Fribourg & Pontet, tobacconists

Tags

tobacco

Street Views: 76 and 77
Addresses: 60 Charing Cross and 124 Pall Mall

      

Farewell to Snuff, An Elegy
1.
Box, thou art clos’d – and Snuff is but a name!
It is decreed – my nose shall feast no more!
To me no more shall come – whence erst it came –
The precious pulvil from Hibernia’s shore!
2.
Virginia, barren be thy teeming soil –
Or may the swallowing earth-quake gulf thy fields!
Fribourg, and Pontet! cease your trading toil, –
Or bankruptcy be all the fruit it yields!

The stanzas above are the first two of twelve of James Beresford’s ‘Elegy’ which was published in 1807 in The Miseries of Human Life (online here).

As we saw in a previous post, the firm of Fribourg & Treyer added a small sentence to one of their advertisements, “To prevent mistakes, they find themselves under the necessity of giving this public notice, that they have no concern whatever with any other shop in London”. They seemed to be referring to their competitors at 134 (later 124) Pall Mall, Fribourg & Pontet. The feeling was apparently mutual as Fribourg & Pontet (Tallis calls him Puntet, but that is a mistake) added a sentence to their trade card, “no connection with any other shop”.

Trade card (Source: British Museum)

Frederick William Fairholt in his Tobacco: its history and associations: including an account of the plant and its manufacture; with its modes of use in all ages and countries of 1859 says that a bill of 1768 is headed “John Saullé and Pontet, successors to the late James Fribourg”, but the British Museum has one of 1774 headed “Fribourg & Saulle” with “& Pontet” added in handwriting, which seems to suggest a later take-over. Please note that the signature is for one C. Pontet, which is Claude Pontet. James Fribourg is mentioned in the Westminster ratebooks for St. James Piccadilly in the 1740s, but in the 1760s, the rates were paid by John Saulle.

1774 bill (Source: British Museum)

Claude Pontet had married Anne Hill at St. George’s, Hanover Square and their son Franciscus Josephus Maria was born on 24 February 1768 and baptised a week later at the Roman Catholic Church in Lincolns Inn Fields (Sardinian Chapel). Claude died in December 1800, and the business in Pall Mall was continued by his son Francis. We will call him Francis sr. from now on as his son Francis Claude also entered the snuff business. Francis sr. died in 1842, 74 years old. It is said that he had married the daughter of James Fribourg, but I have found no evidence for that. In his will, drawn up in 1824, he names his wife Mary as his executor. He had married Mary Toussaint in 1791 at St. James’s, Piccadilly.⁽¹⁾ Another suggestion is that it was Claude who married Fribourg’s daughter, but here we run into a similar problem; the only marriage I found for Claude is the 1757 one with Ann Hill.

The Fribourg that preceded Treyer was Peter Fribourg, but the one whose name was linked to Pontet’s was James Fribourg. Whether Peter and James Fribourg were related remains unclear, although it does seem likely as Fribourg was not a very common name in London. According to John Arlott they were father and son, but he gives nor references or sources, so I have no idea whether that is true.⁽²⁾ Arlott has James Fribourg working from the Haymarket before he moved to Pall Mall in ±1738, while Peter Fribourg took over the shop at 34 Haymarket. Arlott also says that James Fribourg moved to Pall Mall with his daughter and her French immigrant husband Pontet, but that cannot be Claude or Francis as they had either not been born yet or were not old enough. Was there an earlier generation of Pontets who married into the Fribourg family, but then why would Fribourg have a partnership with Saulle while the Pontet name was only added in the 1770s after Fribourg’s death? More questions than answers here I am afraid.

Portrait Francis sr. (Source: shorehambysea.com)

Over the years, the address for Fribourg and Pontet changed a number of times, and Francis junior had a different address altogether, so below an attempt to make sense of the various moves. The dates are just those that I could find in various resources and for the 1818 and 1819 entries, I do not know whether Francis sr. or jr. is meant. The list makes no pretence at completeness.

1740s	Fribourg	Pall Mall
1760s	Fribourg & Saulle	Pall Mall
1773-1783	Fribourg, Saulle & Pontet	Pall Mall
1791-1799	Claude Pontet (Fribourg & Pontet)	3 Pall Mall
1797	Francis Pontet (Fribourg & Pontet)	3 Vigo Lane
1799-1803	Francis Pontet (Fribourg & Pontet)	24 Cockspur Street (see here)
1806-1814	Francis Pontet (Fribourg & Pontet)	134 Pall Mall
1818	Francis Pontet	5 Cockspur Street
1819	Francis Pontet	30 Haymarket
1821-1842	Francis Pontet (Fribourg & Pontet)	124 Pall Mall
1843-1877	Edward Pontet (Fribourg & Pontet)	124 Pall Mall
1822-1826	Francis Pontet jr	59 Charing Cross
1827-1851	Francis Pontet jr	60 Charing Cross

The British Museum date this trade card to 1810, but it must be earlier as Pontet can already be found at 134 Pall Mall in 1806

It is always hard to know who the customers were of a particular shop, other than in the rare cases where the administration of a business is still extant, and even then, you will not find the customer who just came in off the street for a single purchase and paid in cash. But sometimes individual customers make their appearance, such as the Honourable Charles Howard to whom the 1774 bill shown above was addressed, and George F.M. Porter, MP for Shoreham, whose letters were read when Pontet’s portrait turned up (see here). Abbé Count Jenico de Preston, a member of an Irish aristocratic family, who was involved in erecting a Catholic chapel at Abergavenny, was also a customer. On 9 April 1798, he wrote a letter to James Peter Coghlan, a Catholic printer and bookseller at Grosvenor Square, in which he says, “I would be much obliged to you if you were so good to get for me from Fribourg Pontet No. 3 in Pall Mall, twelve pounds of his fine plain rappee snuff such as you sent me once last year, and as I used to get from him when I lived the year before last at No. 6 in Bulstrode Street, which I paid him at 5 shils per pound”.⁽³⁾

Snuff pot (Source: Etsy.com)

After the death of Francis senior, the Pall Mall shop was run by Edward Pontet, Francis’s brother, still under the name of Fribourg & Pontet. Edward died in February 1878 and in June of that year, his “collection of engravings, drawings, paintings, and a few books, miniatures, snuff-boxes, &c.” was auctioned by Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge.⁽⁴⁾

Francis junior married Charlotte Hale in 1834 and the couple had five girls and three boys, none of whom seems to have gone into the snuff business. Francis jr died in 1863 and on his probate entry⁽⁵⁾, no mention is made of the shop at 60 Charing Cross and if we look back at the 1861 census, Francis is given as “retired tobacconist” at 32 Cambridge Terrace. The eldest son of Francis and Charlotte, Frank Fribourg, went into the Merchant Navy.⁽⁶⁾ According to the census records, the next son, Claude Hale, became a clerk at the Post Office Savings Bank, and the youngest son, Horace William George, is described as an unemployed purser in the 1871 census and his probate record tells us that he died in 1878 in Calcutta.⁽⁷⁾ The 1856 Post Office Directory names one Richard James Sherriff, snuff maker and importer, as the occupant of 60 Charing Cross, but I am afraid that he died on 29 December 1859.⁽⁸⁾ What happened to the shop after that is slightly unclear, but at some point the Sun Fire Office had their office at that address.⁽⁹⁾

Engraved plate for Fribourg & Pontet (Source: Pipemuseum.nl)

(1) They were married by licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury on 8 September 1791. Witnesses: James Toussaint and Claude Pontet. Many thanks to Kathryn (@kaffgregory) for sending me the information.
(2) John Arlott, The Snuff Shop (1974).
(3) The Correspondence of James Peter Coghlan (1731-1800), ed. F. Blom et al. (2007), p. 336.
(4) The Standard, 1 June 1878.
(5) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1863.
(6) Master’s Certificates, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, number 23.170 (1860, 2nd mate).
(7) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1880.
(8) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1860.
(9) Advertisement in T.G. Austin, The Straw Plaitting and Straw Hat and Bonnet Trade (1871).

You may also like to read the post on Fribourg & Treyer, tobacconists, or Georgian Gentleman’s blog post on snuff here.

Neighbours:

<– 58 Charing Cross	61 Charing Cross –>
<– 13 Cockspur Street	123 Pall Mall –>

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Thomas and James Farrance, cooks and confectioners

Tags

catering

Street View: 6 and 76
Address: 28 Ludgate Street and 66-67 Charing Cross

In 1775, Thomas Farrance obtained his freedom of the City of London by presenting his credentials to the authorities. He had been bound as an apprentice to one William Manser, “a musician, a cook by trade” and had served his full seven year. Manser had, however, made the mistake of binding Farrance in the Company of Cooks, while not himself “free of this City in that Company”. An administrative mistake and fortunately not with any dire consequences as the error was considered a genuine mistake and Farrance was accordingly admitted to the freedom of the City.

Miniatures of Thomas and Sarah

In September 1782, he married Sarah Pennington at St. Clement Danes. The miniatures on the left are kindly provided by David Roy Clapham.⁽¹⁾ In all, the couple have at least ten children, all baptised at St. Gregory by St. Paul. Two of them, Thomas II (1786-1865) and James (1792-1862) follow their father in his profession. In 1791, an insurance record places Thomas as pastry cook at 74 Leadenhall Street.⁽²⁾ Tax records for the Aldgate Ward show the Leadenhall premises empty in 1791, but occupied by Thomas Farrance from 1792 onwards. However, the indenture with which Thomas junior is bound to his father in 1800 says that they live in Ludgate Street (more accurately Ludgate Hill as the shop was on the corner of Ave Mary Lane) and an insurance entry for that same year places them at 28 Ludgate Street.⁽³⁾ Considering that the children were baptised at St. Gregory, I assume that the family had always lived at 28 Ludgate Hill, which is born out by the tax records for the Castle Baynard ward of 1782 which firmly places Thomas in the correct area.⁽⁴⁾ But Thomas is not content with just one or two shops and already in 1801, in an advertisement for a masquerade taking place in Ranelagh Gardens, we see that tickets can be bought from “Mr. Farrance’s, pastry cook, Ludgate-hill and Spring-gardens”.⁽⁵⁾ We can assume that the Spring Gardens address was the same as the later 67 Charing Cross one as the premises were on the corner of Charing Cross and Spring Gardens and both street names were used interchangeably. Indeed, in 1805, the insurance is listed for Charing Cross.

detail Horwood map 1799

In 1808, an intriguing entry occurs in the Post Office Directory where 74 Leadenhall Street is occupied by one “R. Farrance, confectioner”. I have not found a child of Thomas I and Sarah with the initial R. but it would be too much of a coincidence to have an unrelated Farrance occupying the premises for which Thomas took out the insurance in 1791 and for which he kept paying the Aldgate Ward tax right up to 1826. The 1811 Holden’s Annual London and Country Directory also has R. Farrance at the Leadenhall address and lists both 28 Ludgate Street and 67 Charing Cross for Thos. Farrance, confectioner. It is not at all unlikely that Thomas junior and senior are each in charge of one establishment. Thomas junior lived in Leadenhall Street for a while (see below), but from 1827 to 1834 the tax for that establishment is registered to James Farrance, the other son of Thomas I who went into the confectionary business and who obtained his City freedom in 1822 by patrimony. In the 1825 Pigot’s Directory James is already listed as being at the Leadenhall address. That still does not prove there was no R. Farrance, but at least we can be certain that he did not figure in the confectioner’s story after 1825. Was it perhaps a mistake by the directories, or is there a missing Farrance family member?

The invoice below is made out in 1813 for a Mr. Booth of New Street for the account of the years 1810-1813 and from that we can establish what sort of food the Farrances produced. Booth was charged for pies, giblet soup, oyster patties, jelly, cheese cakes and a few other items I cannot decipher. The bottom item looks suspiciously like turtle spunge. We know they sold mock turtle soup as in 1848, Percy Hamilton overhears the waiter in Farrance’s “soup-room” relay his and his friends’ order as “One pea, one ox, and one mock”.⁽⁶⁾

Invoice from Thomas Farrance to Mr. Booth 1813 ©British Museum

Ralph Rylance in his Epicure’s Almanack of 1815 is very complimentary about Farrance’s establishment at Spring Garden. “In point of magnitude, and of the excellence and cheapness of its article, this long celebrated shop has no superior, perhaps, in the world. here are exquisite soups, highly flavoured tarts, savoury patties, and delicious pastry and confitures. Fruits and ices throughout the whole extent of their season, good and in great variety”. And at Ludgate Street, one could get “soups, mock turtle savoury patties, ices, and confectionary, in all their glory and splendour, with custards of the greatest delicacy”.⁽⁷⁾

An unusual archival find gives us a glimpse into the life of one of Farrance’s apprentices. One James Thornton is asked by his then employer, John Frederick Fitzclarence, the Lieutenant Governor of Portsmouth, to give as much information as possible about his time as cook to the Duke of Wellington, because Fitzclarence thought that anything to do with Wellington might be of interest. Thornton served Wellington as field cook from August 1811, that is, during part of the Peninsular War and during the Battle of Waterloo. Afterwards he is promoted to Steward at Apsley House, but he resigns that position at the end of 1820. The question put to Thornton “where were you apprenticed?” is answered “1st to Mr. Farrance, Cook and confectioner, at the corner of Spring gardens and Charing Cross. 2nd to Mr. Escudier, Hotel Keeper in Oxford Street, London”. Fitzclarence is very content with Thornton as his cook and says “I cannot give him too good a character”.⁽⁸⁾

But back to the Farrances. In 1818, Thomas junior marries Temperance Horwood and up to 1823, their address given at the baptisms of their children is Leadenhall Street, but from 1824, the baptisms are recorded for 67 Charing Cross. But life isn’t always kind and in 1827, Temperance dies “at the house of her father, James Horwood, Esq. of Walworth”.⁽⁹⁾. In 1824, the insurance record for Thomas Farrance of 38 (mistake for 28) Ludgate Street, lists his other properties as “The Spring Garden Coffee House adjoining 66 and 67 Charing Cross. In 1832, both Sarah and Thomas senior die and are buried at St. Gregory’s in the “rector’s vault”. In January 1833 we see the insurance record for the Ludgate property registered to Mary, Harriet, Elizabeth and Maria Farrance (the sisters of James and Thomas junior). In June of that year, it is just registered to Mary, but in January 1834 it is James, Mary and Harriet who pay the insurance. From 1834 onwards, the electoral register lists James at that address. I cannot find him in the 1841 census, but in 1851 and 1861 James lives with his sister Harriet, companion John Tucker and two servants at 10 St. Mary Abbots Terrace, Kensington. The family grave at Brompton Cemetery tells us that James was interred there on 15 November 1862, his sister Harriet followed him in April 1867. Thomas II had been buried in the same grave on 6 June 1865 and so had his second wife Elizabeth (1871), the other sister Maria (1891) and her husband Thomas Thomas (1868) and their child Maria Harriet (1861).

In 1851 and 1861, Thomas II is living at 6 Ladbroke Terrace with his second wife Elizabeth (Eliza) whom he had married in 1845 and the census lists Thomas III and James II (the sons of James II), both unmarried, as living at 66-67 Charing Cross as “confectioners, employing 16 servants”, some of whom are living on the premises. In 1864, a letter sent to the editor of the Society of Arts complains about the lack of sculpture entries for the exhibition at the Royal Academy, Trafalgar Square. The author, who just signed the letter ‘Epsilon’, is not surprised at this lack of response as “the rooms […] applied to the exhibition of this art in this building are a national disgrace”. If the organisation cannot do better, they might as well turn over the rooms “into the charge of Mr. Farrance, over the way, or some other restaurant of that class, who would be ready, probably, to pay a handsome honorarium to the academy for the privilege of there supplying cakes, ices, &c. to the weary and thirsty lovers of pictures.”⁽¹⁰⁾

Cakes from Mrs Beeton’s Household Management

And ices they certainly served at Farrance’s. F.M. Trollope in her 1850 novel Petticoat Government has Miss Tollbridge and Judith Maitland wait for their ices and buns in one of the smaller rooms at the restaurant which “exhibited flower-pieces, plans of porticoes and palaces, and drawings of various descriptions”. But it was not to last forever. James I died in 1862, Thomas II in 1865, Thomas III in 1876 and James II in 1891, but the building on Charing Cross did not last as long as the last survivor. The Architect of 5 February, 1870, tells us that “The old premises in Cockspur Street [the new name for that stretch of Charing Cross], so long occupied by Farrance’s well-known hotel and confectioner’s shop, have been purchased by the Union Bank of London, and are to be pulled down.” In fact, business had already ceased in 1865. When the Farrances stopped serving cakes at the Ludgate shop is unclear.

And to end this post, a poem that appeared in Punch, or the London Charivari of 4 November 1865:

“Jam,” Satis.
“Thomas Farrance and Sons, 66 and 67, Charing Cross, beg to return sincere thanks to their friends and the public in general for their kind patronage, and respectfully inform them that their business of a Confectioner will on and after Oct. 31, be discontinued,” &c.

How they vanish, one by one,
All the haunts we loved of yore:
Farrance, they proud race is run:
regal ice or lowly bun
Thou wilt yield us – never more!

When we left, in Mays gone by,
The Academician’s door,
“Come! to Farrance let us hie.”
Straight we said – but now we cry.
“Never more-oh, never more!”

When our country cousins troop
To the Abbey, old and hoar,
On to Farrance’s they swoop –
But to tarts and ox-tail soup
We shall treat them – never more!

Other Farrances may rise,
Quite as bilious as before –
But the old familiar pies
(Veal and ham) will glad our eyes
Never more! oh. never more!

(1) The miniatures are watercolours on card measuring 7.5 x 6.0 cm and are part of a larger collection of miniatures in the collection of David Roy Clapham that have come down to him through the family via Ann Farrance, Thomas’s elder sister.
(2) LMA, MS 11936/379/588954.
(3) LMA, MS 11936/418/700144.
(4) LMA, MS 11316/250.
(5) The Morning Post, 7 Jan. 1801.
(6) Sporting events at home and abroad (from the MS life of Hon. Percy Hamilton) communicated to and edited by Lord William Lennox in The Sporting review, edited by ‘Craven’, September 1848, p. 180. That same year, the brothers Mayhew in The image of his father: a tale of a young monkey also mention a “basin of mock-turtle” (p.58).
(7) Ralph Rylance, The Epicure’s Almanack. Eating and Drinking in Regency London. The Original 1815 Guidebook, ed. by Janet Ing Freeman (2012), pp. 92,82.
(8) Your Most Obedient Servant: James Thornton, Cook to the Duke of Wellington, intr. by E. Langford, 1985.
(9) The Morning Post, 13 April 1827.
(10) Journal of the Society of Arts, volume 12, nr. 596 (22 April, 1864), p. 378.

Neighbours:

<– 65 Charing Cross	34 Cockspur Street –>
<– 29 Ludgate Street	27 Ludgate Street –>