the many smaller specialised stores in High St. There might have been more than 150 retail outlets in Maitland’s CBD by the late 1860s. The trade with people from the inland, flush with funds from selling their wool (which was much in demand in England), was central to Maitland’s retail economy.
David Cohen & Co and Galtons were other large and important stores in High St for decades.
Professional services provided by doctors, chemists, lawyers, surveyors and architects were also much in evidence. So were banks and hotels, and there were many tradespeople in High St and elsewhere in Maitland.
Workshops were also abundant as manufacturing took hold in the area: Duncan Sim’s iron foundry and machinery factory in Morpeth was a prominent example from the 1850s.
EP Capper & Sons, West Maitland, symbol of Maitland’s commercial power before 1890
(Sydney Illustrated News, 1878)
(John Turner slide collection, University of Newcastle Living Histories)
Maitland as ‘export’ and ‘import’ centre
The coming of the railway in the late 1850s, and its rapid extension thereafter into the interior of NSW, solidified Maitland’s role as an ‘export’ centre. Locally manufactured and household items were sent inland from Maitland. At the same time, the town’s role in funnelling the produce of the interior to Sydney (and then to Great Britain) was also enhanced. Maitland was central to very important two-way inter-regional trade.
In 1852, Maitland was near its commercial zenith.
References
Keys, Chas, ‘Our past: Maitland - Hunter hub and capital of the north’, Maitland Mercury, 21 April 2023.
Maitland Mercury.
Rudkin, Val, Who? What? Where? People of 19th Century High Street Maitland, Maitland and District Historical Society, 2015.
Turner, John, The Rise of High Street: a pictorial history, Council of the City of Maitland, 2nd ed., 1989.
Walsh, B and Archer, C, Maitland On the Hunter 2nd ed., CB Alexander Foundation, Tocal, 2007.
Wilton, Janis, ‘David Cohen & Co, Maitland’, Views of Maitland: Site S6, 19 November 2009.
Wilton, Janis, ‘My father was born here…’, A Conspicuous Object: The Maitland Hospital, September 2021. On the Capper family and business.
