How & Cheverton, tea dealers

Tags

grocer

Street Views: 54 and 82
Address: 21 Charlotte/Goodge Street

The address of the tea dealers caused some confusion, because of the unusual circumstance that the corner shop has two addresses, both with house number 21, that is: 21 Charlotte Street and 21 Goodge Street. Not to mention the fact that the house next door to 21 Charlotte Street is another 21 Charlotte Street, occupied by surgeon Gibbs. We will talk about him in a later post, but here we are concerned with the tea dealers.

The elevation above this post shows the Goodge Street front and the one on the left the Charlotte Street front. Tallis has How and Cheverton as tea dealer in the Goodge Street index and as tea warehouse in the Charlotte Street index, but as you can see from the picture, they were also dealing in wine. Both sides of the building are 4 windows wide and a look at Google Street View shows that this is still the case; the house numbering has, however, changed and is now 44 Goodge Street and 44 Charlotte Street.

So, who were these tea (and wine) dealers?
Thomas Cheverton can be found at 21 Goodge Street in the 1841 census as ‘grocer’, but Thomas How is living at Turnham Green. With him are living a number of his children, but also a Louisa Cheverton and the one-year old John How Cheverton. Louisa Sarah, as she was officially baptised, was a daughter of Thomas How who had married John Orrill (or Orrall) Cheverton in 1838. We can assume a family link between this John Orrill and the Thomas who was in partnership with How, although I do not know which one exactly. The Chevertons and the Hows both had links to the Isle of Wight. Places of birth were not recorded in the 1841 census, but they were in the 1851 census and both Thomas How and Thomas Cheverton list the island as their birth place. But there was another link. Thomas Cheverton’s wife was one Mary Way, also from the Isle of Wight, and Thomas How dissolved a partnership in 1835 with one James Way, also from the Isle of Wight. James and Mary Way were most likely brother and sisters, the children of Henry Way, who died in 1839 on – you guessed – the Isle of Wight. One William Way and Thomas How had been trading as tea dealers and grocers at Great Newport Street until 1814 when they dissolved their partnership and James Way and Thomas How had been trading at 272 and 282 Oxford Street.⁽¹⁾ Tallis lists ‘Way & Co’ at number 272 and ‘How & Co’ at number 282. More on those businesses in another post, but first more on the grocery business in Goodge Street.

Advertisement in The Morning Chronicle, 15 June 1835

How and Cheverton were already listed in the 1829 tax records for Charlotte Street, so their partnership must have existed at least since then. However, the same day that Thomas How dissolved his partnership with James Way in May 1835, he also dissolved his partnership with Thomas Cheverton. Way and Cheverton were to continue the respective businesses. Cheverton apparently thought it a good idea to keep the name of How joined to his own for the business in Goodge Street, as Tallis still lists and depicts the firm as How & Cheverton in 1839, but it was nevertheless not to last. Cheverton was still listed at number 21 in the 1843 Post Office Directory, but in 1846, a notice in The London Gazette mentions him in the list of bankrupts. He is then described as of 107 Tottenham Court Road and late of 94 John Street, “out of business”.⁽²⁾ He must have temporarily picked himself up again as the 1851 census find him as tea dealer at 62 Charles Street, Southwark, but after that, no more is heard of him until 1862 when he died on 19 October at Osborne View Cottage, Elmsgrove, Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight.⁽³⁾

Advertisement for Brocksopp in Hammond’s list of London and provincial newspapers, periodicals, &c., 1850

Thomas How, on the other hand, did quite well. At some point he entered into a partnership with the Brocksopps, grocers and tea dealers at 233 and 234 Borough High Street. Pigot’s Directory of 1839 lists William Brocksopp & Co. at 233 Borough High Street, but in 1842 they are declared bankrupt. Thomas How probably came to the rescue as the 1843 Post Office Directory lists the firm as Brocksopp, How & Co. At various times, “Thomas How, of 233 and 234 High Street, Southwark, tea dealer”, was named as one of the trustees in bankruptcy cases, as for instance in 1844 when he was to be one of the trustees of the estate and effects of William Sloan of Banbury.⁽⁴⁾ And again in 1847 for the estate and effects of John Bumpstead of 297 High Street, Chatham.⁽⁵⁾ The partnership with the Brocksopps probably ended in late 1850 as the advertisement above no longer shows his name, although the 1851 Post Office Directory still has Brocksopp, How & Co. for the Borough premises. Although I have not found an official notice of the end of partnership in The London Gazette, How’s name no longer appeared in the entry for the Brocksopps in the 1856 Post Office Directory.

Grandson John How Cheverton also went into tea and could be found in Hong Kong in 1865 for Johnson & Co. of Gough Street.⁽⁶⁾ In 1866, he was to become a partner in that firm.⁽⁷⁾ But he was not the only one of the family to go to China, as the address given for his uncle Edwin Henry How in the probate record of Thomas How was Foo Chow, China.⁽⁸⁾ Thomas had died in March 1866 at Gordon House, Turnham Green, where the censuses since 1841 had found him. Before that, or at least between 1814 and 1835, when his numerous children were baptised, his address had always been Great Newport Street.

21 Charlotte Street in the 1856 Post Office Directory

And what about 21 Goodge/Charlotte Street? As we saw, Thomas Cheverton moved out before 1847 and twenty years later, the property came on the market and was described as “a dwelling house, with double-fronted shop and premises […] an important situation, in the occupation of Mr. Anderson, chemist, on lease at £140 per annum”.⁽⁹⁾ In the twenty years between Cheverton’s move to John Street and Anderson’s occupation at the time of the sale, various occupants can be found for the premises. The 1851 Post Office Directory lists John Bainbridge, upholsterer, for 21 Goodge Street, but he made way in the 1856 Post Office Directory for Mrs Mary Ann Bott, who ran a straw bonnet manufactory. She can already be found there in the 1851 census, while John Bainbridge is not to be found in the census of either 21 Charlotte Street, nor in 21 Goodge Street.

On 8 July 1855, Reynolds’s Newspaper mentions the annual meeting of the Western Dispensary for Diseases of the Skin, which was held on the 26th of June “at the dispensary, 21, Charlotte Street”. The Post Office Directory entry for 21 Charlotte Street explains this seeming discrepancy. They have three occupants at number 21A Charlotte Street: the Western Dispensary, Mrs Bradley, dressmaker, and Adolphus Dubois, a dentist. For number 21 they have the coffee rooms of Thomas Eversfield. As they also indicate where the side streets are, we can work out that 21A is the building on the corner of Goodge Street and the coffee rooms must be further up Charlotte Street, the same premises as where we found surgeon Gibbs in the Tallis Street View. The 1871 census gives for 21 Goodge Street, “only a shop in which no one sleeps being part of house, corner of and numbered in Charlotte Street”. Charlotte Street had by then been renumbered from number 21 to number 44 with various families listed, among them one James Titley, a chemist. Did he take over from Anderson? Titley acquired some notoriety in 1880 for supplying drugs to induce an abortion, and I will leave you and this post with the newspaper report of the Old Bailey case.

Reynold’s Newspaper, 19 December 1880. Click to read the whole article.

(1) The London Gazette, 15 February 1814 and 6 October 1835.
(2) The London Gazette, 25 December 1846.
(3) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1862. Effects valued at under £450.
(4) The London Gazette, 6 December 1844.
(5) The London Gazette, 16 November 1847.
(6) The Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan etc., 1865.
(7) The London and China Telegraph, 27 February 1866.
(8) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1866. Effects for Thomas How valued at under £60,000, but resworn in 1868 at under £30,000.
(9) The Daily News, 29 May 1867.

Neighbours:

<– 21 Charlotte Street

20 Goodge Street –>

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Robert Attenborough, jeweller and pawnbroker

Tags

jeweller, pawnbroker

Street View: 82
Addresses: 93 Charlotte Street

In a previous post, we saw Richard Attenborough of Blakesley married to Elizabeth Coales. Elizabeth was the niece of Susannah Leete Coales who married John Attenborough of Titchmarch. The story of the extended Attenbury family is quite a complicated one and especially the Titchmarch side of the family. To make the story not more complicated than it already is, I will leave out all the family members that do not figure in the pawnbroker’s story.

John Attenborough (1736-1800) of Titchmarsh and his wife Elizabeth Winfield had three sons:
-John (1773-1860), married Susannah Leete Coales (1780-1864); they had a son George (1815-1874) and a daughter Elizabeth (1804-1884) who married her cousin Richard (1809-1886). Susannah’s niece Elizabeth (1829-1914) married Richard (1822-1901) of Blakesley.
–Robert (1777-1809), married Mary; they had three sons: John (1806-1861, a farmer), Robert (1807-1892) and Richard (1809-1886; who married his cousin Elizabeth, the daughter of John)
–Richard (1780-1862), never married

The various family members spread themselves out as jewellers and pawnbrokers at many addresses in London. Only three of which are in the Tallis Street Views, one for the Blakesley lot (see here) and two for the Titchmarsh side of the family; the one you are reading now and this one. There were many more addresses, some of which will be mentioned, but others will unfortunately have to be ignored, either because I cannot quite work out what the family connection is, or because the story will get too complicated and too far removed from the Tallis Street Views, after all the subject of this blog.

Pawnbroker’s shop by Cruikshank to illustrate Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum Collection)

Tallis lists 110 High Street, Shoreditch and 93 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square for the Titchmarch Attenboroughs and I will start with the latter. Robert (1807-1892), the second son of Robert (1777-1809) was the jeweller / pawnbroker at 93 (later 93-94) Charlotte Street. The numbering in Charlotte Street has changed dramatically since then and the property is now number 10. The earliest mention I found for Robert in Charlotte Street is in an 1834 Old Bailey case where his shopman gave evidence.⁽¹⁾ The 1851 census lists Robert, his wife Mary Ann, two sons, three daughters, one assistant, two shopmen, a warehouseboy, two nurses, a housemaid and a cook. By 1861, he has removed his family to 56 Avenue Road where he remained until he died. Robert's name does figure a few times in Old Bailey cases when dodgy articles have been pawned in his shop, but he seems to have acted honourably on the whole (but do see later in this post) and tried to avoid acting as a fence, for instance in 1836 when he did not trust the chap who brought in some material and went to find the man’s master to see whether the pledge was genuine. It wasn’t.⁽²⁾

Two more addresses are found in Old Bailey cases for a Robert Attenborough: Greek Street (1855 and 1863) and Duke Street (1873 and 1874). In the Old Bailey transcripts, there is no evidence that it concerns the same Robert as the one in Charlotte Street, but a report in the Morning Post of 14 July 1851 on a burglary at Greek Street at least tells us that the owner, Robert Attenbrough, does not live above the shop, so it may certainly be a second shop belonging to the Robert of Charlotte Street. Robert figures several times in newspaper reports of fraudsters, cheats and liars trying to fob off stolen goods to the pawnbroker, either at Charlotte Street or Greek Street, but only in 1864 do we find evidence that it concerns one and the same Robert, incidentally also giving us information about the other Attenboroughs.

Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 10 january 1864

The first time, 39 Duke Street, Manchester Square, is mentioned as the address for Robert Attenborough is in September 1866 when an assistant of Attenborough’s gave evidence against a suspected thief. The business is referred to as “late Neale”.⁽³⁾ In 1872, both the names of Robert and Percy Attenborough are mentioned in the newspapers when they reported on one of their employees who had been stealing from the firm. Percy turned out to be Robert Percy, Robert’s son, born on 10 January 1848.

Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 5 October 1872

Robert was mentioned in Customs’ Administrators and Customs’ Reformers by James O’Dowd (1853) in an 1845 case where bent Custom officers had cheap French watches smuggled into England where they were distributed by a custom-house agent to various pawnbrokers from whom they were subsequently seized by the same customs officers who had hedged the plot. Attenborough was chosen as one of the victim as he dealt in that sort of material, but he got wind of the scheme and dispatched a friend to Calais to gather evidence. The two Customs officers were caught and fired from their office. O’Dowd gives this shortened version of events, but he also gives a longer version in which Attenborough does not act as honourably as he could by not voluntarily giving up all the watches he had in his possession and which had come from the swindlers. According to this version, Attenborough even offered the officers who came for the watches a bribe for which he was fined £50. The pawnbrokers who had been a victim of the smuggle scheme were allowed to retain the watches, but only after paying the import duty.

Robert died on 23 August, 1892 and the estate was valued at over £74,000.⁽⁴⁾ Percy died in 1930 and in his probate entry, there is no reference to the business, so it is unclear what happened to it.⁽⁵⁾ Despite the slur on his integrity in 1845, Robert is called the “prince of pawnbrokers” in a list of people who have died in 1892.⁽⁶⁾

———————
(1) Old Bailey t18341124-141a.
(2) Old Bailey, t18360404-1011.
(3) The Pall Mall Gazette, 24 September 1866.
(4) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1892. The estate was first valued at £66,000 but later revalued at £74,255.
(5) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1930.
(6) The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 31 December 1892.

You may also like to read the posts on George and Richard Attenborough of Fleet Street and Piccadilly, and on Richard, Richard and George Attenborough of Shoreditch High Street and Crown Street, Finsbury Square, or on John Graham of 10 Ludgate Street whose son married Amy, the daughter of Robert.
More information on the Attenborough family can be found in blog post 243 on the Landed Families of Britain site (here)

François Cramer, violinist

Tags

music

Street View: 82
Address: 37 Charlotte Street

In the street directory for Street View 82 (Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square) we find a Mr. Cramer at number 37 without an occupation. The elevation map in booklet 82 unfortunately does not show numbers 28 to 68, although the inhabitants are listed in the directory. Quite a number of residents in the missing part of the street have no occupation after their name and I assume that Tallis considered that part of Charlotte Street, that is, the section between Tottenham Street and Howland Street, too residential for his Street Views which were basically a guide to the shops of London. Why he nevertheless decided to list the names of those living in the missing section is unclear. You will, therefore, not find the customary elevation at the top of this post, but to compensate for this gap in the Tallis information, below a map of the area with Cramer’s house marked with a cross.

Charlotte Street originally only extended to Goodge Street, later to Tottenham Street and that section was also known as Lower Charlotte Street. When the street was extended from Tottenham Street to Howland Street, the new section was referred to as Upper Charlotte Street. This Upper section is what Tallis does not show on his map. The houses have been re-numbered twice in their history – to make life easy for historians no doubt – with the present sequence running from south to north, with the odd numbers on the west and the even numbers on the east side.⁽¹⁾ When Mr. Cramer lived in Charlotte Street, his house, which was situated on the east side, just around the corner from what is now Chitty Street, was numbered 37, but nowadays it is number 82 and part of the Saatchi & Saatchi building. Chitty Street, by the way, was previously called North Street, although Tallis in his directory calls it North Place.

The Survey of London⁽¹⁾ gives us the occupants for number 82 (= 37):

1786–1794, Sir Charles Booth, Bt. 1797–1808, Sir Alexander Hamilton. 1835–1844, Francois Cramer (1772–1848), violinist

Sir Charles Booth (1812-1896) was the 3rd baronet of Portland Place, a gin-distiller, and no, he had nothing to do with Charles Booth, the social reformer and philanthropist. Sir Alexander Hamilton is a bit of a mystery. I had a look at the Wikipedia page for the Hamilton baronets and there is no Alexander there in the correct period. Never mind, we will concentrate on François Cramer who was the Mr. Cramer listed by Tallis.

Portrait of François Cramer by Benjamin Phelps Gibbon, after William Watts ©National Portrait Gallery

François (or Franz) Cramer was the son of Wilhelm Cramer and the brother of Johann Baptist Cramer, both musicians who became far more famous than François. François was born on 12 June 1772 in Schwetzingen, near Mannheim and Heidelberg, but came to London when still young. He was not a very robust child and was taught the violin by his father at home, later frequently appearing in concerts with his father and/or brother. In 1794, he became a member of the Royal Society of Musicians and the leading violinist of the Ancient Concerts. In 1813, he was one of the founding member of the Philharmonic Society Orchestra. In 1834 he became Master of the King’s music. He may have composed music, but if so, most of his work has disappeared; only one violin composition is known.⁽²⁾ Allatson Burgh, in his Anecdotes of Music praises “Messrs. J. and François Cramer, each in his respective line” for their “strength, correctness, and elegance of expression, incalculably superior to the tricks and rapid execution of those dealer in ‘notes, et rien que des notes,’ whom the tasteless caprice of fashion is constantly importing, like other wonderful and useless exotics.”⁽³⁾

Jacques de Claeuw, Vanitas, 1650 ©Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

In May, 1829, Felix Mendelssohn wrote that he was in the Argyll Rooms to rehears his symphony with the Philharmonic Orchestra and that there were about two hundred listeners, chiefly ladies. Apparently, the rehearsals were not behind closed doors and the public was welcome. Mendelssohn writes that François Cramer, the first violin, first introduced him to all the members of the orchestra and then the rehearsal started. According to Mendelssohn “it went very well and powerfully, and pleased the people much even at rehearsal. After each movement the whole audience and the whole orchestra applauded”. After the rehearsal, “Cramer was overjoyed, and loaded me with praise and compliments” and Mendelssohn had to shake “at least two hundred different hands.” The actual concert on 25 May went even better and the public vigorously demanded an encore and “after the finale they continued applauding”.⁽⁴⁾ The symphony he conducted on 25 May was first envisaged as Sinfonia 13, but became Symphony no. 1 in C minor op. 11 and when it was published in 1831, Mendelssohn dedicated the symphony to the Philharmonic Society.⁽⁵⁾ As can be seen in the next illustration, it was not just Mendelssohn himself who was pleased with the way the performance went; The Morning Post of 27 May reviewed the symphony favourably and was most impressed by Mendelssohn’s use of a baton.

In 1831, concern was voiced in The Spectator that Cramer was to leave the Philharmonic Society. The paper hoped that the report was not true as “the loss would be mutual: the orchestra would miss the services of so excellent and experienced a leader; and to him, or to any other of its leaders, the occupancy of such a situation must be in every way advantageous”.⁽⁶⁾ It proved an unfounded piece of gossip, but a few years later, in 1839, a small notice appeared in The Musical World suggesting that Cramer’s health was not what it should be. “Mr. François Cramer has, we regret to learn, been dangerously ill, but hopes are now entertained of his recovery; his complaint is a nervous affection of the head, from which he has suffered most excruciating pains.”⁽⁷⁾ but a few years later, in 1844, Cramer did resign as leader of the Philharmonic Society, continuing as a ‘normal’ member until his death.

The 1841 census (probably roughly the same period in which Tallis’s Street View 82 appeared) finds François, “professor of music”, living at 37 Charlotte Street with his wife Ann and sons Henry, 22 years old, a civil engineer, Frederick, 17 years old, a builder, and Arthur, 15 years old, also a “professor of music”. Ann is Ann Barwick Lamb whom François had married on 14 November 1806 in Brighton. It is unclear whether the family stayed in Charlotte Street; there is a suggestion⁽⁸⁾ that they moved to Cavendish Square, but unfortunately the next census of 1851 came too late to be of any use to determine the veracity of the suggestion. Cramer died on 25 July 1848 and was buried on the 29th at St. John’s Hampstead.

Ancient Concerts – A Rehearsal by John Doyle. Lithograph 1838. Politicians have taken the place of musicians to signify that in both politics and music the cooperation of the individual members under the leadership of an able conductor is vital. (Source: http://www.albion-prints.com)

(1) Survey of London: volume 21: The parish of St Pancras part 3: Tottenham Court Road & neighbourhood, 1949.
(2) Biographical information from Grove Dictionary of Music. The manuscript of Cramer’s violin composition (Album Leaf) is in the British Library, as are the archival records and scores of the Philharmonic Society.
(3) A. Burgh, Anecdotes of Music, Historical and Biographical; in a Series of Letters from a Gentleman to his Daughter, 1814, vol. 3, p. 445-456.
(4) Sebastian Hensel (translated by C. Klingemann), The Mendelssohn Family (1729–1847), vol. 1 (2013), p. 184-185.
(5) The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn, ed. P. Mercer-Taylor (2004), p. 96-97.
(6) The Spectator, 26 November 1831.
(7) The Musical World, A Magazine of Essays, Critical and Practical, and Weekly Record of Musical Science, Literature, and Intelligence, 3 January 1839, p. 14.
(8) Deborah Rohr, The Careers of British Musicians, 1750-1850: A Profession of Artisans (2001), p. 38.

Neighbours:

<– 36 Charlotte Street

38 Charlotte Street –>