Load (unit)
The load, also known as a fodder, fother, and charrus, is a historic English unit of weight or mass of various amounts, depending on the era, the substance being measured, and where it was being measured. The term was in use by the 13th century, and disappeared with legislation from the 1820s onwards. Modern equivalents of historical weights and measures are often very difficult to determine, and figures given here should be treated with caution.
Etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "fother" is derived from:Lead load
In very general terms, a "load" or "fother" of metallic lead was approximately or exactly equal to one long ton of 2240 lbs, also equal to approximately one tonne. Fothers have been recorded from 2184 lbs to 2520 lbs.According to the Tractatus de Ponderibus et Mensuris, a memorandum of Edward I, the load of metallic lead was 30 fotmals, 175 stone, or 2,100 Merchant pounds.
In Derbyshire up to the 13th century a fother of lead is recorded of 1680 lbs or 15 long hundredweight , and likewise in Devon a load of lead weighed the same. An Act of Parliament stated that a fodder or fother of lead was one long ton, or 20 cwt.
Miners of lead ore in Yorkshire in the late 17th century used a fodder of, on the assumption that the ore when smelted weighed about 65% less. Other measures were also used for lead ore, e.g. the volumetric "dish" used in the Low Peak district of Derbyshire was 14 pints, but in the High Peak it was 15 or 16 pints.
Fothers were not used in all districts; for example in the Mendip Hills and in Burnley, Lancashire, tons, hundredweights and pounds were used in the first half of the 17th century. Vivant-Léon Moissenet, a French mineralogist who studied and wrote about English mining in the mid 19th-century stated that in Shropshire 200 lbs were added to each ton of concentrate at the smelt works to make a ton of.
By the early 19th century there was a vast multiplicity of local measurements of all types of goods, which a parliamentary report of 1820 made clear. For plumbers, and in London, a fodder was 19½ cwt, and with miners generally 22½ cwt. In Derbyshire a "mill fodder" was 2820 lbs, but when shipped at Stockwith-on-Trent, 2408 lbs. In Hull it was 2340 lbs. In Northumberland a fother of pig lead was 21 cwt., and in Newcastle sometimes 22 cwt.
The fother was generally used by miners, shippers and smelters. When the metallic lead finally came to be sold it was weighed precisely; its value was calculated to the nearest pound weight and the price adjusted accordingly.