The Shadwell Waterfront in the Eighteenth Century

This note draws attention to the online availability, since July 2012, of London's land tax registers and the increasing number of insurance policies for the pre-1800 period also online. The Bludworth and Shadwell Docks and the Mast Yard on the Shadwell waterfront are used as case histories to illustrate the value of these new resources. During the eighteenth century there were present in Shadwell familybased industrial elites concerned with all aspects of shipping. These elites can be traced over two or three generations, and were tied to specific geographical locations in the parish. Few merchants were established on both banks of the Thames.

The great East London parish of Stepney in medieval times extended from the Tower of London to the river Lea, and was part of the Ossulstone Hundred, Middlesex. The area is now governed by the Borough of Tower Hamlets (see figure 1).

Figure 1 The parish of Stepney (Reproduced from A History of the County of Middlesex, vol. XI, Oxford University Press, 1998, 4, fig. 3 by permission of the Executive Editor)

It has long been recognized that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Wapping, Shadwell and Ratcliff were the natural home for mariners and merchants and early explorers linked to the area include Sir Hugh Willoughby and Martin Frobisher. The majority of writers have emphasized the ‘low life Sailortown’ aspects of the area, following John Noorthouck, who in 1773 wrote of the parishes to the east of the Tower of London that they were ‘chiefly inhabited by seafaring persons, and those whose business depends upon shipping in various capacities, are in general close and illbuilt: therefore afford very little worthy [of] observation, except the parish churches’.1

In his well-known book Shipbuilders of the Thames and Medway, Philip Banbury's focus did not allow him to explore the wider aspects of the trades based along the Thames, and which were essential to the growth of the industry. He did identify a few of the shipbuilders on the north bank, such as John Frame in Wapping, William Yeames in Ratcliff and the Menetones in Limehouse, but none specifically in Shadwell.2 More recently an important series of symposia organized between 2000 and 2012 by Stuart Rankin and then Dr Roger Owen, on various aspects of shipbuilding on the Thames, has greatly advanced our knowledge but has not to date covered the north bank of the Thames in the eighteenth century in any detail.

Land Tax, 1692 to 1932

The availability of land tax records for London online has immediately provided a stimulus for a wide range of studies: from the concentration in Ratcliff of the captains of the Hudson's Bay Company to the business connections of the contractors for the first and later fleets taking prisoners to Australia.3 The land tax registers record both ‘rents’ and ‘personal estates’, in addition to the principal tenants and proprietors, but not their occupations. The land tax registers for London's eastern parishes are nearly 95 per cent complete for the period 1740 to 1790 and, with care, individual properties can be traced for over 40 years. One problem is that in 1798 the land tax became a perpetual charge which could be redeemed by payment of a lump sum. When this was done individual properties ‘disappear’ from the records.4

Until 1765 the land tax assessments were based on the ‘rent’ and thereafter on the ‘rack rent’, which was about 50 per cent higher. This confirms Dr Johnson's definition of ‘rack rent’ as being the ‘Annual rent raised to the utmost’.5 The land tax covered land, property and ‘stock’ and the smallest category for assessment was a room with a rent of £2. Using the land tax registers for Shadwell we have identified everyone whose rent was £10 per year or more between 1740 and 1800. All the men paying rents of £10 or more per year were deemed by statute throughout the eighteenth century to be worthy of filling the many unpaid jobs that were required to keep the local administration working. They were also eligible to serve as jurors at the Old Bailey, trustees for overseeing the relief of the poor and as voters in parliamentary elections. The lists of freeholders for the Ossulstone Hundred provide a valuable view of thousands of men who met this requirement. Subsequently they can be frequently traced in other records such as those of the manorial courts, the Middlesex Deeds Register and wills.

Detailed studies of merchants living in London's eastern parishes have shown that a ‘personal estate’ of £100 or more represented a man or woman of considerable wealth. Such a man was Laurence Sulivan who returned from India in 1753 and settled in one of the best houses in Mile End Old Town at 37 Stepney Green. Sulivan used his fortune to establish himself as one of the leaders of the ‘shipping interest’, and to become the accepted leader of the East India Company, the largest and most powerful private company in the world at that time.6

It must be remembered, however, that the levels of ‘personal estate’, sometimes recorded as ‘stock’, were not an attempt to exactly identify a person's total wealth. They were a device used to assist in the raising of a precise sum of money every year, as demanded by the Land Tax Commissioners. For the tax collectors it was sufficient to place a person's ‘personal estate’ into categories such as £25, £50, £75, £100 up to £200, and these amounts were taxed at £1 in £100. So in 1770 the ‘quota’ for Shadwell was the very precise sum of £1,574 19s. 1½d; and the ‘Surplus’ was £41 10s. 2½d. Whether the full amount of land tax was collected is a different question.7 Studies of the land tax between the Tower of London and Ratcliff show that all the high rental properties were on the Thames waterfront.

Insurance policies 1710–1839

In recent years there have been two major improvements to the indexing of the extensive Sun Fire Office insurance policies now held at the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). The most important is the online project, known as A Place in the Sun, which is now available on the LMA website. Begun in 2003 this is an index to all the policies of the Sun Fire Office prior to 1840 in MS 11936. In 2009 the indexing reached 1800, and has currently (September 2012) reached 1790. It already contains over 400,000 names plus trades and addresses. Probably 90 per cent of the entries relate to families and property (including ships and pictures) in London. For before 1794 MS 11936 contains policies from all over the country.8

A less accessible but vital source of information, especially for the period before 1775, is the card index to over 600 trades based on the Sun Fire Office policies between 1710 and early in the nineteenth century. From 1986 to 2010 a team, initially from the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, hereinafter NADFAS, but later continued by non-NADFAS volunteers with broader interests, indexed MSS 11936 and 11937. Their interests included coopers, instrument makers and the shipping industry, and covered England, Scotland and Wales. These indexes are on cards, copies of which are now held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds. For the period 1775 to 1787 a microfiche index to Sun and Royal Exchange policy registers is available at the LMA and certain libraries.

Shadwell

The development of Shadwell essentially began in 1669 when Thomas Neale, FRS, obtained a lease for three lives covering about two-thirds of Shadwell from the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's cathedral. Neale, was known as a ‘projector and politician’ and at one stage in his eventful career he was groom-porter to Charles II, with the considerable salary of £600 per annum. He had a long parliamentary career and was a Justice of the Peace in Middlesex between 1680 and 1686. The parish of St Paul, Shadwell, was created in 1670 out of the larger parish of Stepney, and within the rather small area of 68 acres were developed four major ropeworks, dozens of cooperages, breweries and sugar refineries and along the waterfront the support facilities need by the maritime industries. At the end of the seventeenth century the Four Shillings in the Pound Aid, 1693–4, shows that there were 20 merchants assessed for ‘stock’ of £100 or more on the Shadwell waterside, and indicates the early importance of the area to the trade of London.9

From New Crane Stairs to Bell Wharf Stairs on the north bank of the Thames, a distance of about half a mile, were clustered the numerous specialist industries required in the eighteenth century to provide the supplies and services needed by the thousands of ships, schooners and colliers finding their way to the Pool of London or preparing to sail to the Caribbean, North America, the Mediterranean, Africa and the Far East. Along the waterfront were to be found taverns, whose names attracted seamen from a variety of countries; the King of Denmark at Shadwell Docks, the King of Sweden near Pelican Stairs and the Three Welch Men near Bludworth Docks. Very few taverns have names related to ports west of Ramsgate.

To demonstrate the value of insurance policies and the land tax to maritime historians we have chosen the Bludworth and Shadwell Docks and the Mast Yard as case histories (see figure 2).

Figure 2 Detail of Bludworth and Shadwell Docks and the Mast Yard reproduced from John Rocque, Map of London, Westminster and Southwark. Milk Yard is off New Gravel Lane, now Garnet Street.

The Bludworth Dock

The Bludworth Dock, just east of New Crane Stairs, was a centre for shipwrights and shipbuilders from 1731, and probably earlier, until at least 1831, and was the location for two family-based enterprises; the Bludworths (with various spellings) until 1761 and the family of James Menetone from 1761 until at least 1831.

The wealth of the Bludworth family over two generations is revealed both by rents and wills. The ‘rents’ of £65 and the ‘personal estates’ of £150, for both Sheirlie and Joseph Bladworth are typical of the wealthier merchants of Shadwell. The 1748 will of Sheirlie Bladworth refers to property in Greenwich and the yard and dock in Wapping Wall; he also held £1,000 of South Sea stock. He was followed by Joseph Bladworth, whose 1761 will reveals £3,333 of stock and property in Deptford and Greenwich.10

James Menetone, senior, developed his business at Bludworth Dock from 1761 and was assessed on rents of £165 and ‘personal estate’ of £200, both indicating his local status and wealth. In April 1782 the Menetones, senior and junior, insured their property for £1,400. This covered a sail loft, a trenail house, wedge house, compting house, a crane, crane posts and wharves. In September 1783 the partnership between James Menetone the elder and James Menetone the younger, shipbuilders, was dissolved. The next generation continued to expand the business, both as shipbuilders in Shadwell and Limehouse, and as merchants trading with Africa in 1787. The Menetones had also taken over a shipwright business at Horne's Dock, Broad Street, Ratcliff, that appears to have been established about 1757. In 1774 they expanded into Limehouse, where Banbury noted the construction of HMS Childers in 1778. In 1788 Joseph Menetone of Ratcliff Cross insured the 270-ton Grenville for £1, 000.11 James Menetone, senior, died in 1786 and his son-in-law Robert Oliver, who took over the Bludworth Dock, was left £4,000 ‘to better carry on the business of a shipwright’. Oliver's rents rose to £200 and in 1787 he insured the 600-ton Jamaica Planter for £3,000.12

The Menetone family extended its commitment to shipbuilding by marriage. In 1774 James Smart leased the Branch Dockyard, Limehouse Hole, to James Menetone and later in October 1781 James Menetone junior married Sarah Smart at St Dunstan, Stepney. In April 1782 James Menetone junior and Robert Smart insured their shipwright's business at Limehouse Hole for £2,200. This was for a mould loft, two warehouses, a long shed, saw pit, carpenter's shop, smith's shop, a house and offices. After Menetone senior's death in 1786 the dockyard was run by his relative Almon Hill, who can be traced in the records of the Sun Fire Office from 1781 until 1816 when he insured the 649-ton East Indiaman Providence for £15,000 and the 300-ton Princess Mary for £5,000. Hill also entered into a partnership with Robert Mellish and they built warships and East Indiamen.13 James Menetone, senior, also had interests in ships and these were left to his son Joseph and to Robert Oliver as follows:

Joseph Menetone William and Elizabeth

St Vincent

Sophia Bailey

Robert Oliver The Bond

The West Indian

The Thompson

The Windsor Castle

The St George The Baillies

The Mast Yard

The Mast Yard, just east of Bludworth's Dock, was the base for the Sheppards, a well-known Quaker family, timber merchants and mast builders. The Sheppards can be traced in the land tax from 1740 until the 1790s and ‘personal estates’ of £200 to £300 indicate their prosperity. In the 1790s the company was known as Sheppard and Bell. The property consisted of a yard and ground and rents of £40 to £49 indicate a considerable number of buildings around the mast yard. James Sheppard's friends included Lewis Weston, a prominent cooper in Shadwell, and in addition to his timber interests Joseph had, like other Shadwell merchants, invested in ‘shares in ships’. The Sheppards were leading members of the Ratcliff Quaker Meeting together with the Westons, and Zachariah Cockfield, whose sons married into a famous Quaker family the Gurneys from Norwich, reflecting their status in society.14

Shadwell Dock

The dock and buildings were certainly in existence by 1716 and were assessed with a rent of £150 in the 1740s increasing to £200 in the 1780s, indicating its size and growing importance. In 1740 the dock was in the hands of a shipwright Robert Foster and Directories between 1752 and 1768 record Robert Foster and Son. Foster was followed by Captain William Dodsworth, shipwright. Dodsworth had earlier been captain of the Sarah 250 tons, that was advertised for sale in 1755 and he moved to the dock from nearby Griffin Street. He leased two houses and a yard and was also owner in 1760 of Mary, burden of 400 tons. In 1767 he insured his house for £700, two warehouses for £300 and a saw-pit and washhouse for £150 and with other property a total of £2,000. When he died in 1775 his will left all to his wife Mary, who ‘was to continue to conduct the trade of shipwright’. He was evidently successful as £2,000 was to go to his four children when his wife died.15 Dodsworth was followed in 1775 by Peter Mestear, a wellknown shipbuilder, who leased a house, yard, and nearby houses from 1780 until 1794, and whose rent was £200. Insurance policies reveal that Mestear appeared in Rotherhithe as a shipwright in 1761 and by 1773 he insured his property around his Rotherhithe dock, utensils and stock for £2,700. In 1775 he had expanded his shipbuilding business into Shadwell.16

From November 1793 to 1828 the property around Shadwell Dock and in Shakespear Walk was insured by Henry and Joseph Fletcher, in 1793 for £3,400, which had increased to £8,500 by 1810. Shadwell Dock had on its western side the very large cooperage of James Savage, Master of the Coopers' Company in 1777. The cooperage was destroyed by fire about 1765 and the site taken over by Peter Bostock and Francis Sheppard, sailmakers. In 1766 Bostock and Sheppard, insured their stock for £1,000 in a warehouse next to Shadwell Dock, and their house and warehouse for £700. All was not well, for Francis Henry Sheppard was declared bankrupt in 1780.17

Conclusions

Our investigation of the insurance policies of the Sun Fire Office, and the land tax records has revealed the detailed and complex structure of the riverside industries of Shadwell in the eighteenth century. The evidence presented, and that of Banbury, provides many examples of Thames firms that were generally built round a great engineer or shipbuilder with the leadership of the firm passed down though the family, as such names as Green and Wigram, and in our case, Forster, Menetone and Oliver, confirm. We have also demonstrated how families controlled and owned specific dock yards and stairs from one generation to another, such as the Bludworths, Menetones and Olivers at Bludworth Docks. We have also identified at New Crane Stairs the important Thompson, Seale and Walter families, all related by marriage, and specializing in sea biscuit baking for the navy and trade with Russia.

Earlier work on Wapping had revealed much more about the ‘industrial elites’ in the eastern parishes, first identified by Dr Leonard Schwarz. Among the merchants involved in international trade were Camden, Calvert and King with a variety of shipping-based businesses; Thomas King being the largest owner of ships engaged in the ‘triangular trade’ with Africa and the Caribbean. Camden, Calvert & King, were also ‘awarded the contracts for transportation of convicts to New South Wales, in the Second and Third Fleets, after their successful tenders’. Similarly, the Henniker family, originally from Wapping, became the largest supplier of timber to the Royal Navy and have a town in New Hampshire named after them, reflecting their involvement in the timber trade with north America.18 We can now extend these international trade links on the north bank of the Thames: for in Shadwell we find the group connected with Captain John Thompson trading with Russia and the Menetones also involved in trade with the Caribbean. Clearly much has yet to be discovered and more detailed studies are planned for Ratcliff in the eighteenth century. Suffice to say little could have been discovered without the use of land tax and insurance policies.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.767001

© The Society for Nautical Research

Notes

1 Noorthouck, A New History of London, vol. V, ch. 3, 769.

2 Banbury, Shipbuilders of the Thames and Medway, 148, 150, 155.

3 Dr Gary Sturgess, pers. comm.

4 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) MS 6009, Land Tax for Shadwell; www.ancestry.com/London England Land Tax Records, 1692–1932.

5 Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Usage.

6 McGilvary, Guardian of the East India Company; Morris, Mile End Old Town, 51, 52.

7 Morris, ‘The Land Tax Assessments’; J. Gibson, et al, Land and Window Tax Assessments.

8 http://www.lma.gov.uk; LMA MS 24172. In 2003 indexing began on the 1840 Sun fire policies and since then indexers have been working back into the eighteenth century. In September 2012 the online index reached 1790 and the team are currently indexing 1789 and 1788, which will go online later this year. We will continue to work backwards into the eighteenth century and in a few years should reach 1710. The reason for this way of indexing is that the originators of the project realized that many researchers had reached back to the 1841 census but lacked an accessible and extensive on-line archive for London for the years before 1840. If we had started indexing at 1710 very few would have been able to use our work.

9 Baker, Victoria County History of Middlesex; Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London; http://www.british-history.ac.uk, Shadwell, ‘Four Shillings in the Pound Aid, 1693-94’ accessed 20 September 2012.

10 The National Archives of England and Wales, Kew (TNA), TNA PROB 11/762 Sheirlie Bladworth proved 14 Jun. 1748; TNA PROB 11/867, Joseph Bladworth, proved 4 Jul. 1761.

11 Banbury, Shipbuilders of the Thames, 150; LMA, MS 11936, 353, 543784; 378, 585971.

12 TNA PROB 11/1146 James Menetone will proved 7 Oct. 1786; LMA, MS 11936, 345, 532814.

13 LMA, MS 11936, 289, 439183; 451, 841455; 467, 922049; 468, 915016; Survey of London, 395, LMA, MS 11936, 290, 439662, 291, 441857.

14 TNA PROB 11/999 James Sheppard proved 16 Jun. 1774; Morris and Cozens, Wapping 1600–1800, 98–100.

15 LMA, MS 11936, 6, 7589; Public Advertiser, 20 October 1755; LMA, MS 11936, 173, 241455; TNA HCA 26/11/155, 21 Mar. 1760; TNA PROB 11/1006, William Dodsworth will proved 27 Apr. 1775

16 Banbury, Shipbuilders of the Thames, 150; LMA, MS 11936, 136, 180810, 223, 325484.

17 LMA, MS 11936, 170, 237487; 171, 238950; 378, 585971; 397, 621142; 424, 727048; 441, 812820, 812821, 812823; 451, 839682; 469, 904697, 915794, 921166; Guildhall Library, microfiche 57.

18 Banbury, Shipbuilders of the Thames, 64; Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation; Morris and Cozens, Wapping 1600–1800, 51– 66.