Thomas Bowtell, boot and shoe maker

Tags

footwear

Street Views: 42 and 17 Suppl.
Address: 58 Cheapside

As we saw in the post on the 49 Skinner Street shop, Thomas Bowtell had quite a number of shops in various places and 58 Cheapside was one of them. The earliest we find him in Cheapside is in Kent’s Directory of 1823, albeit still at number 51. There is not a lot of evidence for the occupation of number 51, as Bowtell’s name does not appear in the tax records for that property which is continuously listed for a Benjamin Johnson. We know that in 1835 George and Alfred Pill had their confectioners’ business there, sharing it with other occupants. Only in 1841 does their name appear in the tax records, so it is likely that in their early years, as Bowtell had before them, they just rented the property from Johnson. What is certain, is that by 1835, Bowtell had moved to number 58, the house on the corner of Bow Lane as the tax records find him there in that year. He shared the property, at least at the time of the Tallis Street View, with Green & Chubb, hair cutters and wig makers. In the 1847 Tallis Supplement, the depiction of the shop is without any names, so no help in establishing whether Bowtell continued to share the shop, but the index tells us that James Green, hairdresser & wigmaker, was still there. In a forthcoming post, we will try and find out what happened to Chubb.

Goad’s insurance map of 1886, showing numbers 51 and 58

(© The Trustees of the British Museum)

The British Museum has the year 1832 pencilled in for the above advertorial poem which lists four addresses for Thomas, but there is a bit of a problem with that: 1835 is the year in which Bowtell is first recorded in the tax records for 58 Cheapside, but the printers of the advertisement, the Soulby brothers, dissolve their partnership and change addresses in April 1834.⁽¹⁾ It is very likely that Bowtell moved from no. 51 to no. 58 in 1834, as the tax data were only recorded once a year in August. We still have a discrepancy as in August 1834, Bowtell was not yet listed at number 58, and in April 1834, the Soulby brothers dissolved their partnership. The other addresses do not help much either; 49 Skinner Street was Bowtell’s address from 1813 to 1852; the Brighton address changed from number 106 to 116 somewhere between 1832 and 1838; and the Norwich address changed at some point from number 1 to numbers 20 & 21, but that address is frequently just described as Davey Place without a number, so that does not help much either. Anyway, somewhere in the early 1830s, Bowtell moved his shop a few houses, and he continued to trade from Cheapside till he died (1852). Until 1855, the shop was subsequently listed in the tax records for son William, but in the 1856 Post Office Directory and in the tax records for that year, the property is listed for John Edwin Shaw, a tailor.

advertisement in The Brighton Patriot and South of England Free Press, 23 Oct. 1838

We will come across William again in the post on the Tottenham Court Road shop, but first a bit more about the Brighton shop. In December 1856, Joseph, William’s brother, had trouble with one of his customers. One Sarah Cooper was charged with obtaining a pair of shoes under false pretences. She had come to the Bowtell shop, pretending to be a servant of a lady residing for the winter at 4 Brunswick Square, Brighton, who asked for a pair of overshoes on credit. She was to bring him the money next day. She did so and then asked for a pair of boots which were to be paid the following Monday. But she did not return with the money and Bowtell had her charged. The newspaper article was not so much about the theft itself as about the shambles the Grand Jury had made in going against the prosecutor’s case by claiming regret for the fact that Sarah had been held in custody and for the damage done to her reputation. The judge examining the case afterwards said that “he considered it a gross neglect of duty on the part of the grand jury, through which a prisoner had escaped punishment”.⁽²⁾ The newspaper reporting on the case, by the way, starts out by – erroneously(?) – naming the shoemaker James, in stead of Joseph, but in the rest of the article, they call him Joseph. As far as I know, Thomas Bowtell did not have a son James, so Joseph should be the correct name, but the confusion occurs again in a book on crime in Brighton.

In 1857, a young workhouse girl was raped by James Bowtell, her master, who is described as a married shoemaker with four children. The magistrates decided to release him on paying a fine of £10, because of his position and the feelings of his wife. Excuse me for using an expletive when I read this. The poor girl was sent back into the ‘care’ of the workhouse guardians.⁽³⁾ When I tried to check up on this story, I found another mention of the case in the CMPCANews, but here the man is named as Joseph Bowtell.⁽⁴⁾. So, what was going on? I contacted the author of the Church Hill Workhouse article, James Gardner, and he was certain the name was Joseph, although the local newspaper report he sent me also mentioned the name James.⁽⁵⁾ As we have seen in the post on the Skinner Street shop, the newspaper reports on the drowning of Henry Bowtell were very imprecise in the naming of the characters in the disaster, so I do not suppose this case was any different and James and Joseph are one and the same person.

116 St. James’s Street, corner of Charles Street, Brighton

The 1861 census, in listing Joseph’s family, who was by then back in London, corroborates that Joseph and his wife Kezia had four children at the time of his crime. Three of the children had been born in Brighton (Kezia, 11, Margaret, 10, and Charles, 5) and one (Emma, 6) in London. By 1861, one more child had been born in London (Susannah, 2). No evidence has been found in the census for a James Bowtell. That the third child was born in London can perhaps be explained by two notices in The London Gazette of that year in which we read that Joseph’s brothers Thomas and John were – at different times – declared bankrupts and in prison. John and Joseph had been trading as Bowtell Brothers in Piccadilly since 1842, first at number 181, but from 1848 at number 170. John’s bankruptcy may very well have necessitated a spell in London for Joseph, but he apparently went back to Brighton until his disgrace in 1857. Joseph does not seem to have had a shop again, but worked as an assistant. The 1871 census gives his occupation as ‘boot clicker’, which was someone who cut out the leather for making the uppers. I am afraid that his brother William did not fare much better, but he will be discussed in the next post on the shop at 152 Tottenham Court Road.

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(1) The London Gazette, 22 April and 25 November 1834.
(2) Daily News, 30 December 1856.
(3) D. d’Enno, Brighton Crime and Vice, 1800-2000 (2007), pp. 167-168.
(4) J. Gardner, “Church Hill Workhouse, Part 2 Children and Vagrants” in Clifton Montpelier Powis Community Alliance News 12, 2008.
(5) The Brighton Observer, 9 January 1857. Thanks go to James Gardner for sending me this newspaper cutting.

Neighbours:

<– 59 Cheapside

57 Cheapside –>

George and Alfred Pill, pastry cooks and confectioners

Tags

catering, food and drink

Street Views: 42 and 17 Suppl
Address: 51 Cheapside

We came across Mr. Pill in the post on James Pimm who had his business further up the street. Pimm’s establishment was compared to that of Alfred Pill with the latter’s considered too small to receive a licence to sell alcohol. There was a bit of wrangling going on between the aldermen whether pastrycooks and confectioners should be allowed a licence and if so, whether the licence should be granted with an endorsement that the premises were not to be used as a gin shop. In the case of Pimm, the licence was eventually granted, but it is not made clear whether Pill received the required licence. At the time of this application, 51 Cheapside was just run by Alfred Pill, but in 1839, when the first batch of Street Views came out, his brother George was a partner in the business.

The brothers had no doubt learned their trade from their father George who ran a confectionery in Mile End, Stepney, but the two boys were also apprenticed to London freemen, which, after seven years, enabled them to become freemen themselves and run a business in the City. George was apprenticed in 1815 to George Ponton, a cook and confectioner of Fore Street, Cripplegate, and Alfred in 1820 to John Coombes, a member of the Cooper Company, but his true occupation and address are not known. The brothers seem to have started at Mile End Road, no doubt the establishment run by their father until his death in 1825, but by 1829, they were to be found at 86 Newgate Street, and by 1835 at 51 Cheapside. A partnership between one Harriott Pill and Alfred Pill was dissolved in 1838 with Alfred remaining at 51 Cheapside, but how this Harriott was related to George and Alfred remains unclear. What is clear, is that Alfred remained the proprietor of 51 Cheapside, which was the fifth house west of St. Mary le Bow church. The building was slightly lower than the neighbouring houses. Alfred shared the premises with various other businesses; in the 1839 Street View with Mellor, Mountain & Co, a lace warehouse, and in the 1847 Supplement with Thomas McClure, a Manchester agent, and William Donne & Sons, engravers. No information is available as to how the premises were divided up.

Cheapside with number 51 on the right from Thomas Malton’s Picturesque Tour of 1792 (Source: British Museum Collection)

There is one customer who has written down what could be had at Pill’s. Charles George Harper, reminiscing about the London of the past wrote Queer Things about London in 1924 and said,

Then there was Alfred Pill, who, on the south side of Cheapside, between St. Mary-le-Bow and Old Change, sold the most exquisite and alluring jellies. You might have had a bun with Deputy Webber, consumed a jelly (Ah!) at Mr. Pill’s, and then, passing, let us say, through St. Paul’s Churchyard, have found on Ludgate Hill another bun shop …

Harper explains that Deputy Webber had his bun shop in Lombard Street, but he does not give any indication when he might have come across Webber or Pill. Tallis does not deal with Lombard Street, but the Post Office Directory of 1843 has a Thomas Webber as bread and biscuit baker at 81 Lombard Street. The jellies must have been quite famous, but other than this one tantalising glimpse of the food on offer at Pill’s, I have not found any more mention of the food available at the establishment, although the place itself must have developed over time from just a confectionery into a ‘proper’ restaurant. It is labelled as such on Goad’s insurance map of 1886 and in the German Baedeker’s guide to London of 1875 it is listed in the section of Coffee Shops, Pastry Cooks and Oyster Shops in the City, together with such places as Peel’s in Fleet Street and Holt’s in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Baedeker finishes the paragraph with the comment that, in most coffee houses, soup, chops and steaks were also available, but whether Pill actually had those on the menu is not made clear.

In the 1841 census, Alfred was living on his own at Cheapside with just a housekeeper, one Mary Wood. But she was or became more than a housekeeper and in 1847 Mary Cooper Wood and Alfred Pill got married at St. Lawrence Jewry. They had two daughters, Mary Susanna and Elizabeth, and one son Alfred Arthur. All three children are described as confectioner’s assistants in the 1871 census and Alfred must have counted on his son, Alfred Arthur to take over the business, but unfortunately, the young man died in 1875, just 20 years old.⁽¹⁾ This must have been roughly at the same time as Alfred retired as he is still listed in the Land Tax records for 1874, but in 1875 the names of Simpson & Bowser are given for 51 Cheapside. In 1881, Alfred, by then a widower, and his unmarried daughter Mary Susanna, are living at The Knowle, Manor Road, Wallington.

The Penny Illustrated Paper, 5 November 1881 (Digital Library@Villanova University)

Murder!
Pill’s quiet retirement was, however, rudely interrupted in 1881 when a man was brutally murdered on the railway from London to Brighton. It turns out that Frederick Isaac Gold, who had married Alfred Pill’s wife’s sister, Lydia Matilda Wood⁽²⁾, was travelling back from town to Preston, Brighton, on a Monday and somewhere along the line he was shot by Percy Lefroy Mapleton. Gold had put up a good fight, but lost his life and was thrown from the carriage in Balcombe tunnel where his body was later found. Mapleton pretended to have been attacked by two man, hence the blood on his clothes, and the police at first let him go, but as more information came in, they knew he must have been the killer and he was apprehended, charged, convicted and later hanged. Mapleton had been staying at a boarding house in Wallington and daughter Mary Susanna had to give evidence at the inquest that Mr. Gold had not come to visit them on that particular Monday and that they knew nothing about Mapleton. More on the notorious case can be read here and here.⁽³⁾

Two weeks before this shocking event, Alfred Pill had attended the forty-fourth anniversary dinner of the London Coffee and Eating-House Keepers’ Association; he is listed as one of the members of the Common Council present.⁽⁴⁾ But Pill’s health must have deteriorated after that, as in 1886, the Court of Aldermen decided to disqualify him “by reason of his not having attended any meetings of the Court in the last six months, owing, it was stated, to ill-health”. Pill had represented Bread Ward since 1860, but it was now time to elect a new representative.⁽⁵⁾ The 1891 census still saw Pill living at The Knowle with his daughter Mary Susanna, but he died in August of that year.⁽⁶⁾ Mary Susanna was one of the executors and remained living at The Knowle until her own death in 1942.⁽⁷⁾

—————————-
(1) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1875. Effects valued at under £200.
(2) Lydia Mathilda Wood had married Fredrick Isaac Gold on 13 April 1845 at Holy Trinity Church, Mile End Old Town, Stepney. Her father's name is given as Samuel Wood, gentleman. Alfred Pill's and Mary Cooper Wood's marriage registration also names her father as Samuel Wood, gentleman, so I think we can conclude that most of the papers were wrong in reporting Gold's sister as having married Pill; it was his wife's sister.
(3) At the time, the case was extensively reported in the newspapers, see for instance, The Morning Post and The Standard of 30 June 1881. The Penny Illustrated Paper devoted considerable space in several issues to the case which included graphic pictures. See for links to the magazine the bottom of the Wikipedia page on Mapleton here.
(4) The Era, 18 June 1881.
(5) Daily News, 13 October 1886.
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1891. Estate valued at over £45,400.
(7) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1842. Estate valued at over £23,400.

Neighbours:

<– 50 Cheapside

52 Cheapside –>

James Pimm, fishmonger and confectioner

Tags

catering, food and drink

Street Views: 38 and 17 Suppl.
Addresses: 3 Poultry and 77 Cheapside

In the 1839 Street View, Tallis lists James Pimm at 3 Poultry (top elevation above) and in the 1847 Supplement at 77 Cheapside (lower elevation). The Poultry did not figure in the Tallis Supplements, so it is impossible from that source to determine whether Pimm hung on to that establishment, but the tax records for the Cheap Ward can help us out. Pimm was still mentioned in the tax records of 1846 as the proprietor of 3 Poultry, but in 1847 the line for that address is left empty, while in 1850 (no records seem to exist for 1848 and 1849) it is filled with the name of Samuel D. Morey. The premises listed in the Supplement for Pimm, 77 Cheapside, were still occupied by George Miner in 1839, although the Tallis plan mistakenly shows the name of a T. Carter, tailor and draper, on the elevation. I will get back to this discrepancy in a forthcoming post on Miner, but here we are concerned with the later occupation by Pimm.

An engraving of a drawing by T.H. Shepherd shows the two premises of Pimm’s, albeit only just. Looking from St. Paul’s towards the Poultry, Cheapside bends slightly to the right into Bucklersbury, which means that numbers 78, 79 and 80 are not visible in the engraving and Pimm’s at number 77 only just (pink arrow). You can recognise the building by the molding above the window on the first floor (pink circle). Number 3 Poultry is indicated by the green arrow. The Shepherd drawing gives the illusion that the two establishments were closer together than they actually were, but Tallis flattened the street in his View, giving a better idea of the situation.

Engraving from Shepherd & Elmes, London and its Environs in the Nineteenth Century, 1831

Street section from Tallis Street View 38

1799 Horwood map

In June 1822, James Pimm acquired the freedom of the City through the Company of Loriners by redemption, that is, by paying a fine for not following the usual route of a 7-year apprenticeship or by patrimony. On the admission paper it is already stated that he was a fishmonger. That same year he married Mary Southerden Mallery at St. Mary Woolnoth, and he started his career in nearby Lombard Street. From the baptisms of the couple’s children, we can work out the subsequent addresses of the family between 1823 and 1841. From 1823 to 1826, they lived in Lombard Street; from 1827 to June 1830 in George Street; from November 1830 to 1834 at 2 Poultry and from 1836 onwards at 3 Poultry.⁽¹⁾ In 1837, Pimm decorated his house with “a crown in variegated lamps” as part of the illuminations for Queen Victoria’s procession to Guildhall on 9 November (see for a painting of the procession here).⁽²⁾ The 1841 census finds the Pimm family at 3 Poultry, but by 1851 they have moved to 77 Cheapside.

In most of the baptism entries for his children, James Pimm is listed as an oyster dealer, the 1841 baptism lists him as a shell fismonger and the 1841 census simply as fishmonger. But the 1851 census shows his business extending the range of goods on offer as he is then described as “confectioner and fish factor, master, employing 4 persons (not very clear, could be ‘personnel’). Daughter Mary and son Henry are both listed as confectioner’s assistants, Frances does not get a job description, William is an apprentice to a fish factor (not necessarily his father) and Ann is still a scholar. Also living on the premises is a female servant, also described as confectioner’s assistant. In 1854, son Henry Mallery acquires the freedom of the City by patrimony, not from the Loriners as his father had done, but perhaps more logically, from the Vintners. The documentation says that he does so “for particular reasons”, but no details about these reasons are given. In 1859, Henry Mallery takes out a General Game Certificate for which he had to pay 4l. 0s. 10d. with an additional duty of 10 per cent.⁽³⁾ This certificate allowed him to shoot game where he wants, subject to the Law of trespass. For an example see here.

portrait of James Pimm, uploaded by kcarmichael43 on ancestry.co.uk

In 1861, according to the census, Henry Mallery and his brother William were living at 7 Billingsgate as fish factors, although the land tax on the property is listed for James. Father James, his wife Mary and daughters Frances and Ann were then still living and working at 77 Cheapside. James is said to be a fish factor employing two men, but he was soon to retire. On his death certificate – he died the 6th of August 1866 – he is said to be living at East Peckham. The cause of death is given as liver and heart failure. His probate record gives him as “formerly a fish factor” and “formerly of Cheapside but late of Billingsgate and of Bush-place East Peckham”. Henry Mallery and William are named as the executors of the estate.⁽⁴⁾ When exactly the Cheapside establishment was transferred to others is unclear, but sons Henry and William seem to have remained at Billingsgate. In 1860, a list of householders of the Cheap Ward supporting the election of John Bennett as councilman lists a George Bradshaw at 77 Cheapside, but unfortunately without mentioning his occupation.⁽⁵⁾ In 1862, James Pimm is still listed for the Cheapside address in the Land Tax records, but in 1864 George Bradshaw’s name has replaced his.

Pimm’s O’Clock?
From the above information, you might gather that all Pimm did was sell fish, oysters in particular, but his name has gone down in history for a very different reason, namely the invention of Pimm’s No. 1 Cup. According to legend, Pimm started offering refreshing drinks with his oysters to aid digestion. It is uncertain when exactly he started with his famous drink, but the year 1840 is usually mentioned, and the bottles proudly show that year, but there is no direct evidence for that. It is certain that he applied for a licence to sell alcohol for 77 Cheapside in 1850, but that was refused. The application was opposed, not surprisingly, by sixteen licensed victuallers of the area; one of the reasons given was that the seating area at number 77 was even smaller than that of 51 Cheapside, whose owner, Mr. Pill, had been refused a licence for not having sufficient accommodation. The report on the hearing does not show the authorities in a very favourable light; they were arguing amongst themselves about the procedure and the meeting had to be adjourned for a while so that the magistrates could rethink their position in the case. In the end, the licence was refused.⁽⁶⁾

A year later, Pimm tried again, and this time he had the backing of 120 inhabitants of the ward, although the licensed victuallers of the area were once again opposed, one of them Pimm’s neighbour, Mr. Innes of the Queen’s Arms Tavern, along with 100 other inhabitants. Pimm was asked whether he planned to live at the premises and he answered, “I do […] the house which I ask to be licensed is my only home; and I have not the slightest intention of leaving it, so long as I can keep it”. The magistrates decided that a licence should be granted as “the shop was an old established and respectable place, well-known in the City of London, possessing every convenience for refreshment”. Interesting to see how they changed their tune from the year before when the accommodation was considered inadequate. But there was a warning: the premises were not to be converted into a gin shop or public house, or the licence might be revoked.⁽⁷⁶⁾

Borage (Borago officinalis) is used to flavour Pimm’s

Pimm’s No. 1 Cup was the first, and still the most popular, variety of Pimm’s beverage, but other varieties were introduced later on (see the Wikipedia page for its later history). It is also suggested that Samuel Morey, a former apprentice of Pimm’s, invented the drink. He was certainly Pimm’s successor at 3 Poultry, but he was not his apprentice. Morey only acquired the freedom of the City in 1854 and he did so by patrimony (his father was a Butcher), so had no need to become anyone’s apprentice. He may, of course, have been Pimm’s assistant before taking over the business at 3 Poultry, but I have found no evidence of that. On the contrary, Tallis already lists a Morey, fishmonger, at 201 Bishopsgate Without, that is, in 1839, and that address and 3 Poultry are both given on the probate record of Samuel Morey in 1877. More on the Morey family here, but for now, cheers, enjoy your Pimm’s.

Postscript: Terence Hodgson kindly sent me information and a picture of the architect’s drawings for 4 and 5 Poultry (see his comment), so many thanks to him. In 1870, restaurateur Frederick Sawyer, who took over from the Moreys, took an 80 year lease from the landowners, the Merchant Tailors’ Guild, and built a new Pimms restaurant at 4 and 5 Poultry. The architect for the new Pimms was a R H Moore, whose best still standing work is probably the Hop Exchange in Southwark. The building had the unusual conflans stone for its sheathing. In the new building, all floors were used for various types of grills and restaurants, and like many such buildings, the top floor, despite all the pretty arcading, was actually used for the kitchens and live-in staff quarters.

—————–
(1) Baptism dates: James 4 May 1823; James Henry 5 Sep 1824; Mary Mallery 12 Feb 1826; Henry Mallery 2 Dec 1827; James Norris, named after his grandfather, 28 June 1829; Francis Elizabeth 21 Nov 1830; William 12 Aug 1832; Ellen 18 May 1834; Ellen 17 Jan 1836; Ann 10 Sep 1837; George 14 July 1839; and Ann 1 Aug 1841. All but the last child, Ann, were baptised at St. Mary Woolnoth, but in 1841 St. Mildred Poultry was chosen.
(2) The Morning Chronicle, 10 November 1837.
(3) The Spectator, 8 October 1859.
(4) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1866. Effects valued at under £10,000.
(5) Daily News, 26 November 1860.
(6) The Era, 31 March 1850.
(7) The Era, 30 March 1851.

Neighbours:

<– 4 Poultry	2 Poultry –>
<– 78 Cheapside	76 Cheapside –>

Eddels and Kerby, hosiers and glovers

Tags

clothing

Street View: 38 and 17 Suppl.
Address: 64 Cheapside

You may remember that some posts ago I wrote about Benjamin Poulson, a tailor at 94 Regent Street. Before he started out on his own, Benjamin’s employer had been John Eddels and, in February 1827, Benjamin worked in Eddels’s shop in the Strand. Quite soon after, Eddels must have given up the shop in the Strand, as on 17 October of that same year, he has his will drawn up and only mentions two premises, one at 2 Coventry Street and one at 64 Cheapside. Eddels had meant the Coventry Street property to be sold with the proceeds to go to his daughter and the Cheapside shop to be retained for the use of his widow, but the family decided otherwise and John’s brother James Eddels of 34 Piccadilly, one of the executors of John’s will, took over the Coventry Street shop. John’s widow Mary, with her young daughter, also Mary, did, however, continue the hosiery business at Cheapside.

John and Mary had been married at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 28 February, 1813, but their daughter Mary was baptised on 31 March, 1816, at St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, suggesting the family already lived in Cheapside, although John may not yet have been the proprietor of the shop. I found an 1805 advertisement for “the cheapest hosiery and glove warehouse in the world” at number 64, but no name is given. And it is only in 1817 that John obtained the freedom of the Company of Framework Knitters by redemption, paying the fine of 46s 8d, suggesting that only then had he become the actual proprietor and needed to be a freeman of one of the City Companies. The following year, a son James is baptised at St. Mary’s, but he probably died young as he is not mentioned in John’s will.

Advert in The Morning Chronicle, 17 January 1805

Fast forward to 1835, when a burglar managed to steal a piece of silk from the shop through a broken window. Evidence is given by John Kerby who states that he is shopman to Mrs Mary Eddels.⁽¹⁾ The theft is not very spectacular, but it gives us the name of Kerby. Interestingly enough, in the 1841 census, the name of Edmund Kerby is listed at 64 Cheapside. This Edmund married daughter Mary Eddels the following year (12 November 1842 at St. Mary-le-Bow) and on the marriage registration his father’s name is given as John with the occupation hatter. Did the father work for Eddels first and did his son take over? Quite possibly. Edmund obtains the freedom of the Spectaclemakers in 1850, also by redemption, paying the usual fine.

elevation in the 1847 Tallis Supplement Street View

The business seemed to have been doing well and nothing much happened for quite some years, but on the 9th of March, 1857, Mary Kerby, aged just 41, dies, leaving her husband and her mother to manage the shop. A year later, Mary senior also dies (on 4 October 1858) and Edmund is left on his own. Both Mary junior and Mary senior left their property to Edmund, but there was a bit of contention as Mrs Laing, the sister of Mary senior, alleged that Mary senior’s new will, the one she had drawn up after her daughter’s death, had not been signed properly in front of witnesses. It was shown that it was just a case of forgetfulness on the part of one of the witnesses and nothing untowards had happened and probate was duly granted to Edmund Kerby on 5 March 1859.⁽²⁾

Soon after, on 28 July, he remarried Charlotte Pardoe, a widow. Edmund’s address is given as Hampstead and his occupation as ‘gentleman’, suggesting he had given up the shop. The 1861 census confirms this as he is then given as “retired hosier” at Lanark Villas. Quite by chance, we know what happened to the shop at 64 Cheapside as the neigbour at number 65 was John Bennett, clock and watchmaker. Bennett had an advertisement put in The Daily News of 10 December 1859 in which he annouces the enlargement of his premises. “J. Bennett, finding that the whole of his present premises are required for his watch and clock business, has secured the adjoining house, 64 Cheapside, for the jewellery department of his establishment, which will be opened as soon as the fittings are completed”.

64 Cheapside had been built over the entrance to Crown Court. In the 1839 elevation (top of this post), Crown Court is clearly written in the gap on the left-hand side of the building, but in the 1847 elevation, the entrance hole is no longer given a name. If you look at the vignette which Bennett had in the 1847 Street View booklet, you will see the black hole of the Crown Court entrance with the windows of the Eddels/Kerby property above it on the right-hand side of the picture, just behind the wheels of the carriage.

vignette for Bennett in Tallis’s Supplement 17 Street View

View of Cheapside with number 64 behind the omnibus (Source: British Museum)

On 23 October 1867, ten years after the death of the Eddels women, a notice from the Bank of England appeared in The Daily News announcing the release in three months time of annuities “in the names of Mary Eddels, of Cheapside, widow, and Mary Eddels of Cheapside, spinster, since wife of Edmund Kerby” to the latter “unless some other claimant shall sooner appear and make out his claim thereto”. No more is heard of it, so I assume Edmund received the money. Edmund married a third time in 1871 to Eliza Kirkes and died in 1879. His personal estate was then valued at under £3,000 and the executors were Thomas Henry Neal, solicitor, and Edward Hemming, a hosier of Cannon Street.⁽³⁾ And here we come almost full circle, as the Hemmings figure prominently in the will of Nathaniel Keen Eddels, John Eddels’s brother. For Nathaniel’s will, see the post on Poulson.

—————-
(1) Old Bailey case t18350921-1933.
(2) The Morning Chronicle, 16 February 1859, Court of Probate report.
(3) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1879.

Neighbours:

<– 65 Cheapside (1839)	63 Cheapside –>
<– 65 Cheapside (1847)	63 Cheapside –>

Thomas Tegg, bookseller

Tags

book trade

Street View: 38 and 17 Suppl.
Address: 73 Cheapside

Thomas Tegg became an important bookseller, known for publishing reprints and remainders, but he also published original work and, in his early years, acted as auctioneer. He left a handwritten autobiography, now lost, of which sections were published by his son in 1870. The small booklet does not seem to be available online, but Henry Curwen had access to it and provides most of the information about Tegg’s early life in his A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New (1873). Curwen’s chapter on Tegg is available online here, so I will only repeat the bare essentials.

Tegg was born in 1776, his father died when he was 5 years old and his mother when he was 9. He was sent to a boarding school in Scotland and from there to an apprenticeship with a bookseller. Unfortunately, that bookseller was often drunk and abusive, so Tegg ran away. After many jobs in many places, he managed to reach London in 1796 where he found work in the bookshop of the Quakers John and Arthur Arch. When he received a legacy of £200, he decided to set up on his own, at first in partnership with J. Dalton Dewick at 6, West Moreland Buildings, Aldersgate Street, but that partnership was quickly dissolved.⁽¹⁾ Dewick stayed at Aldersgate Street and Thomas set up shop in St. John’s Street with one Castleman as his partner. They called their shop The Eccentric Book Warehouse, but apparently Castleman had a predilection for alcohol rather than for business, so that partnership did not last very long either.

The shop in St. John Street (Source: Bodleian Library)

Tegg proceeded to tour the country as an auctioneer, buying up stock and selling it on at a profit until he had raised enough money to come back to London and start all over again for himself. This time, he found a shop in Cheapside, number 111, from which he established himself well enough to be able to move in 1824 to a much larger shop at number 73. Number 73 had been built after a design by Christopher Wren for Sir William Turner who served as Lord Mayor in 1668-9. It became known as Old Mansion House.

111 Cheapside (Source: British Museum)

A advertorial poem listing books that could be bought at Tegg’s (Source: British Museum)

73 Cheapside (Source: W. Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 1, p. 343)

Thomas Tegg married Mary Holland on 20 April 1800 at St. Bride’s and the couple were to have many children. At least five of the boys became booksellers; James and Samuel in Australia; Thomas junior and Henry in Dublin with Henry later going to Cape Town; and William who was to succeed his father in the Cheapside shop, but later removing the business to 12 Pancras Lane. It was a very clever move to send family members abroad to obtain a foothold in far-away places, thereby assuring an outlet for the relatively cheap reprints and remainders Tegg specialised in. Tegg had cornered the market nicely in 1825 when a financial crisis forced many publishers and booksellers who had overreached themselves to panic and sell left-over stock. Tegg swept it all up at hugely advantageous prices, such as, for instance, some of Walter Scott’s novels, which he later sold at a nice profit.⁽²⁾ He wrote in his autobiography, “I was the broom that swept the booksellers’ warehouses”.

Thomas senior died in 1846, according to Curwen, “after a long and painful illness, brought on by over-exertion, mental and physical” and was buried at St. Mary’s, Wimbledon on 28 April. His youngest son Alfred Byron, a student at Pembroke College, Oxford, was buried on the same day; it is said that he was so overcome by his father’s death, that he died almost instantly after receiving the message.

73 Cheapside can be seen on the right-hand side of this illustration from Shepherd & Elmes’ London Environs (Source: British Museum)

Below two advertisements and some title-pages of random publications by Thomas Tegg. If you like to know more about Tegg’s publications and have access to JSTOR, I suggest you read: James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, “Reassessing the Reputation of Thomas Tegg, London Publisher, 1776-1846” in Book History, Vol. 3 (2000), pp. 45-60.

The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser, 30 August 1800

Morning Chronicle, 2 June 1824

Source: British Museum

Source: British Museum

[Postscript: Jenny Bakken, whose husband was the 3 x great grandson of Thomas Tegg, sent me two photographs of the Cheapside façade, which now resides in a Kent park. The building that housed Tegg’s bookshop was demolished in the 1920s, but the façade was saved in order to erect it somewhere else in London. That did not happen and in the end it ended up as a garden feature in Pines Garden, St. Margaret’s Bay, Kent. Thanks go to Jenny for letting me post the photographs and for making me realise that a tangible piece of 73 Cheapside still exist (see also the comment by John Crellin)]

Google satellite view of Pines Garden with the façade clearly visible (see here)

—————-
(1) The London Gazette, 15 March 1800.
(2) F.A. Munby, Publishing and Bookselling (1930, reissued 1934), p. 269-271.

Neighbours:

<– 74 Cheapside

72 Cheapside –>

John Bennett, clock and watchmaker

Tags

clocks and watches

Street View: 17 Supplement
Address: 65 Cheapside

John (from 1872, Sir John) Bennett started his career in Cheapside between 1839 when the shop at number 65 was still occupied by Rigge & Co, perfumers and cutlers, and 1847 when the Tallis Supplements came out. Before that, he had a shop in Stockwell Street. According to the ODNB, he was born in 1814 in Greenwich, the son of John and Elizabeth Bennett.⁽¹⁾ Father John was a watchmaker and John junior continued in that line of business, first in Greenwich where he assisted his mother after she became a widow, but later on his own account in Cheapside. He married Agnes Willson in 1843 and the couple had three children, Alice, John and Juliet, as we can see from the 1851 census. In 1861, the family no longer lives above the shop, but in Camberwell. Son John has unaccountably been given the name of Thomas, but we’ll assume that is a mistake by the census recorder. In 1871, Agnes and Juliet are still living in Camberwell, in the appropriately named Pendulum Cottage. Agnes is still called ‘wife of watchmaker’, but John is not there.

Portrait J. Bennett (Source: British Museum)

He is back, however, in the 1881 census; Agnes and John are then living at Glen Druid, Park Road, Chislehurst. Agnes dies in 1889 and in 1891, John is found as a widowed and retired watchmaker boarding in Rotherfield, Sussex. So far an ordinary family history, but for the fact that John is boarding with the ‘widow’ Aimée (also called Annie) Guilbert, originally from Guernsey, his long-time mistress with whom he had seven children: Lillie, Lionel, Violet, Rose, Horace, Gerald Munro and Douglas Thurlow. They all took the surname Guilbert [thanks goes to Margaret Burns for help with the names of the children, see comments to this post]. There are two probate records, the first one in 1898 for Sir John Bennett of 135 London-road St. Leonards-on-Sea who died 3 July 1897. Probate is granted 1 February to Henry Hewitt Bridgman, architect, and the estate is valued at £463 19s. 6d. A year and a half later, however, a second probate record can be found for Sir John (no mistake it is him; same address, same date of death), but now probate is granted to Edward Jones Trustram, solicitor, the attorney of Aimée Guilbert, spinster. The estate has dwindled to £88 9s. 6d.⁽²⁾ A notice in the London Gazette of 29 September 1899 asking all creditors of the estate to contact Trustram declares that Aimée Guilbert was named executrix in the will. I bet that did not go down very well with the children from his marriage with Agnes.

Interesting as his private life may be, I will now go back to his shop in Cheapside. As can be seen on the vignette on the left, Bennett was “watch maker to the Queen”, “clock maker to the Royal Observatory”, and sold “foreign clocks French Swiss and American”, besides chronometers and Sheffield plate. He went into advertising in a big way; no opportunity was overlooked to promote his business. A large number of his advertisements included pictures of the various watches and clocks he sold. The 1851 Exhibition warranted a page-long advert in the official catalogue. Please note the illustration of the shop front.

1851 advert Exhibition catalogue (Source: Grace’s Guide)

Advertisement from The Illustrated London news, 1898

Advertisement in Bradshaw’s Illustrated Handbook to France, n.d

Minute-repeating, grande-sonnerie clock-watch by J. Bennett for which he received a medal at the Paris exhibition of 1878 (©British Museum)

But making watches and selling them in the shop was not the only activity of Bennett. He gave lectures, for instance in Leeds, where in 1856, he not only treated his audience to an explanation of how watches were made, but also to his opinion why Switzerland was so far ahead of England in producing good watches. He ascribed their success to the education of the people, the subdivision of labour and the extensive employment of women who were particularly well-suited for the delicate work of watch-making.⁽³⁾ In an interview with The Pall Mall Budget, quoted in The New York Times of 5 January, 1887, Bennett is asked about this Swiss supremacy and he alleges that even when watches are called ‘English’, they frequently contain Swiss movements. He also claims that the value of the Swiss export of watches to England amounts to one million pounds per year. He was also in favour of the adoption of the metric system where, once again, Switzerland is quoted as an example of its convenience in manufacturing.⁽⁴⁾
His career in politics started with election as councilman for the Cheap ward in 1860. In 1871, he became sheriff of London and Middlesex, but he was, however, thwarted in his attempts to become an alderman and he stood unsuccessfully for parliament three times as a Liberal. Some of the failures were undoubtedly due to his flamboyant personality which showed not only in his outspoken ideas but also in his dress and public appearance. In the Lord Mayor’s show he tended to appear in a velvet jacket and a broad-rimmed hat, seated on a white horse, and receiving more applause than the Lord Mayor himself.⁽¹⁾
The business became a limited company in 1889 and that was also the year in which Bennett’s involvement in the business ceased. The shop was put up for sale in the late 1920s and the shop front decoration, including the Gog and Magog figures, was carefully removed and taken to America where part of it now graces the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.⁽⁵⁾

shop front in the late 1920s (Source: Henry Ford Museum)

demolition of Bennett’s shop (Source: Henry Ford Museum)

Gog and Magog at the Henry Ford Museum (Source: Henry Ford Museum). More on Gog and Magog in London here.

(1) Richard Harvey, ‘Bennett, Sir John (1814–1897)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2125, accessed 3 April 2013]. See for more information on the Bennett family here.
(2) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1898 and 1899.
(3) W.H.J. Traice, “Education of the artisan, and employment of women” in Journal of the Society of Arts, 4 April, 1856, p.349-351.
(4) Journal of the Society of Arts, 11 March, 1864, p. 277; and idem, 13 may, 1870, p. 581.
(5) See here for photographs of the restoration project.

You may also like to read the post on Eddels and Kerby at 64 Cheapside, which gives information on Bennett extending his 65 Cheapside shop with number 64, or the post on Crown Court where information is given on a burglary from Bennett’s shop.

Neighbours:

<– 66 Cheapside

64 Cheapside –>