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Street View: 45
Address: 11 Wellington Street
One post often leads to another in this blog and this one is no exception. The previous post was on John Colley of Bishopsgate Street of whom Charles Snelling was to learn his trade, but as we will see, this post in turn leads to yet another, but first some information on the address where Snelling could be found in the early part of his career.
Section of the map Tallis provided with his Street View no. 45
Wellington Street was and is again part of Borough High Street, but the first section coming from London Bridge was called Wellington Street after the Duke of Wellington for a while (from somewhere in the 1830s to 1890 or thereabouts). Snelling’s shop was just beyond St. Saviour’s, in the middle of the row of houses between the church and York Street and opposite St. Thomas’s Hospital. In fact, slightly more towards the bridge from where the entrance to Borough Market now is.
top part of Snellling’s 1825 indenture
As mentioned above, Charles Snelling served his apprenticeship with John Colley of Bishopsgate Street. Snelling’s indenture was dated 6 September 1825 and lists his father as Henry Snelling, barber. Henry paid Colley twenty pounds for the privilege of teaching his son the art of hairdressing and perfumery. Charles would have come to the end of his apprenticeship in 1832, but he did not take up the formal freedom of the City of London until 1841. No doubt because he had no need for it running his business on the south side of the Thames. At the end of 1833, the partnership between Henry and Charles Snelling was dissolved and Charles continued at 11 Wellington Street on his own.(1) In 1838, he married Louisa Knowles, the daughter of a naval officer.
Coat of arms of the Company of Barbers at the top of Snelling’s City freedom registration
Tallis only just caught Snelling in Wellington Street, because soon after the Street View booklet appeared, Charles moved to 20 Gracechurch Street where the 1841 census was to find him and his growing family. 1841 was also the year in which he obtained the freedom of the City of London, something he had no need for at his previous address, but did in Gracechurch Street as that street lies within the jurisdiction of the City. 20 Gracechurch Street had been the shop of Nathaniel Pryor, a jeweller, and after Pryor’s death, of his widow Elizabeth (blog post on them here). Charles continued to work in Gracechurch Street and the 1851 census, which was taken on 30 March, finds him there with a shopwoman [Postscript: when I wrote this post, I totally ignored her, but I should not have. See the comment by Melissa why Emma Whitehead should have been noticed] and a visitor, an accountant. Having this visitor, one Samuel Stockton, did not bode well for Snelling. It may, of course, have been an ordinary visit from a friend, but on the 23rd of April, a claim for bankruptcy was filed in the Court of Bankruptcy and Snelling was to appear before the Court on the 19th of May.(2) He was given a certificate of the second class, that is, Snelling had been careless or reckless, but not dishonest, and could partially have avoided bankruptcy, or so the Court of Bankruptcy ruled. Any idea of misfortune without blame was apparently not a valid reason. The last chance for creditors to stake their claim was on 17 January 1852 or they would forfeit any dividends.(3) And on the 11th of May, 1852, or on subsequent Tuesdays, the “creditors who have proved their debts […] may receive a First Dividend of 6d. in the pound” from Isaac Nicholson of 24 Basinghall Street, the offical assignee.(4) No more is written about Charles in The London Gazette, but let’s assume he survived the bankruptcy proceedings and continued to work as a hairdresser and perfumer, although I have not discovered anything about him after 1852.
And what happened at Snelling’s old address in Wellington Street? Briefly, George Philcox, a clock and watch maker, was listed at the address, but already on 2 March 1841, he was insolvent and in Surrey Goal. Next come Batchelor and Rogers, drapers, who are mentioned in Robson’s Directory of 1842. Henry Batchelor and James Baker Rogers, mercers, linen drapers and haberdashers, dissolve their partnership on 14 July 1843. And there was a reason for breaking up the partnership. Just two days earlier, they had assigned all their “stock in trade, bills of exchange and promissory notes, and other securities for money, book and other debts, books of account, and all other the estates, moneys, property and effects, wheresoever and whatsoever (except leasehold estates) … for the benefit of the creditors”.(5) I am afraid that 11 Wellington Street figured prominently in the bankruptcy notices in The London Gazette.
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(1) The London Gazette, 31 December 1833.
(2) The London Gazette, 25 April 1851.
(3) The London Gazette, 30 December 1851.
(4) The London Gazette, 7 May 1852.
(5) The London Gazette, 18 July and 29 August 1843.
Neighbours:
| <– 12 Wellington Street | 10 Wellington Street –> |
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Louisa, Charles’s wife, petitioned for divorce: on or about 15 September, 1852, Charles had left England for Melbourne, Australia, with a woman named Emma Whitehead. He returned with her in May, 1858, and resided at the Hotel d’Europe, Hammet Street, Minories, City of London. During those 6 years, he had never contributed to the support of his wife and children, and ‘on divers occasions had committed adultery with Emma Whitehead. Charles married Emma in 1861.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for this information on Charles. It certainly explained his absence in the records I looked at. Could you please tell me where you found the information on the divorce? I seem to have missed that completely.
It’s actually thanks to your website – as a great-great uncle, I wouldn’t have searched further than bmd. However, after seeing your data about his bankruptcy, I searched Ancestry, and found his running off with his ‘shopwoman’, Emma Whitehead, being divorced from Louisa, marrying Emma and, in the 1861 Census, describing himself as ‘late goldminer’!
After 1861, I can find no information on Charles nor Emma, having searched Ancestry, Find My Past, FreeReg and others!
I can only assume that I was asleep when writing the Snelling post, as I cannot think why else I missed the divorce. Looking back at my notes, I noticed that the shopwoman mentioned in the 1851 census was indeed Emma Whitehead. I have added a postscript. Louisa, still referred to as Snelling, by the way, died in November 1860 at Dalston.
Did you notice that a 10-year old Louisa Snelling is listed as a visitor of the Rosiers next door to Emma and Charles in the 1861 census? The Rosiers were somehow Emma’s family as in the 1881 census she is listed as their sister-in-law and apparently living with them as an “independent”.
You won’t believe this,but it’s actually Emma living with Loisa’s sister, Matilda!
Well, well, you could make a nice TV soap out of these going-ons, couldn’t you?
Curiouser and curiouser:
Louisa Knowles Snelling’s sister, Matilda, is the Matilda Rosier in the 1861 census, next door to Charles and Emma; the Louisa Snelling visiting the Rosiers on that Census is Charles’s and Louisa’s daughter, so staying with her aunt and uncle.
Louisa KS and her children, John & Louisa (listed as Suelling) are visitors at the Rosiers on the 1851 Census (other son, Charles, is a scholar, presumably boarding), whilst Charles Snelling & Emma Whitehead are still living in Gracechurch Street.
Matilda & Walter Rosier’s daughter, Louisa, married her first cousin, Charles Arthur. They had 2 daughters, one of whom died; the other is the Blanche T Rosier on the 1881 Census, with her mother, Louisa R, grandmother, Matilda KR, and Emma Whitehead Snelling. With me so far?
Well Louisa Rosier married Emma’s brother, Harold Whitehead, who was 30 years her senior, in 1881!!!
So why were the Knowles Rosier ladies so friendly with the Whitehead family? More to come, perhaps. It really is like a soap-opera.
Wonderful! I love these complicated family relations. Feel free to post your findings here as I for one love to read them and hope more of my readers do. Perhaps we can establish a link with another shopkeeper that appears in Tallis somewhere. I keep finding connections when researching other shopkeepers, so would not be suprised. There are no Rosiers in Tallis, but there are two Whiteheads: one is a pork butcher at Shoreditch (no first name given) and the other one is listed as Whitehead & Co, engravers in Fleet Street.
Thank you! I can’t fine any record of a Knowles-Whitehead marriage in the relevant areas (they’re common names lin Cheshire and Lancashire), but will still keep searching, because it seems so impossible that Matilda Rosier would live with the woman who ran off with her sister’s husband, and be named in the divorce-petition, unless they were related.