Miss Clarke, lace warehouse

Tags

clothing, lace

Street View: 3 Suppl.
Address: 154 Regent Street

In 1847, in the third Supplement to Tallis’s Street Views, we find the ‘Antique and modern lace warehouse’ of Miss Clarke on the corner of Beak Street and Regent Street. She has succeeded William Vickery, a dealer in glass, who occupied the corner shop when the first series of Street Views came out. Miss Clarke is already present in the 1841 census for Regent Street, but as that does not show any house numbers and the scan is a bit vague, it is a bit difficult to determine whether she was already at number 154, but she was certainly in the area. Where she came from is a bit of a mystery. There is a notice in The London Gazette of 27 April 1827 that one Jane Clarke, “formerly of Wellington, Somersetshire, and late of No. 42, Brook’s-Mews, Berkley-Square, Middlesex, Milliner and Straw Bonnet-Maker” had gone bankrupt, but whether these two Janes are the same or related is unclear.

An 1849 advertisement in The Morning Post mentions ‘British moire antiques’ as being sold by Miss Clarke, both at 154, Regent Street and at 79, Bold Street, Liverpool. Expansion indeed. In 1851, the census mentions her living at number 170 Regent Street and with her some 30 unmarried ladies with job descriptions ranging from assistant to milliner and servant. And amongst all these women, just one man, 24-year old George Getbars. No indication as to his role other than servant.

The Illustrated Exhibitor (Source Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg)

1851 was of course also the year of the Great Exhibition and Jane Clarke sent in the following:
– Royal Irish snow point lappet
– Head dress of Irish rose point
– Scarf of Belfast loop point
– Chalico cover of Irish point
– An Irish lace flounce, with point roses
– Hibernian point collar
– A pocket handkerchief of Irish lace⁽¹⁾

click for larger picture

Jane also expanded her lace emporium into Manchester, but that was one step too far. In 1854 she had to sell the establishment at 80 Mosley Street by auction and with it her “stock of foreign and English silk mercery, &c. including a magnificent display of long and square shawls of French, Austrian, Persian, Indian, Turkish manufacture …”. The list of what was auctioned went on and on, see the illustration.⁽²⁾

And there were more problems. In 1857, Colonel William Petrie Waugh was examined at the Bankruptcy Court and as part of the exhibits, a milliner’s bill from Miss Clarke was reported in the newspaper to be £2745 in total of which only £900 had been paid. Most of the articles bought had been for the daughter by a previous husband of Mrs Waugh on the occasion of the daughter’s marriage to Sir Pigot and ranged from handkerchiefs to veils and from bonnets to any number of dresses. As Mrs Waugh only had a settlement of £600 a year from her former husband, the likelihood is that poor Colonel Waugh had to fork out the rest. Add to that the other outstanding bills for jewellery and boxes at various theatres, and it is not surprising that the Colonel had himself excused from attending the Court by “an affidavit from a continental physician” which caused some of those attending the case to “burst into an audible titter”.⁽³⁾

And then in 1859, we suddenly find advertisements of one Madame Elise at 170, Regent Street, who will be showing the “choicest specimens of antique and modern laces, &c &c, selected from the stock of the late Miss Jane Clarke”.⁽⁴⁾ It transpired that Miss Clarke had died suddenly at her house in St. Peter’s Square, Hammersmith, on the 28th of January, or, as Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper would have it “the great creator of ‘Clarke’s Bonnets’ has made her last chapeau“. The newspaper remarks “how subtly she has fed the vanity of English women, and made Englishmen pay for the feast”. The reporter is obviously male and no admirer of women wanting only the latest fashion. He used phrases as ‘squander’, ‘shallow vanity’, ‘to cheat men into a false admiration’, ‘the satisfaction of out-dressing a neighbour’, and of course he reminds the reader of poor Colonel Waugh. Young women used to make their own clothes – he says – and now they have turned themselves into young ladies who want everything the shops have to offer. And even in death Miss Clarke set the fashion by directing in her will that she should be buried in point lace. On the other hand, he grudgingly admits, she left £80,000, bequeathing much of it to charities.⁽⁵⁾ The reporter is a bit optimistic there as the probate record shows a value of £45,000, later resworn as £50,000⁽⁶⁾, but still a sizeable fortune.

And she did not just leave money to charities; some of her worldly goods found a charitable new home, as can be seen in a notice of the new pictures that were placed in the National Gallery.⁽⁷⁾ One of these paintings, “The Blind Beggar” by J.L. Dyckmans of Antwerp was received from the estate of Jane Clarke (see here for the NG’s page on the painting).

Madame Elise who took over 170 Regent Street was not, as Miss Clarke was, a single woman, but the wife of Frederick Isaacson and her name was not really Elise, but Elizabeth Marie Louise Jaeger. A very unfortunate death occurred at the premises in 1863 when a 20-year old seamstress, Mary Ann Walkley, died of apoplexy, brought on, or at least accelerated, by the long hours in overcrowded apartments and ill-ventilated bedrooms. It prompted the coroner to recommend new regulations for workroom and living conditions.⁽⁸⁾ Apparently the women were housed in partitioned-off cubicles, two to a bed, with no ventilation and their working hours were long, sometimes right through to the following morning. You can read more about the appalling situation of dressmakers on Amanda Wilkinson’s blog here.

I’ll leave you with the first stanza of “The Song of the Shirt” (read the rest here).

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread —
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the “Song of the Shirt”.

lace border c. 1880 (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum)

(1) Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2, p. 560.
(2) Manchester Times, 25 April 1854.
(3) The Bradford Observer, 24 September 1857; and The Hampshire Advertiser, 26 September 1857.
(4) The Morning Post, 15 March 1859.
(5) Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 3 April 1859.
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1859.
(7) The Daily News, 4 April 1859.
(8) The Leeds Mercury, 26 June 1863.

Neighbours:

<– 156 Regent Street

152 Regent Street –>

Advertisement

L.T. Piver, perfumer and glover

Tags

clothing, perfumer

Street View: 3 Supplement
Address: 160 Regent Street

In 1862, the German poet and author Julius Rodenberg wrote a book about his visit to London, Tag und Nacht in London (online here) in which he describes the streets, the markets and the people of the City. When he explains what could be seen in Regent Street he relates how in the afternoon the nobility and gentry come in their carriages (which he likens to four-poster beds on wheels) to gaze at the goods on offer behind the large shop windows – and to be seen themselves of course. According to Rodenberg, Regent Street is the street of fashion and luxury that smells of spring flowers and a jockey club. The latter not suprising with all the horse-drawn carriages, but spring flowers? But read on and it becomes clear that the fragrant smells emanate from the perfumery shop of Piver where inside the walls of gold and brown the glass scent-bottles and soft gloves are what catch your eye.

Illustrated London News, 1846

Rodenberg refers to the shop of L.T. Piver, a company that had started life in France in 1774 as a small business that sold perfumed gloves. Michel Adam Piver was the founder, later succeeded by his cousin Paul Guillaume Dissey. In 1813 Louis-Toussaint Piver became a partner and after Dissey had died, L.T.’s initials were added to the company name, which it kept even when he was succeeded by Alphonse. Eventually, the firm had shops all over the fashionable world and from the 1840s also in London. The first batch of Tallis Street Views (1839) still shows Gosnell, John and Co., perfumers to the Royal Family, at number 160, but in 1847 when the Supplement Street Views came out, Piver had moved in. According to the records kept on “alien arrivals” [don’t worry, they were not from Mars, alien was used where we would nowadays say foreign], Alphonse Piver came over from France via Dover in 1849 and again in 1851. He did not live in London; the shop in Regent Street was managed by Jules or Charles Lauvergnat. In the 1851 census, it is Jules who lives above the shop; in 1861 it is Charles and his wife Eliza; and in 1871 Jules is back with wife Amelia. By 1880, Piver no longer had a shop in Regent Street and we find an advertisement for their stock of gloves that could be bought at “a large discount” at Peter Robinson’s in Oxford Street.⁽¹⁾ The 1881 census gives “being rebuilt” for number 160.

Piver’s Paris shop in Le Monde Illustre (Source: gallica.bnf.fr) (1863 )

But the firm continued to flourish in France, bringing out new scents on a regular basis and also improving the processes of making the perfumes. In 1874, for instance, the London Gazette of 6 March lists a patent for Alphonse Piver of no. 10, Boulevard de Strasbourg, for the invention of “improvements in the distillation of essential oils or perfumes”. And in the paper of 18 May 1877, Alphonse receives a patent for “a new process of manufacturing alcohols by a methodical and endless manner with wines and fermented juices of any kind by means of new or improved apparatuses suitably disposed for the purpose”. Already in 1860, Eugène Rimmel, another great perfumer, describes a process invented by Piver “to extract the aroma of flowers by the pneumatic principle” whereby “a strong current of air is forced, by means of an air-pump, into a receiver filled with fresh flowers, and passes into a cylinder containing grease in a liquefied state, which is kept in constant motion”.⁽²⁾ You can read the whole process here. I found this picture on Wikipedia Commons of one of Piver’s factories in Aubervilliers where they made their cosmetic products.

The gloves Piver sold were Jouvin’s patent French kid gloves and according to an advertisement in The Observer of 19 May, 1850, Piver had the exclusive sale of these gloves in the UK. Jouvin had received a gold medal for his gloves at the 1849 Paris Exhibition “for the quality and great perfection of his make”. Because they were so popular, counterfeits were being made and buyers were urged to check that their gloves had the stamp “Brevet d’Invention Gants Jouvin”.

Source: shipwreck.net

The fancy scent bottles that so attracted Julius Rodenberg and their modern successors can still be found in large numbers by searching the internet, but I thought these two small pots more appealing. They were salvaged from the shipwreck of the SS Republic, a steamship that sank in 1865 in a hurricane while on its way from New York to New Orleans. The passengers and crew fortunately escaped, but the valuable cargo of gold and silver coins sank to the bottom. In 2003-2004 some 51,000 coins were salvaged, along with 14,000 artefacts, among which 50 stoneware pots in two sizes, transfer-printed with Piver’s name.

The Piver firm advertised in many newspapers, books and magazines, far too many to show here, but below a small selection.

1859 advert from To China and Back by Albert Smith

1867 advert from Fontainebleau son palais, ses jardins, sa forêt et ses environs by Adolphe Joanne

1872 advert from London, a complete guide to the leading hotels, etc,

1873 advert from Un Mariage de Paris by Joseph Méry

1878 advert from Appleton’s European Guide Book

—————————-
The Piver firm still exists and you can read more on their history on their website http://www.piver.com/

(1) The Graphic, 11 September 1880.
(2) “M. Rimmel on Perfumery” in The Chemical News and Journal of Industrial Science, 1860.

Neighbours:

<– 162 Regent Street

158 Regent Street –>

W. & J. Sangster, umbrella makers

Tags

canes, umbrellas

Street View: 15, 3 Suppl., 7 Suppl. and 14 Suppl.
Addresses: 94 Fleet Street, 140 Fleet Street, 10 Royal Exchange

As early as 1786, one Samuel Sangster is mentioned as cane merchant of Fleet Street.⁽¹⁾ Whether he already occupied number 94 is not certain, but that particular address is mentioned as being in the family at least since 1802. In that year Samuel Sangster, dealer in sticks and canes, insured his business against fire.⁽²⁾ Samuel also appears as stick and cane manufacturer in the list of members of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce “extended to December 31st, 1818”.

Advertisement Palmer’s European Pocket Guide, 1882

In an advertisement in Palmer’s European Pocket Guide of 1882, the Sangster firm claims to have been established in 1777 and although 94 Fleet Street is mentioned as one of their premises, it does not necessarily follow that it all started at no. 94. The Street View elevation shows the passage to The Old Bell between numbers 94 and 95. This pub was built by Christopher Wren for the builders working on St. Bride’s Church after the 1666 Fire. For centuries, the Fleet Street entrance to the pub was through this small alleyway, but nowadays the pub has taken over what was number 96 (In 1840 Hemsley’s Baby linen warehouse) and they have a proper front in Fleet street.

The 1882 advert also show the other addresses where Sangster could be found: 140 Regent Street, 10 Royal Exhange and 75 Cheapside. The 140 Regent Street address must have been acquired between the publication of Tallis’s first series of Street Views, when 140 was still occupied by R.H. Franks’ hat shop, and 1847 when the supplements were brought out.

Samuel’s cane shop developed into an umbrella and cane shop when his two sons, William and John, took over the shop. William was born on 3 Feb. 1808 and John on 24 Nov. 1811; they were both baptised in St. Bride’s Church.⁽³⁾ At some point, however, the family moved to the ‘Paragon’, a newly developed housing estate in Streatham, Surrey where they are found in the 1841-1881 censuses. The brothers called one of their umbrellas ‘the paragon’.

Paragon advertisement in C. Dickens, Bleak House, 1852

For the ladies they developed parasols “for the fête, promenade, or sea-side”. According to London as it is Today the most important article among the stock of Sangster’s was their “Sylphide Parasol, light and graceful [… that] may now be seen in all the most fashionable drives and promenades in and about London”. The demand for this new fashion item was so great, that “the manufacturers have supplied no less than sixty thousand” of them. But one is not to forget that Sangster’s were also “the patentees of the much approved Alpaca Umbrella, of which upwards of seventy thousand have been sold”.

shopfront from London as it is Today, 1851, p. 412

Great Exhibition display from The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue, p. 313

The British Museum has in its collection a draft for a trade card which also shows the Regent Street shopfront with the canes and umbrellas displayed in the window. The shop windows could be so large because the excise duty on glass had been repealed in 1845, which allowed for far larger display windows.

Trade Card © British Museum

In the London Society Magazine of 1864. W. & J. Sangster announce “a large assortment of sun shades and parasols, made of entirely new patterns in Lyons silk, &c.” and lest you forget, they also remind you of the fact that they “have been awarded four prize medals for the quality of their silk and alpaca umbrellas”.

Advertisement in London Society Magazine July 1864 (thanks to Grace’s Guide)

In 1855, William even wrote a book about umbrellas, Umbrellas and Their History. The illustrations were by Charles Henry Bennett (1828-1867). You can read the whole book online here if you want, but I will just show some of the pictures.

William Sangster died 3 September 1888, his brother John a few years later on 17 November 1890. Their combined estates were valued at almost £83,000.

(1) PROB 11/1144/256. He was buried on 31 July, 1786 in St. Bride’s Church.
(2) Sun Fire Office, National Archives, MS 11936/424/727039.
(3) Baptism records St. Bride’s Church: William was baptised 10 August 1808; John 10 June 1812 at the same time as his sister who had been born 17 Nov. 1809. Their mother was Harriet Cockerell and some of the baptisms of Samuel and Harriet are accidentally listed under Cockerell.

Neighbours:

<– 95 Fleet Street <– 142 Regent Street <– 9 Royal Exchange

93 Fleet Street –> 138 Regent Street –> 11 Royal Exchange –>

J & J Holmes, shawl manufacturers

Tags

clothing

Street View: 4 (Suppl. 3)
Address: 171-175 Regent Street

James and Joseph Holmes, brothers, were shawl and cloak merchants at 171-175 Regent Street, just off the corner with New Burlington Street. As their advertisement in Tallis’s Street View proudly states, they ran their business by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, Her Royal Highness the Princess Augusta, and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge.

advertisement in Tallis’s Street View

Many of the shawls sold by Holmes were imported from India, but the import of certain goods from there was deemed detrimental to the manufacture in England and measures to curb imports were considered. The East India Company petitioned Parliament for the continued free trade with India and R. Montgomery Martin reports at length on the issue in The Colonial Magazine and Commercial-maritime Journal. Montgomery Martin not only states that it would be an injustice if imports from India were to be curbed, but a prohibition to import shawls from there would only benefit other countries as shawls made in England were of inferior quality. To support the argument, Holmes is quoted as saying that if they did not have enough stock from India, they imported the shawls from Paris.⁽¹⁾

Part of West Side of Regent Street drawn by Thomas Shepherd, engraved by W.Watkins, 1828

In an advertisement in The Court Journal the shawl dealers state that their business “is the only establishment in the Kingdom for the exclusive sale of SHAWLS; and, from the vast renown and distinguished patronage their house had acquired by the magnifique and constant supply of fresh productions from their Manufactories at home and Agents abroad, combined with the flattering encomiums bestowed by the fashionables who have honoured Messrs J. and J. Holmes with a visit, amply recompense them for the expense they have incurred in rendering their Establishment the most attractive and splendid even in that vicinage.”⁽²⁾ A visitor to London also heaps praise on the shop “At Holmes’s nothing was sold but Cashmere shawls of the most expensive kinds, and with these shawls the shop window was most picturesquely draped; the only other decoration being a huge vase of Oriental porcelain, standing perhaps some four feet and a half high. I have in my entrance hall precisely such a vase. I bought it many years ago, slightly cracked, as a ‘bargain,’ and when I look upon it I never fail to associate it with Holmes’s great Cashmere shawl shop in Regent Street.”⁽³⁾

Advertisement from Dickens, Bleak House, 1852 p. 22

elevation 1847

Things appeared to go well for Messrs. J. & J. Holmes and in the 1847 supplement to Tallis’s Street View they had their elevation not only adorned with their name, but also with their Royal links. Before that, in 1844, they had dissolved their partnership with Emile Le Batard “by mutual consent” and continued the business together.⁽⁴⁾ When and why they had entered into the partnership with Le Batard is unclear. Apart from the occasional embezzlement by dishonest employees, all seemed to go smoothly.⁽⁵⁾ In 1851, during the Great Exhibition, James Holmes & Co. [Joseph Holmes seems to have disappeared, perhaps he died, but see below for 1848 trouble] displayed an opera cloak, composed of the finest white wool, ornamented with 1,200 gold pendants, together with several other items.⁽⁶⁾ He received a medal. To lure more people to the Exhibition, a book was produced, London as it is Today, which described the establishment of J. Holmes as a “most elegant and distinguished trading establishment” with products ranging from three hundred guineas for the “wealthy and titled lady” to articles from a “humbler sphere”.

London as it is Today, 1851, p. 403

Be that as it may, very shortly afterwards, on 19 August, 1852, bankruptcy proceedings were filed against James.⁽⁷⁾ But things had already not been well even before the Great Exhibition. Dickens relates in his Household Narrative for 1853 that

In the Court of Bankruptcy on the 28th ult. Commissioner Fane gave an Important Judgment in the case of James Holmes the shawl-warehouseman in Regent-street, who became bankrupt some time ago. Mr. Fane attributed much of the bankrupt’s misfortunes to a private arrangement which followed his bankruptcy in 1848. He disapproved of private arrangements generally, as inducing the bankrupt to purchase secrecy by the promise of a higher dividend than his assets will allow, and as unfair to future creditors […] In the present case. Holmes owed, in 1848, £15,907, and had £4151 available assets; but the arrangement specified that he should pay not five shillings but ten shillings in the pound. Of course the extra five shillings could only come from the future profits of the business. Then he had agreed to pay the dividend by instalments extending over a space of eighteen months. Yet to some he had paid twenty shillings and fifteen shillings instead of ten shillings in the pound, and others he had paid in fifteen days instead of eighteen months. Mr. Fane censured him for extravagant personal expenditure—£800 a year. He also adjudged him guilty of obtaining forbearance of debts by fraud; the fraud being concealment of his dealings with the money-lenders, to the amount of £6518. Holmes likewise, when sued in June 1852, instead of meeting his creditors, as he should have done, being insolvent, had pawned some valuable shawls sent him by a French merchant on sale or return. That was a violation of commercial integrity. The judgment of the Court is, (Mr. Fane said in conclusion) that the certificate of the bankrupt be suspended for three years from the date of the bankruptcy, without protection, and when granted to be of the third class. If he should be imprisoned, I shall be willing to release him after three months’ imprisonment. I am sorry to be compelled to pronounce so severe a judgment against a person who had such excuse for his errors as the circumstances of 1848 furnish; and if all his creditors should abstain from exercising the power of punishment which the law gives,it will not surprise me, for I have seen in my judicial life quite enough to convince me that the severe creditor is the rare exception to the general rule.⁽⁸⁾

What happened in 1848? Did Joseph die and did James not have a head for figures? Or has something else happened we cannot now trace. I will continue the research and let you know if I come up with a clue.

The establishment was taken over by Farmer & Rogers who continued in the same line of business as an advertisement for a ‘bosio’, apparently an opera cloak, in The Musical world of 1858 testifies.

advertisement in The Musical World, 1858

G.A. Sala was, however, not as pleased with them as he had been with Holmes, “I am not so certain about Farmer and Rogers’, the Indian warehouse; although the firm are, I should say, ancient denizens of the street”.⁽⁹⁾ Other well-known customers frequented the shop; the Library of Congress holds an invoice to James McNeill Whistler for items delivered to Mrs Whistler, probably his mistress who sometimes styled herself Mrs Whistler, which was never paid because Whistler went bankrupt (see here).
But Farmer and Rogers played another part in the development of the ‘India’-style clothing and furnishings, as in 1862, they employed one Arthur Lasenby Liberty. After more than ten years in service at Farmer and Rogers, Arthur set up his own business, Liberty & Co, but that is another story.

(1) The Colonial Magazine and Commercial-maritime Journal, volume 5, 1841, p. 178.
(2) The Court Journal: Gazette of the Fashionable World, no. 299, 17 January 1835, p. 46.
(3) George Augustus Sala, Travels in Regent Street, part 2, 1895, pp. 219-220.
(4) London Gazette, 22 October 1844.
(5) In 1839 William Berry, described by Joseph Holmes as “their shopman” as withholding money received from clients (Old Bailey proceedings 13 May 1839).
(6) Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 2nd ed., 1851, p. 105.
(7) London Gazette, 28 March 1854.
(8) Charles Dickens, Household Narrative, volume 4, 1853, p. 35 (online here).
(9) Sala, p. 219.

Neighbours:

<– 169 Regent Street

177 Regent Street –>