Untold lives blog

We’ve met Alan Gradon Thomas before, back in 2013 when my colleague Chantry Westwell came across a festschrift in his honour whilst researching the provenance of a medieval calendar. The recent completion of the cataloguing of Thomas’s extensive business archive seems like a good time to reacquaint ourselves with the esteemed book and manuscript seller of Bournemouth and, latterly, London.

Alan Gradon Thomas archive

Thomas was an international dealer in a pre-digital age. He had customers all over the world and all of his business was conducted by letter and telephone, using printed catalogues. It was not uncommon for Thomas to send a catalogue to a customer overseas, receive a letter back some weeks later setting out what the customer wished to buy, only for Thomas to have to write back to say that in the interim he had sold the book or manuscript to another customer.

Three manuscripts purchased from Thomas by the British Library 

He was a meticulous record keeper and the archive, containing sales ledgers, stock lists, financial records, inventories, papers relating to his superbly researched catalogues, and valuations, spans nearly 50 years. There are hundreds of files of correspondence with his customers, including the major auction houses, important private collectors such as John Wolfson, Sir Karl Popper, Lord Kenyon, Lord Wardington, and Major Abbey, and many of the great collections of the world: the British Library, the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Beinecke, the Folger, the Huntington, and the Royal Library in Brussels, to name just a few. Thomas’s correspondence also contains letters from fellow dealers, and from rare book and manuscript curators, librarians, and experts such as Mirjam Foot, Anthony Hobson, Nicolas Barker, Richard Linenthal, and Christopher de Hamel.

The festschrift alone is evidence of how well Thomas was thought of in the trade. But that high regard is also evident in his being elected President of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association for 1958-1959, during which time he was instrumental in establishing the first London Antiquarian Book Fair. His papers include a large amount of ABA material: committee minutes, annual reports and accounts, newsletters, correspondence, and papers relating to the book fairs.

In turn, Thomas himself had great respect for, and was always very appreciative of, the help of the ‘footsoldiers’ of the trade, the shop assistants and bookroom staff. The archive contains papers relating to collections Thomas ran to mark the retirement of three long serving assistants from Sotheby’s and the British Museum. He assiduously wrote to scores of contacts in the trade to drum up as many financial contributions as possible.

Alan Thomas died in August 1992 “as much an enthusiast - for the arts, literature, the history of ideas and beliefs - at 80 as he was at 20”, as his obituary in The Independent put it.

His archive, given his clientele and the material he dealt with, is an extremely rich resource for those interested in the history and provenance of manuscripts and rare books.

Michael St John-McAlister
Western Manuscripts Cataloguing Manager 

Further reading:
Add MS 89159 Archive of Alan Gradon Thomas
Christopher de Hamel and Richard A. Linenthal (eds), Fine books and book collecting: books and manuscripts acquired from Alan G. Thomas and described by his customers on the occasion of his seventieth birthday (Leamington Spa: James Hall, 1981)

The name Thomas Snodgrass will perhaps conjure up for some people an image of an archetypal pen-pushing bureaucrat, and indeed the subject of this tale was a real East India Company civil servant who was appointed writer (clerk) in the Madras Presidency in 1777. 

'Superannuated Man' by C E Brock from Charles Lamb, The Last Essays of Elia, ed. William Macdonald (1907) 

Snodgrass rose to become Collector at Ganjam in Orissa in eastern India, but by 1804 he had left the service under a heavy cloud. The reasons for this can be assumed from the descriptions of a number of files within the India Office Records:

• Mismanagement of the revenue administration of Ganjam District; removal of Thomas Snodgrass as Collector of Ganjam (IOR/F/4/82/1780)
• Snodgrass, Thomas. Apology demanded from, for disrespect towards the Government (IOR/E/4/881, pp. 619-624)
• Snodgrass, Thomas. Enquiry respecting charges of corruption and abuses permitted by, during Collectorship at Ganjam to be completed (IOR/E/4 892, pp. 162, 173-177)
• Memorials from Thomas Snodgrass to the Court of Directors … in defence of his conduct as Collector of Ganjam (IOR/F/4/141/2475)
• Snodgrass, Thomas. Memorial requesting re-admittance to Company’s service not decided upon, and tone of letter severely censured (IOR/E/4/892, pp. 161-169)
    

Not surprisingly a difficulty arose later when he tried to claim his pension. How he succeeded in eventually doing so is recounted in the Annals of the Oriental Club, 1824–1858:

'When Mr. Snodgrass applied for a pension the East India Company refused to grant it till he satisfied the Directors that there had been no misappropriation of the revenue under his control as Collector.  He professed that it was impossible to render an account, his papers having been lost in the wreck of a boat on Lake Chilka. The Hon’ble Court was incredulous; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, meanly attired, posted himself in Leadenhall Street, opposite the India House, and started a new career as a crossing-sweeper. So much sympathy was aroused by the spectacle of a Company’s servant apparently reduced to poverty, that the Court relented and the pension was paid'.

'The Bearded Crossing-Sweeper at the Exchange' from Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor volume 2 

This stunt did not prevent his becoming a founder member of the Oriental Club, and also ensured that the Company had to pay him his perhaps ill-gotten pension until he died in 1834. 

Hedley Sutton
Asian & African Studies Reference Services

Further reading:
Annals of the Oriental Club, 1824–1858, edited by Stephen Wheeler (1925) -  on the open access shelves in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room (shelfmark OIH367.942).  The entry for Snodgrass appears on pp.153-154.

Last week we told you about an explosion at a Marylebone gunmaker's workshop in 1822 which killed two child workers . Today we look at industrial accidents in 1880 involving boiler explosions.

While cataloguing some India Office Revenue files recently, I came across a copy of the Journal of the Society of Arts, dated 14 May 1880. A short article in it was a reminder of how lethal a place the working environment was in late 19th century Britain.  The article was an abstract of a report containing particulars of visits of inspection and a record of boiler explosions for January to April 1880, presented at a meeting of the Manchester Steam Users’ Association by Lavington Evans Fletcher, the Association’s Chief Engineer.

Mr Fletcher reported that in the first four months of 1880 there had been 2,129 visits of inspection made and 3,830 boilers examined. The inspections had uncovered a total of 448 defects, with 4 described as dangerous, including:
• Furnaces out of shape
• Fractures
• Corrosion
• Blistered plates
• External and internal grooving
• Safety valves out of order
• Blow out apparatus out of order or missing altogether
• Pressure gauges out of order and boilers without such gauges
• Boilers without feed-back pressure valves
• Cases of over pressure and of deficiency of water

Exterior of the Mersey Steel and Iron Works in Liverpool 1863 Online Gallery

It was reported that the year had started badly with eight steam-boiler explosions killing 33 people and injuring another 32, while a tar boiler had burst killing 11 people and injuring 6. Despite there being a high loss of life, investigating the causes of such explosions wasn’t always easy. An explosion at an ironworks in Glasgow killed 25 people and injured another 23, but the inspector sent by the Association was refused permission to examine the boiler both by the owner and the Procurator-Fiscal, and was obliged to return to Manchester without any information on the incident. The disaster was reported on extensively in UK and international newspapers.

When a negligent owner was brought to court, it could be difficult to secure a guilty verdict. A boiler explosion at Ormskirk killing three men had been caused by the wasting away of the plates at the bottom of the boiler till they were as thin as a sheet of paper, yet the jury had returned a verdict of accidental death. However, as the report pointed out, competent inspection would have prevented the explosion, and the owners neglected this simple precaution which cost three men their lives. Another explosion at Cork was caused by an inoperative safety valve, yet the Coroner stated that there was no negligence on the part of any person. However as the report stated, safety valves are not inoperative without someone being negligent, and it is the duty of those in charge to see that such valves are free.

On the basis of decisions such these, Mr Fletcher concluded that “The verdict by a coroner’s jury is so constantly one of Accidental death, even though the boiler is worn out and unfit for use, that the coroner’s court becomes to the reckless boiler owner very much what the debtor’s sanctuary in the old days was to the spendthrift”.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further reading:
Journal of the Society of Arts, No.1,434, Vol.XXVIII, May 14, 1880, pages 588-589 [IOR/L/E/6/19, File 1161]

A description of the Glasgow disaster can be found on Trove

When we think of children working in dangerous occupations in the 19th century, perhaps the first things that come to mind are chimney sweeps and mill workers.  I was surprised to learn that young children were employed to make priming for guns. This involved handling percussion powder, a highly inflammable preparation of potash, sulphur and charcoal.

Recipe for percussion powder Philosophical Magazine and Journal vol. LVI (London, 1820)

A terrible accident occurred in London on 12 November 1822.  Collinson Hall, a gunmaker in Upper Marylebone Street, arrived home about six o’clock in the evening  to find a crowd outside his front door.  He was told that there had been an explosion.

Alexander Bettie, aged 12, and his brother John, 10, had worked for the gunmaker for nearly two years.  Their job was to prepare black cakes for priming percussion guns and to fill copper caps with priming composition.  Hall had gone out for the day leaving the boys with instructions to make up about five or six ounces of the priming composition.

At teatime, Hall’s son Collinson left the workshop and went downstairs.  As he was returning about twenty minutes later, there was a fierce explosion in the workshop.  The stone fireplace was torn down; the doors were off their hinges; the ceiling of the room underneath fell; and windows on the staircase were blown out.  Collinson Hall junior found the brothers in the workshop, alive but burned and terribly injured.

Alexander and John both died shortly after being taken to nearby Middlesex Hospital. An inquest was held at the hospital. The Coroner’s jury were taken to the ‘dead room’ to see the boys’ maimed bodies laid together in one coffin, ‘a truly shocking sight’. 

Both Hall and his son were questioned.  Collinson Hall senior said that the workshop was never locked, but the boys were not generally allowed to be in there unless the adult workmen were present.  The boys’ work was expected to be finished and taken from them before candlelight was needed.  He believed it was common practice in the gun making trade to employ children on such work – his own daughter aged 15 and another 16-year-old girl also worked for him - ‘He, however, felt confident that there must have been less caution used on this occasion in his absence than if he had himself been at home’.  The cause of the accident could only be guessed at – perhaps the boys took the cakes they had made that day out of the drawer, and perhaps a spark from a candle had ignited them.

Percussion gun-lock in Transactions of the Society instituted in London for the encouragement of arts, manufactures and commerce vol. XXXVI (London, 1819) 

A verdict of accidental death was returned.  The coroner explained that the jury could only punish the gunmaker by sending him for trial for murder or manslaughter. However that would imply that the powder had been deliberately placed in the children’s way and there was no ground to presume this.

Both the coroner and jury were disturbed by the case.  The coroner said he hoped that the accident would act as a warning: parents should not allow their children to be employed in such work, and employers should not take on children so young that they were incapable of judging the danger to which they were exposed.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive – Morning Chronicle 14 November 1822, Evening Mail 15 November 1822, The Examiner 17 November 1822.
‘Percussion gun-lock’ in Transactions of the Society instituted in London for the encouragement of arts, manufactures and commerce vol. XXXVI (London, 1819)
‘Description of the percussion gun-lock invented by Mr Collinson Hall’ in Philosophical Magazine and Journal vol. LVI (London, 1820)

The directors of the East India Company did not hold their regular meetings at the start of September 1666.  They were caught up in the Great Fire which started its devastating sweep through the City of London on the morning of 2 September.

        

View of the Fire of London Maps K.Top.21.65.b Images Online

East India House in Leadenhall Street stood about 400 metres from the seat of the fire in Pudding Lane.  Books, papers, goods, and treasure were hurriedly removed for safety to outlying Stepney.   The fire damaged the western front of Leadenhall Market but was stopped just short of East India House - firefighters were spurred on by a City official tossing them a hatful of gold coins. 

‘It pleased God that, on the 2d of this moneth, being Sunday, in the morning, a most fearefull and dreadfull fire brake forth, which hath consumed the greatest part of the citty of London, even from Tower Dock to Temple Barr, and almost all within the walls, except part of Marke Lane, Bishopsgate Streete, Leadenhall Streete, part of Broad Streete, and some by the Wall toward Mooregate and Criplegate and part by Christchurch.  The sight whereof was exceeding afrightening and astonishing. In this sad calamity God was pleased to bee very favourable to the Companies interest, having preserved most of our goods, excepting some saltpeeter and our pepper at the Exchange sellar.’
(East India Company directors’ letter to Surat 14 September 1666)

This map shows just how close the flames came to East India House.

 
 
Section of map showing area of fire damage from John Noorthouck, A new history of London, including Westminster and Southwark.(1773)

Eighteenth Century Collections Online 

On 10 September a smaller than usual number of Company directors met at East India House.  Those who had overseen the removal of the property were thanked ‘for their indefatigable paines, and sympathie of the Companies concern’.  Rewards were given for services ‘in the late time of extremitie, when a total ruine was feared by the violence of the flames’. 

Orders were given to bring everything back to the City.  Buyers who had suffered financial losses in the fire were given extra time to settle their accounts.  Tradesmen whose premises had been burnt asked the Company to ‘break’ the front of East India House to provide shops. The Company refused - this would be ‘very inconvenient and unfit’.

When news of the fire reached India, the Dutch in Cochin celebrated and burnt an effigy of King Charles II.  The Company wrote to Madras in December 1666 warning them that the Dutch might exaggerate the effects of the fire. A plan was sent showing exactly what had been destroyed and what remained.

There is a story that victims of the fire were shipped out to St Helena in 1667 by the East India Company to start a new life. A set of stamps was issued by St Helena in 1967 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of their arrival.

St Helena stamps 1967 - Tercentenary of the arrival of settlers after the Fire of London - author's collection

The story has been challenged and said to be a myth.  However the Company did write to St Helena on 28 December 1666 telling them that they were sending out people for the island on the ship Charles.  As well as Henry Gargen who was appointed to the Council, there were several other persons whose names and salaries were enclosed with the letter.  Unfortunately this list does not appear to have survived in the Company records held in London or St Helena , so the identities and place of origin of the settlers are unknown.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records
 
Further reading:
IOR/B/28 Minutes of the East India Company Court of Directors 1650-1669.
IOR/E/3/87 East India Company letter book 1666-1672.
Alexander Hugo Schulenburg, 'Myths of Settlement: St Helena and the Great Fire of London', Wirebird: The Journal of the Friends of St Helena, No.19, pp.5-8 (1999)

Today is the 50th anniversary of Guyana’s independence, a country on the northern coast of South America. Formally known as British Guiana, it had a rich and diverse history. Journalist Lainy Malkani takes a look back at some archive newspapers with a remarkable link to one of the most expensive stamps in the world.

‘Wanted: 100 Hogshead of Sugar.’  Royal Gazette 4 March 1856

Judging by the variety of notices and adverts posted in the Royal Gazette in 1856, Georgetown, must have been a bustling and at times chaotic city. The proprietors of the printing shop, Messrs. William Dallas, Esq, who was one of a growing number of successful mixed-race businessmen, and Joseph Baum from Pennsylvania, were in the thick of it.

 The search for ‘100 Hogshead of Sugar’, is just one of thousands of ‘Wanted’ ads placed in the newspaper, and leafing through just one day in the life of the city feels like time travel at its best. On Tuesday 4 March 1856, Rose and Duff wanted to purchase ‘100 Puncheons of Rum’ while a shipment from London of 600 tonnes of ‘shingle ballast, gravel and sand’ was available for any discerning developer to buy if they had cash at the ready. On other days, an advert announcing the arrival of ships from Calcutta, laden with bags of rice and mustard oil for Indian indentured labourers indicates the country’s increasingly diverse population after emancipation in 1834.

‘IRVING BROTHERS OFFER FOR SALE’  Royal Gazette  3 January 1856

The Royal Gazette, later known as the Official Gazette was regarded as the voice of the colonial administration and Government announcements were frequently posted. Disturbances in the city led to William Walker, the Government Secretary to decree that a reward of $50 dollars for information that led to a conviction of the troublemakers, would be withdrawn and replaced with a $250 reward - perhaps it was a sign of the fragility of peace in the city.

The printing office was located at No23 High Street and Church-Street in the upmarket district of Cumingsburg and it printed more than just newspapers. In 1843, it published a ‘Local Guide of British Guiana,’ a compilation of all the current laws as well as an historical sketch of the city. 

Plan of Georgetown from Local Guide to British Guiana (Georgetown: Baum & Dallas, 1843)

But perhaps their greatest claim to fame was not as printers of newspapers or books, but of stamps, and one in particular, which is now the most expensive and rarest in the world.

The story begins with a delay in the shipment of postage stamps dispatched from London to British Guiana. By 1856, supplies were running low and so the local postmaster ordered Baum and Dallas to print a batch of one-cent stamps as postage for newspapers and a four-cent stamp for letters. The last remaining One-Cent Magenta recently sold at Sotheby’s for $9.5 million and the Four-Cent Magenta and Four-Cent Blue form part of an unrivalled collection of rare stamps donated by the wealthy Victorian businessman Thomas Tapling, held here at the British Library.

 
British Guiana 4-Cent Magenta

All in all, 1856 was a pretty good year for Baum and Dallas. The newspaper was now being printed three days a week instead of two, a sure sign that business was doing well. They had also, unwittingly secured a place in history as printers of the most valuable stamp in the world.

Lainy Malkani
Writer, broadcaster and founder of the Social History Hub

We now have much new knowledge on the men and women who from their shops and workshops in London's  Sailortown supported the thousands of vessels and ships from all over the world that in the eighteenth century made their way to the Pool of London.

 ‘Heaving the lead’ from John Augustus Atkinson, A picturesque representation of the naval, military, and miscellaneous costumes of Great Britain (London, 1807) Shelfmark 146.i.4 Images Online 

To make a financial ‘gain’ as distinct from a ‘loss’, the owners of a collier ship from Newcastle had to make eight or nine voyages in a year. Thus they were very dependent on the quality and speed of their suppliers on the north bank of the Thames. They needed the services of anchor smiths, mast makers, ship chandlers, blacksmiths, and sailmakers together with suppliers of short beer, cabbage, flour and potatoes.

Recent studies have placed an emphasis on unravelling the merchant networks based in Wapping and Shadwell that spanned the world. Two networks are of significance.

The Camden, Calvert and King partnership of Wapping between 1760 and 1824 was at the heart of a complex and significant network which had global reach. Important in their success was the patronage of Sir William Curtis, a well-known Wapping government contractor and Lord Mayor of London in 1795-96. The group's activities included the development of the Pacific whale fishery, convict transportation, and the settlement of Australia, in addition to fulfilling their ‘core’ business of providing ships for government provisioning contracts or transportation hire.

The second important network was based in Shadwell, and traded with Russia. William Hubbard, a linen draper and son of a dissenting minister in Mile End Old Town, went to Russia in about 1770. He established one of the leading British trading groups in St Petersburg that persisted for nearly 150 years. In Victorian times John Gellibrand Hubbard (1805-1889) was created first baron Addington. The family’s connections were with Wiltshire and New Stairs, Shadwell, as biscuit bakers, ropemakers and Russia merchants. Together, they are an excellent example of a merchant group firmly based on trusted family links in which they all prospered greatly.

Thanks to recent important studies of ports and their associated cultures we are beginning to piece together a better understanding of their inter-linked cosmopolitan populations and the expertise that these residents of 'Sailortowns' bought to maritime communities. Many of the 'merchants' who supplied the Navy in major Ports such as London and Portsmouth were also providing services on a regional basis through a system of 'Agents' based in places such as Falmouth, Plymouth and elsewhere. This system of agency worked well for both navies with the provisioning of Royal Naval Ships and services such as regional representation for merchants and the ships of the Merchant Navy.

This was particularly important for the East India Company who appointed regional agents based in 'Key Ports' where they dealt with crewing and last minute provisioning, as well as providing important services and help for many merchants with the sales of 'Prize' ships and their cargoes. The networks of men such as Charles Lindegren, East India Company Agent for Portsmouth, and Joseph Banfield of Falmouth allowed many London merchants and government provisioning contractors to offer a smooth and efficient all round service and was one of the major reasons for Britain's maritime supremacy.

Derek Morris and Ken Cozens
Independent scholars

Further reading:
P. Earle, Sailors, English Merchant Seamen, 1650-1775 (1998)

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London’s Sailortown (1) - Servicing the Royal Navy

The modern visitor to Trafalgar Square finds a striking reminder of the importance that the British have attached to the exploits and successes of the Royal Navy. But while admiring Nelson's Column the inquisitive visitor might ask three questions: where was London's Sailortown, and how were the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy supplied and serviced in the eighteenth century?

Traditionally, London's Sailortown was clustered in a narrow strip of houses, taverns and slums on the north bank of the Thames, down river from the Tower of London. The standard view is that sailors in such areas were looking for food, drink and women, and would often end an evening in a fight with sailors from all over the world. This view has been shown to be incomplete in the recent publications of the East London History Society and the continuing seminars on the Thames and its Shipping, now organised by the Docklands History Group. These have shown that the parishes of Wapping, Shadwell and Stepney, were also the centre for merchants, whose trading networks extended around the world from the Caribbean, to Hudson Bay, and to China and Australia. In addition, these merchants were important in keeping the navies supplied with everything needed for both long and short voyages.

 
‘Wapping’ by Thomas Rowlandson (1807) © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

The tactics used by generations of Admirals have been minutely dissected by maritime historians, but until recently we lacked knowledge about the vast logistical exercise that supported the Royal Navy in their battles in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. To illustrate the size of the problem between 1750 and 1757 the fleet were issued with:

Bread  54,642,437 lbs
Beer  110,049 tuns
Brandy  351,692 gallons  
Beef  4,498,486 lbs
Pork  6,734, 261 lbs  
Pease  203,385 bushels
Flour  6,264,879 lbs

Who supplied all this food and the many other services needed by the navy? This problem has attracted increasing interest in the past decade in the methods and organisations needed to ensure that the Royal Navy was victualled and supplied wherever it was in the world. A major study of victualling of the navy between 1793 and 1815 has shown that this was a huge undertaking, and could only work through the symbiotic relationship established between the state and private contractors. It also had to operate on a global scale as Britain expanded its empire. This was no mean feat when there were food shortages and civil unrest, particularly at times of war.

Many merchants based in London's Sailortown in Shadwell and Wapping on the north bank of the Thames, were deeply involved in these naval contracts. Whether it was for ships, timber, biscuits, meat, beer and spirits, flags, gunpowder, slops or many other necessary supplies these merchants were bidding for and obtaining significant contracts that had an important impact on the area and further out into Essex and Suffolk.

Derek Morris and Ken Cozens
Independent scholars

Further reading:
C. Ellmers, ed. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on Shipbuilding on the Thames (2012)
R. Knight and M. Wilcox, Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815: War, the British Navy and
the Contractor State (2010)
R. Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory, 1793-1815 (2014)
J. Macdonald, Feeding Nelson's Navy; The True Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era (2006)
J. Macdonald, The British Navy's Victualling Board, 1793-1815 (2010)
P. MacDougall, London and the Georgian Navy (2013)
J. Marriott, Beyond the Tower: A History of East London (2011)

Docklands History Group 

East London History

Port Towns and Urban Cultures

London's Sailortown (2) - Servicing the Merchant Navy 
 

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