Wilcoxon & Co., looking glass manufacturers

Tags

furniture, glazier

Street View: 24
Address: 40 Fish Street Hill

The story of Wilcoxon & Co. starts at the end of the 18th century at 58 Lombard Street where Robert Stanton and Arthur Wilcoxon were in business as looking glass manufacturers, although the firm probably existed since around 1770 (see 1864 advertisement below). Robert Stanton died in 1818 and was buried in Bunhill Fields, pointing to a non-conformist background. Robert’s son Robert junior inherited his father’s stake in the business, but in 1821 he withdrew from the partnership⁽¹⁾ and the firm became known as Wilcoxon, Harding and Owen. William Harding was Stanton’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Frances. Arthur Wilcoxon bought himself the freedom of the Clothworkers Company in 1821, just before the partnership with Stanton was dissolved. I guess because Stanton had been the member of a City Company which was obligatory for any businessman working in the City and the only option Wilcoxon had was to either find a new partner who was a Company member or become one himself. He paid the usual fine of 46s 6d. A year later, his son, Arthur II (I will refer to him as Arthur II rather than junior, as a 3rd generation also has an Arthur), also bought himself into a Company, this time the Wheelwrights. Edward Owen left the business in 1824 and the remaining partners were Arthur I, Arthur II and William Harding.⁽²⁾

portrait of Arthur I kindly supplied by Sheila Holt (nee Wilcoxon)

The Wilcoxon family lived in Frodsham, Cheshire, from the earliest records of the 1500’s, but moved to Holt, near Wrexham in the 1770’s to farm at Cornish Hall (photo and information supplied by Sheila Holt)

The first time we hear about a Wilcoxon in the Fish Street area is in 1836, when Robert Wilcoxon insures premises at 1 Monument Yard with the Sun Fire Office as wholesale looking glass manufacturer. That same year, the tax records show “Wilcoxon & Harding” for a property at Fish Street Hill. The confusing thing about having the corner shop is that most of the time it was referred to as 1 Monument Yard (these days Monument Square), but occassionally, as Tallis did, it would be listed as 40 Fish Street Hill. As we can see from the 1799 Horwood map, it was quite a substantial building.

William Harding and Fredrick George Harding withdrew from the partnership in 1839, and the business was continued by Arthur I, Arthur II and Robert Wilcoxon.⁽³⁾ The only address given is that of Monument Yard. Arthur Wilcoxon I died in 1842 and was buried in Bunhill Fields, just as his former partner Stanton had been. In Arthur’s will, drawn up in February 1841, we read that he is “late of Lombard Street but now of Monument Yard”, confirming the move. He leaves three portraits, one of himself, one of his late wife, and one of his brother Jonathan, to his son Arthur II. Is the portrait he mentions of himself the same as the one depicted above? Robert Wilcoxon turned out to be the other son of Arthur and he and his brother Arthur II are to receive the remainder of the estate after various legacies have been paid to their four sisters and various small sums to more distant relations and some of the employees and servants. Arthur I bequeathed 10 pounds and a ring to the value of 2 guineas to each of his two clerks and his two ‘travellers’, by which he means travelling salesmen, which seems generous and unlike most other Tallis shopkeepers whose wills do not normally mention their personnel at all.⁽⁴⁾

top part of the 1855 indenture for Arthur III

Although the firm started out as looking glass manufacturers, they branched out into all kinds of goods that could broadly be described as house furnishings. In 1840, for instance, they registered a design for stained paper hangings.⁽⁵⁾ And on the indenture for the next generation, Arthur III, the son of Robert, Arthur II is described as upholsterer, cabinet-maker and plate glass manufacturer. And in 1857, Wilcoxon & Co. brought out a booklet with their designs for furniture. Unfortunately Google Books does not show the content, so I cannot give you any examples.

advertisement in Deane’s Illustrated Family Almanack (1864)

When Robert died in 1866, his sons Arthur and Charles were given as two of the executors, both with the address 1 Monument Yard and both with the job description “upholsterer cabinet and looking-glass manufacturer”. In 1868, a patent is given to James Watson, foreman to Messrs. A. & R. Wilcoxon, of Newington Causeway for the invention of “an improvement in the manufacture of wall papers, and in apparatus used in such manufacture”.⁽⁶⁾ The description does not tell us much about the invention, but it does tell us that the firm must have branched out across the Thames. And indeed, a notice in The London Gazette of 11 April 1876, tells us that the partnership existing between Arthur II, Arthur III, Charles Wilcoxon and Frederick George Wilkinson (the third executor of Robert’s will and described as accountant) of 1 Monument Yard and 17 Newington Causeway is to be dissolved by order of a decree of the High Court of Chancery in the case Wilcoxon v. Wilkinson. Well, well, the Wilcoxons seem to have fallen out with their accountant.

Arthur II died in 1878⁽⁷⁾ and the business seemed to have been split up after that. Arthur III moved the Monument Yard business to 153, 154 and 156 Queen Victoria Street, but went into liquidation in 1881.⁽⁸⁾ In The Truth, G.M. and H.J. Story announce that they have taken over “the old-established cabinet & upholstery business of A. and R. Wilcoxon, late of Monument-yard” and that they have removed the whole business from Queen Victoria Street to their premises at Coleman Street and London Wall. And that was the end of the Monument Yard branch. Charles and a new partner, Frank Robson, continued the paper staining business at 17 Newington Causeway, but the partnership was dissolved in 1886 with Robson to continue the business under the old name of Wilcoxon & Co.⁽⁹⁾ Not much more can be found on Robson, so I am afraid that was the end of the Newington Causeway branch as well.

The monument from Maitland’s History of London (1739) with Wilcoxon’s corner premises on the right, although it was not yet in their occupation then (Source: British Museum)

(1) The London Gazette, 29 May 1821. Things did not go well for Robert and he was at one point confined to the king’s bench and it is suggested that he died in a mad house (see here)
(2) The London Gazette, 6 April 1824.
(3) The London Gazette, 26 February 1839.
(4) One of the salesman, John Robert Cuffley, can be traced to Great Yarmouth where he stayed a few days in July 1847 in the Angel Inn. He later had to give evidence in a case of election fraud (see here). On 27 december 1849, Arthur and Robert Wilcoxon attended a anniversary dinner of the Commercial Travellers’ School. Had Cuffley been a pupil at that school?
(5) Board of Trade, registered design 467 (National Archives BT 42/15/467), dated 13 November 1840.
(6) The London Gazette, 23 October 1868.
(7) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1878.
(8) The London Gazette, 22 July 1881.
(9) The London Gazette, 22 June 1886.

Henry Blenkinsop, hosier

Tags

clothing

Street View: 24
Address: 59 Gracechurch Street

At the time of Tallis’s Street Views, Henry Blenkinsop’s hosier shop was located at 59 Gracechurch Street. Between numbers 58 and 59 could be found St. Bennett’s Place which used to be called Jerusalem Alley or Jerusalem Court. It is still called by the old name in Horwood’s map of 1799. But Blenkinsop had not always been at number 59 (red cross on the map). At some point he moved to number 53, but in his early career he had been at number 37 (green crosses on the map). The move from number 37 can be explained by an amendment to the London Bridge Approaches Bill in which it was decided to add number 37 to the list of houses that needed to make way for the approach.⁽¹⁾ Thomson, in his book on the history of London Bridge, explains that several houses on the western side of Gracechurch Street were “to be set back” to make way for a wider approach road.⁽²⁾

Gracechurch Street in Horwood’s 1799 map

When exactly Henry started his business is not known, but it must have been before 1827 as his marriage registration already gives his occupation as hosier. An advertisement in the Edinburgh Review of 1827 sees him in partnership with one Naish who had a patent on cotton thread that was “remarkably strong and free from curling”. An earlier advert of 1821, saw one F. Naish on his (or her?) own at 37 Gracechurch Street, running a baby-linen warehouse.⁽³⁾ The discontinuation of the partnership between William Naish and Henry Blenkinsop was announced in the London Gazette of 5 February 1833. Henry was to continue the business. William Naish originally came from Bristol and was the son⁽⁴⁾ of the Quaker Edmund Naish who received a patent on 8 February 1818 “for certain improvements on the machines or machinery used for winding cotton”⁽⁵⁾, so who the F. Naish was in the 1821 advertisement remains unclear (error for E.?).

19th-century stockings (Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

In 1838, Blenkinsop was the victim of some shoplifters. Three females entered the shop, pretending to be interested in Guernsey frocks. They were apparently not the type of customers Blenkinsop was used to in his shop as he stated that he said “I did not think I had any that would suit”, but when they insisted, he showed them the cheapest he could find. They decided “they would not do” and left the shop. Almost immediately Blenkinsop noticed some stockings missing from the window and he and his assistant gave chase. One of the girls, Sarah Young, quickly passed the stockings to an accomplice, Charles Hewitt, but Blenkinsop managed to apprehend them both. Young and Hewitt were found guilty and confined for three months.⁽⁶⁾ A Guernsey frock, by the way, is not some sort of skirt, but a shirt or sweater based on the garments worn by Guernsey fisherman (see here for more information).

Henry Blenkinsop was the son of Charles and Alice Blenkinsop of Heighington in the county of Durham, and was in his late thirties when he married Elizabeth Pryer, daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Pryer of Walworth, St. Mary Newington, on the 28th day of the 8th month, 1827. The designation of the months by numerals was a Quaker practise and the event took place “in a public assembly of the people called Quakers, at Redcross Street, Southwark, in the county of Surrey”.⁽⁷⁾ Three children were born to the couple: Erasmus (1-7-1828), Anna Maria (19-9-1829) and Ellen Elizabeth (24-6-1832). Unfortunately, little Erasmus died when only 9 months old, but the two girls survived and lived until they were 81 and 71 years old respectively (see below).

The registrations of the births of the children were entered at the monthly Quaker meeting of Gracechurch Street. In all three cases the address is still given as 37 Gracechurch Street, so the move to the other side of the street must have occurred after June 1832. The 1841 census does not give a house number, but the 1851 census finds Henry and his two daughters at number 53. I have not found a record of his wife’s death, but Henry is listed as a widower. Anna Maria and Ellen Elizabeth are unmarried and were to remain single all their lives. Henry died on the 27th of March, 1854 “after a lingering and painful illness”.⁽⁸⁾ The “hosiery and outfitting business” was disposed of⁽⁹⁾ and at some point after the death of their father, the sisters moved to Saffron Walden where they started a private school, which they advertised in The British Friend of October 1863.

The census records for 1861-1911 show them residing in Saffron Walden in the High Street at number 77. Ellen Elizabeth died on 16 November 1904 and Anna Maria on 14 August 1911; the probate records name the house as “The Gables”. The sisters were most likely buried in the Friends’ burial ground in Saffron Walden and with their deaths, the line of Henry Blenkinsop, hosier, died out.

(1) House of Lords Journal, Volume 64 – 27 March 1832 (via British History Online).
(2) Richard Thomson, Chronicles of London Bridge (1827). See also the blog post – with lots of pictures – by Georgian Gentleman on the shop at One London Bridge that had to be demolished for the new bridge.
(3) La Belle assemblée: or, Bell’s court and fashionable magazine, 1 Oct. 1821.
(4) William was born on 13 July 1806 (The National Archives; Kew, England; General Register Office: Society of Friends’ Registers, Notes and Certificates of Births, Marriages and Burials; Class: RG 6; Piece: 36: Monthly Meeting of Bristol: Births (1787-1837)) and married Sarah Hallam on 6 March 1832 in London (Idem, Piece: 539: [St John] Horsleydown and Southwark: Marriages (1795-1836)).
(5) “Notice of expired patents” in The Repertory of Patent Inventions, vol. 13 (1832).
(6) The National Archives; Kew, England; General Register Office: Society of Friends’ Registers, Notes and Certificates of Births, Marriages and Burials; Class: RG 6; Piece: 539: [St. John] Horsleydown and Southwark: Marriages (1795-1836).
(7) Central Criminal Court. Minutes of Evidence (1838).
(8) The British Friend, June 1854.
(9) The British Friend, June 1854.

John Miller, waterproof garments

Tags

rubber

Street View: 24
Address: 47 Fish Street Hill

The Tallis Street View elevation shows J. Miller as the occupant of 47 Fish Street Hill where one could buy ‘improved patent waterproof coats &c’’. The side of the house also shows the names of two companies for whom Miller acted as agent: the ‘Royal Victoria Windsor Soap Manufacturer’ and the ‘London Caoutchouc Company’. Well, we all know what soap is, but what the heck is caoutchouc? It turns out to be an obsolete term for India rubber, derived from the French, who probably derived it from the Spanish cauchuc, who originally had it from the South America Indians who called it cahu chuc ‘weeping wood’. The rubber plant, Hevea Brasiliensis, is indigenous to South America, but is now grown all over the world in tropical regions. The French, by the way, still use the word caoutchouc for rubber.

Hevea Brasiliensis Source: Wikipedia

In the 1830s, Robert William Sievier patented a process for rubberizing fabrics, in other words, to make them waterproof by coating the fabric in a thin layer of rubber. In 1837, he founded the London Caoutchouc Company with an outlet at 36 King Street, Cheapside and factories in Upper Holloway and Tottenham where they produced elastic bands for driving machines, waterproof cloths, braces, rubber-insulated wire, and a whole host of other useful products.⁽¹⁾

advert The Observer, 3 Dec. 1837

advert from Street View

John Miller of 47 Fish Street Hill could supply all the rubber goods the caoutchouc factory produced as his advertisement in the Street View announces, but he seems to have thought that waterproof coats, cloaks and capes would be the best-selling items as he had that written on his shop front in the elevation and they are also listed above everything else in his advert. That waterproof clothing became all the rage in the 1830s can be read in The Sketch Book of Fashion where one Rowerton is laughed at for being “cased in caoutchouc from head to heel … His garments have been made waterproof with Indian rubber, and fireproof with asbestos; under favour of which concealed armour he performs prodigies of valour”.⁽²⁾

Henry Adlard, The Natural and Spiritual Man

But waterproof clothing and soap was not all Miller could supply. An engraving by Henry Adlard, ‘The Natural and Spiritual Man’ showing Christ surrounded by eight hearts with symbols of vice and virtue, could also be had from Miller’s shop. Miller had not been long at the Fish Street Hill address when the Tallis Street View was published. Up to 1833, John Albert, a tailor, had been at the address, but he advertised his removal in The Standard of 3 August 1833. Whether Miller immediately took possession of the shop after Albert is unclear, but he had certainly left the premises again by 1841 as The Post Office Directory for that year gives three names for the address: a merchant, a solicitor’s firm and a sailcloth manufacturer, but Miller has disappeared. A bankruptcy notice in The London Gazette of 28 June 1844 tells us more. Miller appears to have been moving from one failed enterprise to another until his creditors caught up with him. I will quote the LG entry in full:

John Miller, formerly of 67, Thomas-street, Windsor, Berkshire, Brewer’s and Banker’s Clerk, and Proprietor of the Windsor Express Newspaper, Printer and Stationer, in partnership with Richard Oxley, at No. 42, Thomas-street aforesaid, then of High-street, Windsor, Manager of Medley and Son’s Bank, then of Park-street, Windsor aforesaid, Agent to the Hope Insurance Office and Phoenix Office, then of 47, Fish-street-hill, London, Waterproof Coat Warehouseman, then of No. 23, Chadwell-street, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, exhibiting the Biophalax at the Egytian-hall, Piccadilly, then of No. 23, York-place, City-road, Middlesex, out of business, and late of No. 9, Bloomsbury-place, Brighton, Sussex, Lodging Housekeeper.

Few of the jobs Miller had can be substantiated, but some observations may be in order to show that he was not the successful entrepreneur he appeared to be in the Street View elevation. The Windsor and Eton Express reported on 28 January, 1837 that “The inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood of Windsor were yesterday thrown into considerable consternation by the announcement that the bank of Messrs. Medley and Son, and Co., of this town, had stopped payment. The alarm, however as the day advanced, greatly subsided, as it became known that from the short period since its establishment – we believe about three years – its business as a bank of deposit was by no means of an extensive character, and also that of those who did bank there, very few indeed are likely to suffer to any material extent”. Miller cannot have been a very successful manager! I also doubt that Miller played a very important role in the ‘partnership’ between Oxley and himself for the Windsor Express newspaper as he is not mentioned in the Wikipedia page for the paper. They just mention the Oxley family who still owned the paper in 1910. I will look into the exhibiting of the biophalax when I write about the Egyptian Hall in one of the forthcoming entries on this blog, but as you can no doubt guess, the biophalax was not a very successful enterprise either.

Horsham prison from H. Dudley, The History and Antiquities of Horsham (1836)

At the time of the LG bankruptcy entry, Miller is confined as a debtor in Horsham prison.⁽³⁾ He must have been one of the last prisoners there, as the goal was closed and the building sold off and subsequently demolished in 1845.⁽⁴⁾ I have not been able to find out whether Miller was at that time still an inmate or whether he had been releases beforehand. In fact, the further story of John Miller has proved elusive; having a common name like John Miller does not help either, so I must end the history of the caoutchouc salesman here.

(1) For more information on the Tottenham factory and the goods they produced see: William Robinson, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham, in the County of Middlesex, vol. 1 (1940), pp. 66-68 (online here).
(2) C.G.F. Gore, The Sketch Book of Fashion, vol. 2 (1833), pp. 251-252.
(3) London Gazette, 8 March 1844.
(4) See: Ye Olde Sussex Pages, Horsham Goal.

Neighbours:

46 Fish Street Hill –>