A Haberdashery Shop on London Bridge: Journal of a Georgian Gentleman - Mike Rendell

good evening and thank you so much for coming out on such a cold night my talk is entitled - we shop at one London Bridge but it is in fact the story of my great-great-great great-grandfather his name was Richard Hall he was born in 1729 and died in 1801 and this was a silhouette cut when he was in his middle age I've subtitled the talk the journal of a georgian gentleman because that's the title of the book i've written about his life and times the talk should take just over fifty minutes so hopefully who we were time for one or two questions and maybe even some answers but first I think it may help if I start with a confession because it may help put things in perspective and the confession is this I come from a family of inveterate hoarders we never throw anything away now you may say that we could all do with a bit of a deep clutter but I think this goes rather further than that and I'd like to give you an example how long do you reckon to keep your shopping lists you've been to Waitrose or Sainsbury's you've gone back to the car you've put the bags into the boot and you look down and you see that the shopping list is at the bottom of the trolley do you push it back to the trolley park and leave it there no of course not you pick up your list and you put it in the bin or maybe you take it home and you check it off against all the items that you've purchased and then throw it away perhaps you keep it to the end of the month go through your Barclays card statement and then entering enter everything up onto your computer so that you can tell at a moment's glance whether you've used more jars of Nescafe this year compared with last whatever floats your boat but I wouldn't mind betting that the life expectancy of your shopping lists is measured in days if not hours in my family we keep shopping lists going back to 1790 I have Diaries going back to the 1650s I have newspaper accounts of the death of Oliver Cromwell and at the outbreak of the Great Fire of London and boxes and boxes of ephemera memorabilia relating to the Georgian era that then is the background the fact that when I got married 26 years ago one of the very first items I carried up the stairs to my wife's top floor flat was this old horse hair chest I say old it was new in 1782 it cost 10 shillings and six months I know because I still have the receipt what's in there my wife asked and when I replied that it was old family papers she seemed somewhat reluctantly to agree that he could go in the hall behind the door where it wouldn't be seen that rang a few alarm bells because next up the stairs was the first of six old tea chests I had naively thought that I would stack them three high either side of the fireplace my wife had other ideas and I decided that perhaps discretion was the better part of valor so I put them back into store i bided my time and a year or so later the flat underneath became available so I bought it and for fifteen years we had the splendid arrangement of his and her flats I do recommend it it gave me the chance to go through the papers that I had and they're not just the papers richard collected fossils and shells I still have those collections I have all his books I have his silver I have his chairs I even have his brass bed warming-pan going through the papers was quite complicated because nothing was in date order I knew that Richard had a daughter called Martha but it was slightly confusing because his diaries were full of entries relating to other names I didn't recognize Polly had a birthday Polly wasn't well patty had a birthday patty wasn't well and it was a while before I realized that patty was the diminutive form for Martha and that Polly Polly was the parrot but I was helped when I came across this manuscript which Richard himself wrote in 1800 the year before he died headed family and personal recollections it reads I have frequently thought of writing a little history of my life interspersed with as much information as I could collect from letters and memorandum in my possession of my family connections he then goes on to explain that his grandparents were wealthy landowners living in Berkshire they had farms in Berkshire Oxford Wiltshire they had a coat of arms they were obviously very comfortably off and in 1699 they had a son Francis who was no doubt brought up to believe that he would never have to do a day's work that he would simply inherit the family's estate then something happened which changed all that and the something was the bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 the first major stock market crash and it would appear that the whole family had been borrowing money from banks to buy my or more shares in the South Sea company and suddenly those shares became valueless the land had to be sold and the one certainty was that Francis would have to go out and get a job not easy because by then he had just had his 21st birthday he headed for London which was a real magnet but then found that the livery companies were standing in his way because their rules were that you had to be over the age of 15 but not have had your 21st birthday so he had no choice but to head south of the river to Southwark where the controls of the livery companies were not as strong he settled in not very salubrious area a red line Street just off in the area of that called the bridge foot just south of London Bridge and there he started at apprenticeship it lasted until 17 28 and nearly qualified as a hozier maker of silk stockings he married and in the following year Richard their only child was born I have very little information about Richards infancy but I do know from his later diaries that he was breached when he was three and a half years old in other words put into bridges and so no doubt he would have looked rather like this little fellow in the hogarth print a sort of a mini me with a tricorn hat frock coat breeches and buckled shoes what is clear is that Francis and his wife were determined that Richard was going to be the one who restored the family fortunes they were determined to keep him on the straight and narrow and they drummed into him these three principles the importance of Education hard work and Christian values and I'll just deal with these I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of Richard's schoolbooks exercised books etc and although I don't know where he went to school it's clear that he had a sound education he had a good hand this is a manuscript he decorated called pocket companion containing selected sentences with some poetry so it's nicely decorated he was obviously artistic I still have his textbooks this was from his natural history book he would have learned for instance that if you cross a long-necked animal like a camel with a spotted creature like a leopard the result is a giraffe and indeed the Latin name for the giraffe family is camel apparel at the same time he would have known what a rhinoceros looked like lower down and unicorn I have his English exercise books setting out punctuation spelling grammar etc here we have his notes for the marks used in reading with apostrophes hyphens brackets etc but I love item 9 the index finger drawn with such detail you can actually see the lace rough around the wrist he also noted down those words which were pronounced differently the way they were spelled presumably as a reminder said that he didn't look too ignorant so top left hand corner you'll see toilet which was was nothing to do with going to the loo that's to do with preparing yourself for going out powdering a wig doing your makeup etc and toilet was to be pronounced to eilat walk Twilight and on the other side to option the bottom you'll see place names Birmingham was to be pronounced brummagem because of course that's what the Brahmas came from I have all his maths books and it would look from these that they are all trade specific they all relate to haberdashery and I would assume from this that he therefore may have had private coaching question the bottom what will twelve yards of silk cost at one pound 11 shillings and 11 pants 3 farthings per yard I have checked his masses right and I also have all his French exercise books he would write out pages and pages of translation English on one side French on the other and he certainly wrote French far better than I ever learned up to a level standard hard work well this is from one of his own Diaries later in life let a person accustomed to sleep too late in the morning rise the first week in April at a quarter before 8 the second week at half past 7 and so on in other words he would get out 15 minutes earlier every week until come August and he'd be getting up at half past 4 in the morning conversely I suspect become the winter he just hibernated Francis was a devout Baptist and a keen follower of dr. Gill who was a towering figure in the Baptist movement and who opened a church - Carter Lane in Southwark less than 200 yards from where the whole family lived so Richard grew up to regard dr. Gill as his spiritual mentor and guide I still have Richards Bible it's not the King James Bible it's the earlier Geneva Bible it is in fact 450 years old and remarkable to think it's been in the family ever since he was printed when he was 15 Richard's formal education finished and he became apprenticed to his father as a hozier he was obviously good at embroidery which is important because hoses could charge three times more for a finely embroidered stocking like this one than for a plain stocking when he was about 17 Richard started to jot down notes of what was going on in the world around him not as a formal diary but just as a note so here we have 1746 the rebels defeated at Culloden by the Duke of Cumberland April the 16th and to illustrate it I've used the first of a number of paper cutouts that I'll be using they were actually made by Richard using a very sharp pair of embroidery scissors with a blade about an inch long the paper cuts about four inches long and they are incredibly fine he must have had a very steady hand and a very good eye the reins on the horses are barely wider than the human hair he also had a little notebook for observables things he noted in the world around him and he starts with this entry an earthquake felt in London February 8th 1750 about half-past twelve at noon another shocked Thursday March the 8th about half after 5:00 so unusual circumstance you had earthquakes exactly a month apart felt in London didn't take long for the Bishop of London to get into the pulpit and announce that he knew exactly what was causing these earthquakes it was divine displeasure at pornography Fanny Hill had just been published and it wasn't long before the good people of London worked out that these two earthquakes exactly a month apart were the warm-up acts and that the really big one would follow on the 8th of April so come the 8th of April everyone piled their belongings into wheelbarrows and hand carts and tried to leave town and it caused London's first total gridlock and come nightfall of course everyone sheepishly went home in 1754 when Richard was 25 he introduced a fourth principle for success and that is to marry well his bride was Elinor Seward who was just 21 and her father Benjamin had made a packet in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London buying up land in the north of the city and selling it off for development by the age of 35 Benjamin had made enough money to retire to his country pile the mansion house at Ben's worth near evesham and it's still there as the evesham hotel so he was living there with his extensive cherry orchards his Deer Park and so on and the marriage took place down at Ben's worth after the wedding Richard and his bride Eleanor stayed down there while Benjamin Seward and his wife came up to London for a bit of rest and recreation unfortunately he fell ill on the journey and died very shortly afterwards his widow stayed up in London for a couple of months and then she too caught a fatal illness so we have the extraordinary situation that Richard a humble hozier from Southwark was suddenly the proud owner of a stately home Deer Park etc his work ethic meant that he didn't give up the day job he continued as a hozier in Southwark bit he put tenants in the house at evesham and twice a year he would go down to the Cotswolds his coaching for presumably to collect the rents and profits and to visit his Deer Park here I've shown paper cutout of him in his coach you'll see that the front wheel is about to go over a very bumpy rock a reminder that road conditions were appalling in the middle of the 18th century but with the advent of the Turnpike trusts each local area was encouraged to carry out road improvements to fill in the potholes and the ruts before long Richard was able to record a rather more sedate progress down to ocean where of course still the problems that you would have from highway robbers here we have one with his blunderbuss that is rather bent sword drawn requiring them to stand and deliver but we all know what happened to hi women is a capital offense and they ended their days on the gallows and of the the launch lengths of the two horse riders taking absolutely no interest in what's going on at about this time things are starting to happen with the old London Bridge this is the 17th century view with all the shops and houses higgledy-piggledy on top of the bridge but it really had begun to it was no longer fit for purpose somebody described it as a a wall with holes in it and that's not far from the truth ships were queued for days to try and get through they could only pass for a couple of hours either side of high tide and it was very strong currents through the bridge pedestrians found it hopeless up to a hundred thousand people a day were trying to use the bridge and of course a lot of horses and cattle on their way to Smithfield and so on so something had to be done and the corporation decided in 1759 to dismantle the central pier and to put in a new great arch two years later than Stonegate was demolished and the year after that when the last of the houses was demolished they were able to widen the carriageway they put in a new pedestrian access from sant magnus the marta church and that then left london corporation owning a small piece of land on the north side of the bridge which they decided they would lease for development so they granted richard a lease for 60 odd years to enable him to build a shop with a full bedroom to house this is a map at the Horwood map showing the area just north of london bridge and i've marked with an arrow number one I'm aware that number one and London Bridge nowadays is a concrete and glass edifice south of the river but when postal numbering first came in in the 1760s it was for this property so it was the very first shop you would come to as you entered the city from the south it's immediately opposite Magnus the martyr Church I see on the other side of the road and therefore halfway between some poles to the left and the tower on the right it's also just hundred yards from the site of the monument so this was the view from down river looking at the new bridge sleek but still on its old foundations from out provar this is the view of Magnus the martyr the spire and behind that the monument and I've marked one London Bridge there also just mentioned the water wheels it must have been an extremely noisy place to live because for two or three hours either side of high tide the water wheels would have been going thud thud thud as they pumped water into Elm conduits to be carried away to the wealthier households in town Richard noted down all the costs of building he entered into an agreement with mr. pounder the Builder to build him his house and shop for 850 pounds surveyors fees 228 pounds seven and seven points and five pounds sixteen shillings for papering so in all just under twelve hundred and fifty pounds in addition he had to pay for furniture and fixtures besides those in the shop kitchen grates the copper system etc 111 pounds but does anyone knows building the house is not the end of the problem he then listed year by year all the expenses and the one item that seemed to cause more expenses anything else was the privy think of it it's a house built just by the River Thames the Privy is in the basement every time there was a really high tide the Privy overflowed and so no doubt Richard would have had to have constant problems with emptying at etc but he listed all the expenses mr. Rogers the bricklayer for the job of the Privy mister pointer a great to the Privy ins to point a plumbing carpenter to the Privy casing in the pipe a very expensive thing and no doubt he would have had to have used a night man to come along to empty the effluent when a rid overflowed that would have involved someone like Richard Harper here coming along and filling up barrels of effluent putting them in the cart and taking them across London Bridge and then spreading them on the market gardens of Peckham what did the inside the shop look like well I showing a caricature taken from 1810 about forty years afterwards which I suspect shows a very typical haberdasher shop with the wooden counter for measuring materials loads of drawers to hold buckles and beads etc and then open shelves with material and on a line across the window various pieces of ribbon lace etc in this one the dandified shopkeeper is saying in rather flowery language and what would modern like next and the shopper replies what I would like mr. dandy is for you to remeasure it so I can see how much you have cut short I do have a couple of the display notes cards one for halls velvet on one for bat which was a sort of cotton wadding and so it appear from that that Richard would display small piles of fabric with with the names on it and if he ever ordered a consignment of lace or calico when it arrived he would put an advert in the local paper he'd buy a copy of the paper to make sure that his advert was in it ring it in pencil or put it in the bottom drawer where of course it remains to this turn one of the problems of opening a shop within the city boundaries is that he was suddenly caught by the habit ashes they took a rather dim view of the fact that for 20 years he had not been paying his livery fees so they find him 25 pounds 14 shillings and sixpence plus 4 pounds 50 for taking up his freedom so he had to pay nearly 30 pounds the equivalent of a couple of thousand pounds today just in order to become respectable one of the things that clearly worried him as a businessman in the city was the risk of fire as I say the monument was very close by where he was living and he was meticulous in keeping his records of insurance the building was insured with a hand-in-hand office for 900 pounds and so almost certainly on the outside of the building he would have had a far mark rather like the one I've shown so that if the were afar the brigade would know that they were going to get paid by the insurance company and on the left he lists the household insurance 500 pounds stock-in-trade 2100 pounds the equivalent of getting over 200 thousand pounds and indeed he increased it to 2300 in 1781 as well he did so because his diary records 31st October 1779 are housed at London bridge was preserved when in great danger from fire what had happened is that a fire had broken out in the hop warehouse next door but luckily the wind was blowing the other way it destroyed the what hop warehouse it destroyed the water wheels and poor Richard had to take refuge in some Agnes Lamar to church that night and there's a picture the the gilgul art gallery showing the sparsa Magnus illuminated by the flames with one London Bridge immediately behind it the waterwheel as I say was completely destroyed and it was at least ten years before the mechanism was replaced so Richard would at least have been able to sleep at night Richard listed all the taxes or what he referred to as taxes there's quite a lot of them a watch Church rate afternoon preacher which is an odd form of tax but often tax trophy tax poor rates sewer rate land tax window lights lamps and pavements Thames Water total of coming up to 42 pounds okay it's not quite business rates but it's a lot of money one of the main problems he was faced as a businessman was the appalling state of the currency the price of silver had rocketed in relation to the price of gold from 1750 onwards and the mint had responded by simply not minting any new silver this meant that the existing silver perhaps dating back to the reign of charles ii was getting incredibly warm and therefore indistinct and it became very easy for forgers just to produce shiny blanks and to pass them off as coins even the gold coins weren't exempt from difficulties this one is a spade Guinea which has been clipped in other words it's it's smaller than it should be but that's nothing compared with the problems if you were in the Counting house at the back of the shop examining change being given to you back handle light if somebody passed one of these to you you could easily mistake it for the real thing it is in fact a brass gaming counter used at cards and has a completely fictitious date of 1701 I say fictitious because George the third didn't come to the throne until 1760 but you had to be pretty observant because that was a very expensive mistake to make and later when banknotes became more popular in the 1790s to pound and five-pound notes were introduced richard specially noted counterfeit banknotes chiefly of five pounds known by the coarseness of the paper and the watermark clumsily executed what surprised me was that shoplifting is not a modern phenomenon this is from an etching dated 1786 entitled the shoplifter detected and it shows the constable just arriving on the right and the very well-dressed lady has managed to conceal yards of lace and ribbon up under her skirt and a young shopkeeper is rather enthusiastically ferreting around above all Richard loved writing about the weather January the 7th 1776 about this time very remarkable for snow in some places ten or twelve feet high many persons detained on the roads he goes on to say febrile across the Thames from iron gate but my favourite description of all for the cold is this one for Saturday the 27th exceeding sharp snow froze very hard froze the water in the chamber pot think about it Richard also like to Dyer eyes when he washed by which I mean did his laundry I'm afraid personal hygiene didn't feature too highly looking at the dates July November March June he actually does his laundry every three months how often do you think he had a bath the answer is every two months whether he needed it or not if it was anything less than a two month interval between baths then he would actually write it down that he had resumed my bath and through mercy was carried very well through it very fine day and very warm grown dull in the evening wife and Patty visited mrs. fontleroy presumably they didn't want to hang around watching him have his bath he even noted when he washed his feet so Friday the 10th didn't do a lot that day fine day not quite so hot washed feet he did enjoy ill health he was the real hypochondriac so we have here Friday the 4th was much indisposed with a cold that came on yesterday head poorly bowels in different and great chilliness but the Lord's hand might have been much heavier a very fine day very cold and then he would list his remedy for an upset stomach you really had to be quite strong to survive this one two ounces of mutton suet near the kidney cut it very small that it's simmering a pint of milk till it comes to half a pint strain it off and take a coffee cup full warm frequently if the stomach will bear it but above all Richard loved showing people the sights and whenever any friends came up to stay he would take them round and sites of London so here we have April the 25th 1771 went with general Whitmore mr. mrs. snuke mrs. Gifford my wife to see the mint at the tower a reminder that the Tower of London didn't just house the Royal Regalia and also the Royal menagerie but also the Royal Mint where he could have seen coins being minted he also liked going to ask his circus Philip Ashley was a brilliant horseman and he combined acrobatics on the backs of horses with music juggling etc Richard liked it so much that he even kept the handbill showing what was on offer and when the British Museum opened at Montague house in 1759 Richard went along to see it the following year October the 8th went with mr. Crouch to see the British Museum he would have needed to have applied for tickets a week in advance he would have been sent an invitation with a time for him to arrive and he would have then had been shown round in parties of 12 he particularly liked levers Museum otherwise known as the liver EURion or for some reason the hollow few second so we have Tuesday the 4th went with wife daughter son Francis and Sophie and sorcerer Ashton levers collection of natural curiosities and curious they indeed are dined at a beef steak house find a mild and the Sirach and lever hood collected some 30 odd thousand natural history history items fossils shells and historical oddments like Oliver Cromwell's broadsword and a lot of things which Captain Cook had brought back from his first circumnavigation and so Richard would have loved seeing those there have been a devout Baptist but it didn't stop him gambling occasionally and here is his copy of the state lottery hand bill and four of his lottery tickets there's one missing it won the obviously had to hand it in these are some of the diaries that Richard made the composite ones these two Diaries cover the years 1780 to 1784 and the very first entry generally the first 1780 was to the effect that he'd taken his son William then aged 25 into partnership and given him half his trade so EC signed articles of partnership with my son commencing January the 1st may the Lord give a blessing to it fine in the morning Hale in the afternoon cool so things were obviously looking good but 10 days later disaster struck Eleanor Richards wife who was then aged 46 was fine at breakfast she had a headache at midday and she was dead by 6 o'clock that evening it must have been an incredible shock to Richard he was devastated and he cut out this superb intricate piece of paper as a memorial to his wife if I show you here it is about an inch and a quarter across so you imagine cutting that out with scissors by candlelight or very bright sunlight and it reads in memory of e Hall aged 46 died 12th January 1780 I would suspect from its size that it was designed to go between the outer and inner cases of his pocket watch and would have been worn next to his heart devastated he may have been but it didn't stop him remarrying within months I'll come back that and second I've got the funeral account from the Undertaker's listing all the items for what must have been a really showy funeral came to just under fifty two pounds which when you think an agricultural worker might get paid twenty pounds in a year it was an awful lot of money for the coffin the pall the black hats the great coats and everything else all itemized and they would have solemnly marched from one London Bridge out the dissenters burial field at burial grounds at bond Hill fields as I say Richard remarried before the year was out and he writes 14th December this day entered into the solemn and very important engagement of a second marriage with Betty snuke oh that it may appear to be agreeable to God's will and it may be attended with his blessing and issue in his glory and that it may prove for the mutual comfortable concerned and never lessen the happiness of my dear children well it did his children boycotted the wedding which took place at bourton-on-the-water they had nothing to do with it they thought that his bride was utterly unsuitable she was twenty years his junior she was much the same age as they were and indeed they referred to her as her cult as their cousin because they've been brought up together and quite clearly she was of childbearing age and they could see their inheritance disappearing down the drain so they issued an ultimatum to Richard you can come back up to London and stay at one on London Bridge on your own your wife can come up and stay on her own but you're not coming up here and staying together as man and wife in the same building this of course was utterly unacceptable to Richard he went straight up to London and as he opened the front door his children all trooped out the back and that happened for three days in a row but the fourth day Richard got the message and he announced that it had enough of the family and it had enough of London and he went to live in Borton on water and never really spoke to his children for the next 20 years complete breakdown obviously he was still a part owner of the business he paid for all the bills William his son did all the work and once a year there'd be a letter with the accounts showing what was due to him but apart from that he didn't speak to speak to any of these three children for the rest of his life when Richard went down - bourton-on-the-water he then started preparing these cutouts that I'm using this one of the Huntsman following the Fox and on the left you've got two men approaching the Dove cut presumably in the winter in order to get fresh meat and on the right you have Richard rather precariously balanced up a ladder pruning his cherry tree this one at bulrush is important because these were used to make candles Richard would go down to the river Windrush in the summer with a very sharp pen knife and cut the bull rushes into two foot lengths he would take off the outer peel to reveal the white pith which he would leave to dry in the Sun they would then be rolled in animal fat or grease allowed to dry and they could then be used as candles to light to put light into the darker recesses of the room and finally here's one of a ploughing scene Richard wasn't very imaginative when it came to Christmas presents everyone got exactly the same thing hoist is not exactly the same he divided up his friends into two groups those who he liked and wanted to impress got the more expensive pie fleet oysters they cost form threatens hundred whereas people who are a blessing importance such as mr. Beddoe meeee the local Baptist minister well he got oysters from Colchester they only cost three shillings and fourpence he always recorded journeys here we have on the left a journey to we've shown which is about 20 miles away from Borden I'm surprised at how much of his budget went on travel here we have journeyed we've shown six shillings and seven plants Turnpike's one and six driver half a crown total ten shillings and seven pants which for 20-mile journey its best part of 40 pounds in modern money and on the other side a journey to London with his wife in 1783 he lists all the expenses in stages totaling three pounds sixteen shillings two which had to be added 17 shillings and 11 that's hate me for expenses which I imagine this is bed for the night and his meal total four pounds 15 so probably the equivalent of perhaps 350 pounds makes British Rail are positively cheap and slightly faster here he lists the journey from Borton to Blandford Weymouth and Longworth Castle and then back through Salisbury a distance apparently of 264 miles and because he would have paid per item of luggage he lists the things that he took with him his great trunk his blue pop box his wainscot box in other words wood-paneled box his green bag his greatcoat his shoes his wig box seven items in all and then as an afterthought presumably because he wanted to brew up when he got at the other end steam kettle eight items in all I suspect that as he got older he got less mobile so we had this entry for October 1795 sedan-chair 6 pounds 10 shillings and tuppence and obviously needed reupholstering because later he had another half a crown on repairs the one thing he liked divet doing was brewing beer making cider and in particular making wine being a Baptist apparently did not mean total abstinence so we have July the 27th 1790 bottled off currant wine from 1789 run 20 bottles and part of a bottle November the 15th tapped a barrel of Porter my wife's birthday December the 20th 1790 began upon the last port wine he was forever having wine and port sent down from London whether that has anything to do with this entry I don't know this is a list of the number of times that his wife fell down I like to think that she was stoned out of her mind but these aren't diary entries they are it is a a separate list of these are the times that my wife fell over so we have March the 21st 1791 wife's bad fall at the parlour door fell down the stairs fell coming from the meeting fell from his his snuke scotch fallen little Eastcheap some part time since and so on he listened about 20 times when she keeled over I don't know and she may have had epilepsy she may have had problems with her balance but he didn't come across as being very sympathetic in 1794 William decided that he'd had enough of standing behind the counter in the shop and announced that he was leaving the partnership so the decision was made that his half share in the business would pass to his younger brother Francis who had until that time taken no part in the business but it did mean that an inventory was prepared showing every single stick of furniture at number one London Bridge and you can go through it room by room seeing exactly what there was one of the things I find interesting given that it was a four bedroom two house have a guess howmany birds the were 16 no such thing as privacy in the 18th century yes you would have had curtains you could draw around your bed but you couldn't expect your own room Richard loved recording the expenses he made lists and end lists of lists and this is one for 1797 showing what he paid the Baker the butcher and the candlestick maker but I particularly draw our attention to the line one up from the bottom paid for wine etc eight pounds three shillings and five pence and the line above that taxes two pounds eight shillings and thrupence in other words he was spending more than 3 times on wine and alcohol than he was on taxation I wish I had his Constitution I have tried but I can't I can't do it but if you compare that figure of 2 pounds 8 shillings and thrupence 4 1797 and then look at what he was paying in 1800 war with France meant the introduction of income tax and suddenly every two months he had to pay an installment of 5 guineas on account of tax so he was paying about 35 pounds in the year instead of just over 2 pounds he was meticulous at recording his assets this one is dated 29th January 1801 an account of what iron possessed because it was made just what a month and a half before he actually died and he lists his properties his freehold estate at been worth a freehold estate at Clapton which is a small hamlet near bourton-on-the-water where he lived a copy hold estate at sedge breh and Cotswolds a leasehold house at London Bridge and then various stocks and shares and monies that he had lent to other people William when he left the shop decided to become a silk man he eventually became master of the haberdashers guild in 1820 Richard died in 1801 and he left his half share of the business to his son Francis who was therefore sole proprietor and Frances soldier Don on his own for 25 years the lease expired on Christmas Day 1826 francis expired on Boxing Day 1826 so whether it was from a broken heart or from too much furniture moving I don't know but it did Herald the end of number one London Bridge plans were afoot to demolish the old bridge and to construct a new one immediately upriver and this is the Greenwood map from about 1828 showing the two bridges side-by-side the new one to the left and if we go close up you can see at that stage one London Bridge was still standing albeit in an island smack in the middle of the road and it was pulled down so that when the new London Bridge opened there was no more of number one London Bridge in its place the Rennie bridge that was put up and which was to last for 150 years before it was demolished and reassembled at Lake Havasu in the middle of the Arizona desert that really brings us to the end but I started with mentioned the shopping lists so I thought I'd just run through one this was from November 1790 or derd of mrs. Johnson 14 pounds of moist sugar they really did have a sweet tooth a pound of coffee in lead which is believed to keep it fresh two pounds of churchmen stock ilat chocolate of course was not a confectionary item it was a medicine it was believed to have the qualities of Viagra penicillin combined cure-all for everything mr. churchman was a pharmacist in Bristol and in the reign of george ii he had patented hydraulic rollers that would crush the cocoa bean later on he married a girl called Elizabeth Fry and when he died the fry family took over his chocolate making business half pound of green tea three pounds of currants two quarts of split peas quarter of orange chips and because it was coming up to the new year three almanacs you might think that that amount of sugar would keep him going for quite a while but no January the 21st 1791 just seven weeks later twenty-eight pounds of Lisbon of sugar in fairness I think he was doing it for his wine making two pounds of rice another two pounds of churchmen chocolate quart of split peas and outs of nutmegs half of sugar candy two ounces of sperma Ceti the cranial cavities of the sperm whale contained a waxy substance which when compressed made a candle that would burn very evenly very even light and it had the added advantage that in the summer it wouldn't melt and finally a quarter of sugared Carraway's the best sort Richard I couldn't have expected anything else right that really concludes it I finished researching and published it as a social history and the biography as the journal of a Georgia gentleman so thank you very much for listening you

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Keywords: History, Georgian, England, London, London Bridge

Id: HqD90aqD3vE

Length: 50min 51sec (3051 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/alllie]

The fascinating story of eighteenth century haberdasher who recorded what he ate, what he purchased, how he slept and what the weather was like in obsessive detail. He also kept newspaper cuttings and admission tickets, he copied sermons, and collected coins, shells, fossils and books.