Elizabeth Pryor, silversmith

Tags

cutler, jeweller

Street View: 21
Address: 20 Gracechurch Street

The previous post showed us Charles Snelling, perfumer and hairdresser, moving from Wellington Street to 20 Gracechurch Street some time between the publication of the Tallis booklet and the 1841 census. In the Tallis booklet for Gracechurch Street, number 20 is occupied by E. Pryor, silversmith, jeweller and cutler. The advertisement for the shop in the booklet shows us that E. Pryor was widow Elizabeth Pryor. She had continued the business of her husband Nathaniel after his death in 1833.⁽¹⁾ Nathaniel Pryor (born 1766) and Elizabeth Thake (born 1777) had married in 1795 at St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, but the earliest mention I found of a shop for them in Gracechurch Street is in 1809 in the Sun Fire Office records. That is not to say that Nathaniel had not had a shop before that, perhaps even as early as 1789 when he was eligible for the freedom of the Goldsmith’s Company (he had started his apprenticeship at Joseph Savory’s of Cheapside in 1782), but he may just as well have stayed on with his master as a journeyman. In the advertisement Elizabeth entered into the Tallis’ Street View booklet, she says that the business had been established 30 years ago, which would indeed suggest 1809 as the starting date.

Advertisement in Tallis’s Street View booklet

Montague Howard in his Old London Silver of 1903 gives Nathaniel from 1810 to 1833 and Elizabeth from 1834 tot 1840. Intriguingly, he also gives a Matthew Pryor at 20 Gracechurch Street in 1819, but I have not found any record of him elsewhere. Could that have been a misreading of Nath.? We do not know a lot more about the shop or what was sold there other than what has been described in the advertisement, but there is a bit more to say about the charitable work undertaken by the Pryors.

For all Victorians charity constituted a large part of everyday life and an advertisement in The Morning Chronicle of 7 May 1821 testifies that the Pryors were no exception. Mrs Pryor is mentioned as one of the people undertaking all the arrangements for the embarkation of a destitute mother and her eight children to New South Wales where they are to join the husband and father. The subscription needed was to cloth the family and provide them with a few necessities for their passage. In this particular case, we do not know the name of the woman, but in another case, we know more.

In February 1819, Nathaniel Pryor received a letter from the Bank of England saying that they were prepared to give £5 to Elizabeth Brooks upon her embarking for transportation to New South Wales. Elizabeth Brooks had been convicted of knowingly trying to pay with a counterfeit £1 bank note. The case was heard at the Old Bailey in September 1818 and she was sentenced to death.⁽²⁾ The sentence must have been changed to one of transportation as on the 1st of February, Elizabeth Brooks writes to the Governors of the Bank of England from Newgate Prison’s “transport side” that she is to go “to a Foreign Country” with her children, two of which are with her in the prison. Two others who are at a factory are to join her with a 5th child to remain behind, looked after by a friend. While Elizabeth was in prison she sold or pawned all her clothes to support the children and now that transportation was imminent, she asked the bank for support. This may seem strange as she first robbed them by trying to pay with a forged note, but the Bank had a fund set aside for desperate cases such as Elizabeth’s.⁽³⁾ I gather from the correspondence that Elizabeth’s letters did not go to the Bank directly, but were sent via an intermediary, in this case Nathaniel Pryor, hence the answer to him and not to her directly.

The original letters from Elizabeth Brooks and the bank’s answer to Nathaniel Pryor (and many more like them) can be seen here.

Despite the fact that Elizabeth Pryor said that she was still continuing her late husband’s shop in the Tallis’ Street View advertisement, she must have given the business up quite soon afterwards, as in the 1841 census we find her living as an “independent” with William Smither, a tea-dealer at 28 Gracechurch Street. As we have seen, the shop at number 20 was taken over by hairdresser and perfumer Charles Snelling who had his business there until at least 1852 when dividends were paid out to his creditors after bankruptcy proceedings had been started against him.

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(1) Nathaniel died the 15th and was buried the 24th of the 2nd month of 1833 at Bunhill Fields. The notation of the month as the 2nd rather than February is a Quaker practice and the records of the Quarterly Meeting of London and Middlesex contain a paper asking Thomas Colcock, grave maker to dig a grave for Nathaniel in the Friends’ burial ground at Bunhill Fields.
(2) Old Bailey case t18180909-107.
(3) See website Bank of England here.

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Robert Dever, confectioner

Tags

catering, food and drink

Street Views: 21, 86 and 7 Suppl.
Address: 60 Cornhill

The large property where Robert Dever (or De-Ver) had his business as a cook and confectionary, was situated on the corner of Gracechurch Street and Cornhill and it was hence depicted in both Street Views. The elevation above this post is from Street View 21, that is the Gracechurch Street one, and shows the side of the building. The Cornhill front was a lot larger and was depicted in Street View 86. When Tallis produces his Supplements in 1847, the Cornhill front was once more depicted, but this time, the right-hand side of the building has acquired a new door and the number 58 above the building. I will come back to the numbering shortly.

elevation of the Cornhill front (1839)

elevation of the Cornhill front (1847)

And if three depictions of the shop was not enough, Dever also paid for a vignette showing his shop situated against the church of St. Peter at Cornhill. A map of the Cornhill Ward of October 1833 in the British Library, clearly shows how the building abutted the church. Number 60 is in the top right-hand corner.

Detail of the Cornhill Ward Survey, 1833 (Source: British Library)

As the vignette shows, the shop had once belonged to Angell & Son and we will start the story with them. William Angell was baptised at St. Peter at Cornhill on 7 October 1733 as the son of John and Elizabeth. Fortunately, the record of the church gives the father’s occupation, cook, but alas not the exact address. William marries in 1759 and in 1767, his son William Sandell Angell, who was to take over the business, is born. William Angell senior dies in 1814 and leaves his property at Cornhill to William Sandell. In William’s will it is described as “the leasehold messuages or tenements and premises numbered 58, 59 and 60 situated in Cornhill aforesaid and now in the occupation of myself and my said son William Sandell Angell [space] Wilkinson and [space] Sanders”. The Kent’s Directory for 1803 mentions one Robert Wilkinson, print seller, at number 58 and a William Sanders, fan-maker, at number 59, so large as the premises may look, it was not in the exclusive occupations of the Angell family, although it may have done so later.

1836 Land Tax entry

William Sandell’s son William Henry, receives his freedom of the Company of Cooks in 1823 and he presumably continued the family business. That is, until he died in 1834. Whether Robert Dever immediately took over the shop from Angell after the death of William Henry, or whether William Sandell himself, or perhaps one of the other Angell sons, continued the confectionary business is not entirely clear, but Dever certainly obtained his freedom of the Company of Cooks in 1834 by redemption. His name appears for the first time in the Land Tax register for Cornhill in 1836 with the name of Angell written behind his, perhaps to indicate a take-over halfway the tax period. Dever is listed for three properties, so I gather that numbers 58, 59 and 60 were then all three occupied by him and had for some time been by the Angells. Tallis, in his first set of Street Views, does not mention numbers 58 and 59, but he does do so in the 1847 Supplement. Above the building is written 58, although the index lists Hyams, a jeweller at number 59. Will try and find out more about Mr. Hyams for a later post.

What do we know about the food Angell and later Dever provided? The elevation in Street View 21, calls Dever “Confectioner Venison and Turtle Dealer”. The vignette just adds the word Cook, but nothing else. The Morning Post of 18 Januari 1842, tells us that Dever provided a banquet at Mansion House which was “most sumptious”. That does not help us much, but The Standard of the same day printed the whole menu and French names were obviously quite in vogue; gelée au citron sounds much better than lemon jelly, does it not?

In 1851, things went slightly pear-shaped for Robert and bankruptcy proceedings were filed against him. He seems, however, to have managed to survive and a certificate of the first class was issued by the Court of Bankruptcy. The Morning Chronicle not only reported on this fact, they also said that his debts were £7,000 and the assets already realised were £4,500. So, he could continue cooking and that is what he did. On 3 July 1856, the same paper mentioned him as the provider of “an elegant déjeuner” at the National Orphan Home. No menu provided by the paper this time, so no clue as to what the dignataries had on their plates.

While the 1851 census had shown Robert living above the shop at 60 Cornhill, the 1861 census shows him at 20 Oakley Villas, Hampstead as a “fundholder”. He dies three years later and his probate record makes no mention of the Cornhill address, so he seems to have given up the business somewhere between 1856 and 1861.⁽¹⁾ In later years, the building was occupied by the YMCA (photograph here) and it is still extant on the corner of Gracechurch and Cornhill, although it has changed its appearance. Apparently, in 1877, it received its new look at the hands of architect Benjamin Tabberer.⁽²⁾ The YMCA photo shows rather ornate columns on the outside that were not there when Tallis depicted his Street Views, nor did the top floor look quite like it does in the photograph. This top floor has now disappeared, but the columns are still there as the Google Street View picture shows.⁽³⁾

Henry Edward Tidmarsh (1855-1939), St. Peter at Cornhill with the YMCA building on the right (Source: allposters.co.uk)

Photograph from An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London, volume 4 (1929), p. 63 (Source: british-history.ac.uk)

Google Street View

(1) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1864. Probate of the estate, valued at under £3,000, is granted to his widow Mary.
(2) Crossrail Bill, first special report, session 2006-07, Vol. 2, Oral evidence, 17 January to 23 March 2006.
(3) The building is now occupied by David Clulow, optician, who lists it as 59, Cornhill.