Charles Snelling, perfumer and hairdresser

Tags

hairdresser, perfumer

Street View: 45
Address: 11 Wellington Street

One post often leads to another in this blog and this one is no exception. The previous post was on John Colley of Bishopsgate Street of whom Charles Snelling was to learn his trade, but as we will see, this post in turn leads to yet another, but first some information on the address where Snelling could be found in the early part of his career.

Section of the map Tallis provided with his Street View no. 45

Wellington Street was and is again part of Borough High Street, but the first section coming from London Bridge was called Wellington Street after the Duke of Wellington for a while (from somewhere in the 1830s to 1890 or thereabouts). Snelling’s shop was just beyond St. Saviour’s, in the middle of the row of houses between the church and York Street and opposite St. Thomas’s Hospital. In fact, slightly more towards the bridge from where the entrance to Borough Market now is.

top part of Snellling’s 1825 indenture

As mentioned above, Charles Snelling served his apprenticeship with John Colley of Bishopsgate Street. Snelling’s indenture was dated 6 September 1825 and lists his father as Henry Snelling, barber. Henry paid Colley twenty pounds for the privilege of teaching his son the art of hairdressing and perfumery. Charles would have come to the end of his apprenticeship in 1832, but he did not take up the formal freedom of the City of London until 1841. No doubt because he had no need for it running his business on the south side of the Thames. At the end of 1833, the partnership between Henry and Charles Snelling was dissolved and Charles continued at 11 Wellington Street on his own.⁽¹⁾ In 1838, he married Louisa Knowles, the daughter of a naval officer.

Coat of arms of the Company of Barbers at the top of Snelling’s City freedom registration

Tallis only just caught Snelling in Wellington Street, because soon after the Street View booklet appeared, Charles moved to 20 Gracechurch Street where the 1841 census was to find him and his growing family. 1841 was also the year in which he obtained the freedom of the City of London, something he had no need for at his previous address, but did in Gracechurch Street as that street lies within the jurisdiction of the City. 20 Gracechurch Street had been the shop of Nathaniel Pryor, a jeweller, and after Pryor’s death, of his widow Elizabeth (blog post on them here). Charles continued to work in Gracechurch Street and the 1851 census, which was taken on 30 March, finds him there with a shopwoman [Postscript: when I wrote this post, I totally ignored her, but I should not have. See the comment by Melissa why Emma Whitehead should have been noticed] and a visitor, an accountant. Having this visitor, one Samuel Stockton, did not bode well for Snelling. It may, of course, have been an ordinary visit from a friend, but on the 23rd of April, a claim for bankruptcy was filed in the Court of Bankruptcy and Snelling was to appear before the Court on the 19th of May.⁽²⁾ He was given a certificate of the second class, that is, Snelling had been careless or reckless, but not dishonest, and could partially have avoided bankruptcy, or so the Court of Bankruptcy ruled. Any idea of misfortune without blame was apparently not a valid reason. The last chance for creditors to stake their claim was on 17 January 1852 or they would forfeit any dividends.⁽³⁾ And on the 11th of May, 1852, or on subsequent Tuesdays, the “creditors who have proved their debts […] may receive a First Dividend of 6d. in the pound” from Isaac Nicholson of 24 Basinghall Street, the offical assignee.⁽⁴⁾ No more is written about Charles in The London Gazette, but let’s assume he survived the bankruptcy proceedings and continued to work as a hairdresser and perfumer, although I have not discovered anything about him after 1852.

And what happened at Snelling’s old address in Wellington Street? Briefly, George Philcox, a clock and watch maker, was listed at the address, but already on 2 March 1841, he was insolvent and in Surrey Goal. Next come Batchelor and Rogers, drapers, who are mentioned in Robson’s Directory of 1842. Henry Batchelor and James Baker Rogers, mercers, linen drapers and haberdashers, dissolve their partnership on 14 July 1843. And there was a reason for breaking up the partnership. Just two days earlier, they had assigned all their “stock in trade, bills of exchange and promissory notes, and other securities for money, book and other debts, books of account, and all other the estates, moneys, property and effects, wheresoever and whatsoever (except leasehold estates) … for the benefit of the creditors”.⁽⁵⁾ I am afraid that 11 Wellington Street figured prominently in the bankruptcy notices in The London Gazette.

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(1) The London Gazette, 31 December 1833.
(2) The London Gazette, 25 April 1851.
(3) The London Gazette, 30 December 1851.
(4) The London Gazette, 7 May 1852.
(5) The London Gazette, 18 July and 29 August 1843.

Neighbours:

<– 12 Wellington Street

10 Wellington Street –>

John Colley, perfumer and hair cutter

Tags

hairdresser, perfumer

Street View: 30
Address: 28 Bishopsgate Street Within

John Colley, the son of Richard Colley, a yeoman of Mitcham, Surrey, had been apprenticed in 1808 to his uncle Philip Lawton, Citizen and Barber of Bishopsgate Street.⁽¹⁾ Colley obtained his freedom of the Barbers’ Company in 1815 and two years later, his son John Lawton Colley was born.⁽²⁾ On the baptism registration for his son, Colley is listed as perfumer of Bishopsgate Street, although no house number is given. He may even have taken over Philip Lawton’s business, but that is not certain. In 1821, daughter Sophia is born, but here again, no house number given. The first time number 28 is mentioned is in 1832 when John’s wife Sarah, just 36 years old, is buried on 14 September at St. Ethelburga’s. The year before Sarah’s demise, son John Lawton is taken on as an apprentice in his father’s business.

Sketch Plan, drawn from the Ordnance Survey, 1894, via British History Online

Before we continue with the hairdresser and perfumer business, first something about the building at 28 Bishopsgate Street Within itself. Horwood’s 1799 map clearly shows that number 28 was situated next to the passageway towards Crosby Square and the elevation at the top of this post shows the passageway under the left-hand side of the Colley building. The Survey of London⁽³⁾ has a sketch of the area taken from the 1894 Ordnance Survey map. The orientation is somewhat unusual, so it looks as if Crosby Square moved to the other side of Bishopsgate Street, but of course it has not. You should really picture the sketch upside down, but then you cannot read the writing so easily, so I left it as it was. I have indicated number 28 with a red arrow. Because of a corbel depicted by F. Nash, there has been some discussion whether Colley’s shop had once been used as a chapel for Crosby Hall or Crosby Place as it was also called, or whether the corbel had already been part of the house that stood on the site when Cataneo Pinelli, a Genoese merchant, lived there before Crosby acquired the lease in 1466. Whatever its former function, it seems that the corbel in the form of an angel could still be seen when Colley had his shop at number 28. I am quoting the Survey:

Corbel in the form of an angel

“Nash and Davis have given a plan of the room showing a door and details of the curious double window in its south wall, and Blackburn corroborates with a description of the window which he saw still in situ in the parlour of a Mr. Colley’s house, erected on this very place. The arch mouldings of the two lights of this window rested, in the centre, upon a corbel carved in the form of an angel, of which Nash and Davis give a sketch. This corbel was evidently secured by Mr. Lewis N. Cottingham for his famous museum in the Waterloo Road, since the catalogue of the sale of the contents in 1850 has the following: ‘Lot 992. A moulded and panelled corbel from Crosby Hall; and one of the same character terminating with an angel supporting a shield’.”⁽⁴⁾

In December 1824, The Ladies’ Monthly Museum, a fashion magazine, mentioned John Colley as the inventor of a particular head-dress in which “the hair worn in very full curls, to meet on the fore-head; equally full at the top as at the sides. The hair is dressed in large clusters of small bows, or, partly, puffs, and rolled at the back of the head, on the Grecian model”. The walking dresses to go with this particular hair style were designed by a Miss Pierpont and shown in an illustration in which the lady in the white dress assumedly has her hair done up in the style invented by Colley.

Ten years later, Colley’s was listed in an advertisement in The Spectator as the address where British lavender water manufactured by Henry Capper at the British Perfume Manufactory was being sold. So far, so good, but Capper’s lavender water was not the only variety of that scent sold by Colley’s. That same year, Messrs. Delcroix of Regent Street, were granted an injunction against three perfumers who sold scented water pretending to be that of Delcroix and Co, while in fact it was just a fraudulent copy. Colley was one of the perfumers “having the appearance of respectability”, but being in fact common swindlers trying to make money imitating Delacroix’s packaging – or so Delacroix claimed anyway. The bad publicity does not seem to have harmed Colley as he happily kept his shop running for quite some years after this incident.

Delcroix’s advert in Northcroft’s Parliamentary Chronicle (1834)

Colley advertised in the Street View booklet with Sicilian Cream, supposedly good for your hair. John Colley and his son John Lawton had entered into a partnership which was dissolved on the 17th of June, 1847. I guess because John wanted to retire, but the notice in The London Gazette does not actually say so. The 1851 census does, however, give John, his second wife Mary and their two children Philip and Reginald Edward at Gypsy Hill, Lambeth, with John described as “landed proprietor”. John died in February 1855 and was buried at Norwood Cemetery. John Lawton could still be found at 28 Bishopsgate Street after his father retired from the business and in 1849 still advertised the Sicilian Cream in The Era of 28 January, no longer just good for your hair, but even preventing baldness. The advertisement refers to Colley’s “thirty years’ experience as a hair cutter” without mentioning the fact that the thirty years were divided up between two generation, albeit of the same family. John Lawton married Cornelia Dear in 1845⁽⁵⁾, but the marriage appears to have been childless. The 1851 census sees John Lawton and his wife at 28 Bishopsgate as a hair cutter, employing 6 men. Cornelia seems to have continued the shop after the death of John Lawton in 1859⁽⁶⁾ as the 1861 census still finds her at Bishopsgate as perfumer, but by 1871, she had moved to Croydon and had apparently retired. She died in 1886.⁽⁷⁾

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(1) National Archives, Kew: PROB/11/2237/208. John Colley is named the executor in Philip Lawton’s will, dated 10 October, 1854, although that commission is revoked in a codicil dated 4 September 1855. Why that is so, remains unsaid. The other executor is named as Joseph (Cox) Dear. See also footnote 5 for the Dear family.
(2) John Lawton’s mother was called Sarah, but I have not found a marriage registration that conclusively links a Sarah to the John Colley of Bishopsgate. There are a few possibilities, but none that point without doubt to the correct John Colley.
(3) Survey of London Monograph 9, Crosby Place. Originally published by Guild & School of Handicraft, London, 1908. Original online here. Transcription available via British History Online here.
(4) Nash and Davis are referred to in the bibliography of the Survey as: MS. Notes and Sketches of Crosby Hall by Frederick Nash and Valentine Davis, in the Library of the Royal Institute (1804) of British Architects. And Blackburn is a reference to An Architectural and Historical Account of Crosby Place. By Edward L. Blackburn. 8vo. London, 1834.
(5) He had married Cornelia on 12 July 1845. Her father was given as Joseph Dear, gentleman. Interestingly, a year earlier, John Lawton’s sister Sophia married the reverend Robert Dear whose father was also named Joseph. Were they brother and sister? See footnote 1 for the Joseph Dear who was named the executor of Philip Lawton’s will. Although it is tempting to think that all these Josephs were one and the same person, that may not be the case, although a family relationship is certainly indicated.
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1859. He was buried 16 March 1859 at Norwood Cemetery. The service was conducted by Robert Dear, his brother-in-law.
(7) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1886. She was buried 7 August 1886 at Norwood Cemetery.

You may also like to read about Charles Snelling, one of Colley’s apprentices who had his shop in Wellington Street and later in Gracechurch Street.

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

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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.