You have mail (2)

Previously, the focus was upon the coaching inn and its connection to Mary Simpson. Now we turn to Mary 2 – Mary Ann Skudder – and her association with mail delivery.

Mary Ann was born in Great Yarmouth, described in Great Expectations by Peggotty as the ‘finest place in the universe’, and baptised in the same church in which her parents married, now designated a minster church and possibly the oldest building in Great Yarmouth.

St Nicholas, Yarmouth

http://www.photosofchurches.com/norfolk-great-yarmouth-church.htm

Mary Ann’s father, John, married Elizabeth Fleming on 10 June 1798 and is recorded in Lane’s Masonic Records as being a mail coachman.Whilst there is an outside possibility that he visited The Swan with Two Necks, ‘Aldgate was the general starting point and terminus for all East Anglian coaches.’ This perhaps suggests that it is unlikely that James Simpson and John Skudder met in the course of their employment. (http://www.mynorwich.co.uk/harleston-stage-coaches-and-carriers/)

Coachman were not postal employees but hired by the inns at which the coaches arrived. They were famous for their driving ability, so famous in fact that gentlemen adopted the coachman’s dress style rather than the other way around (working people mimicking gentlemen).

They wore a drab great coat that might have many short capes layered at the shoulders to lead rain away from their bodies and provide under layers that were not readily wet through. They wore a spotted Belcher handkerchief instead of a cravat, a tall beaver hat, striped waistcoat, white corduroy breeches, and boots. A coachman carried a whip with which he was said to be so expert that he could flick flies off his horses without startling them.

http://www.georgianindex.net/R_mail/coach/rm_driver.html

The coachman

The mail coach is believed to been the brain child of John Palmer. He certainly made his fortune from them! The first designated mail coach was in 1784. Before this, letters had been carried to their destinations by a horse and rider but it was a system riddled with problems:

Over-ridden horses fell lame or ill, the temptation to linger with a mug of beer over the ale-house fire was too great to be resisted, on lonely country roads the boys were sometimes set upon and robbed. So many letters never reached their destination that correspondents hesitated to use the post

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/bynpwllr/coaches2.htm

In 1784, Palmer advertised that the coach Diligence would convey the mail with an armed guard for protection and could also carry four passengers. Beginning on August 2^nd, it

will set off every Night at Eight o’clock from the Swan with Two Necks Lad’s Lane London, and arrive at the Three Tuns Inn Bath before Ten the next Morning

The price for passengers was twenty-eight shillings and, perhaps aware of the previously poor reputation of coachman

Both the Guard and the Coachman … have given ample security to the Proprietors for their conduct, so that those Ladies and Gentlemen, who may be pleased to honour them with their Encouragement, may depend upon every Respect and Attention.

The terror of road travel at the time was the highwayman but second to him was the mail guard! Rosamond Bayne-Powell in Travellers in Eighteenth-Century England cites Pennant (1792): ‘these guards shoot at dogs, hogs, sheep and poultry as they pass the road, and even in towns to the great terror and danger of the inhabitants’ http://www.ourcivilisation.com/

Coachmen supplemented their low wages in tips for carrying mail, undercutting the official charges. On good routes, income could rise from 12s per week (for the night coach, best to be avoided) to £400-£500 annual income. These were the ‘kings’ of the road. ‘The men who drove the mail-coaches were a brave, hardy race, many of them great characters.’ One of them, William Salter, drove the Yarmouth stage-coach (no dates cited so not possible to know if he were contemporaneous with John Skudder); part of his epitaph reads:

Here lies Will Salter, honest man

Deny it Envy if you can

True to his Business and his Trust

Always punctual, always just …

The coach called The Star ‘started from Yarmouth, [and] was the only coach stopping at Harleston that went on all the way to London without passengers having to change to another coach.’ http://www.mynorwich.co.uk/harleston-stage-coaches-and-carriers/ (Again, no dates cited so impossible to say if this were the coach on which Skudder was coachman.) A German traveller, J. H. Campe, found his journey from Great Yarmouth to London a ‘veritable torture’. http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2015/03/travelling-the-roads-of-regency-england-with-louise-allen.html [no date given but early 1800s]

Whether John Skudder was a ’king of the road’ or one of the poor earners is unknown but when his daughter was admitted to the School, the home address given was Eagle Assurance office which rather sounds as if he had perhaps changed occupation.

However, a direct descendant of John Skudder later pointed out that ‘On the 22nd of April 1802 he was made a Mason in the United Grand Lodge of England, his occupation shown as Mail Coachman. His age is given as 32’. Seven years later, when he died (in 1809) his age was given as 49. He was buried in Great Yarmouth on the 18th June 1809. Mary Ann was admitted to the School in 1810 which fits with the death of her father but it does not explain why the ‘family’ address given in the School registers is the Eagle Assurance office. It seems unlikely that this little mystery will ever be solved!

The Eagle Insurance Company was founded in 1807, the purpose being ‘for fire and life assurance and for granting annuities’ and its City office was at 41 Threadneedle Street. (info from http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cats/118/19302.htm)

Advertisement in Bell’s Weekly Messenger 07 August 1836

Following its success, many other companies set up similar businesses. ‘Initially, each company employed its own fire department to prevent and minimise the damage from conflagrations on properties insured by them.’ http://heritage.aviva.com/our-history/companies/h/hand-in-hand-fire-and-life-insurance-society/ . They issued firemarks (now very collectible) to denote which premises were insured. This system had an unfortunate flaw in that burning buildings were ignored if seen not to be ‘one of theirs’. The solution was eventually to establish a municipal authority to which the insurance companies contributed to establish a town fire brigade. This almost worked in that the fire fighters took no notice of whose firemarks were there but rather favoured those buildings that were insured against those that weren’t!

C18th contract & Hogarth print

18th century doc image By Charles Simms [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Cartoon by Hogarth recalling the position of prominence held by the Union Fire Office, 1762 from http://heritage.aviva.com/our-history/companies/h/hand-in-hand-fire-and-life-insurance-society/

It is interesting, but entirely coincidental, that one of the early companies, several mergers later, became what is now Aviva but which was for many years Norwich Union – another East Anglian connection?

You have mail (1)

This post relates to two early pupils and their connection to the early mail system – hence the title. Mary Simpson and Mary Ann Skudder were born in different years and different places and (of course!) had different parents but they also had similarities. Firstly, the obvious one of the same forename and a surname beginning with S; secondly, both were pupils at the Freemasons’ School, then in St George’s Fields, where their time overlapped by approximately eighteen months – Mary 1 was there 1804-1811 and Mary 2 between 1810 and 1816 – who knows, perhaps they shared a ‘dorm?

The plan of first floor of the School at St George’s Fields

Thirdly, their respective fathers, whilst probably not knowing each other, shared common ground in their occupation. James Simpson was a servant at a coaching inn and John Skudder was a mail coachman who may well have called at the inn in question.

When Mary Simpson was admitted to the School, her home address was recorded as The Swan with Two Necks with the parenthetical qualification (servants). This laconic statement tells us two things: firstly that probably both her parents were employed there and, secondly, although there were other inns with that name, the absence of any other information implies that this was the most noted one. We are not given the information about what either parent did but we might surmise that the mother, another Mary Simpson, was employed in a domestic capacity whereas the father may have worked with the coaches and/or horses (but see later).

‘This was one of the really well-known inns of the City of London. It was first mentioned 1556. Its site was between Wood Street and Milk Street beside a short street called Lad Lane.’ https://knowyourlondon.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/swan-with-two-necks-inn-lad-lane. Nothing now remains of it and even Lad Lane has disappeared being absorbed into Gresham St. The image below is captured from Google Earth street view.

Corner of Gresham St and Milk St where the inn stood

John Taylor’s 1637 Carriers’ Cosmographie notes that the inn received the coaches from Manchester ‘every second Thursday’ and that the coaches that passed through Stafford en route from other Lancashire destinations arrived on Thursdays. By 1829 there were ‘23 daily departures by mail coaches’ and by 1855 ‘John Timbs, in his Curiosities of London … [describes it as] the head coach-inn and booking-office for the North.’ (knowyourlondon)

In 1798, in a letter to Charles Upton sent from Jermyn St, London, the inn is mentioned.

Facsimile

Dear Sir,

I sent your bill and my Bills on the late Mr. Broadhurst in a parcel to the Swan with Two Necks in Lad Lane last night to go by this mornings coach to Derby so that you will receive them tomorrow evening.

(This letter was ‘graciously shared with readers of the Victorian Web by Eunice and Ron Shanahan from their website, Letters from the Past’)

It had cost 7d to send and shows that, by this point, the mail coach system was reliable enough that items could be despatched with confidence that they would arrive safely. Competition was clearly keen but The Swan with Two Necks was the leading contender. ‘Of the 28 mail coaches which left London every evening, half were horsed at this inn.’ It was famous enough that it appeared on stamps in the C20th in 1984 and 1994.

Royal mail stamp cover

The Swan with Two Necks stamp was issued in January 1994, the illustration being by Andrew Davidson. Information from http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/letters/upton.html

Images of the inn

The image on the left (attrib. Pollard) dates from circa 1820 and shows a coach about to leave. The galleried areas had the rooms for those travellers who stayed overnight before departing on the coach. https://knowyourlondon.wordpress.com The image on the right is slightly later (1831) showing the growing prosperity of the inn. https://georgianera.wordpress.com/category/georgian-era-people-and-personalities/

William Cobbett wrote, ‘Next to a fox hunt the finest sight in England is a stage coach just ready to start…The vehicle itself, the harness, all so complete and so neatly arranged, so strong and clean and good; the beautiful horses, impatient to be off; the inside full and the outside covered, in every part, with men, women and children, boxes, bags, bundles…’ http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2015/03/travelling-the-roads-of-regency-england-with-louise-allen.html

It should be noted, however, that not all of the proprietors of The Swan were successful. In the Morning Advertiser of 1807, the proceedings of the Old Bailey on 11^th April records that William Williams was indicted for attempting a shortcut method of raising capital!

Newspaper report

The Swan with Two Necks was described in The British Almanac in 1862 as having been ‘built for Messrs. Chaplin and Horne, the railway carriers, and has a frontage of nearly 100 feet, a depth of 150 feet, and a height of 64 feet above the pavement, while beneath are warehouses and extensive stabling.’ (knowyourlondon). By this stage it was no longer an inn but had become the receiving offices ‘for Goods for the Great Eastern, London & South Western, South Eastern, London, Brighton & South Coast & London, Chatham & Dover Railway Companies’ as listed in an 1869 Trade Directory (ibid).

William Chaplin succeeded William Waterhouse at the Swan with Two Necks inn in about 1823 and by 1827 his coach business employed 300 to 400 horses, which by 1835 had risen to 1,200. http://suemillard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-napoleon-of-coaching.html

Two adverts for coach travel

The two newspaper adverts above are from the early nineteenth century.

Intriguingly, http://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/StLawrenceJewry/Swan2Necks.shtml lists a James Simpson connected with the inn at about the right period

1802/James Simpson/../../../Sun Fire Office records, held at Guildhall Library

1804/Messrs Simpson & Williams / Innholders /../../../Sun Fire Office records

(Information provided by Stephen Harris for the website)

Whether this is the father of Mary is impossible to say: neither James nor Simpson are uncommon names and it may simply be coincidence. It does, however, present the intriguing chance that we can place him right at the scene and in more than just a servant capacity.

Logo for a modern pub of this name

The curious name of the inn is generally thought to derive from a corruption of the words ‘nicks’ rather than ‘necks’ and relates to the marking of the ownership of the swans. All swans on the Thames without marking belonged to the Crown; those with one nick in the bill belonged to the Dyers’ Company and those with two nicks belonged to the Vintners’ Company. This marking still happens annually, known as swan-upping, although today the swans are fitted with leg rings rather than having their bills marked. Another version of the name derivation is that swan neckes [sic] are actually the cygnets and there is one pub in Lancashire with this name which has a sign depicting a swan with two cygnets. The logo above is from The Swan with Two Necks in Blackbrook, Staffordshire. For many years it had a sign which read ‘The Swan with Two Neck’ [sic]. It was never clear whether this was an error on the part of the sign writer or a vernacular form. The Midlands and Northern dialects have many examples of a singular being used as a plural, as in “My holiday were for two week”. When the inn was renovated a few years ago, the logo was redesigned as shown. It may now be grammatically correct but, somehow, it has lost some of its charm!

 

Golden Square Flowers

Golden Square Flowers

Caroline’s name in the register

Caroline Pollard, the 53rd child to enter the Freemasons’ School, was the daughter of George and Susannah. She was born in Bromley St Leonards in 1788 and baptised at St Mary’s on 11^th July 1790. She may well have been one of eight girls born to Mr & Mrs Pollard but it is difficult to be certain as the baptismal indices do not supply dates or places. There were eight girls born to a George and Susannah Pollard (and two sons) but the only ones we can be certain about are Caroline, Charlotte, Lucy and Sarah as they all appear together in census returns recorded as sisters.

The village was named after a priory of the same name, a convent founded in the early days of William the Conqueror’s reign, and immortalised by Geoffrey Chaucer in the prologue to The Prioress’s Tale:

Chaucer’s Prioress

(Image of Prioress from http://www.luminarium.org

Chaucer’s apparently complimentary descriptions, far from praising Madame Eglantine’s ability to speak French, is in fact a barbed reference to her speaking with a low class accent and probably an imperfect understanding of the language, learned at the nunnery rather than in France. Chaucer is drawing attention to the fact that an Englishwoman is rather pretentiously speaking French as she thinks it befits her self-perceived status whereas she is speaking it with an ‘East End’ accent, so every word she utters gives her away!

The village retained the name after the Dissolution. There is now no trace of the convent except the chapel of St Mary and part of a wall in the churchyard. What ruins of the convent that might still have been left were demolished to make way for the Blackwall tunnel, opened in 1897. (information from http://www.aim25.ac.uk & Wikipedia )

Gateway and church of St Mary

(Image of gateway from http://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/bromley-by-bow/ and of St Mary’s church from http://www.mernick.org.uk/thhol/p_stmbro.html )

Caroline was admitted to the School at the age of seven and a half in 1796. Unlike many pupils, she was at the school for just over four years, leaving in October 1800. At that point she ‘was returned to her parents’ (rather than apprenticed anywhere) so we do not know why she left at the age of 11 rather than the normal 15. From there until the 1851 census, there is a kind of ‘radio silence’ and we do not know what she did. In 1851, she lived at 8 Warwick St, Golden Square with three sisters.

John Strype wrote of Warwick St that it was ‘a Place not over well built or inhabited’ A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1720, vol. 11, bk. VI, p. 84, cited by www.british-history.ac.uk). ‘Golden Square Area: Warwick Street‘ (in Survey of London: Volumes 31 and 32, St James Westminster, Part 2, ed. F H W Sheppard, London, 1963) goes on to say that ‘Nos. 7 and 8 are only the back of Holland and Sherry’s building in Golden Square’ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols31-2/pt2/pp167-173. Although Holland and Sherry began trading in 1836 it was not until 1886 (i.e. after Caroline and her sisters were at No 8) that the business moved to Golden Square. (information from http://www.hollandandsherry.com/apparel/story.aspx)

Nos 5-8 Warwick St are currently Hammersley House which, although a listed building, seems to have a different style to its two neighbours. It seems likely that the original building matched its neighbours.

Hammersley House today (Google Earth street view)

Further along the street is the Catholic church of St Gregory ‘pillaged during the so-called Gordon Riots of 1780 … the last time that Catholic property in London was destroyed by rioters.’ http://www.ordinariate.org.uk/groups/london-central.php

Church in Warwick St (Google Earth street view)

In the 1861 census, all four sisters continue to reside at No 8 but by now are described as lodging house keepers. Their sole lodger (at the time) was a man described in the census return as a ‘popish priest’. It is unclear who has thus described him – the enumerator or the sisters – and whether there was therefore any religious disapproval intended in the use of the word popish.

In 1851, all four sixty-somethings sisters – Charlotte, Lucy, Sarah & Caroline – were engaged in flower making. https://19thcenturyhistorian.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/a-is-for-artificial-flower-makers/ is very informative of this industry and the role of women within it, noting that most census returns recorded some reference to it ‘despite the fact that making artificial flowers was generally a poorly paid and seasonal occupation.’ It should be noted, however, that Caroline and her sisters employed a household servant in 1851 which either means that they were earning enough from the business to employ one or that they had other money and the flower-making was an occupation rather than a necessity. As they were at the same address ten years later perhaps they owned it although we cannot know for certain. By 1871, the same address is occupied by the Pontet family.

Artificial flowers were big business. They were used to decorate clothing and all but the poorest could afford a few pennies to buy some.

‘astonishingly detailed, hand-assembled flowers were used to decorate dresses, bonnets and hats’ https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/lost-art-flower-making

It should be pointed out here that there were a variety of levels within the trade from the lowest paid ‘more a case of artificial flower mounting – also known as ‘sticking and papering’, or ‘sticking and wiring’, than artificial flower making’ (https://19thcenturyhistorian.wordpress.com) through to people like Emilia ‘Emma’ Fürstenhoff ‘internationally known for her manufacturing and arrangements of artificial flowers of wax, which were a novelty in contemporary Europe.’ (Wikipedia) The ‘sticking & papering’ was paid by the gross and ‘varied from 1¾d to 2½d; the gross took about an hour [to complete].’ (Clementine Black, Married Women’s Work, (London, Virago, 1983), p 31 cited by https://19thcenturyhistorian.wordpress.com)

Flowers were created in a multi-layer process with the heavier manual work (the cutting of the fabric into petal shapes with tools struck by mallets) being done by men. Then the fabric was dyed and left to dry before the women began a process to ‘vein’ the petals to give texture.

‘ …real flowers have concave petals, not flat ones, so the flower-makers would have a tool with a round metal ball on the end, and heat it over a spirit lamp. Then they would press the petal to shape it around the ball.’ (https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/lost-art-flower-making)

Flower making tools

(Image above from https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/lost-art-flower-making)

Once the petals were made, they were then assembled into flower shapes with wire and the flowers into sprays, the wire being covered with silk or paper.

‘Artificial florists were everywhere – it was a job that a woman could do in her own home, with little experience, and which could supplement the household income, and if not actually raise the family out of poverty maybe at least ensure that the roof stayed over their heads for another week.’ https://19thcenturyhistorian.wordpress.com

It could also be done by the disabled, for example, who may have struggled to find other employment.

‘… the Flower Girl’s Christian Mission, where blind and disabled girls from around the City worked to make flowers that were sold for charity. They produced some of the first poppies for the Royal British Legion.’

Information from http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/lost-art-flower-making

The 1891 census recorded 4011 flower makers but as the nineteenth century progressed, the trade became more devalued so that Black’s survey of 1905-8 cited the pay for creating a dozen bunches of eighteen leaves bound together with fine wire being 2d.

Quite what end of the scale the Pollard sisters were at is impossible to say. Nor do we know for how long they were engaged in the trade. They were recorded as artificial flower makers in 1851 but not by 1861. They may have been skilled or they may have done this briefly as a means of occupation – a hobby that brought a small income. Unfortunately, because of the big gaps in her story we do not know how Caroline Pollard spent the greater part of her life. Neither she, nor any of her sisters who lived in Warwick Street, married but presumably were close as they shared a home and two different occupations during their lifetimes. Caroline died in 1864 and was buried at All Souls, Kensal Green on 30th July, her age given as 65 (it was actually 76!) but the address is correct so we assume this to be her. I wonder if there were flowers on her grave?

Artificial rose