Uxbridge
Seed Crushers – I
Chasing back a family tree, Pea-Bee
found someone, born early in the 19th century in Dartford, Kent, had moved in
the 1830s to Uxbridge, Middlesex, while still a bachelor.
Those
readers who know London may think this to be an unusual move. Dartford
is 15 miles to the east Charing Cross and
south of the Thames . Uxbridge is 16 miles
to the west of central London and north of the Thames.
Of course,
despite modern preconceptions, the Thames has
never really been that much of a barrier to the movement of individuals and
families. However, Dartford to Uxbridge did appear to be unusual – especially
when Pea-Bee found that not just one person made the move, but so did one of
his brothers and at least five other Dartford men. Those who were already
married took their wives and children with them; others who were still single went
on to marry local Uxbridge girls.
As well as
their Kent
roots, these men had something else in common – they were all “seed crushers”
or “oil millers”.
Until the development
of the petrochemical industry, there were two main sources of oil for
everything from lubricants to paint to soaps: sperm whales and various seeds.
Today, we think of vegetables oils as those refined for cooking: olive oil,
rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, sesame seed oil, etc. However, there were many other
uses for oils from crushed seeds, including probably the biggest use of all:
oil for lamps. Even today, linseed oil is used for a variety of applications
while castor oil has its medicinal (laxative) properties. There are many more
examples.
Of course, various
questions arise. Why did these men move? Were both Dartford
and Uxbridge centres of oil milling? Was there a link between the towns – other
than seed crushing?
First, the
migrants. These were:
·
William
Archer, who came with his wife and five children
·
Henry
Joseph Chapman, single
·
James
Davis, with wife and two children
·
Henry
Eversfield, with wife and one child
·
William
Eversfield, Henry’s brother, with his wife
·
George
Webb, with wife and one child
·
Henry
Webb, George’s brother, single
By analysis
of the last birth, marriage or death in Dartford
and the first in Uxbridge, it is possible to show that the main migration took
place been 1834 and 1836. It could have been earlier and families returned to
Dartford to have their children baptised, but the probability is they did not,
although, when William Archer’s wife Mary Ann died in Uxbridge in the autumn of
1836, her body was carried to Dartford for burial[1].
Also, not
all the families may have arrived in Uxbridge at the same time. Henry Eversfield,
for example, is known to have been in Kent in the spring of 1836 when he
appeared in court charged with house breaking (he was found not guilty)[2].
There was
clearly much interaction between the families of the Dartford
men, and between them and the local families.
When Jane
Archer, eldest daughter of William, married a local linseed crusher, William
Barrett, in Uxbridge in 1837, one of the witnesses was Ann Eversfield, wife of
William Eversfield[3].
Henry Webb
married local girl Harriet Shirley in Uxbridge in 1838 – the witnesses were his
brother George and her sister, Felicia[4].
Felicia
Shirley then married James Davis, son of James Davis, in 1841[5].
Most of the
migrant workers did not stay in the Uxbridge for long – some less than five
years, others little more than a decade – although several of their children
who had married local people did stay. Nearly all those who continued as seed
crushers moved to oil mills in other towns yet maintained their links to
Uxbridge, some bringing their children back for baptism.
There was a
steady flow of Dartford men leaving Uxbridge
throughout the 1840s, but the exodus finished before 1848.
The first to
leave was Henry Chapman and he went to Limehouse, east London . He had married a local girl in 1839[6]
but by the time of the 1841 census was already in east London[7].
His first child, Emma Elizabeth Chapman, was born in Limehouse towards the end
of that year[8],
but there is an entry in the Register of Baptisms of St John the Baptist,
Uxbridge Moor: “1842 September 25 Reunited with the church / Emma Elizabeth
daughter of / Henry Joseph and Mary Anne / Chapman / Limehouse Middlesex / Oil
Miller / Privately Baptised by Rev Mr Bond, Commercial Road, Limehouse Received
into the Church by Rev H T Liveing, Curate”[9].
Subsequent children were all baptised at St Anne, Limehouse[10].
The next to
leave was George Webb, who also took his family to Limehouse. He was in
Uxbridge Moor for the 1841 census[11],
but in Limehouse when his daughter Sarah was born on 2 November 1842[12].
George’s
brother Henry followed him to Limehouse a little later still. He too was in
Uxbridge Moor for the 1841 census[13]
and his son James Thomas Webb was born in Uxbridge Q2 1843 and baptised at St John the Baptist,
Uxbridge Moor on 23 April[14].
His next child, a daughter named Emma, was born in Stepney Q2 1846[15],
although she and all subsequent children (the last was born in 1852) were taken
back to their mother’s home town for baptism at St Margaret, Uxbridge[16].
It is, of course, possible that Henry’s wife Harriet returned home for the
birth of James in 1843.
There were
several large seed crushing enterprises in Limehouse. One, run by John Garford[17],
was very close to where Henry Chapman and George Webb were to live and it was
probably to this company that these men gravitated. Henry Webb, however, took a
house further north in Poplar, some way from Garford’s mill, and it is likely
he was working for one of the other oil mills in the area.
James Davis
senior died in Uxbridge in 1842[18]
and his family remained in Uxbridge.
It has not
been possible to narrow the timeframe that the other Dartford
men left Uxbridge, although all those who left were in Uxbridge Moor at the
time of the 1841 and had gone by 1848.
William
Eversfield first moved across the River Colne into the parish of Iver,
Buckinghamshire, where his son John was born Q1 1842[19].
His next known child, Tom, was not born until 1848[20]
– and that was in Birling , Kent – which was where William and
his family were living in 1851[21].
There were no events to help track Henry Eversfield’s movements between the
1841 and 1851 censuses – he was in Uxbridge in 1841[22]
and at Offham , Kent , in 1851[23].
Both brothers ceased to work in the oil milling industry.
William
Archer and several members of his family – but not all of them – moved to
Brickendon in Hertfordshire, where there was a large seed crushing enterprise,
run by the Haggar brothers[24].
The first record of the Archer family in the district was the marriage of
William’s son George to Mary Ann Norton on 24 December 1848[25].
Mary Ann was the daughter of John Norton, who also worked as an oil miller in
Brickendon[26].
George was
the only one of the Archer brothers to go with his father to Brickendon. Henry
and Thomas married in Uxbridge and remained there when the rest of family moved[27].
Of William’s
daughters, Jane, who had married a linseed crusher in Uxbridge in 1837, also stayed
in the area[28].
The others moved with their father to Brickendon, where they married men
working in the oil mills[29].
More detailed histories of the various
Dartford families will appear in subsequent Pea-Bee blogs.
* * *
So what did
Dartford and Uxbridge have in common? Both towns had good transport systems –
Dartford and the Thames, Uxbridge and the Grand Junction Canal. They were both
situated on rivers that could supply power to water mills – River Darenth in
Dartford and the parallel Rivers Colne and Frayswater in Uxbridge. Both towns
had a number of different mills – flour mills, paper mills, even a gunpowder
mill at Dartford – as well as seed crushing oil mills.
Early oil
mills utilised a series of vertical stampers, operated by a cam shaft. The
stampers fell repeatedly on to sacks containing the seeds, squeezing the oil
through the sacking into a collecting trough. After this initial cold pressing,
the seeds would still contain an appreciable quantity of oil, so they would be
heated in pans with a little water and put in a screw press to yield more oil.
The residual oil cake was used as fuel, fertiliser or cattle feed. As uses for
vegetable oils multiplied during the 19th century, the old stampers were
replaced by rollers and later hydraulic ram presses replaced the screw presses.
Gradually, the old water and wind powered oil mills were phased out as the
seed-crushing process became more mechanised and individual mills became
larger.
There was a
second link between Dartford and Uxbridge –
William Essenhigh Hammond.
Pea-Bee has
already recited his business history in his blog of 4 March 2014 “Hammond, Gurnell and Fox – the business
links” but here is a brief resumé [for
references, see earlier blog].
He was the
son of Simmons Hammond, a Dartford businessman
with interests in many fields, but mainly that of chemist and druggist, which
extended into the processing of seeds for medicinal oils. At one time Simmons
Hammond was in partnership, dealing in coal and lime, with a William Wilks, a
nephew of Matthias Wilks, the man who had built Dartford’s Phoenix Mill in
1796, specifically as an oil mill [see
Pea-Bee’s four blogs of February 2014 on the Wilks family].
William
Hammond was also involved in a number of businesses – some in partnership with
his father – including operating a seed crushing mill in Rotherhithe in the
1840s.
One of
William Essenhigh Hammond’s ventures was a company called Sexton & Co (or
Lexton & Co).
The first of
several notices concerning this business was published by the London Gazette on
16 June 1848[30].
It began:
“WHEREAS a Fiat in
Bankruptcy, bearing date the 5th day of June 1848, is awarded and issued forth
against William Esenhigh Hammond, of Uxbridge, in the county of Middlesex,
trading under the firm of Sexton and Company, Seed Crusher, Dealer and Chapman,
and he being declared a
bankrupt is hereby required to surrender himself to Edward Goulburn, Esq. one
of Her Majesty’s Commissioners of the Court of Bankruptcy …”
The other notices concern further
meetings of creditors (one using the spelling Lexton [printer’s error?]).
When Hammond got involved in the Uxbridge oil mill
is not known but his first venture into seed crushing came in 1824, when he was
in a partnership with James Vallence at 1 Baker’s Row, Clerkenwell. Among the
various activities of this business, the partners acted as “wholesale druggists
and pressers of castor oil”.
He also had interests in west London : he was living in
New Brentford by 1841 but he had already added to his business empire by 1837 with
a chemist’s shop in the town. He had his linseed oil mill, at Ordnance Wharf ,
near Pageant’s stairs, Rotherhithe, by 1841. In all these businesses, he traded
either under his own name or as Hammond & Co. It has not proved possible at
present to find any more on Sexton & Co.
It is possible that Hammond recruited men in his home town of Dartford to work in his
oil mill in Uxbridge and that the business was going downhill even before his
bankruptcy in 1848. This may have meant he was already laying off men who then
moved to other mills.
There was another seed crusher in
Uxbridge who got into financial difficulties: Rayner Brothers. On 1 November
1842, the following notice appeared in the London Gazette[31]:
“William Rayner and
John Rayner, both of Uxbridge, in the county of Middlesex, and of the parish of
Hillingdon, in the said county of Middlesex, Seed Crushers and Copartners,
trading under the style and firm of Rayner Brothers, that they are in insolvent
circumstances, and are unable to meet their engagements with their creditors.”
Some of the Dartford men may have
taken work with the Rayner brothers and the collapse of their business was the
initial trigger for the exodus of the Dartford seed crushers from Uxbridge.
Certainly the failure of Hammond’s enterprise over the next six years would
have encouraged the rest to go.
[1] Medway
Council Archives: P110 Dartford Holy Trinity 1363-1988/P110 01 10: Holy Trinity
Dartford, Register of Burials
1813-1842 p223
[2] England & Wales,
Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 Class: HO 27; Piece: 51;
Page: 399 (via
Ancestry.com England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 England>Kent>1836
image 14)
[3] London Metropolitan
Archives, Saint John The Baptist, Hillingdon, Register of marriages, DRO/110, Item 016 1837 p5 (via Ancestry.com London,
England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 Hillingdon>St John the
Baptist>1837 image 13); England & Wales, FreeBMD Marriage Index,
1837-1915 Hertford
Q4 1848 Vol 6 p946D (via Ancestry.com)
[4] London Metropolitan
Archives, Saint John The Baptist, Hillingdon, Register of marriages, DRO/110, Item 016 1838 p45 (via Ancestry.com
London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 Hillingdon>St John
the Baptist>1838 image 28); England & Wales, FreeBMD Marriage Index,
1837-1915 Uxbridge
Q4 1838 Vol 3 p284 (via Ancestry.com)
[5] London Metropolitan
Archives, Saint John The Baptist, Hillingdon, Register of marriages, DRO/110, Item 016 1841 p112 (via
Ancestry.com London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 Hillingdon>St
John the Baptist>1841 image 11); England & Wales, FreeBMD Marriage
Index, 1837-1915 Uxbridge Q2 1841 Vol 3 p294 (via Ancestry.com)
[6] London Metropolitan
Archives, Saint John The Baptist, Hillingdon, Register of marriages, DRO/110, Item 016 1839 p70 (via Ancestry.com
London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 Hillingdon>St John
the Baptist>1839 image 20); England & Wales, FreeBMD Marriage Index,
1837-1915 Uxbridge
Q3 1839 Vol 3 p299 (via Ancestry.com)
[7] 1841 Census of England & Wales,
Class HO107; Piece: 701; Book: 1; Civil
Parish: St Anne Limehouse; County: Middlesex; Enumeration
District: 1; Folio: 19; Page: 30; Line: 17;
GSU roll: 438814 (via Ancestry.com 1841 England Census Middlesex>St Anne
Limehouse>Limehouse>District 1 image 16)
[8] England & Wales,
FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 Stepney Q4 1841 Vol 2 p405 (via Ancestry.com)
[9] London Metropolitan
Archives, Uxbridge Moor, Register of Baptism, dro/042/a/01, Item 001 p12 (via
Ancestry.com London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 Hillingdon>Uxbridge
Moor>1843 image 1)
[10] Eg London Metropolitan
Archives, Limehouse St Anne, Register of Baptism, p93/ann, Item 008 p104 (via
Ancestry.com. London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 Tower Hamlets>St Anne,
Limehouse>1844 image 10)
[11] 1841 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107; Piece: 656; Book: 7;
Civil Parish: Hillingdon; County: Middlesex; Enumeration
District: 7a; Folio: 9; Page: 15; Line: 16;
GSU roll: 438774 (via Ancestry.com 1841 England Census Middlesex>Hillingdon>Hillingdon>District
7a image 9)
[12] London Metropolitan
Archives, Limehouse St Anne, Register of Baptism, p93/ann, Item 008 p47 (via
Ancestry.com. London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 Tower Hamlets>St Anne,
Limehouse>1843 image 13)
[13] 1841 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107; Piece: 656; Book: 7;
Civil Parish: Hillingdon; County: Middlesex; Enumeration
District: 7a; Folio: 10; Page: 16; Line: 3;
GSU roll: 438774 (via Ancestry.com 1841 England Census Middlesex>Hillingdon>Hillingdon>District
7a image 9)
[14] London Metropolitan
Archives, Uxbridge Moor, Register of Baptism, dro/042/a/01, Item 001 p14 (via
Ancestry.com London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 Hillingdon>Uxbridge
Moor>1843 image 2)
[15] London Metropolitan
Archives, Uxbridge St Margaret, Register of Baptism, dro/010/011, Item 002 p64
(via Ancestry.com London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 Hillingdon>St Margaret,
Uxbridge >1847 image 4)
[16] London Metropolitan
Archives, Uxbridge St Margaret, Register of Baptism, dro/010, Item 014 p60 (via
Ancestry.com London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 Hillingdon>St Margaret,
Uxbridge >1863 image 5)
[17] British History Online www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols43-4/pp388-397#h3-0004
[18] England & Wales,
FreeBMD Death Index, 1837-1915 Uxbridge Q2 1842 Vol 3 p234 (via Ancestry.com)
[19] England & Wales,
FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 Eton Q1 1842 Vol 6 p379 (via Ancestry.com)
[21] 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece: 1612; Folio: 179;
Page: 9; GSU roll: 193513 (via
Ancestry.com 1851 England
Census Kent>Birling>District
8 image 10)
[22] 1841 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107; Piece: 656; Book: 7;
Civil Parish: Hillingdon; County: Middlesex; Enumeration
District: 8; Folio: 25; Page: 18; Line: 17;
GSU roll: 438774 (via Ancestry.com 1841 England Census Middlesex>Hillingdon>Hillingdon>District
8 image 10)
[23] 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece: 1612; Folio: 483;
Page: 17; GSU roll: 193513 (via
Ancestry.com 1851 England
Census Kent>Offham>District
1 image 18)
[24] 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece: 1711; Folio: 460;
Page: 32; GSU roll: 193619 (via
Ancestry.com 1851 England
Census Hertfordshire>Brickendon>District
9 image 33)
[25] Ancestry.com. England
& Wales Marriages, 1538-1940: Hertford, Hertfordshire, All Saints and St
John; 1837 - 1881; Film Number: 1040810; England &
Wales, FreeBMD Marriage Index, 1837-1915 Hertford Q4 1848 Vol 6 p946D (via Ancestry.com)
[26] 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece: 1711; Folio: 461;
Page: 34; GSU roll: 193619 (via
Ancestry.com 1851 England
Census Hertfordshire>Brickendon>District
9 image 35)
[27] 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece: 1697; Folio: 152;
Page: 40; GSU roll: 193605 (via
Ancestry.com 1851 England
Census Middlesex>Hillingdon>District
3d image 41); 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece:
1697; Folio: 264; Page: 37; GSU roll: 193605 (via Ancestry.com 1851
England Census Middlesex>Uxbridge>District
1a image 38)
[28] 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece: 1697; Folio: 156;
Page: 49; GSU roll: 193605 (via
Ancestry.com 1851 England
Census Middlesex>Hillingdon>District
3d image 50)
[29] 1851 Census of England & Wales, Class HO107 Piece: 1711; Folio: 460;
Page: 32; GSU roll: 193619 (via
Ancestry.com 1851 England
Census Hertfordshire>Brickendon>District
9 image 33)
[31] The London Gazette 1 November 1842 issue 20156 p3015