Now here is a curious thing. My 4x Great grandfather William Stanton was codwainer/shoemaker and every record bar one records him as such (actually make that two the 1861 census has him as a carter but as he was 69 by then he could have retire from the shoe trade). That record is the 1851 census in which he is down as a Coal merchant. As (after a lot of research) I have come to the conclusion that no coal merchants of that name were in the town at that period I greatly suspect that is was an error by the original transcriber, possibly due to the decline of the term "cordwainer", so that it was mis-heard or mis-understood.