Charles Holwell, hatter

Tags

hats

Street Views: 69 and 80
Address: 100 Westminster Bridge Road

When Westminster Bridge was envisaged and built, land had to be bought on the Surrey side for the approach road. Between 1740 and 1746, the Commissioners of Westminster Bridge bought land from the Archbishop of Canterbury and, in Lambeth Marsh, from the Lord Mayor and Commonalty of the City of London. In later years, land on either side of the road was sold or leased for building purposes.⁽¹⁾ One of the houses built there became the hatter’s shop of Charles Holwell.

Canaletto, Westminster Bridge, with the Lord Mayor’s Procession on the Thames, 1746 (Source: Google Art Project via Wikipedia). More pictures of the early bridge on the Wikipedia page.

Although Holwell is listed in the index of Street View booklet 69, the depiction of the houses only goes as far as number 99. To see the façade of number 100, we have to turn to booklet 80 where it is shown as part of Coade’s Row. The Sun Fire Office registration for 21 May 1831 does refer to the hatter’s shop as being at 3 Coade’s Row, although that is – in the Tallis booklet at least – a property on the other side of the road. Church records for baptisms of the children are just as erratic. When the youngest son Charles junior is baptised in 1830, Charles senior and his wife Mary do not yet live in Bridge Road, but in Isabella Street.⁽²⁾ With the next baptism in 1832 (John Bradford), they live on Westminster Bridge Road; in 1834 (Mary Ann) in Coades Row; and in 1837 (Thomas Bradford) and 1841 (Charlotte) on Bridge Road. None of the entries provides a house number, but let’s assume that Charles had his hat shop at 100 Westminster Bridge Road since at least 1832.

baptism record for Charles junior at Christ Church, Southwark

If we follow the census records, Charles sr. and Mary are at Bridge Street in 1841, but in 1851, Mary is listed as widow, ‘hat manufacturer’ with her son Charles as ‘hat maker’ (no idea if the difference between manufacturer and maker signified a difference in status, or whether it was just due to the vagaries of the census taker). Charles senior had died in June 1850 and was buried at Norwood Cemetery. Charles junior continued his father’s business and we see him as hatter in subsequent censuses. In 1853, he married Sophia Lemon and the couple had at least four children (Charles III, Sophia Margaret, James Thomas and Henry William), but as far as I can see, none of them became a hatter.

From 1861 onwards, the home and business addresses start to diverge as it did for so may Victorian shopkeepers. In the 1861 and 1871 censuses, we find the hatter and his family living at 6 Ouverture Terrace, Kennington; by 1881, they have moved to 74 Paradise Road. Nothing of spectacular interest happens to the hat shop, but in 1896, Charles’s claim to fame came about when he went into Westminster Hospital for an abscess in his neck. During the operation to open the abscess in order to remove whatever matter was inside, a rupture was discovered – or accidentally made? – in a vein causing profound bleeding. Fortunately, they managed to stop the bleeding and after a month in hospital, Charles was discharged. He lived to the ripe old age of 80, and only died in 1909. The operation was described in The Westminster Hospital Reports, ed. R.G. Hebb (1897), so medically-minded readers of this blog can read the whole procedure:

No advertisements for the hat shop nor any hats made by Holwell have turned up so far, so no nice illustration to go with this post, sorry about that. There is another Holwell listed in the Tallis Street Views, but since I have not found out who the parents of Charles senior the hatter are, nor where he was born (the 1841 census just says that he was not born in London), I cannot prove a link between the two families. There is a possibility that Charles is related to Edward, son of Edward Holwell, hat manufacturer of Exeter, who was apprenticed to George King, a vintner, in 1791, but genealogical proof is lacking so far.

A hat from the 1830s, nothing to do with Holwell, but since I have not found one with his name on, this anonymous one will have to do (Source: Victoria & Albert Museum Images)

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(1) Survey of London, Volume 23, Lambeth: South Bank and Vauxhall, ed. Howard Roberts and Walter H Godfrey (London, 1951), pp. 69-74 via British History Online (here).
(2) There is an earlier insurance record for 1826 in which Charles Holwell, hatter, is paying the premium for 46 Orchard Street.

Neighbours:

<– 101 Westminster Bridge Road

99 Westminster Bridge Road –>

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Fendall’s Coffee House and Family Hotel

Tags

catering

Street Views: 73 and 80
Address: 32 Parliament Street and 14 Bridge Street

We saw in the post on Edward Milns that the houses along the southern side of Bridge Street had to be demolished in the early 1860s for the widening of the approach road to Westminster Bridge, but Fendall’s Coffee House had been moved once before. It used to sit against the northern front of Westminster Hall and was known as the Exchequer Coffee House. According to The Epicure’s Almanach,⁽¹⁾ it had existed since the 1730s and was removed in 1793, but that is dating the removal a bit too early. In 1800, Samuel Ireland is talking about the “shameful neglect” in allowing “those nuisances, the coffee houses” to be erected at the entrance to the Hall, thereby obstructing the view of the figures which adorned the front.⁽²⁾ According to John Tomas Smith,

the City of Westminster [was receiving] a rapid and material improvement […] by the demolition of many shabby buildings west of the present alterations […]. At this very date, April 1807, the north front of Westminster Hall is about to resume its appearance in the time of Richard II. The two public houses, the sign of the Coach and Horses, and the Royal Oak, Oliver’s coffee-house, and the Exchequer coffee-house, which for many years disguised the Hall and Tudor buildings, have been taken down.⁽³⁾

Source: R. Dodsley, London and its Environs, 1761. Sources differ as to whether the Exchequer Coffee House was the one on the right or the one on the left of the entrance.

The lease of the coffee house property against the Hall had been in the hands of Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, and the under-lessee and occupier of the coffee house was one Mr. Chapman. They were compensated for the loss of the establishment.⁽⁴⁾ In Boyle’s Court Guide for January 1829, we find Mrs Kendall of the Exchequer Coffee House at 1 New Palace-yard, 14 Bridge Street and 32 Parliament Street. No, she did not have three coffee houses; a look on Horwood’s map shows the properties interconnected and wrapped around Edward Milns’s linen drapery which was situated on the corner of Bridge Street and Parliament Street. The Parliament Street front of the coffee house can be seen at the top of this post and on the right in the vignette for Milns property in Tallis’ booklet 80 (here). The Bridge Street façade, much narrower, can be seen on the left. I have not found a picture of the Palace Yard front, but if you know of one, please leave a comment.

Who Mr. Kendall was – I presume there was one – is unclear, nor do I know when the coffee house started taking in overnight guests and calling itself a hotel, but in 1831, the hotel side of the business was definitely part of the establishment as in that year, one Charles Jones of the Birmingham Political Union wrote a letter to E.J. Littleton which was published in The Morning Chronicle of 19 April. He heads the letter “Fendall’s Hotel, New Palace Yard”. The 1841 census gives Frances Kendall, 65 years old, as the hotel proprietor at 1 Palace Yard. Also living on the premises is one Susan Kendall, 35 years old, but how they are related is not made clear.

In the 1851 census, the Exchequer Coffee House has Charles Ritchie as the 30-year old hotel keeper. He is not married, but helping him as housekeeper is Ann Page, a widow, and there is, of course, a whole host of other servants. The 1851 Post Office Directory tells us that Ritchie not only occupied the addresses Mrs Kendall had, but the business had been extended to include number 15 Bridge Street which, in the 1839 Tallis Street View, had been occupied by Mr. Gill, a glass cutter. Ritchie gets a separate entry in the directory for 15 Bridge Street as a tobacconist.

The Times, 19 May 1856

The advertisement above from The Times states that there are eight years left on the lease and that corresponds with a debate in the House of Commons on the Westminster Bridge improvements. On 5 March, 1863, William Cowper, First Commissioner of Works and Public Buildings, is asked when the houses left standing are to be removed and what arrangements have been made with the occupants for lost income. Cowper says that all the houses on the south side of Bridge Street are to be removed before the end of next year [that is 1864] and agreement had been reached with all tenants and leaseholders, except two of which Fendall’s hotel was one. The Office of Works was reluctant to pull down the hotel before it was absolutely necessary as “it was a great resort during the sitting of Parliament” and the lease was to expire in 1864 anyway, so by leaving it standing, the expense of compensation was avoided.⁽⁵⁾

The tenant for the last years of the hotel’s existence was Charles Brumfitt. From the list of houses to be demolished for the new approach, we can see that 14 Bridge Street was part dwelling house / part hotel; number 15 was a dwelling house and shop: the Exchequer Cigar Divan (run together with Charles Ritchie)⁽⁶⁾; number 32 Parliament Street was a dwelling house / part hotel; and 1 New Palace Yard also part dwelling house / part hotel.⁽⁷⁾ The 1861 census tells us that Brumfitt, his family, and the hotel staff were living at 1 New Palace Yard; the other addresses were not mentioned separately, so the census taker apparently considered the whole complex as one unit. As it had already been clear since early in the 1850s that plans were being considered to widen the bridge approach and that the Act with the compulsory purchase orders had been decided in Parliament in 1859, we can well imagine that prospected hotel guests thought it better to book their rooms somewhere else, damaging Brumfitt’s business even before the building had actually disappeared.

It is no wonder that he reacted rather fiercely in The Times of 6 January, 1863, where he states that the Daily News of the 2nd saying that “notice had been given, on the previous day, to the owners and occupiers of the remaining houses […] that they would have to vacate in the course of the month” was utterly and totally wrong and “WITHOUT FOUNDATION” [his capitals] as he was “under no notice whatever from the Board of Works or from any other quarter” and that committees, etc. requiring rooms were welcome “during the ensuing session”. It is of course true, as we have learned from Cowper’s answer in the Commons, that it was thought best to let the hotel stand as long as possible, but ‘without foundation’ is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. Brumfitt must have realised that eviction was unavoidable, although he may not have known the exact date. He may even have regretted his initial outburst as a few days later, a letter from Brumfitt to the editor was published which is couched in far more moderate wording, although we can still read between the lines that Brumfitt was not very happy about the financial compensation he was to get and had put his solicitor onto it.

The Times, 10 January 1863

Fendall’s was indeed the very last building to be removed. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper of 15 January 1865, says that all the houses had been removed, “Fendall’s hotel, the last of them, which stood until a day or two ago, having at length disappeared”. Despite the frequent mention in the papers of the whole process of planning and carrying out the improvements to the approach road, some people were still caught out. Andrew Halliday, a Scottish journalist, when coming up to London for the debate on the Budget, took a cab and had himself set down at the corner of Palace Yard where he

“looked for Fendall’s Hotel. It was gone, and a whole row of houses with it, and had been gone, I was informed, ever so long. When I was in the habit of visiting the gallery some years since, it was my custom to fortify myself at Fendall’s before entering the House. But here I am today, wanting fortification, and there is no Fendall’s […]. Palace Yard without Fendall’s appears to me like a desert without an oasis. Where is the weary parliamentary agent to sit him down and rest?”⁽⁸⁾

Where indeed?

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(1) Footnote 2 on page 83 of Ralph Rylance, The Epicure’s Almanach: Eating and Drinking in Regency London, ed. Janet Ing Freeman (2012).
(2) Samuel Ireland, Picturesque views, with an historical account of the Inns of court, in London and Westminster (1800), pp. 227-228.
(3) John Thomas Smith, Antiquities of Westminster (1807), p. 267.
(4) Reports from Committees, session 1 November – 24 July 1810-1811
(5) Hansard, HC Deb 05 March 1863 vol 169 c1067.
(6) See this Londonist page for the history of tobacco in London and the first divan.
(7) The Statues of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 22. The schedule of the houses to be removed is part of Act C.58 22 & 23 Victoria.
(8) Andrew Halliday, Sunnyside Papers (1866), p. 257.

Neighbours:

<– 33 Parliament Street
<– 15 Bridge Street	13 Bridge Street –>

Edward Milns, linen draper

Tags

clothing

Street Views: 73 and 80
Address: 33 Parliament Street and 13 Bridge Street, Westminster

Milns’ drapery could be found on the corner of Parliament Street and Bridge Street and had two house numbers, one for either street, but we are just talking about one shop, called Anglesea House, but why it is called that is unclear. The earliest reference I found for Edward Milns is an 1827 entry in the Sun Fire Office papers where he is described as linen draper and laceman at 33 Parliament Street. He was to marry four years later to Elizabeth Briant.⁽¹⁾ The position of his shop turned out to be a lucky one, as on 25 June, 1838, Edward advertised in The Morning Post that for the coronation of Queen Victoria a few days later, he had “a few good front seats to be let; also a shop front and the use of a shop and balcony outside, commanding a most extensive view of the procession”. Edward obviously saw the festivities as an opportunity to make a bit of money.

1799 Horwood map

In 1844, a Mrs Sarah Truman, came into the shop to look at shawls, but they were not to her satisfaction and she just bought a pair of gloves. She apparently acted suspiciously as Milns followed her to the Haymarket where he saw her take a bundle from her side. It transpired that she had stolen a black satin shawl with a value of 35s 6d. She was given into custody and later tried. The defence asked for clemency as the lady was pregnant and “females very frequently purloined ornamental articles of dress while labouring under strong passions, which they could not control, when in a similar situation to the prisoner”. Despite this plea, the jury returned a verdict of guilty and Truman was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and hard labour, three weeks of which in solitary confinement. Although the sentence is rather harsh in our 21st-century opinion, pregnancy is of course no valid excuse for shoplifting.⁽²⁾

The caption to the vignette tells us that Edward Milns was a linen draper, silk mercer, hosier and haberdasher who sold millinery, baby linen, Irish linen, damask table linen and items for mourning. And we know from the Truman case that shawls and gloves were on offer. What you could also obtain from the Milns drapery were patterns. In 1847, James Holms and his 17-year old son John, Scottish textile manufacturers who specialised in Paisley shawls, were on a visit to London because the father had to give testimony before the Railway Commission, but business was not forgotten and “they ‘got many good patterns at Milns’, Parliament Street”. John became the firm’s representative in London a year later and, although there is no evidence, he may very well have continued his business dealings with the Milns’ firm.⁽³⁾

Edward and Elizabeth Milns do not seem to have had any children. In the 1841 census, no children are mentioned, just three male and three female servants. The servants are not given a distinct occupation other than servant, but in the 1851 census, the information is more elaborate and we learn that besides Edward, his wife, his wife’s sister Mary, a nephew Robert, and two visitors, there are also living on the premises three male draper’s assistants, one male apprentice, one young male servant, and one female servant. We also learn from the 1851 census that Edward was born in Lusby, Lincolnshire, c. 1801. Elizabeth originally came from Wiltshire and was a few years younger than Edward. Fast forward another ten years to 1861, when Edward, his wife, the sister and the nephew can still be found in Parliament Street, but this time with just two male assistants and one female servant. We do not necessarily have to read into this that the business was going down as assistants need not necessarily have lived above the shop, but things were certainly about to change.

elevation in Tallis’ Bridge Street booklet

In 1859, Parliament passed the “Westminster Bridge Act” (C.58 22 & 23 Victoria) in which the widening of the western approach road to the new bridge was set out. In other words, Milns (and his neighbours) were to be bought out and their houses and shops removed to be able to widen Bridge Street. But, government departments are not always as efficient as they should or could be (nothing changes) and the Office of Works had neglected to serve the required notices of the compulsory purchase orders to some of the occupants and the whole process was delayed.⁽⁴⁾ No wonder Milns could still be found in his shop in 1861, but in the end, the shop had to be demolished.

We know where he went from a notice in The London Gazette of 22 May 1868 in which the partnership between Edward Milns, George Miller and Robert Briant (most likely the nephew who had been living with the Milnses since 1851) is dissolved. Who George Miller was is unclear, but he was to continue the linen drapers’ business which had been at 1 Broadway, Westminster, at 134 Long Acre. Miller was not the original occupant of 1 Broadway as the 1861 census gives a John Beard, linen draper, as the resident. Milns & Co. probably took over the Broadway shop when Beard got into difficulties with his creditors as he is recorded as having assigned all his effects in trust to two of his creditors “for the benefit of themselves and the rest of the creditors”.⁽⁵⁾ According to the electoral registers, Milns himself could be found in Park Street from 1864 onwards and the 1871 census finds him there at number 16 as “retired draper”. I have not found the 1881 census entry for Edward, but his probate entry of 1884 says that he was “late of 9 Queen-Anne’s-gate Westminster … and of Sunninghill in the County of Berks”. Elizabeth died in 1890.⁽⁶⁾

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(1) The marriage took place at St. Mark’s, Kennington, on 6 October 1831.
(2) The Examiner, 30 March, 1844.
(3) H.L. Malchow, Gentlemen Capitalists. The Social and Political World of the Victorian Businessman (1991), p. 260-261.
(4) The Observer, 11 December, 1859.
(5) The London Gazette, 25 June, 1861.
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1884 and 1890. When Edward died, the estate was valued at £31,323. Elizabeth left £29,870.

Neighbours:

<– 34 Parliament Street	32 Parliament Street –>
<– 14 Bridge Street