Uxbridge Seed Crushers part 1

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.

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[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)

[20] England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 Malling Q2 1848 Vol 5 p362 (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)

[30] The London Gazette 16 June 1848 issue 20868 p2288

[31] The London Gazette 1 November 1842 issue 20156 p3015