In 1819 the Persian Ambassador Mirza Abul Hassan Khan arrived in London on a diplomatic mission from the Shah of Persia.  He bore gifts of jewellery, ornamental swords, beautiful rugs, carpets and paintings, and Arabian horses for the King and Prince Regent - an image captured by the artist Henry Chalon. 

Henry Bernard Chalon, A Representation of the Persians in the Costume of their Country Attending at Carlton Palace with Portraits of the Horses Presented to His Majesty by the Ambassador from the Emperor of Persia  (1819?), Tate (T02357) digital image © Tate released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

Relations between Britain and Persia were cordial, the countries having signed a treaty of alliance in 1812, but the situation was sensitive due to the possibility of Russian expansion into Persian territory.  As part of the diplomatic dance, reciprocal gifts were commissioned for Fath Ali Shah.  ‘As a pledge of the continuance of our respect, we shall send by way of Bombay some of the productions of this Country, which … we trust will be accepted as a further indication of the sentiments with which we are impressed’ wrote the East India Company Court of Directors in March 1820.

Seal decorated in gold, from letter in Persian from the Shah of Persia to the East India Company, 1819 [IOR/L/PS/19/189, f 4]

Blades & Co., Royal glassmakers of Ludgate Hill, crafted 'lustres' or suites of candelabra to be delivered to the Shah, intended to decorate the newly refurbished Golestan Palace in Tehran.   At the behest of John Blades and with the permission of the East India Company, Edward James Matthews set sail from England to Bombay in October 1820, tasked with accompanying the cases of fine glassware.

Transporting fragile and highly breakable items to Persia was a tricky business.  Having arrived safely in Bombay, Matthews was instructed to take the eighteen cases to Bushire on the Persian coast.  He travelled on the Frances Warden, arriving in early August 1821.  Henry Willock, the Chargé d'Affaires at Tehran wrote to Matthews requesting that he oversee the onward transport of the glassware and installation of the chandeliers.  ‘I have to request that you will remain at Bushire until the arrival of the Persian Officer who will be charged with their Transport, and I have further to beg that you will accompany their progress to the interior and strive by every Act of Necessary precaution to secure their preservation’.

It is over 750 miles overland from Bushire to Tehran.  It proved impossible to transport the cases by cart, so Matthews arranged for them to be carried on men’s shoulders the whole way.  The journey took five months – ‘an undertaking of infinite difficulty… I may say danger’. Thankfully the glassware arrived intact, and was ‘most graciously received by the King.  His Majesty expressed his approbation and praise of the great care and diligence evinced by Mr Matthews’.   Letters of thanks from both the Shah and Mirza Abul Hassan Khan arrived back in London with Matthews, together with a gift to the Company of the Shah’s portrait. 

Letter in Persian from Mirza Abul Hassan Khan to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company, giving thanks for gifts of lustres sent to the Shah, [1823]. [IOR/L/PS/189, ff 23-24]

The return leg of Matthews’ journey proved eventful. He travelled to St Petersburg via Tabriz, but was shipwrecked in the icy waters of the Baltic in December 1822.  Illness confined him to Oesel Island (Saaremaa) for 4 months, until he finally reached England in June 1823, a journey of ‘2 years, 7 months and 23 days’. 

Letter from Edward J. Matthews to the East India Company describing his experiences, dated 29 Jul 1823 [IOR/E/1/151, 603-604] 

As a result of his efforts, Matthews was awarded the badge of the Lion and the Sun by the Shah, and Blades and Co. were awarded a Royal Warrant from the Persian Court.  Much of the correspondence from Matthews in the India Office Records pertains to his attempts to get the Company to reimburse him for his out of pocket expenses.  A warrant to pay him £368 and 7 shillings was finally made on 26 Sep 1823.

 

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer Modern Archives & Manuscripts

Further reading:
IOR/E/1/151: Miscellaneous Letters Received 1823
IOR/E/1/259: Miscellanies 1823 [Miscellaneous Letters Outwards], entries 1290, 1291 & 1838
IOR/R/15/1/25: Political Residency Bushire Vol 25: Letters Outward, 1822
IOR/L/PS/19/189: Correspondence with the Court of the Shah of Persia, 1819-1823

 

The Hampshire Advertiser for 6 March 1875 had a section reporting on recent crimes and sentences passed by the courts.  It included details of two young women who were charged with the crime of concealment of birth.

Image from page 145  Agnes; or Beauty and Pleasure shelfmark 12625.f.16 BL flickr

Agnes Tiller and Ellen Tubbs were both nineteen years old and working as servants in Hampshire.  They gave birth to daughters on 22 and 29 December 1874 respectively.  Agnes was accused not only of concealing the birth but also of disposing of the baby in a box in the town of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.  Ellen's daughter, Lydia Jane Tubbs, was born in Baghurst, Hampshire.  In both cases the babies sadly died, and the birth and death indexes for Agnes’ daughter simply record her as ‘female’ Tubbs.

The girls were charged with the crime of concealement and on 1 March 1875 they were each sentenced to two weeks' imprisonment.  The judge trying the cases remarked that
'the degree of immorality in this county as shown by these cases was discreditable to Hampshire'.

Hampshire Advertiser 6 March 1875 British Newspaper Archive

Ellen was born in 1855 in Wimborne, Dorset, the daughter of Henry Tubbs, a fireman, and his wife Frances.  In 1881 Ellen can be found living with her parents in Southampton and working as a laundress.  Ellen was married in 1883 in Paddington, London to James Holmes a widower and baker from Botley in Hampshire.  They did not have any children.

Agnes continued to work as a servant.  In 1881 she was a parlour maid to the Hony family at Colbury Manor House, Eling, Hampshire.  She was married in 1886 to William Mercer, a butler, and they had a daughter Lizzie Gray Mercer born in Bedhampton, Hampshire in 1891.  In 1911 William and Agnes were living Fordingbridge, Hampshire and the census records include mention of both of Agnes' children – her daughter Lizzie with her husband William, and the daughter whose birth she had tried to conceal in 1874.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

References:
British Newspaper Archive - Hampshire Advertiser 6 March 1875

 

Advertisements in the Calcutta Gazette of 12 March 1795 alerted readers to the arrival of the East India Company ship Royal Admiral with private trade goods to sell.   Private or ‘privilege’ trade was allowed to the captains, officers and crew of East Indiamen on a sliding scale of cargo space and value based on rank.  Mariners tended to concentrate mainly on items of high value but low volume.

'A view of the river, shipping and town, from near Smith's Dock' from Views of Calcutta engraved by Robert Havell - Shelfmark X644(18) [1824-1826]
 Images Online 

The firm of Tulloh, Henchman, and Innes in Calcutta begged leave to inform their friends and the public that within the next few days they would be offering for sale on commission at their warehouse ‘the large, elegant, and well chosen Investments‘ brought from England by Essex Henry Bond, Captain of the Royal Admiral, and William Fairfax, his chief officer.

The goods offered by Bond and Fairfax consisted of:
• Claret from Carbonal, Paxton, Brown and Whiteford, Wilkinson and Crosthwaite
• Old hock and red port
• Ale and small beer in hogsheads and butts
• Cider and perry from Silas Palmer
• Hams; pickled tongues; red and pickled herrings; salted salmon; pickled oysters, French and Spanish olives; capers; Durham mustard; salad oil, with ground stoppers; pickles and sauces; white wine, elder and tarragon vinegar
• Cheeses – Cheshire, Double Gloucester, Berkley and Pine
• Bloom raisins; new currants; shelled almonds; Turkey figs; French plums; Sir Hans Sloane’s and plain chocolate; cocoa; pearl and Scotch barley
• Confectionery from Hoffman
• Books
• Elegant lustres [candle holders] and girandoles [chandeliers]; table and wall shades; milk bowls; butter dishes; sweetmeat cups; hookah bottoms; salt cellars; muffineers [small castors for sprinkling salt or sugar on muffins, or covered dishes for keeping toasted muffins warm]; Italian shades; tumblers; wine and water glasses; Madeira and claret glasses to match
• Beautiful prints from Macklin
• Looking glasses
• Mathematical instruments
• Plate and jewellery
• Silk and cotton stockings for ladies and gentlemen
• Irish linen; Manchester dimities; cambrics
• Cloth and cashmere; buttons
• Blankets and flannels
• Perfumery
• Stationery and Mogul cards
• Saddlery
• Cutlery
• Haberdashery
• Medicines
• Mahogany furniture
• Fowling pieces and pistols; shooting tackle
• Tin ware; iron kitchen furniture; garden scythes; ship chandlery; ironmongery; spermaceti candles; garden seeds; cork and cork jackets; gunpowder and patent shot
• Toys

Dring, Cleland and Co were offering by private sale Madeira wine imported in the Royal Admiral.  Bucking the trend for non-bulky goods, Steuart, Maudslay and Gordon alerted readers to the arrival of a number of elegant London-built carriages on board the Royal Admiral – chariots, phaetons, gigs and buggies.  They were also selling saddlery, superior in ’variety, taste and fashion’.

There are several advertisements in that issue of the Calcutta Gazette offering European goods just arrived in other East India ships.  The auction houses vied for custom and the buyers had the luxury of choice.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive
H V Bowen, ‘Sinews of Trade and Empire: The Supply of Commodity Exports to the East India Company during the Late Eighteenth Century’ in The Economic History Review, Vol.55, No.3 (Aug 2002)

 

The 1930s were a problematic time for the Earl of Cromer, Lord Chamberlain from 1922 to 1938.  It fell to him to balance representations of Fascism on stage with the policy of appeasement that the British Government espoused at the time.

Rowland Thomas Baring, 2nd Earl of Cromer after Randolph Schwabe (1930) NPG D20814 © National Portrait Gallery, London

In 1933 the Examiner of Plays, George Street, recommended the play Who Made the Iron Grow, for licence, but he suggested that it might present some political difficulties.  The play was a domestic drama that focused on the persecution of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.

Detail from Who Made the Iron Grow Reader Report, LR 1933/4

The Lord Chamberlain disagreed with Street’s assessment and refused the play a licence.  When the author, Alan Peters, took issue with the refusal the Lord Chamberlain laid out the anxieties he had about the play:
‘The whole thing is a strong indictment of atrocities and excesses committed by the Nazis in Germany, and while possibly there is much truth in it all, I did not think that the British stage was a vehicle for this sort of propaganda...’.

Take Heed (1933) by Leslie Reade, was upfront in its criticism of the Nazi Third Reich.  Its plot culminated in the suicide of the protagonist’s Jewish wife and a vitriolic verbal attack on the evils of Fascism.  Street again saw merit in the play saying that he disliked the brutality of the Nazis, but Lord Cromer had the German response in mind and contacted the Foreign Office for advice.  The Foreign Office agreed that the play should be refused a licence, adding that giving a licence could be seen as an official endorsement of its themes.

Detail from Take Heed Reader Report, LR 1934/4

It is this idea of the licence being interpreted as an endorsement that conflicted with the policy of appeasement.  Elsewhere in the UK’s media, the government was seeking to stem the flow of anti-Nazi sentiment, but the policy of appeasement could most easily enforced in the theatre because of the official role of the censor and their importance as a representative of the Crown.

Such policies would be abandoned after Britain went to war in 1939 and in retrospect would be highly criticised by figures such as Winston Churchill.   It is debatable whether these censored plays could have mobilised public opinion one way or the other given the dominance of other media.  However, there is no doubt that amongst these refused plays is a startling insight into the fate of the Jews in Germany.  Authors in 1933 and 1934 were already outlining the shocking consequences of state sponsored antisemitism.

Heroes was submitted in 1934 and promptly refused a licence.  The play described some of appalling experiences that many Jewish people on the continent would soon face, including removal, abuse, harassment, violence and murder.  Its portrayal of a Jewish family suffering under the Nazis emphasised the horrors that were both present and yet to come, but its vision and warning were silenced when public empathy with the Jewish people was most needed.

The Lord Chamberlain’s licence refusal on the Reader Report for Heroes, LR 1934/5

Jessica Gregory
Curatorial Support Officer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Further Reading:
The Censorship of British Drama, 1900-1968, Volume 2 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005)
Dilemmas, Choices, Responses: Britain and the Holocaust – Online Exhibition The Weiner Library
Lord Chamberlain Plays, Licence Refused: Add MS 68816 - 68850
Lord Chamberlain Plays Reports, Licence Refused: Original Reference LR 1903- LR 1949

 

Intrigued by a catalogue description, I investigated the baptism register which survives for the chapel of the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill, near Egham Surrey.  It covers the years 1897-1904 and contains just ten entries for the children of men who worked for the College.

 'The Indian Engineers' College.' Illustrated London News [London, England] 25 Nov. 1871: 502+ Copyright: Illustrated London News Ltd. 

Charles Bushby McElwee was Assistant Instructor in Geometrical Drawing 1892-1906.  In December 1894 he married Alice Henrietta Flynn. Their two sons were baptised at the College: Charles Frederick on 4 April 1897, and Arthur Henry on 26 November 1899. 

When the College was closed in 1906, McElwee returned to his native Ireland, working in Dublin as the organiser of drawing instruction for Commissioners of National Education.  Daughter Eileen Dora was born in 1909.  Tragedy struck when Charles Frederick died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 17 February 1915 aged 18, and Arthur Henry died in 27 December 1919 of ‘pneumonia meningitis’ aged 20.

IOR/L/PWD/8/404 College chapel baptismal register 1897-1904

Alfred Lodge was Professor of Pure Mathematics at Cooper’s Hill 1884-1905.  He and his wife Winifred Ada had six children during that time including Kathleen Elizabeth who was baptised at the College on 2 June 1898.  In September 1904 Lodge resigned to teach maths at Charterhouse School.  Kathleen later trained as a nurse, whilst her sisters became a music teacher and an illustrator. One of her brothers became a tea planter in India, and the other two emigrated together to Australia.

Frank William Harbord worked as an analytical chemist at the College 1892-1906.  The baptisms of two of his six children with his wife Marian are in the register: Marian on 14 November 1898 and John Gilbert on 28 February 1904.   The Harbord family stayed in Englefield Green after the College closed.  Frank worked as a consultant metallurgist and was one of the pioneers of the mass production of steel in Britain.

IOR/L/PWD/8/404 College chapel baptismal register 1897-1904

George Joyce was the coachman at Cooper’s Hill.  He lived with his wife Agnes and five children in the stables there. Brida Dorothy Allen was baptised at the College on 12 February 1899, and her sister Beatrice Amy Sarah on 13 May 1900.  After the closure of the College, George worked as a fly driver in Egham.  His son George Ashley was killed in action in May 1915 when submarine HMS Recruit was sunk by a German U-Boat.

Richard John Woods worked at the College 1894-1904, rising to be Assistant Professor of Engineering.  He had previously served in the Public Works Department in India.  In 1893 Woods married Mildred Bethune Taylor, daughter of General Sir Alexander Taylor, President of the College.  They had two children.  Daughter Marjorie Mildred was baptised at the College on 15 December 1900.  She married Lionel Westropp Jardine of the Indian Civil Service.

IOR/L/PWD/8/404 College chapel baptismal register 1897-1904

Charles John Hardy was the farm bailiff at Cooper’s Hill 1900-1906. His wife Louisa Maria was paid for looking after the chickens and eggs and for making butter.  Their daughter Marjorie Victoria was baptised privately on 31 March 1901.  She died in 1902.  After the College closed, Charles Hardy was farm bailiff for Bexley Asylum.

The last entry in the register is the baptism on 3 April 1904 of Vera Louisa Wilmot Allistone, the six-year-old daughter of Alfred and Ada Beatrice.  Alfred Allistone was a solicitor living in Thorpe Lea, Egham.  Presumably he worked on behalf of the College.  By 1911 the family had returned to London.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/PWD/8/ 374 Personal file for Frank William Harbord
IOR/L/PWD/8/381 Personal file for Alfred Lodge
IOR/L/PWD/8/383 Personal file for Charles Bushby McElwee
IOR/L/PWD/8/401 Personal file for Richard John Woods
IOR/L/PWD/8/322 Sale of College Farm
Anthony Farrington, The records of the East India College Haileybury and other institutions (London, 1976)

 

Archivists are sometimes required to be detectives.  Three volumes amongst the miscellaneous material in the India Office Records’ Political and Secret Department records contain fair copies of letters written 1807-12 by Robert Dundas, President of the Board of Control. 

National Portrait Gallery: Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville by Charles Turner, after Sir Thomas Lawrence, published 1827 (1826). NPG D7851

There are letters from Dundas to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company, and letters to various correspondents, including Spencer Perceval, Lord Liverpool, Marquis Wellesley, and the Duke of York.  No mystery there.  But closer examination of the volumes furnished some interesting clues. Each had a number written in pencil - ‘45’, ‘78’ and ‘79'.  More unusually, each was annotated with a price – ‘£5’, ‘£5’ and ‘£1’.  If these were ‘official’ records of the Board of Control, then why did they have a price tag written on them and what suspiciously looked like a catalogue number?

IOR/L/PS/19/164: Inscription on flyleaf

So began the hunt for information regarding the history and provenance of the volumes.  Provenance provides the contextual evidence for archives, their history, custody and authenticity. Archives with the same provenance - originating from the same source - are kept together, and arranged, described, and catalogued together.  So how had these particular volumes ended up amongst the Political and Secret Department records, and why?

Digging into the India Office Record Department led to a file on the Melville papers, which contained a bookseller's catalogue: 'The Melville Papers Original Letters and Documents Relating to the East But Mainly Concerning Bombay, Madras and Mysore 1780 to 1815.  From the Collection of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville'.  Did it contain numbers '45', '78' and '79'?  Yes, and these were the volumes now residing in the Political and Secret Department Miscellaneous Papers.

IOR/L/PS/19/166: Copies of letters from Robert Dundas to the Earl of Liverpool

The Record Department of the India Office purchased the volumes from Francis Edwards Ltd of Marylebone in 1928, together with a number of other Melville papers in the catalogue.  Those other papers were originally given a place in the Home Miscellaneous series (IOR/H/818), before being transferred to the India Office Private Papers as Mss Eur G92 Robert Dundas papers and Mss Eur D1074 Henry Dundas papers.  Lost links between the collections have now been restored.

  National Portrait Gallery: Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville replica by Sir Thomas Lawrence, circa 1810. NPG 746 

So how had the Melville papers come into the hands of a bookseller in 1928?  Both Henry and Robert Dundas, father and son, served as President of the India Board or Board of Control.  Their papers were generated as part of their work at the Board, but as was common at the time many would have been deemed to be 'personal papers' and removed when they left office.  In the 1920s the Melville papers were sold at auction in a number of sales at Sotheby's by Violet, Viscountess Melville.  Many items relating to India were sold on 23 February 1927 to individuals and institutions, and other lots were purchased by dealers and sold on.  The Melville papers were dispersed far and wide, and the outcry over this led to the extension of the work of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, ultimately leading to the current legislation regarding the sale of important archival material.  Although catalogues of the sales were published, it would be a herculean task to fully reconstruct whereabouts of the Melville papers.  By researching provenance and recording details of our findings, archivists can help to solve the puzzle, one little piece at a time.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer Modern Archives & Manuscripts

Further reading:
IOR/L/PS/19/164-166: Copy Letters from Robert Dundas, later Lord Melville, Board of Control
Mss Eur G92: Robert Dundas Papers
Mss Eur D1074: Henry Dundas Papers
‘The Sale Room’, The Times [London, England] 24 Feb 1927. The Times Digital Archive
‘The Sale Room’, The Times [London, England] 27 Apr 1926. The Times Digital Archive
‘A Napoleon Letter’, The Times [London, England] 16 Jun 1924. The Times Digital Archive
William Welke (1963) The Papers of the Viscounts Melville. The American Archivist: October 1963, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 449-462 

 

In October 1968 the activist and author Walter Rodney, returning from the Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Canada, was declared persona non grata by the government of Jamaica.  He was banned from resuming his teaching position at the University of the West Indies.  In Kingston, students and other activists participated in what became known as the Rodney Riots, and there was considerable activity amongst Caribbean communities in the UK and the US.  Out of that struggle, the publishing house Bogle-L’Ouverture was founded in London by Jessica and Eric Huntley.  2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of their first publication, a collection of Rodney’s lectures entitled The Groundings with my Brothers. 

Cover of The Groundings with my Brothers by Walter Rodney - Artwork for cover design ©  Errol Lloyd

Named for the leaders of the Morant Bay Rebellion and the Haitian Revolution, Bogle-L’Ouverture, alongside New Beacon (founded 1966) and Alison & Busby (founded 1967), soon became an integral part of progressive independent publishing in London.  Their publications provided a space for radical black thought to be distributed and read in the UK.  In 1972, Bogle-L'Ouverture published one of the key early post-colonial texts in Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

Cover of How Europe underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney - work in copyright

The Huntleys founded the Bogle-L'Ouverture Bookshop in West London in 1974, and the space became a key venue for political meetings, talks and readings.  In 1980, following Rodney’s assassination in Guyana, the bookshop was renamed in his honour.  The physical space of the bookshop mirrored the fact that Bogle-L’Ouverture was an example of community publishing in the true sense, with publications often financed by friends of the Huntleys, and collaboration central to their work.  It was out of this sense of collective struggle that The International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books was established by Bogle-L’Ouverture, New Beacon and Race Today.  There were twelve Book Fairs held between 1982 and 1995 and they were intended, as John La Rose stated, 'to mark the new and expanding phase of the growth of radical ideas and concepts, and their expression in literature, music, art, politics and social life'.

Programme of International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books 1985 featuring photograph of Malcolm X - work in copyright

The programmes from each of the twelve book fairs have all been reprinted in A Meeting of the Continents: The International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books – Revisited.  Looking through them one is made aware of what important and creative accomplishments these events were.  Yet, rather than evoking nostalgia, the editors hoped to offer inspiration for others to act.  Indeed, longstanding publishers such as Hansib, Karnak House and Karia Press were founded in the wake of New Beacon and Bogle-L’Ouverture, and Peepal Tree sold their first publication, Rooplall Monar’s Backdam People (1985) at the book fair.  More recently, innovative publishing concerns such as Own It!, Jacaranda, and Flipped Eye have also begun to build on the tradition established by the Huntleys more than half a century ago.  Yet their legacy extends beyond the publishing world – the Huntley archives are held the London Metropolitan Archives, which since 2006 has hosted an annual conference reflecting on their life and work.

Laurence Byrne
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

Further reading:
Andrews, Margaret Doing nothing is not an option: the radical lives of Eric & Jessica Huntley, Middlesex, Krik Krak, 2014 [YK.2015.a.1141]
Sarah White, Roxy Harris & Sharmilla Beezmohun (eds). A Meeting of the Continents: The International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books – Revisited, London: New Beacon Books/George Padmore Institute, 2005 [m05/.29879]

 

The Asylum for the support and education of the deaf and dumb children of the poor published lists of pupils’ names with some family details.  Some parents had more than one deaf and dumb child to care for.  I picked a family named in a report of 1817 to try to trace what happened to the children after they left the Asylum.

'The Deaf and Dumb Asylum, Kent Road' from David Hughson, Walks through London, including Westminster and the borough of Southwark, with the surrounding suburbs (London, 1817)

Pupils Henry and Louisa Tattler (or Tatler) came from a family of eleven children, four of whom were deaf and dumb. They lived in Plough Court, Fetter Lane, London. Their parents were James Tattler, a jeweller or trinket maker described in the report as ‘insane’, and his wife Mary Ann. In 1816 James was a patient at Bethlem Hospital which specialised in the care of the mentally ill.  He died in 1817, aged 44. 

'View of the new Bethlem Hospital in St. George's Fields' 1814, Maps K.Top.27.56.2  Images Online

What happened to the family after James Tattler’s death?

Mary Ann continued to live in Plough Court. Henry Tattler (born 1804) followed his father into the jewellery trade.  He was apprenticed to Robertson and Co of Villiers Street in March 1820.  In 1851 he was living in Baldwin’s Gardens Holborn with his brother James (born 1793) who was a shoemaker described as partially deaf and dumb.

Louisa Tattler (born 1807) became a bookbinder.  Around 1841 she became a pauper inmate of the West London Union Workhouse.  She was still there in 1861.

Here is what I have discovered about some of the other siblings.

Anne Tattler was apprenticed aged 13 in 1810 to Joseph Anderson, a water gilder in Clerkenwell.  It is likely that she was the mother of Alfred Tattler born in the Shoe Lane workhouse in 1818. Alfred was buried aged three months.

Frederick Tattler (born 1801) lived in the Fleet Street area and worked as a carman and labourer. He married Sarah Wickens in 1839. It does not appear that they had any children.

Sophia Tattler (born 1803) married Joseph Snelling in 1829 but died in 1831 in Holborn.

Emma Rebecca Tattler (born 1805) had mental health problems.  She was admitted in January 1840 to the workhouse in Shoreditch and became the subject of a removal order to her home parish of St Andrew Holborn.  Her mother Mary Ann gave a detailed statement about the family’s circumstances going back to her marriage to James in 1792. The Shoreditch justice suspended Emma’s removal ‘by reason of insanity’ and she was taken to Sir J. Miles’ Asylum. However the removal order was executed in March because she was said to have recovered.  Emma died in March 1842 whilst in the care of the Holborn Poor Law Union.

Charles Richard Tattler (born 1808) was a wine cooper living in Finsbury. He married Susan Lawrence in 1830 and they had five children,

Edwin Tattler (born 1814) was a pupil at the Orphan Working School in City Road.  He then worked as a cooper before joining the Army, serving in the Rifle Brigade.  He deserted in December 1834 and the trail goes cold.

The story of the Tattler family shows what can be uncovered from online resources, especially for those who came into contact with institutions and authority.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Asylum for the support and education of deaf and dumb children of the poor
List of the Governors and Officers of the Asylum for the support and education of the Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor; with the rules ... and an introductory statement of the purposes of the institution (London, 1817)

Family history information can be found from findmypast and Ancestry under a variety of spellings for the surname e.g. St Martin-in-the-Fields Poor Law examination for Henry Tatler 1827 from City of Westminster Archives Centre and. Poor Law settlement papers 1840 for Emma Rebecca Tatler from London Metropolitan Archives.