Alexander Thorn, Oil and Italian Warehouse

Tags

food and drink

Street View: 20
Address: 223 High Holborn

The earliest reference I found to Alexander Thorn’s shop is 1827 when the shopman, Henry Ottley, gives evidence in a case of a stolen neat’s tongue (value 5s). He says he lives with Thorn who keeps an oil and Italian warehouse in Holborn.⁽¹⁾ No house number is given, but in 1835, an advertisement in Alexander’s East India and Colonial Magazine mentions number 223. The advertisement is for two items: Thorn’s Tally Ho! Sauce and Thorn’s Potted Yarmouth Bloaters. I have not found any advertisements in which other goods are mentioned, so the extent of the produce sold by Thorn is unknown, but it was probably similar to what other Italian delis sold, that is, basic stock such as Italian olive oil and dried pasta, sauces, anchovies and raisins. The elevation in Tallis does show “British wines” on the front of the building, so presumably Thorn sold those as well.

Advertisement in Tallis’s Street View 43

The Tally Ho! sauce and the potted bloaters also figure in advertisements that Thorn entered in some of Tallis’s Street View booklets. The one in number 43 can be seen above, but the same one also appeared in booklets 35 and 42. In the 1835 advertisement, Thorn claims that the “finest Yarmouth bloaters [were] cured especially and in a peculiar manner after the proprietor’s instructions” and were “particularly recommended as being free from the rancid, oily, salt flavour, so generally complained of”. And the only genuine ones were – of course – the ones signed by Thorn himself. In later advertisement, for instance in the Street View one and in the 1840 one shown below, Thorn warns his customers that “spurious compositions” are offered as potted bloaters, but only the real ones have the signature A. Thorn on the side of the pot. I saw a picture of one such pot on Pinterest which does indeed have the name of Thorn on the side (see here).

Postcard, origin unknown, c.1922? (Source: The Foods of England website)

Bloaters are whole cold-smoked salted herrings, particularly associated with Great Yarmouth. For the difference between bloaters and kippers, see here. The bloaters were so called because they swelled up a bit during the smoking process. The potted variety was made by removing the skin, head, tail and bones of the smoked herring, stewing the fish in spiced butter, rubbing the resulting mess through a coarse sieve and putting the paste in small pots covered with clarified butter. And ready was your fish paste to be spread on biscuits or sandwiches.

Precious little is known about Alexander Thorn himself. He was probably the son of Peter and Mary Thorn, born 29 January 1798 and baptised a few month later on 21 March at St. Mary’s, Ealing. In 1824, he married Elizabeth Hierons at the same church. In 1840, Thorn was the defendant in a case of adultery. The son of a Mr. Morgan, when still a minor, had married the young daughter of the postmistress of Ealing without the knowledge or consent of either parent and in 1840 Morgan tried to get a divorce for his son.⁽²⁾ What does transpire from the case is that Thorn was living in Little Queen Street, but as the shop was on the corner of Holborn and Little Queen Street, that does not mean much. The building probably had an entrance to Thorn’s private apartment in Little Queen Street while the shop’s entrance was in Holborn. Having said that, I have not found Thorn in the 1841 census at the Holborn address, nor anywhere else. There is a fishmonger listed at number 223, but his name is rather unclear on the form; it looks like Rett Sybon, but could be Rch (Richard?) Syben.

Advertisement in The Musical World, 1840

In 1846, it was almost over for our Italian deli proprietor. A bankruptcy charge was filed against him, dated 19 May, and he was to disclose his finances to prove that he could meet the demands of his creditors.⁽³⁾ He seems to have been able to satisfy the commissioner as in April 1847 he was given a certificate.⁽⁴⁾ The 1851 census, just as that of 1841, fails to find Alexander anywhere, but 223 Holborn is in the occupation of one Henry Brown, cheesemonger, so despite the bankruptcy certificate, Thorn must have terminated or relocated his business sometime between 1847 and 1851. He died in 1854 and was buried at All Souls, Kensal Green on the 13th of October. His address is then given as 52 York Road, Lambeth. And that was the end of the Tally Ho! sauce and the potted Yarmouth bloaters from Holborn.

Still Life with Bloaters and Garlic by Vincent van Gogh, 1887 (Source: WikiArt)

(1) Old Bailey case t18271206-64.
(2) Morgan started with a case at the Queen’s Bench against Thorn for damages as a first step towards a divorce (see here). You can read the – incomplete – second reading of the so-called Morgan Divorce Bill in the House of Lords here. The whole case seems to have been trumped up by father Morgan in order to obtain a divorce for his son, although real evidence seems to have been scarce.
(3) The London Gazette, 22 May 1846.
(3) The London Gazette, 6 April 1847.

Neighbours:

<– 224 High Holborn

221 High Holborn –>

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Woolley & Sabine, playing card makers

Tags

playing cards

Street View: 20
Address: 153 High Holborn

Henry Robert Sabine and Thomas Lewis Woolley were partners in the playing card makers business when Tallis produced his Street View for Holborn. Their shop was located at 153 High Holborn, but a notice in the London Gazette that their partnership had ended on the 25th of May, 1839, also listed 22 Hyde Street, Bloomsbury. Woolley was to continue the business at 153 High Holborn. On 24 February 1835, another partnership notice had appeared in the London Gazette in which it was announced that the partnership between Woolley and John Wilton was dissolved and that Woolley was to continue the business at 22 Hyde Street in partnership with Sabine; no mention is made of the Holborn address. The High Holborn shop was therefore presumably acquired between 1835 and 1839.

Woolley & Sabine playing cards. Source: www.plainbacks.com

In the 1841 census Woolley was listed as the occupant of the Holborn premises, together with his wife Ann Frost and daughters Jane and Elizabeth. The Woolleys had married on 20 December, 1821 in St. Anne Soho church, Westminster, but not much more is known of their lives. Research on playing cards seems to suggest that the name Woolley & Co. was used in the second half of the nineteenth century at the address 210 High Holborn, but it is not clear whether Thomas Lewis Woolley had anything to do with it. Apparently, one Mrs. Elizabeth Evans took over the playing card business of Edward James Stone at that address, retaining Stone as manager, and changing the name of the firm to Woolley & Comp. in 1857.⁽¹⁾ A lot more is known about Sabine. He was made free of the Stationers’ Company by patrimony in August 1839. His freedom record states that he was born in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street in 1811 as the son of Thomas Sabine, Stationer. A baptism record can be found in the St. Bride Church records for 17 November 1811 which gives his mother’s name as Ann, the address as 81 Shoe Lane and his date of birth as the 3rd of October.

detail City freedom record

Just before his partnership with Woolley, Sabine had married Emma Boaden on 15 November, 1834 at St. Andrew Holborn and they were to have at least 10 children: Henry born ±1836, Emily ±1839, Lucy ±1842, Kate ±1846, Lewis ±1848, Charles ±1849, Alfred ±1850, Arthur ±1853, Robert ±1856, and Thomas ±1858. Henry Robert did not remain a playing card maker for the rest of his life; unfortunately in 1852, by then working from Poppin’s Court, he went bankrupt⁽²⁾ and in the 1861 census he is listed as a commercial traveller, in 1871 as card board maker (his address given as Glossop, Derbyshire) and in 1881 (back in London) as an accountant. In 1891 he is listed as retired and living with his daughter Lucy in Chelsea. He died in early 1895.

Because his father was a Stationer, it was logical that young Henry Robert became a freeman of that guild, but that did not necessarily mean he was a stationer in the narrow sense of the word. Members of the guilds sometimes branched out into other fields, not always with the approval of the guild on which they encroached, but the rule of staying in one’s own field was difficult to enforce as the City guilds only had authority within the strict geographical borders of the City and not all guilds objected to their members involving themselves in other activities. Henry’s father, and probably his grandfather as well, had been making playing cards, although by rights that craft belonged to the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards.

That Company was granted its charter by Charles I in 1628. “Originally the Company was created in order to regulate and control the importation of cheap playing cards, to protect the cardmakers and their families and to maintain quality. The Crown received the benefit of the duties levied by the Company agreeing to pay a tax on all packs, the Ace of Spades being the chosen card to show the tax, every maker of playing cards had to have a mark of his own inrolled to indicate recognition of his name.”⁽³⁾ The Stamp Duty on cards was only abolished in 1960. Dickens in volume 6 of his Household Words devotes several pages to the manufacture of playing card and he also mentions the tax:

Every pack of cards made in England for home use pays one shilling to Her Majesty; for which the ace of spades is the printed receipt. The manufacturer pays for the production and engraving of a steel plate containing twenty aces of spades; he also sends paper to Somerset House; and the authorities at the Stamp Office print him off thousands and tens of thousands of aces. These are sent to him in certain quantities, and under certain bonds and seals and restrictions. He proceeds to use them, by pasting the sheets of aces on carton, and making cards of them. The Excise Officer calls on him at intervals; and, for all the sheets of aces which he is not in a condition to produce, he has to pay one shilling each ace as duty; and a Government stamp is pasted round every pack to show that the duty has been paid.

making playing cards from Tomlinson’s Cyclopedia

The process of making cards is described in detail in Tomlinson’s Cyclopedia and for that, the author witnessed the manufacture first-hand at Sabine’s in Poppin’s Court. He first described the pasting together of sheets of paper to produce card board which is first pressed together to get rid of excess water and then dried. After drying the crinkled surface is smoothed by passing the card board through rollers. The finished result is then either cut into sizes if needed for calling cards, or passed to the stenciller if made into playing cards. The stencil is a thin sheet of pasteboard, parchment or metal with the outlines of the required figures cut out so that when the ink is spread over the stencil, it will pass through the cut-out sections onto the material held under it. The ‘pips’ or common cards, require just one colour, red or black, and for them a thin stencil-plate is produced with the correct number of aces, clubs, hearts or diamonds cut out to allow the transfer of the paint. For the ‘têtes’ or court cards, several stencil-plates are used, one for each colour. After colouring, the cards are cut and a skilled workman can cut 200 packs, that is 10,400 cards, in two and a half hours.⁽⁴⁾

Despite the fact that Mr. Sabine told the author that card-playing was not on the decline and that trade to the colonies was very large, he went bankrupt in 1852 and had to give up his business.

(1) See plainbacks.com here and here. M.H. Goodall gives more information on the later developments at 210 High Holborn in his Minor British Playing Card Makers of the Nineteenth Century, Volume II: Woolley & Company (1996).
(2) The Jurist, 10 January 1852.
(3) www.makersofplayingcards.co.uk
(4) ‘Cardboard’ in Cyclopædia of useful arts & manufactures, ed. by C. Tomlinson, vol. 1 (1852), pp. 321-324 (online here).

Neighbours:

<– 154 Holborn

152 Holborn –>