Archibald Barklimore, surgeon

Tags

medicine

Street View: 27
Address: 4 High Street, Bloomsbury

Although Tallis lists a W.W. Barklimore, surgeon, in the index to his Street View for High Street, Bloomsbury, I have not been able to work out who this W.W. was, There is only one other one mention of him in a directory, but fortunately another surgeon could be found at the same address with the same last name, so this post is about him. Archibald Barklimore enrolled as a student of medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1799.⁽¹⁾ He did not finish the full doctor of medicine curriculum, but chose to become a surgeon. He went to the West Indies and in 1808 was captured when returning from there by a French privateer off Ireland. He, and a few others who had also been captured by the French, managed to escape. Apparently he had unsuccessfully tried to escape before from Verdun, but was re-captured and sent to Bitche from where the second attempt was made.⁽²⁾

Old Hall of the Royal College of Surgeons from their library website

Back in England he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh) in 1810 and settled in London. The first mention of him in the Capital is in the 1811 London and Country Directory with the address of 2 Piccadilly. In 1814 and 1818, Barklimore bought some books for Thomas Mcwhirter, who had attended Edinburgh University at the same time as Barklimore. Mcwhirter, however, finished the whole course and became a doctor of medicine and settled in Newcastle-on-Tyne.⁽³⁾ I guess that he could not so easily obtain the books in Newcastle that were published in London and hence procured them through his friend Barklimore.⁽⁴⁾

In 1822, in Pigot’s Directory, Barklimore could be found at 4 High Street, Bloomsbury. The Tallis index mistakenly lists him at 4 Broad Street, but every other resource, such as the Land Tax records, has 4 High Street as his address. In 1827, Barklimore married Hessey Owens at St. Mary’s, Dover, Kent. According to the announcement of the wedding in The Standard, she originally came from Ireland. In that same announcement Barklimore is listed as of Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury. Hessey died in 1830 and as far as I know, Barklimore did not marry again.

The Examiner, 24 June 1832

The Electoral Registers for 1832-1837 also give Barklimore’s address as 10 Charlotte Street. And so does Pigot’s Directory of 1839 which gives Wm W. Barklimore at 4 High Street. Who he is, remains a mystery, and he is not mentioned in Robson’s Directory of 1839 which lists Archibald Barklimore at both 10 Charlotte Street and 4 High Street. Barklimore cannot be found at 4 High Street in the 1841 census, but he is resident in Charlotte Street, which would suggest that the latter address was his home and 4 High Street his surgery.

Barklimore’s name crops up in various advertisements for articles that are said to improve one’s health, such as corsets, “spectacle lenses” and “voice conductors”. These last two items, glasses and hearing aids in our parlance, were advertised by Messrs. S. and B. Solomons of 39 Albemarle Street and were, of course, much better than anything that came before as was attested by the gentlemen whose names were listed in the advertisement.⁽⁵⁾

The London Gazette, 24 December 1844

1845 Medical Directory

1846 Medical Directory

In The Medical Directory for 1845 and in the one for 1846, Barklimore’s name is joined to that of William Simpson, but that partnership had already been dissolved in 1842. Simpson was apparently a common name among doctors and Simpson’s qualifications could not yet be listed in the 1845 directory, but by 1846, they had worked out which of the Simpsons he was. Note that he is still given the address of 4 High Street. Barklimore’s entry is an exact copy of the 1845 one. The British Medical Directory for England, Scotland and Wales of 1853 gives Barklimore as ‘retired’. He died on 2 April 1864 at the age of 86 at Old Quebec Street.⁽⁶⁾ A notice in the Belfast News-Letter of 8 April of that year, mentioned that he was the only son of Hugh Barklimore, late of Whitehouse, parish of Carnmoney, which precludes the illusive Wm. W. being a brother. So, Archibald Barklimore originally came from Ireland, but lived most of his life in London.

Breathing a vein by James Gillray (Source: British Museum)

(1) University of Edinburgh: Matriculation Album, 1786-1805.
(2) Roy Adkins, Roy & Lesley Adkins, The War For All The Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo (2006), unpaginated, but about halfway.
(3) University of Edinburgh: Matriculation Album, 1786-1805. Tentamen medicum inaugurale, de Pneumonia, 1800.
(4) Invoice offered by Richard Ford (accessed 6 May 2016).
(5) The Morning Post, 26 April 1839.
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1864. Estate valued at under £4,000.

Neighbours:

<– 5 High Street

3 High Street –>

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George Cramp, coal merchant

Tags

fuel

Street View: 27
Address: 22 High Street, Bloomsbury

The index page to Tallis’s booklet 27 lists George Cramp at 22 Broad Street, but that is a mistake. In every resource I found, and indeed on Tallis’s own street plan, Cramp is given the address of 22 High Street, Bloomsbury, also known as High Street, St. Giles. Mr. Cramp has not left many traces behind of his existence, so I am afraid his biography will be rather short.

The 1841 census for 22 High Street tells us that George Cramp, 45 years old, not born in Middlesex, with an occupation so faded that it could be anything, is living there with Liddey Cramp, 40 years old, also from outside Middlesex. A Charles Hunter, 5 years old, appears to be living with George and Liddey, but I have not found out what relation he was of them. As you can see from the elevation above, number 22 was a rather large house and more people are listed at that address in the census, but they do not seem to have anything to do with the Cramps, nor are they listed in Tallis. Ten years later, in the 1851 census, Cramp is living at number 24 (I’ll come back to the move later), he is now 56 years old and clearly listed as a coal dealer. His birthplace is given as Branstead (Brasted?), Kent. His wife, now called Lydia, is 50 years old and originally from Norwich, Norfolk. Living with them is Sarah Eley, an 80-year old widow, also from Norwich and described as ‘mother’. This gave me a clue to Liddy’s maiden name⁽¹⁾ and led to the marriage registration for George Cramp and Liddy Eley on 26 July 1845 at St. Martin’s in the Field, Westminster. Yes, indeed, long after the couple were listed together in the 1841 census and one can only speculate why they got married at St. Martin’s rather than at their local church, St. Giles’s.

Georgey in the Coal-Hole by James Gillray, 1800 (Source: British Museum)

George may have been listed at 24 High Street in the 1851 census, that is, he was recorded as sleeping on the premises the night of 30 March when the census was taken, but earlier that year he had been in the debtor’s prison “on his own petition”.⁽²⁾ On 13 February, he was to appear before the Commissioner and in the notice about it he is described as “formerly of no. 22, High-street, Bloomsbury, and having a stable in Camden-street, Soho, both in Middlesex, coal dealer and carman, and late of no. 24, High-street aforesaid, out of business or employment”.⁽³⁾ So, George diversified and in stead of just dealing in coal he used his cart or waggon to deliver other goods, most likely for other people, possibly one of the railyway companies. In the elevation above for number 22, a gaping hole on the ground floor suggests a throughfare to the backyard where Cramp may have stored his coals and his horse(s), but number 24 does not seem to have had such a passage and perhaps Cramp just rented a few rooms at number 24 while he kept his horse and cart in Camden Street.⁽⁴⁾

There is one other snippet of information to be found about George Cramp, and that is that he was summoned to serve on the Traverse Jury at the Middlesex Sessions of the Peace on 23 July 1850.⁽⁵⁾ A traverse jury is one that is chosen for just the one case, but which case that was in Cramp’s case is unclear. No more is heard of George and his wife Lydia after the bankruptcy proceedings; I have not found anymore census records for them, nor any death registrations, so what happened to them is uncertain. Did they emigrate?

A trade card that has little to do with Cramp, but all with transporting coal, to end this rather short post:

Source: British Museum

(1) Lydia Ely was baptised 31 May 1799 at St. Margaret’s, Norwich, the daughter of Benjamin Ely and Sarah Rovell. I have not discovered any baptism records for George.
(2) London Gazette, 21 January 1851.
(3) London Gazette, 28 January 1851.
(4) Victorian London published W.J. Gordon’s The Horse World of London (1893) with chapter 10 on The Coal Horse (see online here).
(5) London Metropolitan Archives, MJ/SP/1850/08/005.

Neighbours:

<– 23 High Street

21 High Street –>

Louis Panormo, guitar maker

Tags

music

Street View: 27
Address: 46 High Street, Bloomsbury

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the six-stringed guitar was introduced into England and one of the best maker of such guitars was Louis Panormo. His father, Vicenzo Panormo (1734-1813), originally a violin maker from Sicily, came to London via France with his four sons. The whole family was musically minded and many Panormos found work in London as instrument makers, musicians, music publishers and composers. There were to begin with Vicenzo’s four sons, Francis (1763-1843), Joseph (1768-1837), George (1776-1852) and Louis (1784-1862), but the next generation, Ferdinand (c.1795-1882), Robert (c.1803-1873), Edward (1811-1891), George Lewis (1815-1877) and Angelina (1811-1900) were also involved in the world of music. George Lewis, the son of George, will figure later in the story of Louis’ business. Louis styled himself “the only maker of guitars in the Spanish style”. Whether that was true is debatable, but it made a good advertorial phrase and he had it printed above the elevation of his shop in the Tallis Street View.

Advertisement in Street View 27

Guitar label (Source: art-robb.co.uk)

The labels Louis put in his guitars included his address, so it is possible to trace were his shops were situated. The earliest label of 1816 puts him at 26 High Street, but he moved to number 46 in 1828 where he remained until c.1846-7. He also had shops at number 40 High Street (1829-c.1832-3), at 6 Greek Street (1837-1840) and a short-lived one at 22 Compton Street (1847). From 1847-c.1854 he worked from 31 High Street. Tallis calls it High Street, Bloomsbury, but it is now better known as St. Giles High Street. Although the labels suggest he started his career in 1816, the advertisement he had in Street View 27 claims that he had already been working for thirty years which would date the start of his career at ±1809. His daughter Angelina (also Angiolina) was baptised on 1 March 1812 (date of birth 19 July 1811) at St. Pancras Old Church which suggests another area of the city, athough no specific address is given. When daughter Anna Maria is baptised at St. Giles in the Fields on 5 September 1813, the address of 43 Mortimer Street is given, but it is unclear whether he ever had a shop there. The name of the mother of these two girls was Ann, but that is all I know about her. When the next daughter, Mathilda, is baptised, the mother is listed as Sarah and the address is High Street, which does correspond to the guitar labels. More children were born to Louis and Sarah and when addresses are given in the baptismal records, they correspond to those on the guitar labels. Why Louis married Sarah Sutton only in 1834, many years after the children were born, remains a mystery. We also know that he rented a stable in Falconbery Court from where some riding material was stolen in April 1836.⁽¹⁾

Panormo guitar (Source: University of Edinburgh Collections images.is.ed.ac.uk)

Panormo’s guitars became quite famous and Major William Charles Yelverton wrote to Theresa Longworth,

“I forget whether guitar playing is one of your musical accomplishments; but having just heard of one of said instruments going for the sum which a music-seller in this town has pleased to offer for it, and which, I presume, is, according to trade custom, far under its value, I have persuaded the lady wanting to sell it to wait a day or two until I could hear from you whether you would promise to play the said guitar if I get it for you … I should have told you that the guitar was made by ‘Louis Panormo;’ not that I ever heard his name before, but they tell me he was a great man in his own line”.⁽²⁾

Two days later, the paper continues the letter conversation and Miss Yelverton wrote rather despondently “If you have got the guitar I will learn it, in the hope of doing something to please you, having hitherto failed in all my accomplishments”. Whether the Major bought the instrument and whether Theresa did indeed learn to play the guitar is unclear, but what is clear, is that Panormo’s name as a guitar maker was apparently highly regarded in Ireland from where Yelverton wrote his letter.

Six string guitar, labelled ‘Louis Panormo, London’, inlaid with mother of pearl (Source: National Trust Collection inv.nr. 836071)

The famous Spanish guitarist Antonio Trinitario Huerta (1800-1874) had come to England in 1827 and played on a guitar made by Panormo. This seems to have been a mutual benificial arrangement; the famous guitarist using a guitar made by London’s famous guitar maker. Panormo published Huerta’s Divertimentos which were dedicated to his student, Louis’ daughter Angelina. She married Huerta in 1828 when she was only 17 years old and the couple lived in Paris for a while, teaching the guitar, she to the ladies, he to the men. But ten years later, Angelina was back in London with her children while Huerta lived – apparently separately – at Brighton.

In 1859, Louis, his wife Sarah and three of their children took the boat to New Zealand to settle in Orua Bay (close to Auckland). They were not the first of the family to emigrate; three sons and two daughters had gone to Australia in 1853, but later joined the rest of the family in New Zealand. Nephew George Lewis continued the business of musical instrument maker in St. Giles High Street and later at 87 St. John Street, Fitzroy Square and in Whitefield Street until his death in 1877.⁽³⁾

The Bird Waltz (1816) by Francis Panormo, 26 High Street (Source: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek)

A.T. Huerta. Life and Works (Source: finefretted.org)

No 1 from Huerta’s Four Divertimentos played by Taro Takeuchi on a Panormo guitar, albeit not one made by Louis, but by Edward (click to start the music)

———
Information that has not been given a footnote, came from Gary Southwell, The Panormo Guitar and its Makers, London College of Furniture (1983; online here) and James Westbrook, “Louis Panormo: ‘The only Maker of Guitars in the Spanish Style'” in Early Music, vol. XLI, no. 4 (2013).
(1) Old Bailey Case t18360404-1029. Stolen: 3 saddles, 1 pair of traces, 1 pair of harnes, 1 breeching, 1 bridle, 1 pair of reigns, 1 martingale and 1 horse-cloth. Total value 79s.
(2) Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertser, The Longworth-Yelverton Letters, 10 January 1863. Date of the actual letter not stated. See the Wikipedia pages for Yelverton and Longworth.
(3) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1877.

Neighbours:

<– 47 High Street

45 High Street –>

Charles Ubsdell, tailor

Tags

clothing

Street Views: 27 and 61
Addresses: 32 High Street, Bloomsbury and 75 Shoreditch

The elevation at the top of this post is for the property Charles Ubsdell had on 32 High Street, Bloomsbury, or, as he sometimes put it in his advertisements, opposite the end of Oxford Street. The earliest mention of Ubsdell in an advertisement is in the London Dispatch and People’s Political and Social Reformer of 14 January 1838. He calls his shop the “Great Western Emporium” and you could buy your suits and coats there “in any colour” and with “a good fit warranted”. But he also had a shop at 75 High Street, Shoreditch (elevation on the left), perhaps predictably called the “Northern Emporium”. An Old Bailey case of August 1838 tells us that Richard Ubsdell, Charles’ son, is living at Shoreditch and we can assume that he managed that branch for his father.⁽¹⁾

The 1841 census tells us that Charles is 52 years old, not born in Middlesex, married to Jean (also called Jane) who is 53 years old, and that the couple have five children living with them (Matilda, 23, Richard, 21, Martha, 19, Asa, 17, and Thomas, 14). They are living in Boziers Court, a small road behind a block of houses on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. See The Cat’s Meat Shop for more information on Boziers Court. By then, that is by 1841, the Ubsdells had moved their Emporium from High Street, Bloomsbury to 1 & 2 Oxford Street. The shop in Shoreditch is no longer mentioned in the advertisements.

Advert in various Street View booklets

Nothing spectacular happens in the tailor’s shop at the Great Western Emporium as the shop is still called, but that cannot be said of the personal life of some of the Ubsdells. Matilda, the eldest daughter went off in 1842 with “a Noble Lord, the younger son of a Duke, to Ireland, where she lived with him for some months, and having become enceinte by him, she returned to this country and was delivered of a boy”.⁽²⁾ Matilda sued the young Lord for breach of promise and was paid 300l. to hush it all up. She assumed the name of Mrs Black and with her younger sister Martha set up as milliners at 113 Park Street, Camden Town. In 1844, she met a young man who worked as a clerk in the goods department of Ely station and they became engaged. The engagement was, however, broken off and they did not see each other for a while. They renewed their engagement in 1846 after a chance meeting and the wedding day was fixed for September 1847. The millinery business was advertised for sale and the money raised was to be used for a house. On the 8th of August, Matilda received a letter from her young man in which he wrote that he thought they should acquaint her father with the engagement. Apparently they had kept it a secret. Why one wonders? Mr. W.R. Carr – the young man’s first name is not mentioned – wanted to get their financial future on a better footing and he thought that Matilda might “be furnished with 800l. or 1,000l.” He stresses that he does not want the money for himself, but for “the society I shall have to enter into and other things”. Matilda was not having any of that and she alleged that the letter amounted to a refusal to marry her and she consulted an attorney who wrote to Mr. Carr threatening proceedings, but also offering a way out if money were to change hands. In other words, Matilda thought she could get some money out of a second young man for another breach of promise. But this young man was not such a push-over as the Irish nobleman, or had less to lose, and it came to a court case.

The defence stated that Mr. Carr had not known of ‘Mrs. Black’s’ earlier history, but had thought her to be a young widow with a child. Witnesses were called to refute that claim as Matilda had frequently been called by her maiden name in front of the defendant and her young son had been called by his father’s real name. Two witnesses said that Carr had told them he knew of Matilda’s previous history but “that it would make no difference in his respect and esteem for the plaintiff”. The defence claimed that “it was not likely that with the knowledge of so serious a lapse of virtue on her part as consenting to live as the paramour of another man defendant would have entered into this engagement.” Chief Justice Wild considered the fact that this was Matilda’s second action for breach of promise and that she had entered this second one under her assumed name of Mrs. Black, giving the world the impression that she was a widow. She should have made the real facts known to the defendant and “as to the question of damages, if it should arise, plaintiff’s feelings were not likely to have suffered so severely as if this had been her first appearance in court as plaintiff in an action of this nature. Verdict for plaintiff – damages one farthing”.⁽³⁾ Not quite the 300l. she might have hoped for! If you now think that Matilda went on to lead the quiet life of a spinster, or even an assumed widow, you are wrong. The same year as the court case againt Carr, she managed to get her hooks into one John Lymes, a widowed coffee house keeper. The couple got married on 7 December 1848 and presumably lived happily ever after as Matilda’s name did not appear in the papers again.

Matilda behind the counter? (Source: British Museum)

Back to the Western Emporium on Oxford Street. In the 1851 census, we can still find Charles and his wife Jane at Boziers Court. Living with them are sons Thomas and Asa, and daughter Martha and her husband Jonathan King whom she had married in 1850. I am afraid things did not go well for Charles Ubsdell after that. Whether that had anything to do with the shenanigans of his daughter which lost him customers, or whether he just fell foul of the debit/credit balance is unclear, but in early 1853 he is confined to the Queen’s Prison as a bankrupt.⁽⁴⁾ And this story is unfortunately not a fairy tale and so does not have a happy end; in 1877, Charles dies on the 31st of March, 86 years old, at the Saint Pancras Workhouse. Life was not kind to this particular London tailor.

————
(1) Old Bailey t18380820-1949.
(2) the Morning Post, 17 May 1848.
(3) Lloyd’s Weekly, 21 May 1848.
(4) London Gazette, 11 and 21 January 1853.

Neighbours:

<– 33 High Street <– 76 Shoreditch

31 High Street –> 74 Shoreditch –>