General Steam Navigation Company

Tags

transport

Street Views: 17, 25 and 2 Suppl.
Address: 37 Regent Street

The General Steam Navigation Company had their office at 37 Regent Street, one of the houses of Piccadilly Circus, which was still called Regent Circus (South) when Tallis produced his booklets and looked similar to how Oxford Circus (Regent Circus North) still looks today, but it lost its complete circular form in 1886 with the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue. The Ordnance Survey map of 1893-95 below shows the changes in progress. The north-eastern corner of the Circus has already disappeared and the rounded off corners of the three remaining sections were to disappear over time when streets were widened and houses set back.⁽¹⁾ Number 37 is indicated by the arrow.

In February 1823, a meeting took place at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street, to see whether enough interest (read: money) could be raised to form a General Steam Navigation Company (GSNC). The idea was to raise a capital of £300,000 by issuing 150 shares of £2000, a large sum to fork out, but individual shares could be divided into halves or quarters. With the money raised steam ships were to be purchased or ordered to be built. It was envisaged that these ships would provide a regular service from London, Dover, Brighton, Southampton and Plymouth to various destinations on the Continent.⁽²⁾ The official year for the start of the Company is 1824, as was proudly displayed on their flag. A notice in the papers a year and a half after the meeting in Bishopsgate Street, showed that the activities and the capital were to be increased considerably by issuing 20,000 shares of £100.⁽³⁾ The GSNC initially had their office at 24 Crutched Friars, and later in Lombard Street, but certainly by 1834 they also had an office at 37 Regent Street.

Source: P&O Heritage website

After only a year in business, the Company announced that they were so successful that a dividend of eight per cent could be paid out to the shareholders and that fifteen vessels had been bought or built.⁽⁴⁾ The company initially concentrated on passengers, but from the late 1820s they also transported livestock. By 1833, the company ran regular mail boats to Hamburg, Ostend, Boulogne and Rotterdam. In 1836, they acquired the six steam ships of the London and Edinburgh Steam Packet Company and the steamships of the rival Margate Steam Packet Company. Some of the GSNC’s personnel managed to be singled out for their achievements, such as, in November 1836, when one of the Company’s captains, W. Norwood of the Sir Edward Banks, was presented with a gold medal by the Emperor of Russia for rescuing some Russian citizens from the shipwreck of The Neptune on the Hinder Bank. To distribute among the crew, £40 was given.⁽⁵⁾ And one Henry Cobby, of the GSNC’s Kingston-upon-Hull office, listed a design for “an apparatus for causing the paddle-wheels of a steam-vessel to revolve in a contrary direction to each other at one time, and thereby to turn the vessel round”.⁽⁶⁾ I wonder how they managed to do that before Cobby’s invention.

advertisement in Northcroft’s Parliamentary Chronicle, 1834

listing of rates and conditions in The Pocket Cambist of 1836

Pleasure boats, ferrying people for trips to Southend, Margate or Ramsgate, were very popular, but after the SS Princess Alice disaster in 1878 (see here), the market slumped considerably and it took all the efforts of the company to restore public confidence. The Continental cattle trade was also in trouble due to the Franco-Prussian War, a cattle plague on the Continent, and some severe winters blocking traffic to northern harbours, forcing the company to decommission some ships.

advertisement in The Post-Office Directory for Edinburgh & Leith, 1854-55

Changing holiday destinations, the railways and cheap flights all contributed to the decline of the Steam Company and they were taken over in 1920 by P&O, although remaining under own management till 1972. More on this later part of the history of the GSNC is to be found here.

A list of all the ships that have been owned by the General Steam Navigation Company can be found here. And if you want to know more about the history of the GSNC, have a look at Sarah Palmer’s “‘The most indefatigable activity’: the General Steam Navigation Company, 1824-50” in The Journal of Transport History 1982.

Guidebook (Source: P&O website)

shipping token (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

One of the GSNC’s ships (Source: Ebay)

Dutch poster for the GSNC (Source: Geheugen van Nederland)

Poster GSNC (Source: classicboat.co.uk)

(1) Changes described in Survey of London, vols. 31-2; online here and here.
(2) The Morning Post, 12 February 1823.
(3) The Morning Post, 19 August 1824.
(4) The Morning Post, 12 August 1825.
(5) The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle for 1838, p. 628 and List of Shipwrecks in 1836.
(6) Newton’s London Journal of Arts and Sciences, 1843.

Neighbours:

<– 35 Regent Street

39 Regent Street –>

Advertisement

William Mortlock, china warehouse

Tags

china

Street Views: 17 and 1 Suppl.
Address: 18 Regent Street

As we saw in the post on Mortlock & Sturges of 250 Oxford Street, John and William Mortlock dissolved their partnership in 1809 with John to remain at Oxford Street and William II to set up on his own in Regent Street. His sons John and Frederick also worked in the Regent Street business. William’s other son, also William, worked for his uncle in Oxford Street until 1828, when he partnered with his brother John at Regent Street. In 1835, however, uncle John of Oxford Street retired and nephew John left Regent Street to take over the business in Oxford Street. All quite complicated, but the end result was that William III was the sole proprietor of the Regent Street business.

advertisement in The Times, 23 May 1836

The Mortlock family did not live above the shop, or at least, they did not when the censuses were taken and the 1841 census only listed a shopman and several servants on the premises of 18 Regent Street. In 1851, James Clark and his wife Susannah are taking care of the shop with their son William acting as errand boy. James and Susannah are still there in 1861 and 1871, but by 1881 they have been replaced by Charles Cruse and his wife Dinah. The Cruses are still acting as caretakers at the time of the 1891 census, but by 1901 the premises appear to be empty. At least, number 18 is no longer mentioned in the census record which jumps straight from no. 16 (the Raleigh Club) to no. 20 (William P. Rowlands who worked on the Stock Exchange).

A coffee beaker with Mortlock’s mark on the bottom (Source: worthpoint.com)

William III Mortlock himself was listed as a retired china dealer in the 1871 census, but the next generation, brothers William IV and Frederick, had already taken over by then and in March 1872, a notice appeared in The London Gazette that the partnership between the three Mortlocks had officially been dissolved with the younger generation to continue the business. William III died in 1879 and left an estate of £60,000.⁽¹⁾ The brothers were both listed in the 1881 census as “gentleman”, suggesting they had retired. William IV died in 1888 and Frederick in 1915.⁽²⁾

In 1896, a large advertisement appeared in The Times for a sale at Mortlock’s in which they say they have sold the lease of 18 Regent Street. The 1902 Post Office Directory, however, still lists them, albeit with the information that the business had been transferred to Phillips Ltd of 19-21 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square. An intriguing notice appeared in The Times of 6 July 1881, in which Messrs. W. Mortlock and Sons of 18 Regent Street and 19 St. James’s Street state that, although the defendant in the Tower v. Mortlock case has several china shops in London, their business has no relation with that Mortlock. Although I have no idea what the court case was about, the notice in The Times tells us that at some point Mortlock had a second shop in St. James’s Street. The censuses for 1871 and 1881 have no names listed for the property, so no one was sleeping on the premises on the night of the census taking, but in 1891, the widow Clermont is listed at number 19 as a caretaker. Not that that proves anything as it does not say for whom she is caretaking. Tallis has a Mr. Brumby, glass manufacturer at the address, a business that was later taken over by J. Green and the 1856 Post Office Directory lists a J. Dobson, also a glass dealer. Did the Mortlocks take over from Dobson?

top section of the advertisement in The Times, 28 May 1896

Minton china plate, 1885, with Mortlock’s retailer’s mark on the bottom (Source: V&A)

More examples of Mortlock wares, both from the Oxford Street and the Regent Street shops are to be found here.

18 Regent Street is now part of the listed Dorland House at 14-22 Regent Street.⁽³⁾ It was built in the 1920s and designed by John James Joass (1868-1952) whom we have come across in the post on John Belcher, the architect and surveyor at 5 Adelaide Place. Joass continued the Belcher business after the death of John Belcher junior and was very successful. He designed, for instance, the Mappin and Webb building at 1 Poultry.

Regent Street looking towards Piccadilly Circus, with Dorland House on the right (Google Street View, March 2017)

(1) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1859. The executors were sons William and Frederick.
(2) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1888 and 1915. William left an estate of almost £40,000 and Frederick one of ±£43,500.
(3) Historic England, Grade II, list entry Number: 1222573 (see here).

Neighbours:

<– 20 Regent Street

17 Regent Street (1839) –> 16 Regent Street (1847) –>

Ann Drewett, circulating library

Tags

book trade, library

Street View: 17
Address: 44 Regent Street

Writing this post was fraught with difficulties. Not only was the name Ann Drewett not to be found in any of the advertisements for a circulating library in Regent Street, there was only one advertisement for number 44. That was a notice in The Times of 21 August 1838 in which “Drewett’s library” at number 44 was the place where chymists could buy “a quantity of fixtures, bottles, drugs, and utensils, the complete stock of a gentleman declining retail”. Not quite what you expect to find in a library, but the place seemed big enough to set aside a room for some extracurricular activities. Then I found for 1839: Joseph Bunney’s Christian Phrenology: a Guide to Self-Knowledge which was published by A. Drewett and Co., public library, 62 Regent Street. Well, A. Drewett could of course be Ann, but who the Co. was remains a mystery. It is at least clear that the library must have moved from number 44 to number 62 quite soon after the publication of the Tallis Street View booklet. Number 62 in the Tallis booklet was still occupied by J. Whitehouse (late Brown), a milliner, so he must have moved out quite soon after the publication of the booklet for Drewett to appear in a 1839 advertisement.

Etching derived from a print by John Raphael Smith (Source: British Museum)

Quite a number of advertisements appear for the circulating library (and attached stationary business) at number 62 in the period July 1839 to early 1844, but in none of them an initial is given for the proprietor, so whether we are still dealing with Ann Drewett is unclear. The advertisements either call the place Drewett’s circulating library, Drewett’s library, Drewett and Co., or just plain Drewett’s. The 1841 census is no help either. No Drewetts to be found in the relevant section. There are of course enough Drewetts living in London, but no Ann that can be matched to the library and without another first name, it is hopeless to find out who it was that ran the library. Never mind, we can still find out what they had on offer in their library and shop.

Besides the one publication mentioned above, no other books seems to have been published by Drewett’s, so that does not help us any further. The advertisements, most of them in The Morning Post, however, do tell us a little bit about the library itself. A subscription was only a guinea a year and they had “a good supply of books and all the new works”. Well, they would say that, would not they? But, you could not just borrow the books, you could also buy them. They had “5,000 juvenile and other books at little more than half price. Bibles, Prayers, or Church Service, in velvet, morocco, and illuminated. Handsomely bound Bibles 2s only.”⁽¹⁾ But their biggest advertorial item was not the library, but the envelopes they sold. In July 1840, for instance, they say that they are selling off “good envelopes 4d. per 100.” In the same advertisement they also mention other items that could be bought at number 62: envelope cases, blotting books, scrap books, travelling cases, dressing cases, despatch boxes, post office stamps, black-bordered envelopes and cards.⁽²⁾ In another advertisement, juvenile books, novels, fancy papers, silver-bordered envelopes and wafers are offered.⁽³⁾

And special occassions were not forgotten. Christmas presents were suggested, such as leather envelope cases, matching blotting books, rosewood or mahogony writing desks, portable dressing cases, complete with razor, shaving brush, strop and comb, or what about an inkstand?⁽⁴⁾ For Valentine’s Day Drewett offered a “splendid asortment of Valentines, French papers, and envelopes just received from Paris”⁽⁵⁾ And for Easter, the perfect gift would be, “at an immense reduction” (see further on why), a writing desk, a work box, a music or pamphlet case, or perhaps a book “at less than half price”?⁽⁶⁾

The cheapness of the product became more and more an important selling point in the advertisements and plain Drewett’s even became Drewett’s Cheap Stationary Warehouse. Competition in the field of stationary was fierce. The introduction of the Penny Post in 1840 caused an enormous increase in letter-writing and the development of the separate envelop; with the subsequent surge in retail outlets. Just across the road from Drewett’s, Stocken could be found who also advertised heavily with his envelopes, often on the same page as Drewett in The Morning Post. Before 1840, a letter was folded and sealed and then sent on with the recipient having to pay for the delivery. Putting a letter in a separate envelop would double the charge. Rowland Hill’s Post Office Reform revolutionized the system and any letter under an ounce could be sent anywhere in the UK for a penny, to be paid for by the sender.⁽⁷⁾ A whole new industry in envelope making (and selling) developed and Drewett had obviously jumped on the bandwagon. Not only did he sell them, he also produced them himself.

The Morning Post, 8 October 1842

The journalist George Augustus Sala (1828-1895) wrote in his autobiography that one summer (no exact year mentioned, but it seems to be in 1841⁽⁸⁾), he and his mother and siblings, after “a week in a boarding house … where … we were most terribly bitten by fleas, settled down in our old happy hunting ground in the Quadrant; our apartments being this time at the house of a stationer named Drewitt.” And this is where it gets interesting, because Sala relates that there he “made acquaintance with a most ingenious machine for cutting envelopes, which now universally used accessories to correspondence were, until the penny postage system became firmly established, very rarely made use of”.⁽⁹⁾ No wonder Drewett could slash his prices of envelopes if he no longer had to rely on manual labour to cut his envelopes. Sala unfortunately does not describe the machine any further, so we do not know if it was anywhere near as sophisticated as the one shown by De La Rue at the 1851 Exhibition. Probably not. Drewett may have imported his from France where they were using envelopes a little earlier than they did in England and we know he imported stationary from across the Channel.

Source: victorianweb.org

Up till 6 December 1842, Drewett inserted advertisements in The Morning Post more than once a week, but all of a sudden they stopped. In April 1843, we learn why. That month, three identical advertisements were put in the paper, mentioning that they were “declining business”, hence the “immense reduction” in the prices mentioned when the Easter gifts were advertized.⁽¹⁰⁾ In early 1844, a few more advertisements were put in the paper, inviting “attention to a stock of various articles now being cleared off at prices not to be equalled in London”. Envelopes went for one penny a hundred.⁽¹¹⁾ The stationary business was taken over by Allcroft and Co, and they were still at 62 Regent Street when the second lot of Tallis’s Street Views came out in 1847, but they will be the subject of a separate post some other time.

———————
(1) The Morning Post, 4 June 1842.
(2) The Morning Post, 3 July 1840.
(3) The Morning Post, 4 November 1840.
(4) The Morning Post, 9 December 1840.
(5) The Morning Post, 12 February 1841.
(6) The Morning Post, 17 April 1843.
(7) More information here.
(8) The census for 1841 lists Henrietta Sala, music teacher, Frederick Sala, piano teacher, and daughter and son Augusta and George in the Quadrant, but as the census does not mention house numbers, it is difficult to determine where they were staying exactly. Drewett him- or herself is certainly not listed in Regent Street.
(9) The life and adventures of George Augustus Sala, written by himself (1895), volume 1, p. 122.
(10) The Morning Post, 12, 15 and 17 April 1843.
(11) Last advertisement in The Morning Post appeared on 19 March 1844.

Neighbours:

<– 46 Regent Street

42 Regent Street –>

Carlton Chambers

Tags

architecture, solicitor

Street Views: 17 and 1 Suppl.
Address: 4-12 Regent Street

When John Nash was working on his Regent Street project, he ran into financial difficulties and James Burton came to his rescue. In return, Nash promoted the career of Burton’s son Decimus. Burton was a builder/developer who had already made his mark in building houses in Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury Square and Russell Square and was later to found the new town of St Leonards-on-Sea (see here). He bought up the leases of parts of Regent Street and one such plot was 4-12 Regent Street. Instead of just building individual houses, he envisaged one large building in which many professionals could have their office. According to James Elmes in his Topographical Dictionary of London and its Environs (1831), it was “a large handsome building”, “fitted up as sets of chambers for gentlemen and professional men”. It seems to have been ready for occupation in 1820.

If you compare the elevations for the property in the 1839 and 1847 editions of the Street View for that section of Regent Street, it is noticable that in 1839, the names of various tradesmen are written above the building: Luck, Kent and Cumming sell carpets, Jones is a tailor, Hatch is a bootmaker and Seguin has a library and ticket office. Not really the professionals you envisage in chambers. But the only name visible above the 1847 depiction of the building is that of the London Life & Fire Assurance Corporation.

The 1839 elevation

The 1847 elevation

The directory of the 1839 Street View does not help us very much either. Besides the four names we have just encountered in the elevation, the directory also mentions Ryalls & Co, a publisher, the London Assurance Corporation and just one firm of solicitors: Fuller and Saltwell. But, in the 1847 directory, the situation is quite different. Besides various shopkeepers, who, I assume, had their shop on the ground floor, quite a few architects and solicitors are listed as the occupants of the building.
Shopkeepers:
number 4: Luck, Kent & Cumming, carpet manufacturers
number 6: Jones, Tailor
number 8: –
number 10: London Assurance Corporation
number 12: Bailey & Moon, booksellers
Chambers:
number 4: no name specified
number 6: –
number 8: Mr. J. McMahon Du Pasquier, solicitor; Mr. Humby, solicitor; Mr. Blake, solicitor; Mr. Gell, solicitor; Cundy, solicitor; D.E. Columbine, solicitor; Mr. Snell, surveyor
number 10: –
number 12: Mr. Parish, architect; Fuller and Saltwell, solicitors; Mr. Vane, solicitor; Mr. Railton, architect; Mr. Laing, architect; Elmstie and Lee, architects; Mr. Hayes, solicitor; Mr. Mee, architect

I will write about the individual shopkeepers mentioned by Tallis separately at some point, but for this post, I will concentrate on Fuller and Saltwell.

Carlton Chambers (Source: christies.com)

Frederick James Fuller (-1874)⁽¹⁾ and William Henry Saltwell (1793-1875)⁽²⁾, solicitors, seem to have been the most permanent fixture amongst the occupants of the building as they can be found there right at the beginning in 1820 and they are still there in 1873. The first notice in the newspapers I found for them at Carlton Chambers is 25 February 1820 in The Morning Chronicle where they advertise for information on a missing young man. The last notice I found is on 5 July 1873 in The Ipswich Journal when they, still from Carlton Chambers, deal with the estate of the Reverend Robert Gordon, deceased.

At some point Fuller and Saltwell were assessed for a tax according to Act 48 Geo. 3. c. 55, to which they – unsuccessfully – objected and the report on the case gives us an interesting insight into the building and its use. Fuller and Saltwell claimed that “they were not liable to be rated to the duties on inhabited dwelling-houses, no person sleeping or boarding in their said chambers”. Their office was on the first floor of Carlton Chambers and

“the whole house being built for the express purpose of letting out in sets of chambers to gentlemen, with a public staircase, the same as in the inns of court, but with the exception of a door to the entrance from the street, which door is kept open during the day, but shut at night, and then opened when required by a porter or a female, who constantly reside in the lower part of the building for that purpose, as well as taking care of the chambers. Messrs. Fuller and Saltwell hold a lease granted by the owners of the building for 21 years, determinable at the option of either party, at the expiration of 10 years. The porter above-mentioned cleans the public stairs and keeps the chambers, and is paid by Messrs. Fuller and Saltwell as well as all the other occupants of sets of chambers 2s. 6d. per week, for so doing. The female also lights the fires in the appelants’ chambers, cleans the same, and is paid by them and the other occupants of chambers 4s. per week for her services.”⁽³⁾

I have looked in various sources to complete the picture for the period 1820-1850 and a long list of occupants could be compiled for Carlton Chambers, most of them architects, surveyors, attorneys or solicitors. Two are perhaps of note and worth mentioning: Decimus Burton, the son of the builder James Burton, became an architect and had his office at Carlton Chambers and so did George Gilbert Scott when he first started his career.
In 1938, the Carlton Chambers building was replaced by Rex House, designed by the architect Robert Cromie. At some point, it housed the BBC radio studios.

(1) Fuller died 25 December 1874 at 93 Maida-vale. Probate was granted on 9 March 1875 to two of his sons, Frederick, also a solicitor, and the reverend Charles James, clerk.
(2) More information on Saltwell here.
(3) Cases Determined on Appeal, Relating to Assessed Taxes. England for the years 1824, 1825, & 1826, Case 35.

Neighbours:

<– 14 Regent Street

2 Regent Street –>