Wedgwood & Co., manifold writers

Tags

dressing case, instrument maker

Street View: 64
Address: 4 Rathbone Place

The index to the Tallis Street View booklet simply says that Wedgwood & Co produced manifold writers, but the vignette that they had in the booklet proudly has the lettering “R. Wedgwood’s improved manifold writers & machines for the blind” on the facade, but just in case you did not realise how important they were, the caption to the vignette tells you that Wedgwood & Co. were the “sole inventors & patentees of the improved manifold writer for copying letters, invoices, &c.” Ralph Wedgewood, of Charles Street, Hampstead Road, had received the patent for his “apparatus for producing duplicates of writing” on 7 October 1806. A specification of the invention can be read in the Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture of September 1807 (online here). It was an early form of carbon copying, a technique that would really only take off in the 1870s when typewriters and an easier way to produce the carbon paper became available. To make the invention usable for the blind, Wedgwood also invented the ‘nocto polograph’ or ‘nocto-graph’ which consisted of a frame to be placed over the paper with guidelines to make sure one kept one’s writing straight.

advertisement in Tallis’s Street View booklet

Wedgwood was not the only one to lay claim to the invention of carbon copying. Several competitors alleged that their system was much improved upon the design of Wedgwood, for instance Frederick Bartholomew Folsch, whose system included an ink pen rather than the metal stylus Wedgwood promoted. A specification of his invention can be read in the Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture of September 1809 (online here). Folsch and Wedgwood had some sort of economic relationship that is not yet entirely clear. They had neighbouring shops in Oxford Street until 1821 and in some years, the Land Tax records bracketed the properties together despite having different occupants.

1812 Land Tax record for 327 and 328 Oxford Street

According to the land tax records, Wedgwood moved to a property further up the street in 1821, but they were slightly behind with their administration, as already in 1819, Wedgwood advertised his manifold writer from 345 Oxford Street. Number 327 was henceforth occupied by a Richard Spratson. These changed were no doubt related to the fact that a block of houses around Folsch’s property (numbers 324-329) had been redeemed for the construction of Regent Circus (now called Oxford Circus) and Folsch received compensation for the loss of his premises at both 327 and 328 Oxford Street.⁽¹⁾ The question is, why would he receive compensation in 1816 for both properties? He is never mentioned as having two houses in the Land Tax records. The same question has been asked in the Bodleian Library blog post ‘Copycat Copiers? Frederick Folsch, Ralph Wedgwood, and the “Improved Manifold Writer”‘ (see here), but so far, there does not seem to be a logical answer, although the most likely is that Folsch held the lease and Wedgwood rented from him. I recommend you read the Bodleian blog post for all the additional information it gives on the carbon copying invention and the apparent competition between Wedgwood and Folsch. What is clear from the tax records, is that Folsch’s name continued to be listed for number 327, at least till 1850, which is strange, as the houses disappeared and Tallis does not list Folsch or his immediate neighbours; he jumps from house number 325 to 332.

From 1827 onwards, Wedgwood was trading from 4 Portland Place, although he seems to have hung onto 345 Oxford Street, at least till 1845, but he does not mention that address in his advertisements. Another confusing thing is that the inventor Ralph had a son Ralph who went into the business. The son was usually distinguished from his father by the addition of ‘junior’ to his name, for instance in the advertisement in The Examiner shown below, but the Land Tax records are silent on this point, so it is unclear whether the son or the father is the occupants of the Oxford Street properties. Ralph senior died in 1837 and after that year, the Land Tax records no longer mention a first name or initial for Wedgwood at Oxford Street, so it is possible that another family member took over the premises. It is, however, clear that it was Ralph junior who occupied 4 Rathbone Place and Ralph junior who was listed in Tallis’s Street View.

Manifold writer from Bonham’s auction website, online here

In 1840, an advertisement for Wedgwood’s manifold writers casually mentions the fact that the partnership between Wedgwood and one Mr. Squire has been dissolved by mutual consent.⁽³⁾ An ordinary notice, officially recognised by a similar entry in The London Gazette of 1 September 1840, but all was not what it seemed, as there had been trouble between the partners. The London Metropolitan Archives list a record, dated September 1840, of the Middlesex Sessions of the Peace in which William Squire, of 18 Furtess Terrace, Kentish Town, and Ralph Wedgwood, of 4 Rathbone Place, are bound over to keep the peace towards each other. I have not seen the documents, so no idea what the argument between the gentlemen was, but it does put a slightly different slant on the phrase ‘by mutual consent’. On 13 January 1841, an advertisement appeared in The Morning Chronicle in which Squire offered “Squire’s manifold writers” from 9 City Road and in which he lists himself as “Squire (late Wedgwood and Squire)”. Apparently he still found it necessary to use the Wedgwood name to underline the quality of ‘his’ product despite the acrimonious parting with his former partner.

vignette from Tallis’s Street View booklet 64

advertisement from The Examiner, 20 October 1833

© Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

In 1851, Wedgwood junior obtained the freedom of the City through the Company of Loriners by redemption on paying the fine of 46s 6d. The document with the oath he swore at the Guildhall on the occasion has been preserved. Another document in the file tells us that he was the son of Ralph, late of Chelsea, Gent., deceased, and that he was living at 84 Lombard Street. An advertisement in The Times of 2 November 1849 gives the Lombard Street address with the addition “late of Rathbone Place”, so presumably a recent move. The blue advertorial sheet above from the Science Museum also has the Lombard Street address. Wedgwood died in October 1866 and was then living at Castlenau Villas, Barnes.⁽⁴⁾

And in case you are wondering: yes, Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, and Ralph Wedgwood were related. Ralph senior, the inventor, was the son of Thomas Wedgwood who was the cousin and business partner of Josiah I Wedgwood, the potter. John Raphael Wedgwood, the son of the Ralph Wedgwood who is listed in Tallis and the grandson of Ralph, the inventor, died in November 1902 and was then living at Etruria House, Lonsdale Road, Barnes, the name of the house a reference to the Wedgwood factory in Etruria, Staffordshire.⁽⁵⁾

(1) The Morning Chronicle, 14 September 1816.
(2) London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CHD/FR/02/.
(3) The Morning Chronicle, 31 August 1840.
(4) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1867. One of the executors was his son John Raphael of 9 Cornhill who is described as Manufacturer of Patent Manifold Writers and Writing and Dressing Case Maker. The effects were valued at under £10,000.
(5) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1903. His estate was valued at over £110,000.

Neighbours:

<– 5 Rathbone Place

3 Rathbone Place –>

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J.W. Norie & Co., navigation warehouse

Tags

book trade, instrument maker, transport

Street View: 2
Address: 157 Leadenhall Street

It is sometimes a good thing that the process of OCR is not perfect, especially not for older text material, as I might not so easily have worked out that Tallis made a mistake by listing J.W. Norie as Morie, with the modern facsimile edition making it even worse by transcribing Tallis’s mistake as Moria. My first Google search for ‘moria leadenhall’ immediately gave me as a matching result a book available at archive.org that contained an advertisement for Norie and Wilson at 157 Leadenhall Street, and that put me on the right track for John William Norie who obtained his freedom of the City of London by redemption through the Company of Coopers. The notice from the Coopers’ Company about his registration already has 157 Leadenhall Street as his address. The 1834 electoral registers tell us that besides his shop, he also had property in Albany Street, Regent’s Park.

Norie did not start the navigation warehouse in Leadenhall; it was William Heather who had taken over the chart publishers Mount and Page and who ran the Naval Warehouse and Academy from 1795. When Heather retired in 1813, Norie took over and hence needed the freedom of one of the Worshipful Companies to be able to trade in the City. He had already been busy before 1813, not just as an assistant to Heather, but also as an author, or perhaps more correctly compiler, of A New and Complete Epitome of Practical Navigation (1805). On the title-page he is referred to as ‘teacher of navigation and nautical astronomy’ and in his preface he sets out his reasons for writing the book, namely the inadequacy of existing works on practical navigation. He dedicated the book to the Court of directors of the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies, which was of course a sensible move as most of the customers of the Navigation Warehouse had links with the East India Company and their headquarters were situated just a bit further up the street.

The shop is depicted in Robert Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata (1825) as the second building from the left in the first section on the north side of Leadenhall Street, that is, on the left if you were coming from Cornhill and had just crossed Bishopsgate and Gracechurch Street. The caption explains that these houses were erected after a fire in 1765. A map of that fire, with the individual houses can be seen here. From the map, we learn that number 157 was then occupied by a linen draper, but none of the names correspond to the ones in the 1825 picture and in turn, most names of the 1825 occupants had disappeared by the time Tallis produced his booklet on the street some 15 years later, with the exception of Norie at no. 157, Robinson at no. 153 and Corser at no. 152.

There is nothing left now of the shop as street widening has taken its toll. There is, however, a tangible reminder of the shop in the Charles Dickens Museum. They have on display the figure of a midshipman who used to adorn the Norie premises as a shop sign.⁽¹⁾ The poor man is squashed a bit against the ceiling in the museum and not so easy to photograph (no flash allowed), but it is great that he has not been thrown in a skip when the shop was demolished. Dickens used the navigation warehouse in Dombey & Son as the model for Sol Gills’ shop with one of the “little timber midshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside the shopdoors of nautical instrument-makers in taking observations of the hackney coaches”. The little midshipman appears throughout Dickens’s story, following the ups and downs of Gills’ shop, and ending with a new coat of paint, still gleefully taking the measure of the hackney coaches.

Illustration by Hablot Browne (‘Phiz’) from the 1848 edition of Dombey and Son

portrait of Norie by Adam Buck, after Williams (Solomon Williams?), watercolour, circa 1803 (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

John William Norie was born in 1772 and died in 1843. He probably retired in 1840, as that is when the partnership between the executors of George Wilson and Norie came to an end.⁽²⁾ Norie’s will provides a number of clues. For starters, it was drawn up in Edinburgh, because he was at that time “residing in Princes Street Edinburgh in order to settle my affairs and to prevent all disputes that might otherwise arise in regard to my means and estate after my death”.⁽³⁾ In fact, he was to die there at the end of 1843. He names William Nash of St. Thomas’s Hospital, his brother-in-law John Hodgson Anderson, and his son William Heather Norie as executors. Besides a few named bequests, he leaves his three daughters £5,500 each and the rest of his estate is to go to his son William Heather.⁽⁴⁾ From the bequests he lists, we can work out that he had a brother Evelyn Thomas Francis, a nephew John William, and five sisters. All this information makes it fairly easy to work out that John William was the eldest son of James Norie of Moray and Dorothy Mary Fletcher of London. James had been trained for the Presbyterian ministry and ran a school at Burr Street, London. You can see a portrait of him here.

After John William’s retirement, the business was continued by Charles Wilson, the son of George Wilson who had been Norie’s partner in the past. The Land tax for 1840 is still in Norie’s name, but in 1841 it is Wilson who is paying the tax. His name continued in the tax records till 1882 when his name is given as “late Charles Wilson” and an annotation indicates that a new building is being put up: “Premises in course of erection” as the tax man phrased it. The business relocated to 156 Minories, and in time amalgamated with various other firms to become Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson, but it is nowadays just plain Imray of St. Ives, Cambridgeshire (more on them here).

title-page of J.W. Norie’s A New and Complete Epitome of Practical Navigation, 1805

part of a nautical chart by Norie, 1837 (Source: Library of Congress, online here)

octant, c. 1795 (Source: Land and Sea Collection, see here)

imprint of J.W. Norie’s New sailing directions for the Adriatic sea, or Gulf of Venice, 1843

advertisement for The Corinthian Yachtsman. Note the new address

(1) On loan since 1946 from Laurie, Norie, Imray & Wilson, see here.
(2) The London Gazette, 22 September 1840.
(3) PROB 11/1991/402.
(4) Evelina Harriet, Frances Charlotte, and Ann Isabella.

Neighbours:

<– 158 Leadenhall Street

156 Leadenhall Street –>

Solomon Maw, surgeon’s instrument maker

Tags

instrument maker

Street View: 44
Address: 11 Aldersgate Street

The history of Maw’s firm has been well researched by various people, so I will give you just a basic overview and a few links⁽¹⁾. What I will also do is provide some pictures to show you what kind of supplies could be bought at Maw’s.

It all started with George Maw, from Lincolnshire, who, in 1807 started a partnership with his wife’s cousin Hornby in Fenchurch Street. In 1814, he set up for himself by purchasing the business of a surgical instrument maker in Whitecross Street. In 1825, he moved the business to 56 Aldersgate Street where his sons John Hornby and Solomon joined him. The firm moved again in 1834 to 11 Aldersgate Street where Tallis was to find them, but by then it was in the hands of son Solomon; father George had retired in 1829⁽²⁾ and the eldest son John Hornby in 1836⁽³⁾. As you can see from the vignette in the Tallis booklet, the shop and workplace comprised quite a substantial set of buildings behind the modest shop front.

Advertisement in the Tallis Street View

Solomon brought in his son Charles in 1860 and the business became S. Maw and Son. But Solomon was not to enjoy the partnership for very long, as he died the following year.⁽⁴⁾ Charles took in his own sons and various Maws have run the business until the 1970s when they were taken over by a large international supplier. After WWI, the factory had been relocated to New Barnet.

New Barnet (Source: Britain from above) See their ‘nearby images’ for more views.

The firm brought out various price lists of the products they could supply, three of which which you can view online here, and from time to time also a book of illustrations. The pictures below are from the Book of Illustrations to S. Maw & Son’s Quarterly Price-current,

In 1868, Maw’s took out a patent for “a perfume flask to be called ‘Gaskings perfume pistol flask'”. The Chemist and Druggist found it interesting enough to write a short description about it with a picture to illustrate it (or did Maw pay for the item and is it really an advertisement?). The stock of the pistol was made of india-rubber and could be filled with perfume. A little pressure would force a thin spray from the glass barrel. The magazine wrote that “it will no doubt be very popular at Christmas parties”. No doubt, but I am afraid that if I were to carry such a pistol on the Underground, I would instantly be set upon by the anti-terrorist brigade.

Perfume pistol (Source: The Chemist and Druggist, 15 October 1868)

Earthenware inhaler, London, England, 1866-1905 (Source: Science Museum, London. Wellcome Images)

Advert from The Lancet, 4 March 1865

Advert from The Pharmaceutical Journal, 11 October 1871

After a fire in December 1856, the Aldersgate premises had to be rebuilt and twenty years later, after the Maws had acquired the neighbouring premises, a new front was put on. According to The Chemist and Druggist, it was “a handsome front extension” designed by the same architect, H.B. Garling, who had also designed the main building after the 1856 fire. The plot the Maw business stood upon roughly corresponds to where Cooks’ Hall once stood.⁽⁵⁾ That building was not rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1771, but as late as 1893, the Ordnance Survey map still identified the plot as such.

1799 Horwood map

1893 Ordnance Survey map

Meanwhile, John Hornby Maw, after his retirement in 1836, had founded a decorative tile making business for his sons George and Arthur, first in Worchester, later at Benthall, Shropshire. The company, after a few restarts, still exists. See here for their history and here for their website. The old factory is now a craft centre, see here.

(Source: British Museum)

(Source: British Museum)

(1) The Chemist and Druggist, 1905, p. 47-48 (online here)
Chronological list and copy of information in The Pharmaceutical Industry: A Guide to Historical Records, edited by Lesley Richmond, et al., Ashgate, 2003 (online here – a bit lower on the page, so scroll down or use search). The same source is used by CollectingMe.com.
(2) The London Gazette, 17 July 1829.
(3) The London Gazette, 17 June 1836.
(4) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1861.
(5) See the website of The Worshipful Company of Cooks of London here.

Neighbours:

<– 12 Aldersgate Street

10 Aldersgate Street –>

Edward Clarke, optician and magnetician

Tags

instrument maker, optician

Street View: 81 (Suppl. 8)
Addresses: 11 Lowther Arcade, 428 Strand

Lowther Arcade once ran from the Strand to Adelaide Street. The Strand-side entrance was situated in Lowther House. The lease was to be taken over by Coutts Bank who left the frontage in the original style until 1978 when the present building, designed by Frederick Gibberd & Partners, was opened. Because the building to the left and right are still as John Nash designed them in the 1830s and because Coutts’ glass frontage is completely different from the surrounding premises, it is easy to see where Lowther House once stood. See for a history of Coutts Bank here.

Source: Google Street View

According to Tallis in booklet 13 (Strand Div. 5) Lowther Arcade was “a beautiful passage lighted by a glass roof, and consists of elegant shops. It conducts from the Strand to St. Martin’s Church, and the New National Gallery”. In booklet 81 (Lowther Arcade) he says that it

is short, but for beauty will vie with any similar building in the kingdom; its architecture is chaste and pleasing; its shops well supplied, tastefully decorated, and brilliantly illuminated at night. It forms a pleasant lounge either in the sultry heat of summer or the biting cold of winter. At the western end of this building is situated the Gallery of Practical Science, an exhibition we should particularly recommend to the patronage of the public.

This Gallery of Science was situated at numbers 13 and 14, opposite the shop at number 11 of Edward Marmaduke Clarke, philosophical instrument maker. Clarke was an Irishman who had started out as an optician, first in Dublin, but by the 1830s, he had moved to London where he started working for Watkins and Hill of Charing Cross. While there, Clarke was set to demonstrate electro-magnetic machines and to find a way of producing locomotion by electricity. Not long after, he set up on his own at 39 Charles Street, later moving to Agar Street. In 1835, he brought out a ‘magnetic electrical machine’ for which he was accused of plagiarism by Joseph Saxton, an American instrument maker employed at the Gallery of Practical Science, also known as the Adelaide Gallery. Saxton himself had been into trouble over allegedly plagiarising Hyppolyte Pixii’s machine in 1832, but to this day the jury is still out on that issue and it depends very much on the question: at what point can modifications and improvements be classed as a new invention?⁽¹⁾ In 1837, Clarke, inspired by William Sturgeon in whose Annals of Electricity he had described his machine, founded the Electrical Society of London. The Society first met in Clarke’s shop at number 11, but soon moved to the Gallery across the Arcade.⁽²⁾

Clarke’s machine in Annals of Electricity (1837)

At the time of the 1841 census Clarke could be found at 428 Strand. A trade card in the British Museum shows that he is still working as an optician, but that he is also styling himself as ‘magnetician’, according to the Oxford English Dictionary “an expert or student of magnetism”. Clarke even warranted the earliest reference to the word in the dictionary with a quote from volume 2 of Annals of Electricity (1838): “Had Mr. Clarke, the ‘magnetician’, known that fact, he might have saved himself the trouble.” Sometime in the 1840s, that is before Tallis’s Supplement came out, Clarke branched out into engineering when he became the proprietor of the Rodney Iron Works in Battersea where engines, tools, boats and locomotives were made. Also in the 1840s, he produced a price list of all the instruments he could supply. The symbolic illustration on the title-page showed his electro-magnetic machine in the centre.

Source: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

On the reverse of the title-page, Clarke tells his prospective customers that “in addition to a theoretic knowledge of the principles of their formation and application, he possesses the mechanical capability of constructing them with his own hands, and really makes what he sells”. Customers were also invited to come and have a look in his workshop if they are so inclined. The list has been divided into the various subjects of study, such as mechanics, dynamics, hydrostatics, steam, photography, chemistry, etc. And not forgetting his original occupation of optician by offering glasses, telescopes and microscopes. The whole list can be viewed online here.

In 1855, Clarke showed himself in favour of “the Saturday half-holiday” when a letter by him was read at a meeting to discuss the pros and cons of leaving off work at 2 o’clock on a Saturday. The newspaper article reporting on the meeting stated that “Mr. Clarke, of the Rodney Iron Works, Battersea [bore] testimony to the satisfactory results, so far as his experience went, of early closing on the morals of the work people and the interests of the employers”.⁽³⁾ The idea behind the motion for early closure was prompted by a wish to keep the whole of Sunday available for religious activities if people so wished, which was impossible if that day was the only day on which they had time to buy their groceries. Whether Clarke really thought that people should be able to spend more time in church is not known, but on that occasion the motion was carried and one may assume that the employees at the Iron Works benefited.

Panopticon by T.H. Shepherd 1855 ©British Museum

Despite branching out into engineering, Clarke had not given up on spreading the word of his new inventions altogether. He sold his business in the Strand to Messrs Horne, Thornthwaite and Wood and started on a very ambitious project to build a purpose-built exhibition centre and in 1854, the Royal Panopticon of Science & Art was opened in Leicester Square. The building was a grand affair in the Moorish style with lecture and exhibition halls. After the opening by the Bishop of London on the 18th of March, 1,000 visitors per day could be welcomed, but the interest waned quite quickly and within two years Clarke, who had been the resident proprietor of the Panopticon, resigned. A short time later, the building had to be sold for a fraction of what it had cost and it became the successful Alhambra Palace / Theatre.⁽⁴⁾ There is some confusion over the last address for Clarke. According to the ODNB, Clarke died of apoplexy at 4 Birchin Lane on 26 January 1859.⁽⁵⁾ He was buried on the 31st in Kensal Green All Souls cemetery. His address in the burial record is given as Avoca Villa, Kirk Dale, Sydenham, Kent and B. Gee gives his last address as 4 Grove Park Terrace, Camberwell.

Trade Card E.M. Clarke ©British Museum

On 17 March, 1834, Edward Marmaduke Clarke had married Eliza Henrietta Wilkins Collins at St. Pancras Church. The 1841 census saw them living at 428 Strand with their children Epee (? = probably Ephraim, see below, 6), Ivan (3) and a one-month old baby who does not yet have a name. Eliza died in February 1843 and Clarke remarried Mary Agnes Close on 29 October 1845, again at St. Pancras Church. In the 1851 census the family, Edward (45), Mary (25), Eph. M. (Ephraim Marmaduke?, 16), Jasper B. (5) and Lafsot Blais (?, 2), was living at 5 Beaufort Square.⁽⁶⁾ Another of Edward and Mary’s sons, not mentioned in the census, Caspar Purdon (1846-1911), became the Director of the Art Museum, South Kensington and later Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

(1) Brian Gee, “Early development of the magneto-electric machine” in Annals of Science, vol. 50/2 (1993), p. 101-133.
(2) Brian Gee, “The Spectacle of Science and Engineering in the Metropolis. Part I: E.M. Clarke and the Early West End Exhibitions” in Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 58 (1998), pp. 11-18.
(3) The Essex Standard and General Advertiser for the Eastern Counties, 24 August 1855.
(4) Brian Gee, “The Spectacle of Science and Engineering in the Metropolis. Part II: E.M. Clarke and the Royal Panopticon of Science and Art” in Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 59 (1998), pp. 6-13.
(5) Iwan Rhys Morus, ‘Clarke, Edward Marmaduke (c.1806–1859)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
(6) The names of the children are unfortunately a little unclear in the censuses, so may not be correct.

Neighbours:

<– 10 Lowther Arcade

12 Lowther Arcade –>