Georgian London - Filed under 'Immigrants'

January 22, 2010

'The Life, Spring and Motion of the Trading World': A Very Brief Account of Georgian London's Foreign Import and Export Trade

London, like Venice was a trading hub, and throughout the documents of the 18thC, London is compared with her Italian counterpart in all things apart from our 'superior' manner of government (they let 'tradesmen' govern in Venice, can you imagine?). I am inclined to think that our import and export business was slightly less glamorous than that of the Floating City's, but perhaps familiarity has bred contempt and a fine piece of cheddar was as highly valued in Venice as parmesan cheeses were in London.

This blog post is a very brief overview of our import and export trade in the mid-18thC and reflects the abundance of foreign goods available in London, and thus throughout England. I think it is hard to over-estimate the extent to which the ordinary people of London were involved in 'trade' and to the extent they identified themselves as 'tradesmen'. The expansion of the Empire beneath the Tudor family's reign had opened up parts of the world formerly inaccessible to the English people, and the writers of the 18thC certainly looked back on their medieval forebears as ruder cousins, lacking sophistication and knowledge of the world. Trade brought not only goods to England's shores, but new ideas, schools of thought and scientific developments; our own advances were also traded as part of the ongoing development of the civilized world. This air of enthusiasm, excitement and potential is lost to modern London where we are little more than a hub for financial services, and an exporter of bad cars, worse actresses and Newcastle Brown Ale.

England was beaten only by the Dutch for international trade, 'a country not much bigger than Yorkshire, and with a soil naturally barren'. However, the legacy of the Spanish was a superb navy, and they were 'mighty in traffic'. The wealth of the Dutch merchants was thrown into sharp relief in 1747 when the government went to them in crisis: they put over six millions pounds (sterling) at the service of the government in less than four hours. It is almost impossible to put a modern figure to this sum, but it's more than a billion pounds. In cash. With those sorts of amounts, it isn't hard to see how the Netherlands convinced the poorer countries of the world, possessed of valuable commodities, to trade with them over any other nation. Britain had struggled with long and sapping wars, and the countries with which it traded were in decline. They had one large advantage over the Dutch though: the plantations. The tobacco, sugar and other byproducts of the American and Caribbean plantations were vital to keeping England, and London, wealthy.

Merchants tended not to deal in one commodity; it was too risky. Instead, they would deal in the produce of one country, hence Virginia merchants (tobacco and wood), and French merchants (wine and foodstuffs). England imported wine, sugar, flax, hemp, cotton, rums, copper and iron ore amongst other basic products such as indigo for dyes. It also imported a large quantity of fish from America, but it was deemed fit only for the Levant. England exported made-up clothing, furniture, cutlery, haberdashery, clocks, glassware, toys and all manner of 'fancy goods'. The rule of thumb is that England imported raw products, but exported finished products of a relatively high standard. The upper-classes of Ireland had a strong 18thC, and were buying heavily from the London markets, but the poor remained very poor, often arriving in England with little more than a strong back and a desire for gin. Robert Campbell made an acid note of the English attitude to the Irish, 'The balance paid by Ireland in exchange of goods, and the money spent by their gentry and nobility in England, amount to at least one million sterling per annum, which is a greater advantage (relative profit) than we reap from all our other branches of commerce; yet we grudge these people the common privileges of subjects, despite their persons, and condemn their country, as if it was a crime to be born in that kingdom from when we derive the greatest part of our wealth'.

Exports of fancy goods to Denmark and Sweden are recorded, in exchange for woods and minerals, although this trade was apparently dying out by the late 18thC. To Turkey we sent lead, tin and sugar, and received carpets, coffee, and silks. Tin and wool were sent to Portugal, and wine, olive oil and ready money were received in return. To the East Indies, we sent woollen clothes, hats, firearms and silver bullion, but imported gold, diamonds, spices, drugs, tea, porcelain, china, silk, cotton, salt-petre and various other goods. It was judged a very profitable branch of England's trade, and no wonder. The less savoury aspects of our history are also recorded in our exports of guns, swords and cutlasses to Guinea, 'in exchange for negroes to work on our plantations, gold dust, and elephants' teeth'.

This is a broad subject for a blog post and does not take into account the 'triangular' nature of the slave trade. I will tackle it in more detail in future but until then, I quote Campbell again, in what has to be one of the greatest comments on the English relationship with France, ever:

We export to France scarce anything but lead and tin, some tobacco to Dunkirk and some salmon from Scotland but we import wine, brandy, silks of various sorts, cambrics, laces of thread and of gold and of silver, paper cards and an innumerable quantity of trifling jewels and toys; for all which we pay an annual balance of one million and a half. In reckoning up the imports from France, I should have mentioned pride, vanity, luxury, and corruption; but as I could make no estimate by the custom-house books of the quantity of these goods entered, I chose to leave them out.

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Filed under // Black London. French London Immigrants Indian London London's Food Muslim London Trading in London

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December 2, 2009

'A kind of portable coach': Sedan chairs and London's Irish Chairmen

The very first sedan chairs belonged to grand individuals in the late Elizabethan period, who employed fit young men to carry them through the streets as part of their household retinue. Then, from 1634 Sir Saunders Duncombe took a fourteen year licence in Westminster to provide sedan chairs to the public. They had two great advantages: you could get inside the chair in your own home, and get to your destination without being seen or recognized, and they were legal on both the pavement and the roads, so avoided the traffic wherever it was necessary. They were also very good for invalids, although many complaints were made about the public sedan chair rank at St James' Park as it was open air and the leather chairs got soaked through in bad weather, making them smelly and unpleasant to travel in.

The chair itself is a strong wooden frame with metal fitting through which two stout poles fit. As long as the frame, floor and seat of the chair were strong, the idea was to make the rest of the chair as light as possible. Very grand chairs were carried by four men, but almost all street chairs were carried by two, who were fitted with a leather harness to distribute the weight across the shoulders and prevent them from dropping the handles of the chair. At night, they were helped on their way by one of London's link-boys, who made a few pence by carrying lighted torches through the streets and escorting the 'chairmen' to their destination. The link-boys were indispensible, as they knew the warrens of London streets, and most chairmen were Irish. They worked in teams of at least two, and were licenced by the authorities, having to wear badges on their sleeves with numbers. Public sedan chairs were like large boxes, clad only in stiffened leather stained black with a bench seat inside. They were the property of carriage companies or teams of chairmen. Most smart pubs, inns, hostelries, and clubs would have had at least one chair for the use of patrons, but they didn't want to keep (or feed) a staff of brawny chairmen on hand, so the teams of Irish chairmen grew up on the streets. After all, as a poor but strong immigrant, being a chairman was ideal: it paid well (about a shilling for a cross London-trip), you didn't need any more than basic local knowledge because the link-boys worked days as well as nights, and your working apparatus was a wooden pole and harness. (This is also why hardly any sedan chairs apart from the very grandest have their original poles; the two rarely belonged to the same person.)

Being a chairman, provided you were strong to begin with, and had the appropriate and well-designed harness was extremely physically demanding but would have made a man enormously powerful. Last year I came across the sedan chair (pictured in the gallery) in an auction. This is the chair of a reasonably wealthy private individual. I pushed it about a little to see how much it really weighed, and it wasn't light, probably weighing in excess of 60 pounds. If we say the average person in Georgian London weighed 140 pounds (some would weigh much more, or less, but I would imagine particularly heavy or even corpulent people would have known better than to attempt to get a sedan chair through London's busy streets and taken a more comfortable carriage instead). Still, we are talking about a constant load of around 100 pounds for each chairman, not including his poles and harness. It was rewarding work, but even if it was for seven hours a day, it was hard graft (a phrase for which we most likely have to thank the Irish, but not until the 1790s). Still, the chairmen of London were generally regarded to be the best by Continental visitors, being strong and agile enough to overcome most obstacles, as well as remarkably rapid. A young Frenchman records being knocked over four times by sedan chairs during his visit to the capital.

During the Georgian period, there was a large increase in the Irish presence in London. Hardship at home, plus the opportunity to labour in a city expanding as fast as London was, drew them to the English capital. They began known for their brawn and willingness to work at any hard task. They also became known for making trouble, and their love of fist-fights. Boxing has long been a popular English sport, but as chairmen men got fitter and stronger, it was common for the English boxing promoters of the day to advertise fights between 'the Irish chairmen', as they could sustain many 'knockdowns' and provided excellent entertainment. The newspapers of the time contain frequent occasions when riots had to be broken up because in excess of 500 people had come to watch and bet on the chairmen.

The Irish were derided during the Georgian period, for their stupidity and for their drinking habits. This worsened during the gin craze, and by the time Victoria came to the throne, the Irish population of London, which lived mainly around Marylebone and Southwark were viewed as the lowest of the low. Illustrations of the chairmen often show very coarse faces, to the point of caricature and there can be no doubt that they were not viewed favourably by the majority of the population. In 1719, an Irish sedan chairman was sentenced to a whipping for spitting on the Princess of Wales. I am surprised at such a light sentence frankly. They were regularly fined for cursing loudly in the street (although one might forgive them if it was for the purpose of clearing their path), and as young men they were notorious Romeos, probably much in demand for their stamina, like footmen. Irish immigrant Denis O'Kelly, later a successful racehorse owner made his initial fortune after starting out as a chairman and bedding a countess in Hanover Square, probably one of his customers.

By the 1790s, London was growing rapidly, and the use of sedan chairs was falling, that of the small 'hackney-carriage' rising (although the hackney-coaches had been running with licences from around the same time as the chairs - more in another post), and the Irish were moving to work on the navigation canals and roads that were being laid in and out of London. (They dug both canals and pavements with spades, the width of which was known as a 'graft', and they termed their heavy digging 'hard graft'). Long a protected industry (like plumbing), building and paving were open only to family already established in the trade, supply could not keep up with demand, and the legend of the Irish navigator was born.

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Filed under // Immigrants Irish London London Transport

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November 27, 2009

The Variegated Damsel and The Beautiful Spotted Boy

On the 12th of October 1736, on a Jesuit plantation in Cartagena, Columbia a little girl names Mary Sabina was born to the two negro slaves Patrona and Martiniano.

José Gumilla was a priest in charge of the sick on the plantation, and when Mary Sabina was about six months old, he happened to see her when she was with her mother. He discussed the child's extraordinary appearance with Patrona. Mary Sabina had piebaldism, resulting in the astonishing spotted effect visible in the two portraits of her in the gallery. Patrona put it down to the fact that she had a pet dog of black and white colouring of which she had become fond whilst pregnant. Gumilla recommended Patrona guard her baby very carefully lest some ignorant person cast the evil eye upon it.

Mary Sabina's fame rapidly spread. Piebaldism is a form of partial albinism, usually without the attendant eye problems and skin thickening, rendering piebald individuals both extraordinary to look at, and rather beautiful. Particularly fascinating, and striking in black piebald individuals are the contrasting patches of black and white hair. Mary Sabina was undoubtedly a very pretty little girl, as the two images show, but her ultimate fate is unknown. During her life she became something of a local celebrity in Cartagena, and the owners of one of the 'English factories' there sent back her portrait to London, where it now hangs in the Royal College of Surgeons Hall. She was used as an illustration for Victorian lectures on partial albinism where she was dubbed, 'Our Little Variegated Damsel'.

It was only a matter of time before some enterprising individual provided London and its insatiable love of freakery with a piebald individual of its own. In 1808, a little piebald boy was born on St Vincent in the Caribbean. George Alexander Gratton was the child of two black islanders who shared the surname of Gratton (possibly two slaves on the plantation of a man named Gratton, or they may have been married and free). As a baby he was apparently shown to spectators for a dollar per person, but at 15 months old he arrived in Bristol, where he ended up on the care of Marlow-born showman John Richardson, who had apparently paid a thousand guineas for George. The details of this part of his story are hazy enough to be verging on the anecdotal, but there can be no doubt that George ended up in Richardson's care, and that Richardson had George baptized at Newington Church in Surrey on the 22nd of July, 1810.

George was shown throughout London, and England for the next few years as 'The Beautiful Spotted Boy', or the 'Spotted Negro of Renown'. The piebald dog theory (no doubt drawn from Patrona's own 80 years before) makes an appearance in the pictures of George, who looks to be a lovely baby. The similarity in the markings on his body show it is the same boy. He died in 1813, of 'a gathering' about the jaw, which perhaps was a facial tumour his condition predisposed him to. Richardson had done well out of his purchase, and if his treatment of George in death mirrored his treatment of the boy in life, perhaps little George Alexander Gratton's short existence was not so very bad: Richardson had George buried in Richardson's own plot at the All Saints Church on The Causeway in Marlow, and had an attractive and dignified headstone fashioned for him. He was later buried with George, and his own headstone placed behind that of his 'Beautiful Spotted Boy', where they remain today.

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Filed under // Black London. Celebrity London Immigrants Strange London Young Londoners

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November 13, 2009

Deen Mahomet and London's First Indian Restaurant*-

Enough of diverting scandal, I must blog about my favourite subject: the foreigner in Georgian London. One such character is Deen Mahomet (later Sake Dean Mahomed). Mahomet is rightly remembered a flamboyant character. Born to a Muslim family in Bihar in 1759 he grew up to serve in the Bengal branch of the British East India Army as a surgeon, but had been attached to the Army in some capacity since he was 10. An Anglo-Irish officer, Captain Godfrey Baker seems to have become the boy's patron, but in 1782, Baker was forced from the Army in disgrace (after extorting money from villagers: always the mark of a gentleman). Deen left to accompany his friend back to Ireland. It is unclear whether he was involved in Baker's activities.

By 1784, Deen was in Cork. There he met Jane Daly, an Irish girl, and in 1786 they eloped to marry due to her family's disapproval. Deen began to write the story of his travels, and in 1794 published what is thought to be the first book by an Indian written in English: The Travels of Dean Mahomet. It's a great read and very enlightening on the details of the British in India, but there's a lot of fudging by Deen on the story of his life, and around this time, his name and self-styled titles begin to change. He and Jane came to London, and here Deen found employment with the Hon. Basil Cochrane, who had made a fortune in India and liked the people and way of life. He opened a bath house at 12 Portman Square and employed Deen to offer 'shampooing services'. No doubt he washed hair, but what he actually offered was Indian head and body massage with perfumed oils. It became a huge success.

Late in 1809, Deen opened the Hindostanee Coffee House, announcing its arrival with the following advertisement:

HINDOSTANEE COFFEE-HOUSE, No. 34 George-street, Portman square - MAHOMED, East-Indian, informs the Nobility and Gentry, he has fitted up the above house, neatly and elegantly, for the entertainment of Indian gentlemen, where they may enjoy the Hoakha, with real Chilm tobacco, and India dishes, in the highest perfection, and allowed by the greated epicures to be unequalled to any curries ever made in England with choice wines, and every accommodation, and now looks up to them for their future patronage and support, and gratefully acknowledges himself indebted for their former favours, and trusts it will merit the highest satisfaction when made known to the public.

At the same time, Deen adopted the 'Sake' bit of his name, meaning 'Venerable One'. Although reviewed very favourably in the publications of the time, Deen struggled. This is probably because he had started his establishment in what he thought was the perfect area (plenty of Nabobs around Marylebone at that time), but the thing was, most of them had brought Indian cooks with them who catered for their every whim, without going out to a restaurant. Although clearly a great ideas man, Deen expanded too quickly after early success, and by 1813 he was bankrupt (although the coffeehouse continued until 1833 under different management).

Deen and his wife moved down to Brighton, where the building of the Pavilion was lending an exotic flavour to things. He became 'shampooing surgeon' to both Prinny and later, William IV. His financial misfortunes continued, but he appears to have been a philosophical soul, eventually dying in 1851, of a decline, after the death of his wife from uterine cancer. They are buried together in St Nicholas's churchyard, Brighton.

Deen and Jane had at least five children together, although the records are conflicting. Their son William became a postman in the West End and held that position for his lifetime. Another son, Frederick took over where his father left off in Brighton, also teaching both boxing and fencing. His own son, also Frederick, became a surgeon at Guy's Hospital and completed pioneering research into hypertension before his early death at 35.

Deen Mahomet and his family are an excellent example of the delicate balance between promoting one's own 'otherness' and yet becoming thoroughly immersed in a new culture. Their integration into British society is a heady mixture of affection, family, money, skill and intellect as well as financial mismanagement and disaster, and one that deserves to be more widely known.

*I am aware that to claim any establishment as London's first anything is dangerous. As soon as there is a small community, there are establishments to feed them with a taste of home. However, the Deen Mahomet appears to be the first Indian to market his cuisine to the London market, rather than solely catering for his fellow Indians.

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November 6, 2009

The little Black girl who helped end slavery in Britain: Dido Elizabeth Belle

In my previous post on 'On Matters Pertaining to Slavery-' I related Lord Mansfield's role in bringing about the beginning of the end of slavery in Britain, at least as far as the law was concerned, in 1772. Mansfield was a moderate and educated man, but at his home, Kenwood House in Hampstead was a young person who no doubt influenced his thinking: Dido Elizabeth Belle, his illegitimate, mixed-race grand-niece.

John Lindsay was Lord Mansfield's nephew and a Captain in the Royal Navy, stationed in the Caribbean. When he was 23 or 24, he had a relationship with a Black woman named Maria Belle who bore him a daughter c. 1762. There has been a great deal of speculation about Maria Belle's status: whether enslaved, captured, free and so on. It is likely she was a slave aboard a captured Spanish ship. These points are moot, as far as I can see, as John Lindsay was sufficiently fond of the child (indicating a continuing relationship with the mother) to send her to his uncle before 1766, when she was baptized in St George's Church, Bloomsbury. There is no further record of Maria Belle, so far.

John Lindsay's daughter wasn't the only child at Kenwood. There was already another little girl there: Elizabeth Murray, an orphaned cousin. Lord and Lady Mansfield were childless and the presence of the two little girls must have been a great boon. However, when Elizabeth Lindsay arrived, it was clear another name would have to be found for her, to differentiate between the two children, and so she was baptized with the name of the African Queen Dido.

The two girls were playmates, although no letters or records have so far come to light about their relationship. The most detailed account of Dido's presence in the house is from the diary of Thomas Hutchinson, an American Loyalist living in London. In August 1779 he attended a dinner at Kenwood (in reality a late lunch) and had the following to say:

A Black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies and after coffee, walked with the company in the gardens, one of the young ladies having her arm within the other. She had a very high cap and her wool was much frizzled in her neck, but not enough to answer the large curls now in fashion. She is neither handsome nor genteel - pert enough. I knew her history before, buyt my Lord mentioned it again. Sir John Lindsay having taken her mother prisoner in a Spanish vessel, brought her to England where she was delivered of this girl, of which she was then with child, and which was taken care of by Lord M., and has been educated by his family. He calls her Dido, which I suppose is all the name she has. He knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her - I dare not day criminal.

A few years ago there was a cause before his Lordship bro't by a Black for recovery of his liberty. A Jamaica planter being asked what judgement his Ldship would give? "No doubt" he answered "He will be set free, for Lord Mansfield keeps a Black in his house which governs him and the whole family."

She is a sort of Superintendant over the dairy, poultry yard, etc, which we visited. And she was called upon by my Lord every minute for this thing and that, and shewed the greatest attention to everything he said.

Dido would have been about fifteen at the time, so this is no small achievement. That her position within the household was slightly uncertain is no surprise, but the fact that she joined the family in the dining room, and that the guest was taken to see her domestic successes is a mark of how highly they regarded her. Around the same time, the portrait at the head of the gallery was painted. For a long time it was attributed to Johann Zoffany, although I think it is clear he did not paint it (it lacks the crystalline clarity usually present in his work, although the detailing of the costumes is indicative of Zoffany). It is however, a high quality portrait that was painted to hang prominently. Elizabeth Murray wears an aristocratic/pastoral costume of the style of the 1760s, to emphasize her Englishness and a book to show her ladylike tastes. Dido wears a modish and exotic silk-satin dress with a turban (meant to signify her 'foreign' status), plus a very expensive pearl earring. She carries a basket of exotic fruit, which may indicate her position within the household as being concerned with the gardens, or supply of food, plus another indication of her 'exotic' origins. There have been many readings of this portrait, but I find many of them grasp at straws. My reading is that the portrait is intended almost like a photograph: the two girls are walking in the grounds of Kenwood, and are 'surprised' by the artist, who attempts to capture them. Dido laughingly points to her complexion and makes to leave Elizabeth alone, but her cousin and friend attempts to restrain her, smiling for the artist. The moment is captured, as Lord and Lady Mansfield no doubt intended when they had it commissioned.

Dido was a favourite with her great-uncle and acted as his secretary when his sight began to fail. The fact that she was a valuable and well-cared-for member of the family is evident from the account books (one entry for her allowance is in the gallery). In 1770, Edward Lonsdale furnished the family with a bill for 'a mahogany table for Dido'. A good dentist was employed to extract two of her teeth at some expense in 1789 at 5 shillings each. Her bed of was draped with chintz which was starched and finished by a professional brought in to do the job. Asses milk was purchased for her (presumably over a period of time during an illness) at the vast expense of over £3 in 1791. Her £30 annual allowance was way short of Elizabeth's but then Elizabeth was an heiress in her own right, and it was still plenty of money for a young girl whose keep was funded anyway.

Elizabeth left Kenwood to marry in 1785, and Dido was left alone, although she continued to scribe for her great-uncle. Her father died in 1788, and left his wife (by whom he had had no children) £1000 to split between John, another illegitimate child and Dido, indicating her awareness and acceptance of his children. Nothing is known about John, but Lindsay's obituary records Dido as 'amiable' and 'accomplished'. Lord Mansfield wrote a will in 1783 confirming Dido's freedom and leaving her some money. This has been construed by various historians as meaning she was previously enslaved, but much more likely is that Lord Mansfield wanted to make her status absolutely clear in the event of his death. He died in 1793, and left Dido an annuity.

In December 1793, Dido was married in St George's Church, Hanover Square, to a John Davinier, very likely a steward at Kenwood. He was not English, having arrived some time in the 1780s, but little else is known about him. It seems likely that they waited until after Lord Mansfield died to marry. She and Davinier had three sons together: twin boys, Charles and Edward in 1795, and William Thomas in 1800. They lived in what is now Ebury Street in Pimlico. Dido died in 1804, aged a little over 40, and was buried in the St George's burial ground. Her remains were exhumed and reburied, along with all the others in 1960 when the area was redeveloped.

Fifteen years later, in 1975, Dido's last relative, Harold Daviniere died a free white South African in a land still struggling under apartheid.

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October 22, 2009

Ignatius Sancho, Britain's first Black voter-

The exact date and place of Ignatius Sancho's birth are unknown. The idea he was born, as his unreliable biographer Jekyll suggests, upon a slave ship in 1729, seems unlikely, but the date is as good as we have. By 1731, Sancho was in Greenwich, living with three wealthy sisters as a servant (most probably the Legge sisters, who lived opposite Montagu House on Blackheath). Education was not viewed necessary for Sancho, but this does not mark him out as special at this point in time. Nor is it by any means certain what his status was, with the sisters, but his degree of freedom seems to make it likely he was a servant rather than a slave.

The Duke of Montagu was a notorious practical joker, but also a liberal and tolerant man with wide interests. He saw Sancho out and about and brought him home to amuse his wife, Lady Mary Churchill, but also took an interest in him and encouraged him to learn to read and write. Montagu died in 1749, and this seems about the time Sancho decided he could no longer live with the sisters, and tried to find a place with the bereaved Duchess. It appears at first that she sent him away, but was later persuaded to employ him as a butler. When she died in 1751, Lady Mary left him with a year's salary and a £30 annuity. Sancho promptly fell into women and cards. However, after an 'unsuccessful contest at cribbage with a Jew, who won his cloaths', he appears to have given up gambling.

What Sancho did between 1751 and 1766, when he re-enters to the service of the Montagu family, is a bit of a mystery. He returned as a valet to his old employer's son-in-law, who had inherited the title (in a roundabout way: it was recreated for him). In 1768, he was painted by Thomas Gainsborough as above. He married Ann Osborne, a young woman of 'West-Indian origin', and probably also in the service of the Montagus in some fashion. By 1773 Sancho was crippled by gout and could no longer work for the Duke, who accordingly, set him up with a freehold in Westminster and a small grocery shop, which appears to have been successful enough to keep him and his family.

He was a prolific letter writer, and some of them show an astonishing, journalistic writing style. In particular, the ones sent to John Spink giving a detailed account of the Gordon Riots, with times noted next to actual events, is invaluable. His letter of 1766 to Laurence Sterne, the master of sentimentality, gives a neat picture of his life, devoid of self-pity:

I am one of those people who the vulgar and illiberal call 'Negurs.' - The first part of my life was rather unlucky, as I was placed with a family who judged ignorance the best and only security for obedience. - A little reading and writing I got by unwearied application. - The latter part of my life has been -tho' God's blessing, truly fortunate, having spent it in the service of one of the best families in the kingdom.

He wrote to newspapers under the pseudonym Africanus, and positively identified himself as of 'Afric' birth. In 1776, he writes a short opinion of the slave trade, showing at once his sound judgement:

In Africa, the poor wretched natives who are blessed with the most fertile and luxurious soil - are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing:-the Christian's abominable traffic for slaves - and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty kings - encouraged by their Christian customers - who carry them strong liquors - to enflame their national madness - and powder - and bad fire arms - to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping. - But enough - it is a subject that sours my blood - and I am sure will not please the friendly bent of your social affections. - I mentioned these only to guard my friend against being too hasty in condemning the knavery of a people who as bad as they may be - possibly - were made worse - by their Christian visitors. - Make human nature they study - wherever thou residest - whatever the religion - or the complexion - study their hearts.

Sancho was very keen on music, and published three collections in his lifetime. After his death a collection of his letters were published, recording excellent vignettes on the life of a gentleman of middling social status at the time. In the summer of 1779, he writes of his hopes that the family dog, Nutts, will not catch fleas in the heat, and in September of 1780, he writes to his friend Mrs Cocksedge that he has cast his 'free vote' in the election of that year, in favour of Charles James Fox. This small note makes Ignatius Sancho the first recorded Black voter in Britain.

He died in December of that year, the Gentleman's Magazine recording, the first known British obituary of a Black individual, the demise of 'the Extraordinary Negro' Ignatius Sancho, Butler, and Grocer of Westminster.

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October 21, 2009

The Westminster Bridge Lottery and Catherine the Great's Wine Cistern-

This is a story of many little strands, but they knit together so please bear with me. My posts so far have focussed on the incomers; this one focusses on the working trades already resident in London during the early Georgian period.

I have written before about the Huguenots and their influence upon Georgian London. Not everyone took kindly to their arrival in the years following 1685, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. A rash of petitions were presented to every public body in London protesting about the 'foreigners' who worked for less, undercutting British journeymen. The goldsmiths gathered together to sign their petition again the 'aliens' in 1697, and again a few years later. Amongst them was the English Catholic Goldsmith Anthony Nelme. The fact that he was a massive hypocrite, who bought cheap but excellent goods from the immigrant workers, and later replicated them himself seems to have escaped him.

Amongst Nelme's apprentices was a boy names Henry Jernegen. Jernegen was from a family of landed gentry and the apprenticeship with Nelme was probably a smokescreen to ensure the boy became free of the Goldsmiths' Company, and so would hold a prestigious position when he became a banker, which he rapidly did. Henry Jernegen was in no way a working goldsmith, but employed others to produce commissions for his clients (rather like ordering a set of cutlery from Garrards now). Jernegen was lucky, or unlucky enough to land Littleton Pointz Meynell as a client. Meynell was raised as a banker, but instead became a massive gambler, in a way only possible in the 18th century. His wins were mammoth, his losses, likewise. In between winning and losing, Jernegen made attempts to divert his client's capital into 'fashioned bullion', essentially works of art in sterling silver. This helped Jernegen in two ways: he could mitigate his losses through commission, and make sure his client had some money in commodities.

In 1730, Jernegen and Meynell (pronounced Men'll) came up with an astonishing idea: to create the biggest wine cistern ever. Wine cisterns are modernly called coolers, which is wrong. A wine cistern had a companion piece to a fountain which spouted wine into the cistern and into which guests dipped their glasses, rather than wait for a servant. (sounds an excellent idea) The largest ever cistern had held 20 gallons, made in 1721. The Meynell cistern was to hold 60 gallons and weighs over a quarter of a ton, making it the size of a bathtub (see the image in the gallery). I have posed for pictures in an exact copy of this cistern, and when seated on the bottom, you can just see my eyes over the top. It is enormous.

The silversmith commissioned to make it was Charles Kandler, originally from Saxony (an immigrant then?). At some stage, Kandler became a Roman Catholic, and married into a well-to-do Catholic family. He made huge amounts of silver for the Norfolk family of Arundel, indicating he was favoured by Catholic families. Charles Frederick Kandler is widely thought to be a relative of Johann Joachim Kandler, talented modeller for the Meissen factory, which explains the amazing handles on this piece.

Clearly, a piece of silver weighing more than a quarter of a ton takes time to make, and when it was finished, so was Meynell: he had no money to pay. Jernegen sued him, but had no luck, because Meynell was broke and Jernegen was stuck with this enormous White Elephant. It just so happened that the State was stuck for money at the time, and holding a lottery to rebuild Westminster Bridge. Jernegen offered the cistern as first prize, in hopes to avoid financial embarrassment, and was accepted (taking a percentage of the ticket sales and so recouping his losses). Not enough tickets sold, and it wasn't until 1737 that a second huge and prestigious state lottery offered the cistern as a prize in hopes to fund the bridge rebuilding (the image in the gallery details the catalogue for the cistern). A Dorset farmer won first prize, but there being little call for a rococo silver bathtub in Dorset, he sold it.

Another mystery ensues. No one knows who the cistern was sold to, but by the following year (1738), it was in Russia and forming part of Catherine the Great's collection. (My personal wager is on Paul de Lamerie, and his underground network. It was probably sold over lunch as soon as the lottery was drawn.) It remains in the Hermitage Museum, the largest extant piece of antique solid silver in the world. It is a huge folly, and a beautiful one: utterly dispensable yet extraordinary.

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Filed under // Artisan London French London Huguenots Immigrants London Apprentices London at Leisure Trading in London

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October 13, 2009

Fan etiquette-

The craze for fans took hold in England during the Elizabethan period, when large parties and balls became fashionable. The combination of new cosmetics, heavy clothes and a crush of people meant a fan was useful for keeping cool, or at least preventing your face from running. The first ones were paddle-shaped or made from feathers, and pretty enough but by the 18th century they had become works of art. Except in England. Until the Huguenots arrived and the Chinese export trade detected a gap in the market, English fans were fairly dull and of poor quality.

The arrival of the French soon changed that, and throughout the 17thC the quality of fans improves. During the massive influx of Huguenot refugees, one Jacob Chassereau settled in London and took fan-making to a new level. The trade-card of his son Frances, with its Royal Appointment is featured below. Fans took on a strict shape and form: they were constructed as per the image in the gallery, they covered 1/3rd of a circle and must be no bigger than 12 and a half inches long. The decoration was whatever pleased the lady in question. Some of them are quite spectacular, as you can see (the white one is Chinese for the English market, and the other is French, same). The visible parts consist of the sticks and the leaf. The sticks were made of wood, ivory, mother-of-pearl, gold and so on. The leaves are often catalogued as 'swan's skin', but they aren't; they are either paper or lamb's/kid's skin.

Painters specialized in decorating fans. In England the shepherds and nymphs of Watteau and later Boucher were popular. (Watteau himself painted fans, including the bridal fan of Adelaide of Savoy in 1709.) By 1711, the craze for expensive fans had become such that Joseph Addison felt the need to mock it roundly in his coffee house publication, The Spectator. His excellent article, 'advertising' his Academy for the Instruction of the Use of the Fan explains how he drills young ladies in fan etiquette in a military fashion.

The Fluttering of the Fan is the last, and indeed the master-piece of the whole Exercise; but if a lady does not misspend her time, she may make herself mistress of it in three months...There is the angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry fluttter, and the amorous flutter...I have seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to have come within the wind of it...I need not add, that a fan is either a prude of coquet according to the nature of the person who bears it.

p.s. I teach young gentlemen the whole art of gallanting a fan.

Spectator, no. 102

This mockery arose from the purported 'Language of the Fan'. The Rotari portrait of circa 1750 of the girl with the butcher's hands seems to indicate there was some kind of message to be imparted by particular postures. Whether such a language was ever really deployed by young ladies at fashionable parties is impossible to know, but a compilation of common themes is as follows:

Fan closed, tip to lips: we are overheard

Ditto, tip to right cheek: yes

Ditto, tip to left cheek: no

Ditto, tip to forehead: you are out of your mind

Chin on tip: you annoy me

Ditto, tip to heart: I love you

Lower open fan until pointing at the ground: I hate you

The Fan-Makers' Livery Company was incorporated in 1709 (although not officially given Livery until 1806), and it still exists today as a charitable organization. It was the last of the 'original' livery companies, being number 76 and no other new Company was created until the Master Mariners in 1926 (the Carmen don't count).

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October 12, 2009

'To the French Church here in the city-'

Samuel Pepys records five visits to the French Church on Threadneedle Street in his famous diaries, dating from 1662 to 1664. The Pepys's closest church was St Olave's, and it it where both he and his wife Elizabeth are buried, but he seemed to have had a fondness for the French Church and his snippets of information give a valuable insight into the nature of worship there. As a rule, I don't dwell on the Huguenot's status as religious refugees, but in investigating the reasons behind their motivation, it's necessary to get an understanding of the value of their church in providing a structure for the community.

The Threadneedle Street Church had undergone a split during the Civil War, declaring for Cromwell and causing the Royalist members to leave. By 1660, the Royalists were established in their own church in the Savoy Chapel (any mention of this is curiously absent from the Chapel's website) and worshipping to an Anglican liturgy, although it was delivered in French. Those that remained in the Threadneedle Street church were traditionalists, and rich. They were not the refugees who would arrive after 1681, but men who had come to London to worship in peace, and too make money. Members of the congregation included future founding members of Bank of England, and some of the wealthiest merchants and brokers in the City. The nature of strict Huguenot worship is lost, but Pepys's diary gives a nice picture of what it was like to attend a service.

In the afternoon I to the French Church here in the city, and stood in the aisle all the sermon, with great delight hearing a very admirable sermon, from a very young man, upon the article in our creed, in order of catechism, upon the Resurrection.

30th November, 1662

Huguenot churches were famously relaxed in the way they conducted their services. In a 16thC picture of the Lyons temple, there is even a dog sitting in the aisle, appearing to listen to the sermon (could be symbolic, but the tone of the work is vernacular so no reason to suppose it isn't a real dog). The congregation at St James's Square was warned, at the end of the 17thC not to injure English sensibilities by sitting on the altar railings (I doubt this would have happened in Threadneedle Street). The sermon was the central part of the Sunday service and was given without notes. Some speakers, like the young man above, were interesting. Jean Le Marche, an Church elder at the Threadneedle Street Church, was pretty dull, and famed for going on for three hours, until he was left 'preaching to blank walls'. He wasn't the only one, Louis Herault preached the 'tedious, long sermon' Pepys records in his diary for 28th of December 1668.

Something about the French Church appealed to Pepys, although he doesn't state in any detail what that might have been. It is clear that there was no problem with attending the services, even if you weren't a Huguenot (although also worth noting that Elizabeth was of Huguenot descent and Sam understood French, so the service would not have presented any great problem for him). What you couldn't do at a Huguenot church was take communion without a mereaux, or communion token, which recognized you as a Huguenot and member of a particular congregation. Communion could be taken as any Huguenot church as long as you had one. There is a picture of a French one from the 16thC in the gallery. Communion was only taken four times a year, as Huguenots weren't keen on the importance placed upon it by the Catholic church.

Pepys makes a note in 1663 of attending the French Church after a Sunday lunch and finding the Dutch congregation there. This is likely to have been Dutch Walloons, presumably without somewhere convenient of their own to worship at that time. Most importantly, the service was in Dutch, so Sam left. Another time he arrived too late to get in. Both times, he resorted to his own church of St Olave's.

Without getting too dull, the Huguenot service relied on the Genevan psalter from the mid 16thC. The singing of psalms was central to the Huguenot expression of faith as defined by Calvin and the music was a great attraction for those who came to Huguenot churches. It is commonly believed that the Huguenot congregation did not sing themselves, but relied upon a choir. I'm not so sure: in 1664 Pepys goes twice to the French church and mentions three sisters, whom he sits next to in the earlier entry. They are the three sisters of the French pastor, and he notes they 'sing prettily'. It is interesting to note that the polymath and all-round big hitter Sir Samuel Morland also attended this service, so the church was clearly not without its supporters, or perhaps he just liked the music too. Either way, the psalms used by the Huguenots are beautiful, and if this link works, you can listen one here.

The Threadneedle Street Church remained in use until 1841, when it was moved to Soho during the rebuilding of Threadneedle Street.

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October 8, 2009

John Castaing, Jonathan's Coffee House and the birth of the Stock Exchange

When asked to name a London coffee house, most people automatically say, 'Lloyd's'. In way they'd be right; Lloyd's is famous for the birth of the insurance industry, but Jonathan's was arguably a more important venue, and also based around Exchange Alley.

Jonthan's was opened by Jonathan Miles in 1680. Along with Garraway's, it was frequented by City businessmen, although the 'quality' was better at the latter. Trading in stocks was no new invention but it accelerated quickly with the arrival of the Huguenots. They had liquidated their assets on leaving France and some of them were very rich indeed. It is a mystery how they got their money out of France, but stocks would certainly have been one method, and there was a strong history of Huguenot stock trading in the Netherlands already.

By 1690, there were at least 100 companies selling stocks that were traded in London. Their value fluctuated according to the news that came and went along the international information routes: the ships coming and going from London's docks. News of lost cargoes, huge hauls, diseased crews and delays for repair were brought back by thousands of vessels, both large and small. The coffee houses employed boys to go to the docks, hang around and wait for news, then run back as soon as they heard anything. They would also run to the houses of the biggest merchants and butter up the servants for information. Then they would report to the coffee house and their findings would be displayed on a board behind the bar. Entry to the coffee house cost a penny, and then the coffee was included, so this service wasn't free. The better coffee houses such as Jonathan's soon began to print their own news sheet, with the gossip relevant to their clientele. John Castaing was a Huguenot broker who spent a lot of time at Jonathan's and he began to write up stock prices, bullion prices and exchange rates in 1698, publishing the sheet on a Tuesday and a Friday as The Course of Exchange and Other Things.

Castaing's prices were relied upon by many of the coffee houses in the City, even though other more comprehensive sheets were printed. His exchange rate was commonly used, and the publication continued for almost a century. Castaing's success was largely connected to his Huguenot background. It can be no coincidence that the packet boat from Harwich to the Hook of Holland ran on Wednesdays and Saturdays, taking Castaing's prices along with the scribblings of Pierre Des Maizeaux from the coffee houses of the West End where men such as Newton informed the conversation. The Huguenots who remained in the Netherlands were a substantial network of both money and thinkers.

Jonathan's burned down in 1748, ending an era. New Jonathan's was built without delay, supported by various brokers and soon took on the name of The Stocks Exchange. The coffee house was close to the site of London's original livestock market (The 'Stocks Market); the two were soon combined, and the London Stock Market was born.

Future posts will include the other London coffee houses, their origin in the Levant Company and the first records of Muslim London.

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