John Burder, solicitor

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law

Street View: 73
Address: 27 Parliament Street

27 Parliament Street was situated on the west side of the street, but the row of houses it belonged to is no longer there. The building that now houses HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs) occupies the whole block of houses that used to be there, although not exactly, as the street has been widened in the late 1890s and the frontage set back and the street at the back, King Street, has disappeared altogether. The building is now known as 100 Parliament Street and Grade II* listed (see here).

27 Parliament Street in Horwood’s 1799 map

The Times, 11 Nov. 1891

At the time when Tallis produced his Street Views, number 27 was occupied by John Burder, a solicitor. We first come across him with this address in 1822 as the solicitor where particulars can be obtained about the sale of an estate in Buckden.⁽¹⁾ The previous occupant of number 27 had been Christopher Hodgson who provided similar services and who removed his business to Dean’s Yard. Hodgson and Burder were or became friends and Hodgson is remembered in Burder’s will as “his friend”. We next find Burder in an advertisement of the Medical, Clerical and General Life Assurance Society, established in June 1824. Burder was one of the society’s solicitors.

The Examiner, 20 June 1824

In early 1826, Burder married Elizabeth Taylor at Holy Trinity Church, Guildford. Ten years later, he acquired the freedom of the City of London through the Worshipful Company of Broderers. The 1841 census does not show him at number 27, but the entry does show a Mary Burden or Burder, 30 years old, without an occupation, who may have been a relative living with the Burders. Also present are a clerk and a female servant. Also in 1841, Thomas Evans of Hereford transmits Articles of Clerkship to William Gilmore Bolton of Austin Friars, attorney of the Queen’s Bench, solicitor of the High Court of Chancery, and Burder’s co-solicitor for the Medical, Clerical and General Life Assurance Society. The clerkship was for the benefit of John Burder junior, the son of John and Elizabeth. In addition, in 1843, John Burder junior became the apprentice of the same William Gilmore Bolton and he thereby obtained his freedom of the City after the customary seven years. The 1851 census shows John senior and his family living at Crown Lane, Brixton. That same year John junior and his brother Charles Sumner become members of the freemasons’ Middlesex Lodge. Charles Sumner was listed with the abode of Pembroke College, Oxford and was later to become rector of Ham on the Wiltshire/Berkshire border.⁽²⁾.

In the alphabetical section of Boyle’s Fashionable Court & Country Guide of 1847, John Burder Esq. is listed as of 27 Parliament Street, but also of 41 Parliament Street. A look at the street section explains that the office of the Clergy Mutual Assurance Society was situated at number 41 for which Burder was one of the secretaries. John Burder senior died in 1855 and in his will and subsequent codicils still described himself as “of Parliament Street”, although The Freeman’s Journal stated that he died at his residence at Norwood.⁽³⁾ The Morning Chronicle states that he was interred at Hale, near Farnham, by the bishop of Winchester, in the church created by his lordship [that is, St. John’s]. The Bishop of Winchester was Charles Sumner and there must have been some sort of link between the two gentleman for Burder to call one of his sons Charles Sumner Burder. The burial register of Hale also described Burder as of Norwood.

The family’s woes were not over yet as Burder’s other son, Thomas Henry Carr, died a few months later at Cambridge, just 23 years old. He was also buried at Hale. According to Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, Thomas was a little frail and she records him falling ill several times when on a trip to America with Henry Arthur Bright. Not to mention his clumsiness in losing his carpet bag and sticking his hand in a cactus.⁽⁴⁾ When Elizabeth Burder died in late 1879, it turned out that she had not done anything with Thomas’s estate and it fell to her executors to sort out both estates in 1880.⁽⁵⁾ Elizabeth was also buried at St. John’s, Hale.

St John the Evangelist’s Church, Farnham (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

John junior remained at 27 Parliament Street, later together with his brother-in-law Simon Dunning who had married sister Elizabeth Mary Burder in 1856. The gentlemen were secretaries to several bishops, among them the bishops of Ely, Chichester and Chester. They dissolved their partnership in July 1876 with Dunning to continue the business.⁽⁶⁾ According to the 1861 and 1871 censuses John, unmarried, lived with his mother at 60 Queen’s Garden, Paddington, but in 1873, he married Annie Theresa O’Connell, 20 years his junior. The couple lived at various addresses, at some point in Brussels, Belgium, and had three children. In 1881, John filed for divorce on the grounds that Annie had committed adultery. He had not been living with his family since 1877, but Annie was delivered of a son in 1880, who must therefore have another father. Annie denied the allegation and said that John had lived with her in August 1879 and was therefore the father of her youngest son and that he had abandoned her for another woman, one Mary Jane Manning. John denied all that and said he left Annie because she was violent towards him, throwing plates and candlesticks, forcing him to sleep on the sofa. In March 1881, Annie had forced her way into the house where he then resided, creating a disturbance and assaulting Mrs Manning. On earlier occasions she had annoyed and threatened his mother and partner Dunning. The court dismissed the case with Burder to pay costs.⁽⁷⁾

In the 1891 census, John Burder is living in the same house as Mary Jane Manning, née Walker. He is described as ‘cousin’. There does seem to be a family link between the Burders and the Mannings or Walkers as in the 1881 census, one Sarah Burder is described as ‘aunt’ and living with the Walkers and Mannnings. When John died in 1895, probate was granted to Mary Jane Manning. His effects had dwindled to £14 15s, so whatever he had made as a solicitor had disappeared dramatically.⁽⁸⁾ Simon Dunning had died in 1883.⁽⁹⁾

Solicitors’ Journal and Reporter, vol. 27 (1882-1883), p. 456

(1) The Morning Post, 23 May 1822.
(2) St. Mary Hall, Oxon., B.A. 1853, M.A. 1857. Deacon 1854, Priest 1856, Winchester. Curate of Privett (Hants); Rector of Ham, 1864 — 1900.
(3) PROB 11/2211/418; Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 6 April.
(4) Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, ‘A Victorian Englishman on Tour: Henry Arthur Bright’s Southern Journal, 1852’, in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 84:3 (July 1976), pp. 333-361. Available via JStor.
(5) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1880. The executors were Charles Sumner Burder and Simon Dunning. Elizabeth’s estate was valued at under £1,500 and Thomas’s at under £5,000.
(6) The London Gazette, 11 July 1876.
(7) Civil Divorce Court: Class: J 77; Piece: 259.
(8) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1895.
(9) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1883. The executor was his widow Elizabeth Mary. The estate was valued at over £29,000.

Neighbours:

<– 28 Parliament Street

26 Parliament Street –>

Smith & Pinkney, solicitors

Tags

law

Street View: 75
Address: 41 Chiswell Street

No elevation from the Tallis Street View to grace the top of this post as Tallis depicted numbers 1-37 and on the other side of the street numbers 53-91, missing out 39 to 52. Did he plan another Street view of that section of Chiswell Street, continuing into Beech Street? Possibly, but then why would he include the occupants of those properties in the index? No logical answer seems to be available, so we will make do with Horwood’s street plan of 1799.

Horwood shows what became Smith and Pinkney’s property as number 80 (red arrow), just around the corner from Whitecross Street. The blue arrow points towards what is now Sundial Court, formerly part of the Whitbread brewery, and the green arrow points to Lamb’s Passage which is still there.

Pinkney’s career started on the 27th of May in 1831 with the following contract:

William Davidson Keats clerk to George Trewhitt of Cooke Court near Lincolns Inn in the County of Middlesex Gentleman one of the attornies of his Majesty’s Court of Kings Bench at Westminster and a solicitor by Articles of Clerkship bearing date the Twenty first day of May Instant and made between The said George Trewhitt of the one part and Herbert Pinkney of Walnut Tree Walk in the County of Surrey Gentleman and Thomas Francis Pinkney Son of the said Herbert Pinkney of the other part the said Thomas Francis Pinkney for the consideration therein mentioned did put place and bind himself Clerk to the said George Trewhitt to serve him in the profession of an Attorney at Law and Solicitor in Chancery from the day of the date of the said Articles for the term of five years from thence next ensuing ….⁽¹⁾

I will spare you the rest as it is not so easy to follow the long sentences that were written with capitals in unexpected places and without punctuation marks or apostrophes. Joseph Smith, Pinkney’s partner, was most likely the Joseph Smith who was articled in 1821 as clerk to William Rosser.⁽²⁾ When exactly the gentlemen decided to set up a practise together is unclear, but they are listed in Chiswell Street in Pigot’s Directory of 1839. They dissolved the partnership a few years later, in 1841, with Pinkney to continue the practice on his own.

The London Gazette, 14 May 1841

Both solicitors went bankrupt in 1847; Pinkney, whose address is then given as Eccleston Street, Belgravia, seems to have got off lightly, but Smith ended up in prison. Between the end of his partnership with Pinkney and his bankruptcy he seemed to have had five different addresses and besides having a practice as an attorney, he was at one point also the Superintendent Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths of the parish of St. Luke.⁽³⁾ But in 1851 the census found him once again as a solicitor, this time in Arbour Street, Stepney. In 1843, Pinkney was still working at 41 Chiswell Street, but is, according to the Post Office Directory, no longer to be found there in 1848. He re-emerges in the 1871 census in Stoke Newington as the manager of an unspecified public company and died four years later.⁽⁴⁾

After Pinkney left 41 Chiswell Street, the building was occupied by various people. The 1851 Post Office Directory lists Henry Dale, auctioneer and appraiser. He dissolves a partnership with two others in March 1853 and seems to have left Chiswell Street.⁽⁵⁾ In February 1855, Philip Nelson and Albert James Cappel dissolve a partnership as merchants at 41 Chiswell Street⁽⁶⁾, although the 1856 Post Office Directory still lists them there. The next occupant is Charles Eaton who advertised auctions from number 41, but he combined that with the trade of leather factor. Many of his auctions did indeed feature leather, shoes, boots, etc. He also went bankrupt and had to assign all his effects in trust to an accountant for the benefit of his creditors.⁽⁷⁾

The London Gazette, 25 March 1864

I could go on listing the businesses that occupied 41 Chiswell Street until the present day, but I think I will call it a day and leave you with a Google Street View of the property.

Google Street View of 41 Chiswell Street

(1) National Archives, Kew: Court of King’s Bench – Affidavits of Due Execution of Articles of Clerkship, Series II, Class KB 106, Piece 16.
(2) National Archives, Kew: Court of King’s Bench – Affidavits of Due Execution of Articles of Clerkship, Series II, Class KB 106, Piece 5.
(3) The London Gazette, 27 April and 7 May 1847.
(4) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1874. His estate was valued at under £450.
(5) The London Gazette, 18 March 1853.
(6) The London Gazette, 2 March 1855.
(7) The London Gazette, The London Gazette, 11 April 1862 and 25 March 1864.

Neighbours:

<– 42 Chiswell Street

41* Chiswell Street –>