Untold lives blog

In 1793 the London Foundling Hospital received a petition from ‘Black Peggy’, a native of Bengal.

‘Being a poor unfortunate girl just arrived at the age of fourteen was on my voyage to England with Mrs Harding, unhappily seduced by my fellow servant James Murray by a false promise of marriage, but on our arrival at Ostend he knowing of my pregnancy left me friendless and unprotected.  Nothing but the kind humanity of my mistress could have supported me through this scene of misery and repentance and who is still inclin’d to be my friend could I conceal my disgrace by your benevolence.  This gentleman urges me in the most supplicating manner to entreat and solicit your generous aid and protection to the unhappy infant of your very humble petitioner.’

Peggy’s mistress, Mrs Elizabeth Harding of 2 Buckingham Street, recommended acceptance of the child because of the girl’s penitence and past good conduct.  On 4 May 1793 Peggy’s two-month-old daughter was admitted to the Hospital as Foundling No.18142.  She was baptised with the name Jane Williams and sent as a nurse child to Dorking.  Sadly Jane died a year later and was buried at St Martin’s Church in Dorking on 11 May 1794.

Foundling Hospital Chapel – British Library Crach.1.Tab.4.b.3.

It is not clear whether Peggy was of Asian or African descent.  African slaves were brought to Bengal in the 18th century.

I believe that Peggy’s mistress was the wife of Thomas Harding an officer in the East India Company’s Bengal Army.  In May 1794 Elizabeth Harding was granted permission by the East India Company Court of Directors to return to her husband in India.  At the same time Thomas Parry Esq, (the Company director?), was authorised to return a black servant named Peggy to Bengal on the Royal Admiral with no expense to be incurred by the Company.

IOR/B/119 p.93 East India Company Court of Directors' Minutes 7 May 1794 

In the passenger list for the Royal Admiral, Peggy is recorded as the servant to Mrs Anna Maria Freeman who was returning to her husband in Bengal.  The ship sailed from Plymouth in August 1794 and the two women landed at Calcutta in February 1795.

The homeward passenger list for the Royal Admiral shows Anna Maria Freeman and her black servant, now named as Peggy Harding.  This link to her previous mistress surely confirms that this is the Foundling Hospital’s ‘Black Peggy’?  What had happened to cause Mrs Freeman to leave again for England on the Royal Admiral in August 1795?  Did she discover that her husband had died in her absence?  Frustratingly I have been unable to identify with any certainty who her husband was.

IOR/L/MAR/B/338G Passenger list homeward of ship Royal Admiral 1795

Mrs Freeman and Peggy left the ship in the Bristol Channel on 8 January 1796.  Less than a month later Anna Maria Freeman, described as a widow, married William Fairfax in Bristol.  Fairfax had been first mate in the Royal Admiral on the 1794-1796 voyage to India and back.

For now, the story of Peggy ends here.   Perhaps she is the black female servant called Peggy who sailed on the Houghton to Bengal in the spring of 1797?

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/MAR/B/338G Journal of Royal Admiral for 1794-1796 voyage with passenger lists.

London Metropolitan Archives Foundling Hospital records - Petition of 'Black Peggy' is in A/FH/A08/001/001/018 Petitions admitted to ballot 1792-1793.

Forgotten Foundlings: black lives and the eighteenth-century Foundling Hospital.

Despite an active career as a potter, Thomas Lakin (1769-1821), whose pieces can be found in collections globally, is almost entirely absent from the written history of Staffordshire Pottery.  He is scantily mentioned in the pottery directories of the time, and was omitted completely from Simeon Shaw’s History of the Staffordshire Potteries, one of the principal texts on the history of the industry.

Lakin spent his working life in the Leeds and Staffordshire potteries.  He worked a number of years for John Davenport in the Longport glassworks, and traded in pottery under numerous titles including 'Lakin & Poole', 'Lakin & Son' and 'Lakin & Co.'.  Before his death he was a Principal Manager of the higher departments of the Leeds Pottery.  An obituary in The Staffordshire Advertiser, which asserted his reputation, noted ‘he had long been distinguished for his taste, judgement and ingenuity as a potter'.  Little is known of Lakin’s personal affairs: unlike many of his better known contemporaries, he did not leave a business or family archive.  He did however leave what is considered one of the seminal published texts on 18th century pottery techniques - Potting, enamelling and glass-staining ... Receipts of the late Thos Lakin ... with ... directions for their preparation and use in the manufacture of Porcelain Earthenware and Iron Stone China, etc. printed for Mrs Lakin (Leeds: Edward Baines, 1824).

Published post-humously by his wife Catherine, the text contains a variety of trade recipes for various enamels, coloured glazes, underglazes, glass staining, and more used by Lakin.  The preface by his wife provides us with the only published primary biographical source for Lakin, beyond newspaper clippings.

The British Library’s Add MS 89436 is a manuscript copy of Potting, Enamelling & Glass Staining.

Thomas Lakin's 'Potting Enamelling and Glass Staining' Add MS 89436

Manuscript copies of texts continued to offer an alternative to printed publications well into the 19th century.  Various factors led to their production: practice of penmanship, dissemination of ‘banned’ publications or plays, and cost or scarcity of the printed text.  Lakin’s volume was a considerable £50 on release.  Thanks to its uniqueness, and valuable content, the volume would have been in high demand and probably sold quickly.  Manuscript copies were likely made by those that either could not afford the printed version, or simply could not get their hands on it.  The British Library’s copy stands out for its remarkable penmanship and beautiful calligraphic coloured title page.

Enormous care and time was taken to produce this copy, and no doubt it would have been treasured by the owner throughout their career.  Add MS 89436 may have been copied by a potter, from a fellow potter’s printed copy.  It wasn’t unheard of for potters themselves to have well-practised penmanship, as surviving business ledgers demonstrate.  This was likely a result of extensive record keeping and the need for legible documentation within the business.

Add MS 89436, a recipe for 'cobalt blue' by Thomas Lakin.

Several other manuscript copies of Lakin’s text have been up for auction in the past decade, and can be found in collections globally, including one at the Rakow Research Library, Corning Museum of Glass, in New York.

Zoe Louca-Richards
Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Please note that due to work-flow restrictions resulting from Covid-19 action this material may not be accessible via the reading rooms until later in the year.

Thank you to Patricia Halfpenny from the Northern Ceramic Society for her assistance in tracing information relating to Thomas Lakin and his career.

Further Reading:
LAKIN, Thomas. Potting, enamelling and glass-staining ... Receipts ... with ... directions for their preparation and use in the manufacture of Porcelain Earthenware and Iron Stone China, etc. Leeds : printed for Mrs Lakin, by Edward Baines, 1824.
Harold Blakey, “Thomas Lakin: Staffordshire Potter 1769-1821”, Northern Ceramic Society Journal, Vol. 5, 1984. pp.79-115.

In these times of lockdown and social distancing, unable to visit friends and family, many of us have become used to keeping in touch in other novel ways.  In somewhat of the same manner, digitised India Office Records shed light on a method in the 18th century by which families separated from each other by the vast distances of a growing empire kept in touch: the portrait miniature.  As the East India Company established its domains in India and increasing numbers of families were residing there for long periods of time, a demand grew for miniature portraits which could be easily sent back to loved ones in Britain.

To meet this demand required the skills and expertise of portrait painters in India to undertake commissions from those wealthy enough to afford them.  These painters, like anyone else, had to be given permission to proceed to India by the Court of the East India Company.  Two such painters were Diana Hill and George Carter.

On 14 September 1785 the Court ordered that George Carter be ‘permitted to proceed to India to practice as a Portrait Painter’ and seven days later the same order was issued for Diana Hill.

Minutes of East India Company Court of Directors, 14 September 1785, giving George Carter permission to travel - IOR/B/101 p.396

Minutes of East India Company Court of Directors,, 21 September 1785, giving Diana Hill permission to travel - IOR/B/101 p.416

Their passage to India took them to Bushire on the Persian coast where they required further clearance.  A letter in 1786 from Rawson Hart Boddam, Robert Sparks, and Richard Church of the Public Department at Bombay Castle to Edward Galley, the Resident at Bushire, records that ‘Mr George Carter and Mrs Diana Hill Portrait Painters have our leave to proceed to India to practice their profession’.

Extract from letter sent in 1786 from Bombay to the Resident at Bushire about George Carter and Diana Hill - IOR/R/15/1/4, f 61

Once in India, they were commissioned to paint many miniature portraits – examples of Diana Hill’s are held at the V&A Museum and George Carter’s at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Portrait miniature of an unknown girl, watercolour on ivory, painted by Mrs Diana Hill (1760?-1844). British School, painted in India, ca. 1785-1790. Image courtesy of V&A Museum.

With museums and galleries opening again we can appreciate at first hand the skills of such painters who helped families separated by thousands of miles keep in touch in the late 18th century.

Dr Francis Owtram
Gulf History Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture 1770-1825 (Sotheby’s Publications, 1979).
These snippets of George Carter and Diana Hill’s passage to India are contained in the British Library, India Office Records and Private Papers.  The Minutes of the Court of Directors in IOR/B have been digitised as part of Adam Matthew Digital’s East India Company resource (free access in British Library Reading Rooms).   IOR/R/15/1/4 is available on the Qatar Digital Library.

Whilst researching the Seringas of the Norris family I came across other families with a daughter named Seringa or Seringapatam.

One family in particular caught my attention, that of James Hewes (1841-1917) a mariner from West Mersea, near Colchester in Essex.  James Hewes had married Angelica Lay in 1865 and the couple had seven children.  Although I have not been able to find out much about James’s career as a mariner, it clearly had an influence on him, and was reflected in the names of his daughters.

His eldest daughter, born 22 April 1867, was named Seringapatam, though she often turns up in records as Seringa or Meringa Patson.  Their second daughter, born in 1868 was named Tamar Adelaide.  She sadly died in 1869.  Their third daughter born in 1870 was named Robina; their fourth daughter, born in 1872, Rosina; and their youngest daughter, born in 1877, Urania Minnie.

Figurehead from HMS Seringapatam courtesy of Royal Museums Greenwich

Seringapatam and Tamar are the names of ships from the time that James Hewes was a mariner.  HMS Seringapatam was built in the East India Company dockyard at Bombay in 1819, and from the 1850s onwards was being used as a coal hulk.  HMS Tamar was a troop ship built in 1863 which frequently visited the port of Adelaide, which is perhaps why James's second daughter was named Tamar Adelaide.  Robina, Rosina and Urania all sound like the possible names of ships too.

The couple also had two sons, Oscar Thomas who was the twin of Seringapatam but who died in 1868, and James who was born in 1874.

It would appear that by 1881 James Hewes had retired as mariner, and his occupation from then on is given as fisherman.

Seringapatam Hewes had a daughter born in 1890, whom she named Seringapatam Kate (although she appears to have preferred her middle name Kate, and her full name often appears as Kate Merringer in records), and a second daughter Ethel born in 1898.  In 1899 Seringaptam married Thomas Woodward, a fisherman.  Interestingly the GRO index for their marriage lists her as Meringo Hewes.  Seringapatam Woodward remained in West Mersea all her life.  Her daughter Seringaptam Kate was married in 1919 to Thomas Walter Reeves Pounceby.

Of the other daughters, Urania Minnie married in 1902 to Thomas Soloman Potter, a police constable, and lived in Colchester with their daughter Ivy Urana and son Thomas James Oscar.  Rosina died unmarried in 1922.  I have been unable to trace Robina after the 1891 census where she is listed as working as a servant in West Mersea. 

Their only surviving son James never married, remaining in the area and following in his father’s footsteps as a fisherman.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

In 2019 a Women’s Social and Political Union medal was sold at auction in London.  It was awarded in 1912 to Elsie Wolff van Sandau in recognition of ‘ a gallant action, whereby through endurance to the last extremity of hunger and hardship, a great principle of political justice was vindicated’.

Women’s Social and Political Union membership card from the scrapbook of Maud Arncliffe Sennett

On 4 March 1912 Miss Wolff van Sandau broke a window of the post office in Howick Place, Victoria.  She was sentenced to two months’ hard labour in prison for wilful damage.

Votes for Women 29 March 1912 British Newspaper Archive

Miss Wolff van Sandau had previously been imprisoned in February 1907 after taking part in a suffragette deputation, and again in November 1910 when she was arrested in Parliament Square on ‘Black Friday’.

The name van Sandau rang bells with me.  We published a blog post featuring Lewis van Sandau of the Bengal Army who was shot dead when mistaken for a ghost.  I wondered if I could find a connection between our unfortunate officer and the suffragette.

There are references to both Elsie Wolff van Sandau and Mathilde (or Matilda) Wolff van Sandau in suffragette records, leading some to conclude that there were two sisters campaigning.  But I believe that there was only one Miss Wolff van Sandau.

Votes for Women published a brief biography in 1910 stating that ‘Miss Wolff von Sandau’ had worked for women’s suffrage for nearly 30 years.  She was a music teacher.  Her grandfather Reverend Dr Ernst Schwabe had been private chaplain to Queen Victoria’s mother.

Votes for Women 25 November 1910 British Newspaper Archive

I found the marriage in London in 1832 of Ernst Schwabe’s daughter Bethia Friedericke to Ernst Woolf, who was a flax manufacturer in Leeds.  In the early 1840s Ernst and Bethia moved with their children to Dresden in Germany.  Their daughter Elise Eugenie Mathilde Wolff was born there in 1843.

In the 1881 census Elise Eugenie M. Wolff is a music professor aged 37 living in Clapham, South London.  In 1891 she is listed in Kensington as Mathilda Wolff, pianist.

A newspaper advertisement in 1888 names her as Fraulein Mathilde Wolff of the Dresden Conservatoire.

Advertisement for the Hastings and St Leonards College of Music in The Hastings and St Leonards Observer 22 September 1888 British Newspaper Archive

There are reports of her concerts, such as this one in 1888 at Collard’s Rooms in Grosvenor Street London.

Report of concert at Collard’s Rooms in Grosvenor Street London The Era 16 June 1888 British Newspaper Archive

Miss Wolff advertised in newspapers for pupils and for lodgers. She entertained members of the Women’s Vegetarian Union at her home.

Meeting of Women's Vegetarian Union - The Queen 20 July 1895 British Newspaper Archive

In 1889 she used the name Wolff  van Sandau when publishing a song ‘David’s Message’.

The Graphic 12 January 1889 British Newspaper Archive

It was reported in 1895 that Miss Mathilde Wolff van Sandau was managing the new Equitable International Chess Club for Ladies.

Morning Post 10 June 1895 British Newspaper Archive

In 1911 she refused to provide information to the 1911 census and is recorded as simply ’Miss Wolfe – Suffragette’.

Her brother Henry William Wolff (1840-1931) also left Germany to live in England. He was a well-known journalist and writer and founder of the Co-Operative Alliance.

Henry William Wolff at the Reform Club by Eyre Crowe, 1905 NPG D6688 © National Portrait Gallery, London

In the 1920s Matilda van Sandau of Brooklyn Road, Shepherds Bush, was offering typewriting and translation services.  Is this the same woman?

By 1926 our Matilda was lodging in Putney.  She died in a local nursing home on 29 August 1926 aged 83 and was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery as Matilda Wolff.

One mystery remains.  Why did Matilda adopt the name van Sandau?  I have found one connection between the families.  Andrew van Sandau, brother to Lewis, was a witness at her parents’ marriage.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Her recorded surname varies between Wolff and Wolff van/von Sandau in census returns, electoral registers and directories, and her first names are any combination of Elise Eugenie Mathilde with variant spellings. It appears she is named as Elsie only in suffragette records and related newspaper reports.

The medal awarded  to Elsie Wolff van Sandau is now in the State Library Victoria.

British Newspaper Archive - also available via Findmypast.

The National Archives papers from Home Office, Director of Public Prosecutions, and Metropolitan Police Commissioner – see the Suffragette Collection on Findmypast .

Entry in Who Was Who for Henry William Wolff.

Researching Suffragettes in the British Library’s Modern Manuscripts and Archive Collections.

In late 1904 William Foster took extended leave from the India Office Record Department to visit India, an experience he found most enjoyable.  Foster travelled with Henry John Tozer who was a clerk in the Statistical Department of the India Office.  The pair visited Calcutta, Madras, Trichinopoly, Madura, Conjeeveram, Tanjore, Tuticorin, and Columbo.  Tozer toured industrial premises and interviewed officials, and also studied the inscriptions and architecture of temples.

The principal shrine of the Varadarajaperumal Temple at Conjeeveram (Kanchipuram) from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections: Madras, 1896-98 British Library Photo 1008/3(321)

Tozer was collecting data for a paper on Indian arts and industries which he was to deliver on his return to London. On 11 May 1905 the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, who was on a private visit to England, presided at a meeting of the Indian Section of the Society of Arts.  Henry Tozer read his paper ‘The manufactures of Greater Britain – India’.

Henry Tozer was born in 1864 in Cottishall, Norfolk, the son of an Inland Revenue officer.  By 1881 his family had moved to Romford in Essex and Henry was working as a junior clerk at the Admiralty.  He joined the Accountant’s General Department of the India Office in January 1882 as a clerk, 2nd class.  Tozer then studied at the University of London, gaining a B.A. (Hons) in 1889 and an M.A. in philosophy and political economy in 1893.  He transferred to the Revenue and Statistical Department in 1897.  The Society of Arts awarded Tozer a silver medal for a paper on Indian trade in 1901, and he published British India and its trade in 1902.

Tozer was a man of many interests. He addressed industrial conferences and spoke at the Economic Club of the Working Man’s College in Crowndale Road in the 1890s. He published an English translation of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract in 1895 which is still widely cited today. 

Title page of Rousseau's  The Social Contract translated by H. J. Tozer

Before he married Amy Jane Carruthers in 1908, Tozer lived at the Passmore Edwards Settlement in Tavistock Square London.  Young professional men living at the Settlement gave classes in academic and practical subjects to poor adults and children living nearby.  Tozer was an active member of the local committee of the Charity Organisation Society.  In 1898 Tozer corresponded with George Bernard Shaw about the appalling sanitation of the parish of St Pancras, and in 1903 about the Education Act.  Tozer wrote to Winston Churchill in January 1903 inviting him to open a debate at the Settlement on the fiscal question – Churchill declined.

Henry Tozer also corresponded with Pierre Kropotkine, the Russian writer and activist who spent part of his exile in Britain in the late 1890s.  Tozer sent Kropotkine a Blue Book on India.

There is evidence that Tozer acted as an informer for the India Office, reporting on a meeting of the London Indian Society in May 1901.  His report on ‘Resolutions Passed at a Meeting of the London Indian Society’ has been preserved in the records of the Public and Judicial Department.

Tozer was promoted to senior clerk in 1911 and principal in 1921.  He worked in the military, public works, revenue and industries and overseas departments. He retired in 1924.

In 1939 Henry and Amy Tozer were living in Kensington Park Gardens, Notting Hill, with a resident cook, parlour maid, and housemaid.  Henry Tozer died in October 1943.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Passmore Edwards Settlement
Nigel Scotland, Squires in the Slums - Settlements and Missions in Late Victorian Britain (London, 2007)
Dinyar Phiroze Patel, 2015. The Grand Old Man: Dadabhai Naoroji and the Evolution of the Demand for Indian Self-Government. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Resolutions passed at a Conference of the London Indian Society; report on the meeting by H. J. Tozer, May 1901 - IOR/L/PJ/6/570, File 970
British Newspaper Archive 

Historians of the East India Company and archivists working with the India Office Records owe a debt of gratitude to Sir William Foster whose publications are an invaluable source of information for them. Foster joined the India Office in Westminster in 1882, becoming Registrar and Superintendent of Records 1907-1923, and Historiographer to the India Office 1923-1927.

Photograph of Sir William Foster (1863-1951) by Bassano Ltd 12 February 1929 courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery  NPG x81132

So I was delighted when I was given a copy of Foster’s John Company as a present. 

Title page of John Company

The name R. A. Bell is written on the title page and there are three letters from 1945 pasted into the back of the book.  The first, dated 20 February, is addressed to Sir William Foster at his home in Mountfield Court in Hampstead from Mr Bell of Chiswick.  He was researching the older churches of London and wanted to know about the pictures of St Matthias Poplar in John Company.  Bell had visited the church last summer and found it badly knocked about by bomb blast but not beyond repair.

Bell's letter to Foster 20 February 1945 - copyright resides with the heirs of  Robert Arthur Bell

Mr Bell said that he was ‘an old Anglo-Indian’ who had worked in Negapatam in the late 1880s.  His grandfather had been a collector in Trichinopoly and his great-grandfather a General in the Madras Artillery.  Bell asked if Sir William had been head assistant collector at Negapatam.

I have identified the writer as Robert Arthur Bell (1865-1949), son of Robert Courtenay Bell and his wife Clara.  Bell worked as civil engineer for the South Indian Railway in the 1880s and 90s.  He married Eveline Maud Richardson in Negapatam on 29 October 1891.  The couple had two children born in Cuddalore: Eveline Clara in February 1893 and David Courtenay in October 1894.  Sadly Eveline Clara died in December 1893 and David Courtenay was killed in 1918 whilst serving in the Royal Navy.  Robert and Eveline had returned to the UK by the time that their daughter Lavinia Courtenay was born in 1898 and they had four more children.

Foster's letter to Bell 23 February 1945 -  copyright resides with the heirs of Sir William Foster

Foster replied promptly on 23 February.  The verger of St Matthias had lent him a faded photograph and a pencil drawing by Miss Sexton, a local schoolmistress.  Mr Baragwanath had drawn the illustrations for the book using copies of these.

Sir William said that it was many years since he had visited St Matthias and had not realised it had suffered bomb damage.  The population of East London was estimated to have been reduced to one third of the pre-war figure and he had heard that there were plans to amalgamate parishes.  As it was very close to Poplar parish church, St Matthias might be deemed superfluous.

In answer to Bell’s question, Foster said he had never served in India.  However in 1904-1905 he had taken extended leave to visit India, a most enjoyable experience.  He had seen little of the Madras Presidency but he had known several officials based there, such as Sir Murray Hammick, Colonel Love, and Julian Cotton: ‘All these are now dead; and I myself am now in my eighty-second year and very much of a back number’.

The third letter is from Bell dated 5 March 1945. He replied that he had known Hammick, Love and Cotton whilst in India.

Our next post will focus on Sir William’s companion on his trip to India - Henry John Tozer.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
William Foster, John Company (London, 1926)
Digitised entries for baptisms, marriages and burials from the India Office Records can be seen at the British Library and via findmypast -
Marriage of Robert Arthur Bell to Eveline Maud Richardson IOR/N/2/78 f.297
Baptism of Eveline Clara Bell IOR/N/2/75 f.68
Burial of Eveline Clara Bell IOR/N/2/76 f.164
Baptism of David Courtenay Bell IOR/N/2/77 f.312 

Beautifully tooled bookbindings signed with the initials C.E.G. appear on printed books dating from the early 20th century.  These are the initials of Charles Elsden Gladstone (1855-1919) of the Royal Navy. 

Extract from record of service for Charles Elsden Gladstone - image courtesy of  The National Archives, ADM 196/19/266 ©Crown Copyright

The National Archives chart his somewhat unusual career.  Like his later fictional counterpart James Bond, he attained the rank of commander.  Also like Bond, he used cutting edge tech.  There is even a suggestion of covert intelligence gathering activities!  Admiralty service papers refer to an early specialism in torpedos, submarine weaponry and skill in photography which aided research on the subject of armaments.  He saw action in 1873 when he was landed with the Naval Brigade in the Ashanti War, while serving on the corvette H.M.S. Druid.

Photograph of starboard side of H.M.S Druid, a corvette at sea with sails down, 1880 - image courtesy of Royal Collection Trust 

As for hobbies, Gladstone’s name is included in the annals of specialist societies relating to microscopy and optical magic lanterns, interests which suggest he had a keen eye and feeling for accuracy.  His family house was based in Thanet where he lived with his wife, a son, a governess and enough domestic help to make his situation comfortable.  Gladstone’s life, therefore, is quite well documented, but, annoyingly for the fans of bookbinding, not his connection to the craft!

Apparently Gladstone family lore confirms that Gladstone bound books but what does this mean?  Traditionally, binding was a two stage process, making the structure (called ‘forwarding’) and applying the decoration (‘finishing’).  Practitioners did not usually teach themselves.  Apprentices spent seven years training with an accredited bookbinder.  Did Gladstone master both techniques and who taught him?  I have found no evidence either way.

People outside the craft did learn to bind but were usually guided by professionals in some way.  A contemporary of Gladstone’s, Irish barrister Sir Edward Sullivan (1852-1928), ‘finished’ ready-bound books to a high standard.  Today, these bindings fetch high prices, as do Captain Gladstone’s though to a lesser extent.  Was this a pastime for Gladstone or the means of raising income?  The latter seems unlikely as his navy salary was good and his retirement pay (from 1904) was £400 a year.  In 1919, the Liverpool Probate Registry listed the gross value of his estate as £27030 2s 5d.

Gladstone’s well bound colourful goatskin book covers, displaying a range of finishing skills, are attractive additions to sales catalogues.  Antiquarian book sellers have included images on their websites, notably David Brass Rare Books, Temple Rare Books (see Temple Rare Books online Book of the Month January 2014), and Nudelman Rare Books.  The bindings usually (though not exclusively) include all-over designs comprising small flower and leaf motifs, have smooth spines and elaborately decorated turn-ins.  Here is the British Library’s example, Alfred de Musset's On ne badine pas avec l’amour.

Alfred de Musset, On ne badine pas avec l’amour (Paris, 1904) British Library shelf mark C.188.114

Tooling on the turn in showing the initials C.E.G.  - Alfred de Musset, On ne badine pas avec l’amour (Paris, 1904) British Library shelf mark C.188.114

For a naval officer Gladstone was a quite remarkable bookbinder!

P.J.M. Marks
Curator, Bookbindings

Further Reading:
The National Archives Admiralty records ADM 196/19/266; ADM 196/38/621; ADM 196/40/207
Dreadnought Project
Commander Charles Elsden Gladstone