In memoriam Thomas COSBY 1706 – 1765 Forget him not 1706 4th November : birth, 9th of 10 children of John and Mary COSBY, married before 1696, at home, Charter House Lane (now St. Bartholomew's Medical School) 1706 10th November : Thomas is baptized at St. Sepulchre's church 1728 12th September : he married Ann PARTON at St. Andrew's Holborn 1731 23rd August : baptism of Ann, buried at St. Andrew's Holborn next 4th September Thomas and his wife are already living at Dean Street, High Holborn. 1732 9th August : baptism of Thomas, buried at St. Andrew's Holborn next 8th November 1735 9th August : at St. Andrew's Holborn, he married Olive, Mr WARD's widow, probably nee LLOYD, baptized 26th August 1708 Ludlow Shropshire. She seems to be Welsh. She gave one boy and 2 girls living adults. (Marriage Licence Allegations Index - Faculty Office – 10th June 1735) 1737 13th May : his son Thomas is baptized at St. Andrew of Holborn (0.2 ml from St. Sepulchre) Thomas and his second wife are still living at Dean Street, High Holborn. 1738 16th April : birth of his daughter Olive 1738 2nd May : she is baptized at St. Anne of Soho. So he has moved since the year before, maybe in Tottenham Court (see below). 1739 17th June : Elizabeth, his second daughter, is born 1739 18th June : she is baptized at St. Anne of Soho. 1741 3rd May : birth of his second son, John 1741 10th May : he is baptized at St. Anne of Soho. 1742 18th November : baptism of James COSBY, son of Thomas and Lydia, at St. Anne of Soho. Has Thomas Cosby lost his second wife, or is there another Thomas living in the same parish ? 1744 4th April: in The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, reference Number: t17440404-11, Offence: Theft - grand larceny, Verdict: Guilty, Punishment: Transportation. "197. Eleanor Callen , of St. Martin's in the Fields, was indicted for stealing a silver spoon, value 9 s. the goods of Thomas Cosby , March 10. Thomas Cosby. The Prisoner lived with me as a servant five or six weeks, and in that time I lost a silver spoon, a pawnbroker stopped it and advertised it, I went to him and found it. George Sherrard. The Prisoner came to my shop (I think on a Saturday night) to pawn a spoon, I asked her whose property it was, she said she was then a nurse keeping at a gentlewoman's at Tottenham-court, who desired her to pawn it ; I not being satisfied with this account, told her I should have occasion to go that way the next morning, and wou'd call there ; then she began to hesitate, I told her I would stop the spoon, and if she brought any body to give an account of her she should have it again ; but she not coming in two or three days I advertised it, and Mr Cosby came and owned it. Guilty." Concerning Tottenham Court, here is what we find in Survey of London: volume 21: The parish of St Pancras part 3: Tottenham Court Road & neighbourhood, by by F. H. W. Sheppard (General Editor), 1970, p. 66-74 : West side : “The old southern boundary of the parish was about three houses south of the junction of Hanway Street with Tottenham Court Road. The houses on the west side of the road, which are shown in Tallis's View, have now been mostly rebuilt or altered, and the side streets, the openings to which alone reproduce the old arrangement, have, several of them, changed their names. The lower end of the road, a little south of Hanway Street, formed part of Bozier's Court, in the parish of St. Anne's, Soho, where a block of buildings, now removed, stood in the roadway. The numbering of the houses starts in Tallis's View, north of Bozier's Court, and Hanway Street comes between Nos. 5 and 6. Danks' Floor Cloth and Carpet Warehouse (No. 9) is chosen by Tallis for one of his vignettes, in which he shows the building in detail. Tudor Place, Stephen Street and Percy Street are shown and at the end of Windmill Street can be seen the elevation of Percy Chapel. Between this and Goodge Street a small alley, called Kirkman's

Place, appears, and then after Chapel Street comes Whitfield Chapel and Burial Ground with its iron railings and two entrance gates.” East side : “The parish boundary between St. Pancras and St. Giles which follows Tottenham Court Road from south to north now turns east at Francis Street but formerly passed farther south through No. 196, the property of Messrs. Heal & Sons (see below). North of this point, the east side of Tottenham Court Road falls therefore within the parish of St. Pancras. The sites fronting the road in this section formed part of four separate properties: (a) the southernmost, Cantlowes Close, on which Torrington Place is built; (b) a six-acre field belonging to the Southampton estate—a long strip, the southern limit of which ran just north of Torrington Place and the northern through Pancras Street; (c) Bromfield, later known as Brickfields, the devolution of which is described at length in Part 2 of theSurvey of St. Pancras (pp. 16–18), extending just north of Grafton Way; and (d) Pond Close, part of the grounds of Tottenhall Manor House (see p. 121), cut off by the Euston Road. The history of Cantlowes Close has already been given in the Survey (St. Pancras, Pt. 2, p. 19) and the farmhouse at the rear of No. 196 Tottenham Court Road, which stood in both parishes and which was demolished about 1917, has been described and illustrated (St. Giles-in-theFields, Pt. 2, p. 188 and Plate 107). A ground plan of the building, site plans and further photographs appear in an article in Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, New Ser., Vol. III, pp. 28–33, by Sir Ambrose Heal, who has kindly lent the plans for reproduction (page 75). It may be recalled here that the farmhouse was known as Capper's Farm from Christopher Capper who was farming the surrounding property as early as 1693. His widow died in 1739, and his daughters, Esther Capper, and Mary Booth were in occupation until 1768. His son was a lecturer at St. George's, Bloomsbury. The Cappers occupied Brickfields and pasture land adjoining it to the east during the first half of the 18th-century. In his wife's obituary notice in the London Daily Post of 10th July, 1739, Christopher Capper was described as "a great Cow keeper." Brickfields had passed to Hans Winthrop Mortimer of Caldwell (Derby) by 1768 and Mortimer's Market, on the western portion, was in process of building in 1795. The houses shown on Plate 27 were part of the market which occupied the centre of the island now bounded by University Street on the north, Pancras Street on the south, and Tottenham Court Road and Hunter Street west and east respectively. The eastern portion of the Mortimer estate (Brickfields) was occupied by the northern part of Gower Street and provided the site for University College.” We may guess that, between 1738 and 1744, he didn't move, supposed he was living in the lower west end of Tottenham Court road, in the parish of St. Anne's, Soho (viz. Supra). “Those living near Lewis Smart's huge piggery on London's Tottenham Court road described how servants fell sick and resigned on account of the smell, which 'Drives thro' the walls of the houses'. Visitors to the house opposite were forced to hold their noses, and one neighbour explained how the fumes had dirtied newly laundered linen and tarnished plate. Properties were devalued by their proximity to the site, and even in Great Russell Street inhabitants could not use their front rooms due to the stench […] In 1733, Lewis Smart, a distiller who lived neat Tottenham Court road, kept several hundred pigs. Accused of a public nuisance for letting his sty become constantly offensive, his defence argued unsuccessfully that his pigs were a 'public convenience', as they consumed the waste products of his trade. His product was good for the citizens in general, and therefore he could not be judged a public nuisance. Lewis also argued that his piggery was well sited, as the area was already blighted by the stench of cows, nightmen's pits, common laystalls and a ditch. […] However, this was an extreme nuisance : householders fell sick and were deserted by their servants. The value of local properties declined, linen was discoloured and silver tarnished. Lewis's neighbours presented such a convincing olfactory picture of dangerously odiferous swine that he was found guilty on the basis that his sty caused infection.” Emily Cockayne Hubbub, Filth, Noise & Stench in England (London 2007) p. 148 & 213.

About the poor people's temptations : “In 1749 some girls 'in a sad dishabil, ragged and barefooted' were thought to be stealing small silver items” in Emily Cockayne Hubbub, Filth, Noise & Stench in England (London, 2007) p. 75. About butlers' (or servants') stealings and pawns : “Not a few butlers, faced with domestic debts, would pawn an article of the master's plate, in the hope of being able to redeem it before its loss was detected.” E. S. Turner in What the butler saw (London, 1962, p. 159). About servants in England : « For the well-to-do, it was a harassing period : was the demure young woman who applied for a post all that she seemed, or was she the tool of a highwayman ? Was the deferential young lackey with the seemingly excellent referencies interested in polishing the silver – or stealing it ? The system of robbing houses by planting corrupt maids, did not, of course, die out with the execution of Jonathan Wild, in 1725 : but Wild's death did at least remove a powerful source of temptation to the servants of the Metropolis. […] There were times when a master held his servant's life in his hands, for to denounce a man for theft might well send him to the gallows. » according to E. S. Turner in What the butler saw (London, 1962, p. 41-42). And then, p. 47 : « As the eighteenth century progressed, the abuse was intensified. Servants saw no reason, perhaps, why they should not indulge in the general greed and corruption of the times. In operating the system they traded successfully on the pride, indifference or pusillanimity of their masters. » About the servants' perquisites : “By her own traditions, she [the cook, or the servant] was entitled to sell the household dripping to dealers […] Henry Mayhew tells how women with large baskets under suspiciously large cloaks used to call at kitchen doors in the fashionable districts of London, before householders were awake, to collect lumps of dripping, estimating the value by eye. Often the transaction would include lumps of butter, cupfuls of stock, pieces of meat and loaves ; and occasionally silver spoons. [...]” E. S. Turner in What the butler saw (London, 1962, p. 136). Maybe a bit of explanation of Thomas Cosby's later misfortunes ? So Thomas Cosby lives now in Tottenham Court, his wife has a servant or a nurse and he is rich enough to have got silver spoons for his table, unless his standard of life was a little too high, until he became short of money... as we shall see in the next item. But was Eleanor Callen the lonely servant and what might have been Thomas Cosby's annual income ? We could be helped by The Complete Servant (1825) by Samuel & Sarah Adams, quoted by E. S. Turner in What the butler saw (London, 1962, p. 112-113), considering Thomas Cosby was acting 80 years earlier : “As an example of how expenditure would work out, the authors quoted these figures : Income £1000, Household £333, Servants £250, Clothes £250, Rent £125, Reserve £42 […] Then followed 'The number and Description of Servants Usually Employed' : [...] £150-£180 a gentleman and lady without children may afford to keep a better servant maid at about ten or twelve guineas ; £200 ditto, a professed servant maid of all work at from twelve to fourteen guineas ; £300 ditto, with one, two or three children, two maidservants [...]”. Considering Thomas Cosby and his wife were in charge of at least 3 children in 1744 (it seems unlike, if not impossible, the same Thomas married Lydia during winter 1741-42), his annual income might have been close to the equivalent of £1000 of 1825. Quite comfortable as it seems. About middle class standards, here is a good example of a good use from a relatively modest budget : “The middle classes […] continued to raise their standards of display. In 1858 readers of The Times debated whether a young gentleman could afford to marry on £300 a year […] Among the letters were several from householders revealing their personal budgets. One of the more frugal was from a man with £300 a year who spent £12 6s. On the combined wages of a woman servant and a nursery girl, £25 on rent, £3 12s. On taxes and £22 on meat (the biggest item after rent). He still had £69 14s. Left over – enough to pay the wages of four or five more servants.” E. S. Turner in What the butler saw (London, 1962, p. 224). Reported to the 18th century, with lower figures, the strategy might have been approximatively the same for our Thomas Cosby.

1745 11th May : In The London Gazette Issue 8431 published on the 11 May 1745. Page 3 of 4. "Whereas a Commission of Bankrupt is awarded and issued forth against Thomas Cosby, of Russel-street, in the Parish of St. Paul Covent Garden, in the County of Middlesex, Vintner, and he being declared a Bankrupt, is hereby required to surrender himself to the Commissioners in the said Commission named, or the major Part of them, on the 21st and the 25th of May instant, and on the 25th of June next, at Three in the Afternoon on each of the said Days, at Guildhall, London, and make a full Discovery and Disclosure of his Estates and Effects ; when and where the Creditors are to come prepared to prove their Debts, and at the second Sitting to chuse Assignees, and at the last Sitting the said Bankrupt is required to finish his Examination, and the Creditors are to assent or to dissent from the Allowance of his Certificate. All persons indebted to the said Bankrupt, or that have any of his Effects, are not to pay or deliver the same but to whom the Commissioners shall appoint." Concerning Russell Street, here is what we find in Survey of London: volume 36: Covent Garden, by F. H. W. Sheppard (General Editor), 1970, p. 192-195 : “The first occupants probably included at least three victuallers or vintners […] In 1668 it had twelve shops assessed in the ratebooks, a higher proportion than in most of the Covent Garden streets […] Strype (John Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1720, vol. II, bk. VI, p. 93.) spoke of Russell Street as 'a fine broad Street, well inhabited by Tradesmen' and Mortimer's Universal Director of trades in 1763 listed nine residents—an engraver (William Ryland), a music-master, a printer, a clockmaker, a distiller, a metal-button maker, two apothecaries and a grocer. The eastern end of the street, towards the boundary of St. Martin's parish, was more disreputable: the ratebooks list a 'gaiming house' at No. 24 in 1722, and it was at this end of the street that the late eighteenth-century parish officers contended with disorderly taverns, and ratepayers who absconded or retired to gaol.” « Russell Street, Covent Garden, built 1634, and so called after the Russell's, Earls and Dukes of Bedford, the ground landlords. In 1720 'it was a fine broad street, well inhabited by tradesmen ;' it is now rather poorly inhabited. Remarkable places in.— Will's Coffe-house, on the north side of the west-end corner of Bow Street, Button's Coffe-house, 'on the south side, about two doors from Covent Garden ; Tom's Coffe-house, on the north side ; Rose Tavern, next Drury Lane Theatre. [see these names.] The candidates for being touched for the King's Evil, July 1660, were required first to repair 'to Mr. Knight the King's Surgeon, living at the Cross Guns in Russell Street, Covent Garden, over against the Rose Tavern.' » London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions by Henry Benjamin Wheatley & Peter Cunningham (1849 & 1891) Cambridge University Press, 2011 p. 194 From The Pub in Literature: England's Altered State (Manchester University Press, 2000) http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/ds/sle/altered/inns/inns.htm : “Harp Tavern Russell Street. Famous resort for actors in Covent Garden, especially Edmund Kean. 'Here also met a Club of a very old foundation called the "City of Lushington." Whoever joined selected his word out of the four - Lunacy, Suicide, Poverty and Juniper, painted on the four walls of the room. Sheridan and the Prince Regent were both members of it.' (Maskell, pp.146-7). Hummums Corner of Russell Street, in Covent Garden, on the old site of Button's Coffee House. Mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson. (Popham, p.21). Rose Tavern Russell Street/Drury Lane, Covent Garden, 'adjoining the Drury Lane theatre, a favourite haunt of theatrical performers and audiences, was mentioned by Farquhar in several of his plays (Love and a Bottle, The Constant Couple, The Recruiting Officer).' Kenny, note to The Stage Coach. (add-on from John Camden Hotten The history of signboards: from the earliest time to the present day 1866 p. 125) In 1766 this tavern was swallowed up in the enlargements of Drury Lane by Garrick, but the sign was preserved and hung up against the front wall, between the first and second floor windows. Plate III of Hogarth's The Rake's Progress, 'The Tavern Scene' is set here.

Shakespeare's Head Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, London. Site of the Beefsteak Society. Button's Coffee House Russell Street, Covent Garden. Later the site of Hummums. Associated with Addison. Wills 's coffee-house at No.1 Bow Street, at the corner of Russell Street, frequented in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by authors, notably Congreve, Dryden, Wycherley, Addison and Pope.' Note in Farquhar, The Beaux Stratagem.” Another house or flat now, in Russell street, not very far from the last one at Tottenham (about half a mile). And now we can know his occupation : he is selling wine, as it is said also in the Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1745, vol. XV, p. 277. Making debts ? A widely shared behaviour during the C 18, as it appears in What the butler saw by E. S. Turner (London, 1962, p. 27) : « Twenty-five years earlier [1746], says the Squire [Bramble, from Smollett's novel Humphrey Clinker (1771)], only the most opulent London citizens kept an equipage with liveried servants. The generality of citizens were content with plain boiled or roasted meat, and a bottle of port or a tankard of beer. Now every broker and attorney maintains a couple of footmen, a coachman and a postillion, with a town house, a country house, a coach and a post-chaise. Their wives and daughters are constantly dressing up, holding assemblies and drinking the most expensive wines. 'The gayest places of public entertainment are filled with fashionable figures ; which, upon inquiry, will be found to be journeymen tailors, serving men and abigails, disguised like the betters'. In short, all ranks are 'actuated by the demons of profligacy and licentiousness, they are seen everywhere, rambling, riding, rolling, rushing, justling, mixing, bouncing, cracking and crashing, in one vile ferment of stupidity and corruption.' The eighteenth century had its 'rat race' too. » Concerning the London vintners, very few informations seem available. They were wine merchants, but the most of them innkeepers or tavern landlords as well, and others wine-cooper (viz. a person who samples, bottles and sells wine). What exactly did Thomas Cosby ? We don't know exactly. Here is what we can find in The Making of the English Middle Class - Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 by Peter Earle - University of California press Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1989 - The Regents of the University of California : “A rather more respectable business was that run by the money-lender, who lent in larger amounts against paper securities, a common business for the men of the middle station. Nathaniel Axtell, for instance, who died in 1672 worth over £7000, was a member of the Vintners' Company but the only wine in his household was for his own consumption. All his assets, apart from domestic goods and cash, were in advances made from his own capital. His liabilities totalled a mere £126, of which £100 consisted of legacies owing to his children from their grandmother […]. “TABLE 2.1: Fortunes of London Manufacturers : Fortune at Death

Occupations

£2000–£4999

Distiller; dyer; builder/mason; tobacco-refiner; sugar-refiner; cloth-finisher; soapmaker; metalworker; metalrefiner; cooper; publisher; brewer; printer; distiller; trunkmaker; distiller; brewer; tobacco-refiner; dyer; distiller; dyer

TABLE 2.2: Fortunes of London Merchants, Wholesalers and Shopkeepers : Fortune at Death Occupation

£5000–£9999

Merchant; merchant; merchant; merchant; merchant; draper; drysalter; haberdasher; merchant; merchant; wine-cooper; merchant; merchant; wool-stapler; merchant; cheesemonger; jeweller; bookseller; merchant; merchant; leather-seller; leather-seller; merchant; merchant; druggist; merchant

(the second category of six, from more than £10,000 to less than £500 - NDLR) TABLE 4. 1: Start-up Costs for London Businesses (in £s) : Type of Business

Campbell (1747 )

Collyer (1761 )

Vintner

100–500

500

[…] Separate estate enabled at least some wives to own property. It also presumably meant that they were able to trade independently of their husbands, though in fact there was no need for an innovation in Chancery to allow them to do this, since the custom of London already made provision for married women to trade as individuals and had done so since the middle ages. The custom converted the wife of a freeman from the servile status of feme covert into a 'feme sole merchant' with the legal rights of an independent trader. This privilege was only open to a wife who practised a separate trade from her husband, 'a trade with which her husband does not intermeddle'. Most legal handbooks interpret this as meaning that the wife must practise a distinct trade in the sense that they could not both be vintners or haberdashers, though Bohun says that 'if they both exercise the same trade distinctly by themselves, and not meddle the one with the other, the wife is sole merchant'. […] It seems a reasonable assumption that most potential bankrupts would be drawn from those liable to pay more than the basic rate on the Poll Tax. If this is true, then the 2.8 per cent of female bankrupts should be compared with the 7.7 per cent of heads of households paying surtax in 1692 who were women, a comparison which suggests that just over a third of such women were in 'business' and so liable to become bankrupt. It can finally be noted that the eighteen women bankrupts included six people described as 'chapwomen', probably shopkeepers, four vintners or tavern-keepers, two milliners, a woodmonger, a coffeewoman, a mercer, a barber-surgeon, a silkwoman and a periwig-maker, the last three being the partner of a man. […] Hoppit (1986) (1) pp. 45-7 and W. R. Jones (1979) p. 5 for overall rates of bankruptcy; numbers of cheesemongers (411) and taverns (447) from Maitland (1739) p. 531; for the number of apothecaries, see Ch. 2, note 140, above; numbers of bankrupts from PRO B4/1-2, the tavernkeepers were described as vintners. Other high numbers of bankrupts relative to likely total numbers include merchants (133), mercers (27), linen-drapers (26), brewers (14), dyers (13) and shipwrights (7). Other vulnerable businesses were probably normally too small to merit a commission of bankruptcy. There were, for instance, only 11 distillers, 9 haberdashers and 18 victuallers amongst the bankrupts in these years, while the building industry, often cited as very prone to bankruptcy, hardly shows up at all, just 8 carpenters and 1 bricklayer. [...] The result, by our period, was that a livery company label was by no means a good indication of a man's occupation, especially for members of the older, larger and more prestigious companies. Some idea of the confusion can be seen in Table 9.4 overleaf, which lists the occupations of

members of the sample belonging to companies with at least ten representatives. A few companies, such as the Apothecaries, Distillers and Vintners, could still be said to represent a trade but most were so heterogeneous in their membership that little loyalty to craft or occupation can have remained. TABLE 9.4: Livery Company and Occupation : Livery Company

Occupations

Vintner (26)

19 tavern-keepers, 2 merchants, money-lender, draper, milliner, horner, rentier

Source: Common Serjeants' Books in CLRO for Livery Company; inventories of sample and occasionally Boyd for occupations. All Companies with at least 10 members have been included and those of unknown occupation have been left out. […] A rather similar story can be told of the Vintners' Company, which as can be seen from Table 9.4 (p. 252) was largely composed of tavern-keepers. The company was of medieval foundation and its members had many important privileges, including that of selling wine without licence in the City and liberties. Past members had left property which the company administered as trustee, and rents comprised 56 per cent of the company's income in the early 1690s. However, nearly all this rental income was specifically tied to charitable purposes and the Vintners shared the problems of all the ancient property-owning companies of honouring their charitable commitments in the difficult half-century following the Fire. Livery fines, very high at £31 each, were the backbone of the company's non-property income, while the tavern-keepers seem to have been better payers of quarterage than the members of most companies. The company still carried out searches in the early years of the reign of Queen Anne. In May 1704, for instance, some wine found in the cellar of William Lewellin of Pudding Lane was 'tasted and tryed by severall members and found to be defective and not fit for the body of man to be drunk'. However, the Vintners, like the Distillers, were doubtful about the legality of their searches and sought legal opinion in 1704 and again in the winter of 1706 on the subject. It is not known what advice was given by 'eminent Councell', but matters seem to have come to a head in 1708 when the Master was faced with a mutiny, the majority of those summoned for the search failing to turn up. Eventually, most of the mutineers appeared before the Court to purge their contempt at a cost of 3s.4d. a head in the poor box (or 5s. for late-comers) but, from this date onwards, searches were few and far between and seem to have been give up altogether by the reign of George 1. The company continued to lobby on behalf of its members but its main business was property management, charity and more than usually good dinners. […] A neighbourhood might be a street, a few streets or, in the City, it might be contiguous with the precinct and the parish. In medieval times, these small areas of a few hundred houses had been the setting for a vibrant community culture. Much of this vanished with the Reformation and, although such institutions as the Ascension Day procession round the parish and the Ward Inquest dinner survived, the local life of Augustan London had little of the colour and pageantry of other European cities. For information on the parish life [Augustan London] of the sixteenth century, see Pendrill (1937) and Brigden (1984). See also Burke (1977) for a general discussion of popular culture in seventeenth-century London. On ward or precinct dinners and breakfasts organized by the questmen, see Webbs (1908) ii, 597-8. This seems to have been the main function of the inquest. See, for instance, the accounts of Cheap Wardmote Inquest for 1701 (GHMS 60). Their receipts were £132, of which £38.10.0 was contributed by members of the inquest themselves and £84 'of the severall inhabitants of this ward in the house box'. Their disbursements included about £100 in such items as the Steward's Bill (£22), Vintner's Bill

(£52), sugar and spice, ale and beer, ' brawne', coffeeman and baker. Cf. Cornhill Ward (GHMS 4069/2) where the main disbursements were also the steward's, butler's and cook's bills. [...] TABLE C.1: Creditors of Selected London Debtor Groups by Occupations : Debtors

Creditors

Butchers

Butcher(5), gentleman(2), tallow-chandler(2), victualler(2), merchant, tripeman, leather-seller, cordwainer, glazier, vintner, coffeeman, silkman

Merchants

Merchant(71), gentleman(20), packer (6), linen-draper(5), (Blackwell Hall) factor(4), warehouseman(3), weaver(3), glover (2), clothier(2), widow(2), hosier(2), grocer(2), apothecary(2), ropemaker(2), haberdasher(2), skinner(2), goldsmith(2), yeoman, druggist, surgeon, carrier, vintner, mason, Joiner, pewterer, silkman, victualler, silk-thrower, tinplate-worker, grazier, tailor, felt-maker, peruke-maker

Vintners

(Wine) merchant(22), (wine) cooper(11), gentleman(5), vintner(4), widow(4), cook, drysalter, plasterer

The numbers in brackets are the number of times that a person from each creditor occupation sued a person in the debtor occupation in the left-hand column. No number means once. But who's better than Ned Ward to speak facetiously about vintners ? "Ward was publican [publican, n : the keeper of a public house - syn: tavern keeper] at the King's Head Tavern, next door to Gray's Inn, London from 1699. In 1712 Ward opened an alehouse near Clerkenwell Green ... From 1717 to (approx) 1730 Ward kept the Bacchus Tavern in Moorfields ... Between late 1729 and late 1730, Ward left the Bacchus tavern and established himself in the British Coffee House in Fullwood’s Rents near Gray’s Inn. On 20 June 1731 Ward passed away and was buried in St Pancras’ Churchyard in Middlesex. His obituary in Abbleby’s Journal of 28 September 1731 published the names of his wife and children, but there is no record of his marriage." (source : Wikipedia ) “Ned Ward, with his usual humour, describes a breakfast given in 1706 by the master of this house [At the King's Head, the corner of Chancery Lane] to his customers, consisting of an ox of 415 lb., roasted whole, and at the same time embraces the opportunity of praising the landlord as 'the honestest vintner in London, at whose house the best wine in England is to be drunk.' This was probably Ned's way of settling an old score. “(source : THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS From the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten 12th impression London 1908) "Let's therefore bear no longer the Abuse Of Bastard Vintners, and their Brickdust Juice. Fiddlers and Fools to Tavern Bars advanc'd, By crafty Knaves, by Blockheads countenanc'd;

Who justifie their Wines, as Quacks their Pills, By the short Number of the Weekly Bills:" (source : The Quack-Vintners or, a Satyr against Bad Wine (1712), With Directions where to have Good by Edward Ward (1667-1731) , a tract written against Brook'e) and Hilll(i)er's, the wine-merchants of that time, frequently mentioned by the Spectator.) "Yet first, my Muse shall let you see What Vintners are, or ought to be, Those Demy Gods, from whose rich Cellars Arise, Popes, Addisons, and Knellers, And ev'ry Worthy that can claim A place in the Records of Fame; For all that's excellent or fine, Derive their Origin from Wine, And should each Vintner shut his Door, Love, Wit, and Arts would be no more, But all the Land become at once, A dirty Hive of stupid Drones." Canto I "Jove, therefore, at the Intercession Of Bacchus, gave to the Profession Of Vintners , the mutative Pow'r That Proteus had in Times of Yore, By which they change their humane Shapes, For Int'rest sake, from Men to Apes, Or whatsoe'er will best agree With this or that Fool's Company, Nor is't their Fault to thus submit Themselves, to others want of Wit, The failing is in those proud Asses, That Lord it too much o'er their Glasses, And want the Vintner to behave Himself more cringing than a Slave, Teaze him the more, that they may see His Patience and Humility. " Canto II (source : The Delights of the Bottle (1720) or, The Compleat Vintner. With the Humours of Bubble Upstarts. Stingy Wranglers. Dinner Spungers. Jill Tiplers. Beef Beggars. Cook Teasers. Pan Soppers. Plate Twirlers. Table Whitlers. Drawer Biters. Spoon Pinchers. And other Tavern Tormenters. A Merry Poem. To which is added, A South-Sea Song upon the late Bubbles. By Edward (Ned) Ward, 1667-1731) “In Hell upon Earth or the Town in an Uproar (1729) vintners, victuallers and coffe-house proprietors stand 'eternally upon the Watch at their Doors and Windows, hemming after everyone that passes' to encourage them to 'propagate the Doctrine of Drinking'. These hems, issued from the threshold of the establishment, carried hints of challenge and temptation.” Emily Cockayne Hubbub, Filth, Noise & Stench in England (London 2007) p. 177. To end with the precise work of vintner, here are some extracts from The Gentleman's Magazine Oct. 1830 p. 345 : “An innkeeper, or (more strictly according to the old style) vintner, in Aldersgate street, London, when Charles I. was beheaded, had the carved representation of a bush at his house painted, and the tavern was long afterwards known by the name of the Mourning Bush in Aldersgate. […] " Dealers in wine of that period [Edward II], and long before, were of two descriptions, vintners and taverners : the first were the merchants and importers; the last the retail venders of wine. The distinction between vintners and taverners, from the frequent union probably in one person of the two trades, seems to have been in subsequent times lost and confounded, except perhaps so

far as the existence of the guild or company of 'vintners, merchant vintners, or merchants of the vintrie', might tend more strictly to define the crafts. The author affirms, in contradiction to some old writers, that the vintners were never called 'wine tonners.'' (p. 48.) Anciently there was no eating at taverns beyond a crust of bread given as a relish to the wine. They went not (according to Stow) in old time to dine and sup at taverns, for they dressed no meals to be sold, but first to the cooks and after to the vintners. Shakespeare has committed an anachronism in furnishing the Boar's Head Tavern, East Cheap, with sack in the reign of Henry IV. Vintners kept no 'sacks, muscadels, malmsics, bastards, alicants, nor other wines but while and claret, until 1543.' All the sweet wines before that time were sold as medicines only by the apothecaries. Sack being supposed to be a sweet wine, the addition of sugar to it has puzzled the commentators on Shakespeare.— To sweeten their wines, however, appears to have been at once a favourite and peculiar custom of the English. Sir John Falstaff not only added sugar to his sack, but a toast; he had, however, a particular aversion to its being enriched by eggs, 'I'll no pullets sperm in my brewage.' (See p. 54.) The single drawer or taverner of the 15th century was succeeded in the 16th, by a troop of waiters, assisted by 'an underskinker or tapster.'' 1747 17th November : In The London Gazette Issue 8694 published on the 17 November 1747. Page 3 of 4 : "Whereas the acting Commissioners of the Commission of Bankrupt awarded against Thomas Cosby, of Russell-street, in the Parish of St. Paul Covent-garden, in the County of Middlesex, Vintner, have certified to the Right Honourable Philip Lord Hardwicke, Baron of Hardwicke, Lord High Chancellor of Great-Britain, that the said Thomas Cosby hath in all Things conformed himself according to the Directions of the several Acts of Parliament made concerning Bankrupts ; This is to give Notice, that by Virtue of an Act passed in the Fifth Year of his present Majesty's Reign, his Certificate will be allowed and confirmed as the said Act directs, unless Cause be shewn to the contrary on or before the 12th of December next". Happy end : Thomas solved his debts, until the next time... 1749 5th August : Whitehall Evening Post On Saturday Ann Corbet was committed to Bridewell, and Mary White to the Gatehouse, by Thomas Ellys, Esq, for stealing a large Quantity of Milk from Thomas Cosby, a Cowkeeper in Tothill-Fields, Westminster (his milkmaids?) (source : Marion Hearfield Cowkeepers in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 2009 from http://gale.cengage.co.uk/) But what kind of spot were Tothill Fields in the past and in the time of Thomas Cosby ? « Take a ride in the elevator to the top of Westminster Cathedral's soaring campanile and look towards the river. The area was open land known as Tothill Fields until the 19th century. It had a myriad of uses, including animal grazing, market gardening, and the fighting of duels. From the 12th century, Tothill Fields hosted knights tournamentsand later bear and bull baiting. » in Looking Up in London: London as You Have Never Seen it Before by Jane Peyton (2003) p. 116 « In Howell's time, Tothill Fields were famous for melons ; and so lately as in the year 1750, the farmers in the neighbourghood suffured much loss by the cow distemper. Wallis, a citizen of London, left 6000l. For their relief. » in The Memorials of Westminster: The City, Royal Palaces, Houses of Parliament, Whitehall, St. Peter's College, the Parish Churches, Worthies, Streets, Modern Buildings, and Ancient Institutions by Mackenzie Edward Charles Walcott (2005) appendix p. 42 1755 3rd June : in The London Gazette Issue 9482 published on the 3 June 1755. Page 5 of 16, then in The London Gazette Issue 9483 published on the 7 June 1755. Page 15 of 16, then in the London Gazette Issue 9484 published on the 10 June 1755. Page 11 of 16 : "The following Persons being Prisoners for debt in the King's Bench Prison in the County of Surry, hereby give Notice, that they intend to take the Benefit of the late Act of Parliament made in the Twenty Eighth Year of the Reign of his present Majesty King George the Second, intitled, An Act for Relief of Insolvent Debtors, at the next General or Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be

held for the said County of Surry, or at the Adjournment thereof, which shall happen next after Thirty days from the Publication hereof viz. First Notice [...] Thomas Cosby, formerly of Tothill Fields, in the Parish of St. Margaret Westminster, late of Horse Ferry Road in the Parish of St. John the Evangelist, Westminster, in the County of Middlesex, Cow Keeper […]" And now, if he changed his occupation (actually cow keeper) and moved twice (first to Tothill Fields between November 1747 and August 1749, then to Horse Ferry Road not very long before June 1755) he didn't change his mind ; same mistakes, same punishment : jailed once more, but probably freed quicker than before, thanks to the MP... Concerning Tothill Fields and Horseferry road, here is what we find in Old and New London: Volume 4 by Edward Walford, 1878, p. 1-26 : “Horseferry Road, which we may be supposed to have reached, leads to that part of the river between Westminster and Lambeth, where was the only horse-ferry allowed on the Thames in London. The ferry was granted by patent to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the ferry-boat station on the Lambeth side was near the palace-gate. On the opening of Westminster Bridge the ferry practically ceased, and compensation, amounting to upwards of £2,200, was granted to the see of Canterbury; but, as we learn from a work styled "Select Views of London and its Environs," published in 1805, the ferry was still in use in the early part of the present century, though its traffic was sadly diminished […] 'Tothill Fields,' says Mr. Archer, in his Vestiges of Old London, 'were, within three centuries, part of a marshy tract of land lying between Millbank and Westminster Abbey, and on which stood a few scattered buildings, some of them the residences of noble personages.' They must have witnessed some extraordinary scenes in the Middle Ages {…] 'The open Tothill Fields, as they were called,' observes a writer in the Builder, 'existed in this state till 1810, with a group of lonely cottages standing in their midst, when the note of preparation for an altered site might have been heard in the construction of the iron bridge at Vauxhall. Dr. Vincent had already inclosed a portion of the fields for the square which bears his name, and the Westminster Gas and Coke Company removed their offices, and commenced their new buildings in the Horseferry Road, on the site of the beforementioned nursery […]'” Cow Keeper's Shop, London 1825 British Museum About the occupation of Cow Keeper : “These three scenes show how dairies operated in London. Cows were milked on the premises. In the Cow Keeper’s Shop, a customer is making a purchase while the man on the right pours milk into large tin pails. The milk was collected twice daily and taken out into the city streets by girls, usually Welsh or Irish, who carried two heavy pails on a yoke. Their routes varied, but were usually a few miles long. The girls called out through the streets and squares for customers to purchase the fresh milk. Their cries included, “Milk below, Maids!” and “Buy any milk?” In the scene below, a wealthier class of customer makes a purchase in Westminster Dairy. City conditions for cows were not optimal, cooped up inside as they were. A few lucky beasts would spend their day grazing in Green Park, where maids sold milk by the cup.” George Scharf, Chronicler of 19th C. London in Jane Austen's World blog. “The quantity of LIVE STOCK in and about London is probably less than in any other county, in

proportion to the number of acres, with the exception of the cows kept in the vicinity of London, for the purpose of supplying the metropolis with MILK. These cows are chiefly of a large size, with short horns, and are distinguished by the name of Holderness cattle, from a district so called in the East Ruling of Yorkshire, but to which the breed has long ceased to be confined. The entire number kept by the London cow-keepers is estimated to be about9,600; viz.,7,900 in Middlesex, 801 in Kent, and 899 in Surrey. The quantity of milk yielded by each cow has been averaged at nine quarts a day, at least, but the vast total is about 7,884,000 gallons annual produce. Some deduction must be made for sucklings, and the rest is to supply the consumption of London and its immediate dependencies. The price at which, the milk is sold to the retail-dealer (who agrees with the cow-keeper for the produce of a certain number of cows, and takes the labour of milking them upon himself), varies from 1s. 8d. to 1s. 10d. for eight quarts, according to the distance from town; taking at the medium, i.e., 1s. 9d., the whole amount will be (allowing for sucklings) 328,000l. In delivering the milk to the consumer, a vast increase takes place, not only in the price, but also in the quantity, which is greatly adulterated with water, and sometimes impregnated with still worse ingredients, to hide the cheat: by these practices, and the additional charge made for cream, the sum paid by the public has been calculated to be as much more, 646,000l., nay, one writer has said the advance or profit is 150 per cent.!! The milk is conveyed to the consumers in tin vessels, called pails, which are principally carried about by woman, mostly robust Welsh girls: it is distributed twice daily through all parts of the town.” Leigh's New Picture of London. Printed for Samuel Leigh, 18, Strand ; by W. Clowes, Northumberland Court. 1819. Let's talk Marion Hearfield in Cowkeepers in the 17th and 18th Centuries (2009) on Marion Hearfield's website at //www.johnhearfield.com/Marion.htm : “The cow-keeper has been located in Golden Lane in the City of London, two blocks north of St Paul’s Cathedral […] To find out more about these town-based dairies I [...] quickly realised that the word itself had different meanings, depending on the century […] Most growing cities had similar milk supply systems in place, but the earliest available newspaper reports are about London, and the first mention of cow-keeper was in 1681, when the Observator in

Copyright © Marion Hearfield 2009

Dialogue mentioned a satirical tract concerning “Roger Hodgkins, Button-Seller; Giles Pritchard, Cow-keeper; with other of their Associate-Princes...” which suggests that the cowkeeper was already so well established that everyone would understand the joke […] Here is a map of London in about 1746 (re-drawn by John). I have written elsewhere about how the rivers were used as sewers and consequently I have not coloured the Thames blue […] The map shows that the separate Cities of London and Westminster are joined by the building and development of the West End, which started after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Most of the land south of the river was marshy and undrained and, apart from Southwark and the Borough, only the river-side itself was built up. But the marshy ground was good enough for cows and the common land called St George’s Fields at Southwark was the centre for the south-of-the-river cowkeepers. The problem of draining these fields was of great interest and, when a major draining project started in Lincolnshire in the 1720s, it was reported widely and at length in the London newspapers {…] One factor which is hard to comprehend now is just how expensive cows were. In the mid 18thC, when a London craftsman was fortunate to earn £40 a year and labourers got about £25, a milch-cow cost £18 [Middleton] […] In 1798 Middleton's report to

Copyright © Marion Hearfield 2009 the Board of Agriculture quoted the numbers collected in 1794 by Mr Foot: that London was supplied by 8,500 cows – 7,200 in Middlesex, 1,300 in Kent and Surrey. Here is where the cows were kept (his list goes clockwise from the river). These places are marked in yellow on the map below, which was published by Samuel Leigh in 1819 (and redrawn by John). You can see the extra bridges built across the Thames - Battersea, Waterloo, Blackfriars and Southwark - since the 1746 map in Part 1. The other huge difference is the new network of canals […] District of Tothill Fields + Knightsbridge 205 cows […] It seems reasonable to accept that there were about 8,500 cows in 1794. But how big were the herds? The auctions taking place in the 1750-70s suggest that a herd of 80 or 100 was not unusual. A 1781 letter to the Westminster Chronicle said: '... the Cow-keeper had, ten years ago, such a great call for that article [milk], that he was enabled to keep constantly forty or fifty cows; whereas, at the present period, he cannot keep half that number.' which puts a 1780s herd at 25; this seems a bit low. In his 1798 survey, Middleton reports that Mr West of Islington kept 800 beasts across different farms, but I suspect this was most unusual. In February 1796, the Evening Mail carried an editorial which stated ‘London is supplied with milk by about thirty cow-keepers’. This is one of the rare times when numbers are mentioned but I have no idea of the reporter’s source, and the numbers just do not tally. Given

8,500 cows, and the 1781 average herd of 25, that means 340 cow-keepers, not thirty. Maybe the Evening Mail reporter was simply counting the districts named in Middleton’s report (listed above) – thirty-three districts. That makes more sense, but shows an unrealistic expectation that thirty cow-keepers could manage 8,500 cows […] But this next advertisement, from the London Evening Post of 16th November 1736, was for a 56-acre farm in Pimlico, ‘along side St James’ park wall’, with housing for 80 cows, a 7-horse stable, and a carthouse, recently in the occupation of John Hugger and now being offered for immediate letting by Mr Andrews of Grosvenor Street. This was much closer to civilisation. I show it here superimposed on a modern map, because it now seems so incongruous […] In November 1737 Mr Andrews placed another advertisement, this time for a 64acre farm adjacent to the Horseferry. These farms must have occupied the space identified on the 1746 map as Tothill Fields, although it seems that in 2009 all that is left of that earlier huge open space is a playing field. I suppose if you were the cow, it didn't matter much where you were kept, as long as you were fed and milked regularly […] The first mention of price rises I can find is in October 1765, when the Public Advertiser complained: 'The Milkmen, since Michaelmas-Day last, have Copyright © Marion Hearfield 2009 advanced the Price of Milk to Two-pence Halfpenny per Quart, which they purchase, Winchester Measure [=39.2 fl oz], and retail at Wine Measure [=33.3 fl oz], and which, exclusive of the Adulteration of that Comodity, is the most scandalous Imposition on the Public that has happened in the present Age, since within these few Years good Milk used to sell at One Penny Farthing per Quart.' For those readers below a certain age, One Penny Farthing was half of Two-pence Halfpenny. So anyone with £1 in 1765 could buy 48 quarts (enough to bath a small child) but it might take two weeks to earn £1 […] In 1767, in a campaign to raise the wages of public office servants, a correspondent detailed the barest annual expenditure of a London clerk which enabled him to save twelve shillings a year for his old age out of a salary of fifty pounds. Here it is: £32 1s 4d a year for rent and laundry and food; £17 5s 11d for clothes, candles, coal; £49 7s 3d TOTAL, leaving 12s 9d available for saving out of a £50 0s 0d notional annual income […] When cow-keeper Mr Ennever was finally made bankrupt in 1773, the auction advertisement for the sale illustrates that he had been living rather well. His household goods were advertised as: 'ALL his neat and genuine household furniture plate, linen, china, & consisting of four-post bedsteads, mahogany pillars, cotton, damask, and other furnitures; fine goose feather-beds and bedding, mahogany chest of drawers, bureaux desks, large mahogany and other tables, carved and other chairs, carved, gilt, pier, and other glasses [mirrors]; a very good eight-day clock by Wilson; large Wilton, Jersey, and other carpets; a set of rich enamelled tea china; Bath and other stoves; a very stout range, a jack and sundry good kitchen furniture.' [I had to look up ‘pier glass’ – apparently it was a mirror, usually framed, placed between windows or on dark walls to reflect more light into the room or hallway] […] Other cow-keeper household auctions tell a very similar story of comfortable living, with Turkey and Wilton carpets being mentioned regularly, often an eight-day clock, and cotton, linen, and woollen curtains and bed hangings, goose-feather beds (goose-feather duvets and pillows are still the most expensive). Always there was enough furniture to fill a substantial house rather than a modest dairy-man's cottage. But only towards the end of the 18thC, there were no such

auctions before the 1770s - the cow-keepers had only been as upwardly mobile as the rest of Georgian society.” (originally found on Marion Hearfield's website at //www.johnhearfield.com/Marion.htm) Always connected with the milk trade, here is what you may learn in A General Dictionary of Commerce, Trade and Manufactures by Thomas Mortimer esq. London (1810) digitalized by Google books (item milk) : “The cow-keepers feed their cattle very highly, in order to their producing the greatest possible quantity of milk. The expence is nearly as follows : turnips, 7 cwt. or 14 bushels, per week each cow, at 6d. Is 3s. 6d., brewer's grains, 7 bushels, at 5d. Or more, is 3s., hay, one truss and a half per week, at 2s. 6d. is 3s. 9d. (this may perhaps be deemed a low price to put the hay at, but it will not appear to be so, if we take into the account, that the cow-keepers mow their land two or three times in a season ; as their object is to procure the most grassy and soft hay they can. It is also not burthened with market charges – J. M.). The expense of the diet of a cow, is, per week, 10s. 6d., which is the equivalent to £26 13s. per annum ; and that sum taken from the produce in milk and calf, as before stated, of £38 leaves £11 7s. There are several other charges to be sustained by the cow-keeper, particularly, the interest of stock, annually £1 5s., damaged and lost cattle, 7 s., horses, harness and waggons, £1 15s., rent of buildings, 10s., hire of servants, £1, expenses and fairs at markets, unforeseen expences, and losses, 10 s. These things amount, per cow, annually to £5 7s. Which, taken from the £11 7s. Before-mentioned, leaves a remainder of the net profit of each cow, about £6 […] Five or six men only are employed in attending near three hundred cows. As one woman cannot milk more than eight or nine cows twice a day, that part of the business would necessarily be attended with considerable expence by (?) the cowkeeper, were it not that the retailer, as before observed, agrees for the produce of a certain number of cows, and take the labour and expence of milking on himself. Every cow-house is provided with a milk-room (where the milk is measured, and served out by the cow-keeper), and this room is mostly furnished with a pump, to which the retail dealers apply in rotation [...]” Let us end, once more with Hubbub, Filth, Noise & Stench in England by Emily Cockayne (2007), p. 99 & 107 : “Bramble [in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smolett - 1771] reserved his thickest bile for a description of London's milk : 'the produce of faded cabbage leaves and sour draff, lowered within hot water, frothed with bruised snails, carried through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings, discharged from doors and windows, spittle, snot, and tobacco-quids from foot passengers, overflowings from mud-carts, spatterings from coach-wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it by roguish boys for the joke's-sake, the spewings of infants ... and, finally, the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious mixture, under the respectable denomination of milk-maid.' Smollett here exaggerates the accidental impurities in milk by combining all potential contaminants in one pail, and extend the view that cows fed on cabbages and draff produced tainted and insipid milk.” “William King, in his Art of Cookery (1708), describes the cries of London as a 'hideous din'. As shouts were varied to attract attention, words degenerated into sounds, and many consumers would have had difficulty distinguishing one slurred yell from another. Milk, explained Joseph Addison, was sold in shrill sounds and one milk-seller became infamous for her inarticulate scream [The Spectator, n° 251, 18 Dec 1711].” About the diseases among the cattle in Tothill Fields just before Thomas Cosby began his career : « anno 1746 - A third Account of the Distemper among the Cows. By C. Mortimer, M.D. Fell, of the Royal Coll of Physicians, and Secr. R. S. N° 478, p. 4. - A certain cow-keeper in Tothillfields, Westminster, had 30 cows, out of which number 4 only have survived, 2 never took the infection, 1 had it and recovered; and he said, that one had the distemper 4 several times; for that, as soon as she was well for a week or 10 days, she relapsed, and went through all the stages of the disease, but now continues well... As a contagion distempers among the cow-kind is no new

thing... These infectious diseases have not been confined to the cow-kind alone, but sometimes the conta_gion lias been so virulent as to attack all sorts of brutes, as well as men. » In The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, from Their … by Royal Society (Great Britain),Charles Hutton,George Shaw,Richard Pearson vol IX p. 186 « On the distemper among the horned cattle - Feb. 1746 - It any farmer or cow-keeper refuses on your demand to kill and bury any of his sick cows, or to let you kill and bury them for him, in hopes they may recover, or on any other pretence, you are to acquaint him, that we shall not think ourselves obliged to allow him 40 s. a cow for them, as we do others; the chief end of giving that allowance being to command the cows to be killed as soon as they fall sick ; which is their interest also, as it tends to preserve the rest of their herd... You are to inform us of any stand that may be put upon the government by any farmer or cow-keeper, or any other person whatsoever, or any practice tending thereto. You are to give notice to the farmers and cowkeepers, and likewise to take care yourself, that no cows be buried within any common, waste, or road, (except in Tothill Fields, there being no other place near to bury them in), without particular orders. » in The Scots magazine, Volume 8 Par James Boswell vol. VIII p.70 About all the other known cow-keepers in Tothill Fields (Marion Hearfield in Cowkeepers in the 17th and 18th Centuries (2009) : Daily Gazetteer Wednesday 18th January 1744 "On Monday died, at his House in Tothill-Fields, Mr Ferryman, a great Cow-keeper, and one of the Persons concerned in the Stone-work for the new Bridge at Westminster." London Evening Post Tuesday 16th January 1750 "On Monday last died at his House in Rochester-Row, Tothill-fields, Westminster, Mr Unthank, a wealthy Cow-keeper." Date

District

Place

Surname

Firstname

Story

1758 May Westminster Tothill Fields Unthank John sale of stock (bankrupt) 1758 Sep Westminster Horseferry road Unthank John died, noted cowkeeper and farmer 1758 Oct Westminster Tothill Fields Martin 1761 Westminster Mar 1767 Westminster Apr

Tothill Fields Tothill Fields

Mears Meres Jnr

fire: two stacks of corn burnt to ashes

servant died after cart ran over him in the yard died; or rather appeared to have died; recovered, removed from coffin

About the bull's baits and the bets : « Bets were taken on the outcome : the 'bull's eye', a crown piece in circulation during the early 1800s, was often placed on the outcome of a bait. Most towns had a bull/bear ring, commonly known a 'bear garden', and in eighteenth-century London bull baiting took place twice a week at Hockley-in-the-Hole, Clerkenwell, at Marylebone fields, Soho and at Tothill Fields, Westminster... Far from being a pastime solely for the 'mob', bull-baiting was enjoyed even by royalty. » in Cow by Hannah Velten (2007) p. 57. 1759 : his younger daughter, Elizabeth, 20, married James LANDY at Westminster St. Margaret 1760 22nd January : his granddaughter, Margaret LANDY, is baptized at St. James' Westminster 1761 14th December : his elder daughter, Olive, 23, married James LEWIS (Marriage Licence

Allegations Index - Vicar-General 1694-1850) Both his daughters weren't too old when married : Would he be not rich, nevertheless Thomas seems living with a slice of wealthiness. 1765 7th July : Will of Thomas COSBY 7 JUL 1765, Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, PROB 11/910, Rushworth Quire Numbers: 244 - 286, p. 338 : "In the Name of God Amen I Thomas Cosby of Tuttle Fields in the Parish of St Margarets Westminster cow keeper being of sane mind and understanding but weak and feble in body do make this my last will and testament, In primis I give and bequeath my soul to the Almighty God and my body to be interred according to the directions of my executrix hereafter mentioned, Item I give and bequeath to my son Thos Cosby one gold ring value one guinea and to my daughter Olive wife of James Lewes to her and her husband each of them one guinea ring and to my daughter Elizabeth wife _ James Landy to each of them a ring of value one guinea to be given to them at the time of my interment, Lastly I give and bequeath to my dearly beloved wife Mary Cosby all my wordly effects after paying my just and honest debts and also constitute and appoint her my whole and sole executrix to this my last will and testament, Thos Cosby, signed and sealed the 7th day of July 1765 in the presence of us Will Dowling John Birch. This will was proved at London the eighth day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and sixty five before the Worshipfull Andrew Colter ducanel (?) doctor of Laws and Surrogate of the Right Worshipfull George Lay doctor of Laws master keeper on Commissionary of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury lawfully constituted by the oath of Mary Cosby widow the relict of the deceased and sole executrix named in the said will to whom administration was granted of all and singular the goods chattels and credits of the deceased having been first soon duly to administer." 1765 8th August : He is dead now, He was nearly 59. His will is proved by Mary, his 3rd or 4th wife. What was happening in London along Thomas COSBY's life ? 1706 “Thomas Twining bought Tom’s Coffee House off Strand, London” (actually 17 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden) http://www.xtimeline.com 1706 Measles epidemic (London) http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk List of Epidemics and Disease outbreaks by MarkCDodd & Australian Institute for Genealogical Studies 1707 July 8 England Heat 'Divers persons died'. 'Hot Tuesday' http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1708 June12 England Summer cold A hoar frost http://www.phenomena.org.uk Exceptionally cold winter; crops affected throughout that year http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1709-1710 London “An unusually hard and long winter followed by a poor harvest in 1709 was undoubtedly a factor in the epidemic, evidently of typhus, that began in the fall of 1709 and lasted throughout 1710, in which year 4,740 human deaths were attributed to 'fever' (4,397) and 'spotted fever' (343).” Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence: from ancient times to the present by George C. Kohn 1710 Smallpox http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1714 August 1 « The death of Queen Anne on August 1st, 1714, at Kensington Palace, once more changed the scene of political affairs, but George Louis of Brunswick's accession to the throne and his reign of thirteen years had very little influence, either on the appearance of the city or that of the river. There was still only the one bridge, and notwithstanding the loss of the riverside palace at Whitehall, and the removal of the Court to St. James's and Kensington, the watermen with their wherries and skiffs were still much in demand. The Lord Mayor in his State barge and the twelve great Companies in theirs, with all the pomp and pageantry of civic splendour, accompanied by bands of music and innumerable other boats and barges, made their annual procession to the Law Courts at Westminster for the Lord Mayors Show on Lord Mayor's day, returning to Queenhithe or Blackfriars where they had embarked. The Stationers' Company in their barge on the same occasion also paid an annual visit to their patron, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth, and presented their almanacs to his Grace. But very few other pageants were now seen on the river, and it was as dull as the Court, under a king who could not speak a word of English, and who disliked his new subjects every bit as much as they disliked him. » http://www.londononline.co.uk

1714 London “Deaths from fever, most of which were probably due to the typhus, reached nearly 4,781 in 1714, exceeding the previous three years by about 1,000 to 1,600 deaths per year.”Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence: from ancient times to the present by George C. Kohn 1715 April 22 England Solar eclipse Halley observed corona, white ring & fainter rays http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1715 August 22 « George I. had passed the Tower not long before on a trip down the river. On the 22nd of August, 1715, the King, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and a numerous party of nobility, went, with music on board their barges, from Whitehall, the old Privy Stairs there being still kept intact, to Limehouse. When they returned in the evening, the captains of the shipping in the river suspended lanterns in their rigging, and the houses on both banks were illuminated; an incredible number of boats filled with spectators attended the Royal party, and cannon were repeatedly fired from the Tower wharf during the day and evening. » http://www.londononline.co.uk 1716 January 22 Europe Cold winter -4° F. in Paris. Frost fair,London http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1716 « it was ordained that every householder should hang a light before his door from six in the evening till eleven. Gas was first used as an illuminant in 1807. » http://www.londonhistory.co.uk/ 1716 « The year 1716 witnessed the first race for Doggett's coat and badge, rowed by six young watermen who had just completed their apprenticeship. Doggett, who was a well known Irish comedian, joint manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Hanoverian dynasty, left a certain sum in trust for the purchase of the prize, an "orange" coloured coat with a silver badge on which the horse of the House of Hanover was embossed. The race was from Old Swan Stairs, by London Bridge, to the Old Swan at Chelsea. Thomas Doggett, who was also something of a dramatist, died in 1721, but the race is still contested today. » http://www.londononline.co.uk 1718 Measles epidemic (London); smallpox (London); influenza epidemic http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1718 London “The years 1718, 1719, and 1720 saw an upsurge in fatal cases to 3,607, 3,927, and 3,976 respectively.”.Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence: from ancient times to the present by George C. Kohn 1719 March 19 S. England Meteor 70 miles over Channel, 30 explosions. http://www.phenomena.org.uk « At about 8 p.m., London was suddenly illuminated by a light almost as bright as the Sun. The stars and the waxing Moon were blotted out, and candles gave no light. A great fiery body, estimated to be over a mile in diameter, raced over southern England at 21,000 miles an hour before exploding thirty miles above the English Channel. » http://www.londononline.co.uk 1719 June “In the 18th century, the industry was threatened by a new fashion for wearing printed calico, from India. This led to riots in June 1719, when 4,000 Spitalfields weavers rampaged through the city, attacking any women they saw wearing calico. They ripped the women's calico dresses and splashed them with ink. It took the troops two days to restore order.” http://www.icons.org.uk 1719 August England Heat & drought May, June, July & August; ‘such a summer for heat hardly known’ http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1719 Measles epidemic (London); smallpox epidemic (London) followed by severe influenza http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1724 November 16 London “Jack Sheppard, a notorious English robber, burglar and thief, was taken to the gallows at Tyburn to be hanged. He planned one more escape, but his pen-knife, intended to cut the ropes binding him on the way to the gallows, was found by a prison warder shortly before he left Newgate for the last time. A joyous procession passed through the streets of London, with Sheppard's cart drawn along Holborn and Oxford Street accompanied by a mounted City Marshal and liveried Javelin Men. The occasion was as much as anything a celebration of Sheppard's life, attended by crowds of up to 200,000 (one third of London's population). The procession halted at the City of Oxford tavern on Oxford Street, where Sheppard drank a pint of sack.[37] A carnival atmosphere pervaded Tyburn, where his "official" autobiography, published by Applebee and probably ghostwritten by Defoe, was on sale. Sheppard handed "a paper to someone as he mounted the scaffold",[38] perhaps as a symbolic endorsement of the account in the "Narrative". His slight build had aided his previous prison escapes, but it condemned him to a slow death by strangulation by the hangman's noose. After hanging for the prescribed 15 minutes, his body was cut down. The crowd pressed forward to stop his body from being removed, fearing dissection; their actions inadvertently prevented Sheppard's friends from implementing a plan to take his body to a doctor in an attempt to revive him. His badly mauled remains were recovered later and buried in the churchyard of St Martin's-in-the-Fields that evening." Wikipedia 1726-1729 London “Four-year period of epidemic fevers, among which louse-borne typhus fever was probably the most widespread and fatal. According to the London Bills of Mortality, human deaths from fevers were about 4,700 for each year from 1726 through 1728, and 5,335 for 1729.” Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence: from ancient times to the present by George C. Kohn 1727 July 19 England Earthquake 'All over England' http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1727 October 11 king George II coronation at Westminster Abbey

1730 January 1 London Thames there was such a dense fog that it caused numerous deaths and fatalities from collisions among the shipping. http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1730 April 13 Francis Hackabout, highwayman, tried at the Old Bailey on 28 February, found guilty, is sentenced to death and hanged. Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruickshank 1730 May 12 James Dalton, found guilty of robbery and assaults, is hanged at Tyburn. Francis Hackabout and James Dalton probably inspired William Hogarth for his set of engravings: The Harlot's Progress, issued in 1730/1731. Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruickshank 1730 Whooping cough especially in London; measles epidemic http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1733 « In the reign of George II, Walpole’s excise and gin acts were accompanied by another series of riots. The Excise Act was swiftly withdrawn after a siege of Parliament; then there were election and turnpike riots (with some cross-dressing) around the country. » www.housmans.com/kingmob.pdf 1735 January 8 England Gale ‘Most violent since 1703’ http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1736 July 5 England Floods All low meadows flooded. Heavy rain http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1736 July 26 London riots «By 1735 there were 7000 shops, licensed and unlicensed, in the Middlesex area of London alone that offered gin and brandy—their enticement read, “drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and straw for nothing.” Between 1727 and 1735 the annual consumption of spirits had increased from 3.5 million gallons to 5.5 million with the growth in the number of gin shops providing quick and easy access to drink. In February 1736 the Middlesex justices, concerned over drunkenness among journeymen, apprentices, and servants in particular because of the plethora of gin shops, petitioned the Parliament to restrict excessive sales of spirits. In March, Parliament responded with the Gin Act, whose provisions were to take effect on June 24. By the terms of this act any retailer in possession of “Spiritous Liquors” would pay a duty of 20 shillings per gallon on the spirits, and all inns, alehouses, or other shopsproviding spirits would pay 50 pounds per year for a license to do so. Although the actual application of the act’s provisions was postponed until Michaelmas (September 29), George Rude surmises from contemporary documents that its terms contributed to riots that erupted in Whitechapel, Shoreditch, and Spitalfields in July. The immediate catalyst for the rioting in Shoreditch and Spitalfields, however, was the replacement of English workmeninvolved in constructing the new church of St. Leonard’s with lower-paid Irish workmen. The immediate target of these riots, which broke out on July 26 andinvolved perhaps 2000 protesters, was the Irish residents, and in the course of the rioting several of their houses in the two areas were damaged by the mob. During the riots in Shoreditch, members of the mob shouted against “putting Down Gin”—a denunciation of the Gin Act. […] Certainly the Gin Act, despite the imposition of thousands of fines and penalties, failed of its intent—by 1743 the consumption of spirits had risen to 8 million gallons. » http://www.bookrags.com 1736 London « From 1736, lights were to be lit each night of the year. Traditionally they had been lit until midnight ; from 1736 they were lit until sunrise. » London A Social History by Roy Porter 1738 August London Tottenham Court Fair "1738, Tottenham Court, at Fielding's and Hallam's Great Booth, near the turnpike in Tottenham-Court, during the Fair, the town will be diverted with a new Entertainment (never perform'd before), call'd the Mad Lovers, or Sport upon Sport, with the Comical Humours of Squire Graygoose and his man Doodle, my Lady Graygoose, and Capt. Atall." Notes and queries by Oxford Journals (1859) p. 411 1739 January 6 London Tottenham Court “boxing match at Tottenham fair. 'Yesterday was fought at TottenhamCourt Booth the great BoxingMatch between Stephenson the Coachman and Taylor the Barber; there was a prodigious crowded House of Nobility and Gentry, at five Shillings a Ticket: The Odds before they began was six to four on the Coachman, who has but one Eye; and though the Coachman at the very beginning of the Battle struck the Barber just above the Eye such a Blow, that the Wound seem'd as if done with a Sword, and the Blood gush'd out and run into that Eye that he could scarcely see, yet the Barber flung him seven times successively, fought away boldly, and beat him in eleven Minutes: Peartree was the Coachman's Second, and Boswell the Barber's. There were vast Sums of Money lost on this Match: A noble Lord took a bett of 300 Guineas to 200 that the Barber would beat the Coachman. During the Battle, Part of the Benches fell down, several were hurt, and a Man had his thigh broke.'” St. Pancras: being antiquarian, topographical, and biographical memoranda by Samuel Palmer 1739 July 30 London Tottenham Court “On Thursday next, the 30th instant, at the Great Booth at Tottenham-Court, will be an extraordinary Trial of Manhood between JOHN BROUGHTON, of St. James's Market, AND GEORGE STEPHENSON, Coachman to a Nobleman, For One Hundred Pounds. The Doors to be open'd at Nine o'Clock. N. B. Gentlemen are desir'd to come early, large Sums of Money are depending, and the Combatants are oblig'd to mount exactly at Eleven o'Clock." St. Pancras: being antiquarian, topographical, and biographical memoranda by Samuel Palmer 1739 October 22 England Aurora? Meteor? ‘Frightful fiery dragon’ seen over all England. Cloudy http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1739 December 25 England Severe winter ‘Great frost’ began. N’ly winds almost constant till summer 1740 http://www.phenomena.org.uk

1739 Intensely cold winter; scarlatina (London) http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1740 January 11 England Cold Bitter E'ly gale, 20° F, Plymouth http://www.phenomena.org.uk « The winter of 1739-40 was one of the most severe ever remembered, and from the long continuance of the frost from Christmas Day, 1739, to February 17th, 1740, when it began to thaw, but very gradually, it has been known ever since as the Great Frost. It was impossible for the colliers from the north to get up the river, and the distress among the poorer classes was terrible, not only from want of fuel, food and water, but also of work. The watermen and fishermen with a peterboat in mourning, and the carpenters, bricklayers, and labourers walked in procession through the streets begging, and to the honour of the city and all, great sums were collected and disbursed. Another terrible calamity happened a few days after the frost had begun : there was a terrible gale which did incalculable damage in the river, dragging vessels from their moorings and dashing them against one another, while the large sheets of ice floating in the stream overwhelmed the wherries and lighters and barges, and sunk many, especially those laden with coal and corn. Above the bridge the Thames was frozen completely over and a Frost Fair was held on it. Various shops were opened for the sale of toys, cutlery, and other light articles. Printing presses were set up and the usual drinking booths and puppet shows abounded. All sorts of sports and activities were there, and the place became a perfect carnival, as if the populace were utterly oblivious of the misery and distress which existed on shore. » http://www.londononline.co.uk 1740 Intensely cold winter; scarlatina (London) http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1741 August London Tottenham Court fair “THE following is copied from a Daily Advertiser, of the year 1741. 'At Lee and Woodward's Great Theatrical Tiled Booth, near the Turnpike, during the time of Tottenham Court Fair, (which began on Tuesday the 4th inst. and will end on Monday the 17th,) will be presented, The Generous Freemason; OR.TIIE CONSTANT LADY; With the comical humours of Squire Noodle & his man Doodle.Squire Noodle, Mr. Woodward; Clerimont, Mr. Cross; Doodle, Mr. Yanghan; (he rest of the characters from both the Theatres. To which will be added, anew Pantomime entertainment, in grotesque characters, called Harlequin Sorcerer. Harlequin, Mr. Woodward;Columbine, Miss Robinson, being ber first appearance on any stage. X. B.— During the time of the fair, we shall begin at ten in the morning, and at nine at night. August 10, 1741." Dramatic table talk: or, Scenes, situations, & adventures, serious & comic, in theatrical history & biography (1825) Volume 2 by François Joseph Talma p. 20 1741 December 11 London Meteor Daylight fireball, trail vis. 20 min. http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1741 Severe typhus (London) http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1741-1742 London “Extensive and highly fatal epidemic of louse-borne typhus fever that caused over 7,500 deaths in London, England, in 1741 and nearly 1,200 in January and February of 1742. These figures, of course, are not totally reliable, as record-keeping in the 18th century was not uniform, and precise cause of death was not always accurately assessed. […] The epidemic followed an exceptionally cold winter in 1740, subsequent crop failure, and critical unemployment, conditions that contributed to the misery of London's poor population.” Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence: from ancient times to the present by George C. Kohn 1742 Severe typhus (London); measles epidemic http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1743 August 16 First set of written rules for boxing drafted by John Broughton and friends at Broughton’s Amphitheatre in Tottenham Court Road, London. The seven rules became known as the Broughton Rules http://www.supersport.com/boxing 1744 March 31 “Mr Sheridan … made his London debut at Covent Garden Theatre on 31 March 1744, as Hamlet, a role he repeated on 3 April. […] The following season he joined Fleetwood at Drury Lane... For his hastily arranged benefit on 13 December, he acted Hamlet; tickets were available from him at Mr Grignon's, a watchmaker in Russell Street, Covent Garden, opposite Tom's Coffe House.” A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Volume 13, Roach to H. Siddons: Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800 by Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, Edward A. Langhans (1991) p. 340 1745 March 5 “He [Mr Sheridan] was back in London to play Richard III on 5 March. […] On 31 August 1745 the London Daily Advertiser reported he had just arrived in London from Ireland.” A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Volume 13, Roach to H. Siddons: Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800 by Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, Edward A. Langhans (1991) p. 340 1746 June 24 Kent, England Thunderstorm “Continual storm of hail, rain & flame’. Much damage. http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1746 Scarlatina especially severe in London; smallpox http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1747 November 30 England Cold Lasted to Dec. 10. Snow 14 inches deep http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1747 Scarlatina especially severe in London http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1748 Scarlatina especially severe in London http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1749 May 15 England Thunderstorms Widespread damage by hail & floods http://www.phenomena.org.uk

1749 June 15 England Summer snow Skiddaw snow lay till 16th http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1749 November 30 London the British Lying-In-Hospital was set up in Brownlow Street, Long Acre, Covent Garden Man-Midwife, Male Feminist: The Life and Times of George Macaulay, M.D., Ph.D. (1716-1766) by James Wyatt Cook, Barbara Collier Cook p. 59 1749 Scarlatina especially severe in London http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1750 February 19 London Earthquake Also on French coast http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1750 March 8 London Earthquake Houses damaged http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1750 July 18 – 20 England Heat Hot from July 8. Several persons & many horses died http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1750 October 3 the Gentleman Highwayman James MacLaine is hanged at the Tyburn tree, convicted of 20 highway robberies in six months, often in the then-relatively untamed Hyde Park. Amongst his victims were Horace Walpole and Lord Elgington. Wikipedia 1750 November 18 « Westminster Bridge had been built, being then the only one besides London Bridge, which at last had been cleared of its houses and considerably repaired in 1757-58. » London A Social History by Roy Porter 1750 Widespread Scarlatina epidemics rife throughout the 1750s Scarlatina (Plymouth, London, Kidderminster epidemic) http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1750 London “... Black Assize of the Old-Bailey court-house […] Sir Michael Foster, ajustice of the King's Bench who had presided at the Old Bailey just a few months before, recorded that the court and the passages leading to it were unusually crowded, that these passages, which led directly from Newgate prison, were particularly filthy and that a foul smell was present in the courtroom. He stated that 'within a week or ten days at most, after the session, many people who were present … were seized with a fever of the malignant kind; and few who were seized recovered.' […] The Lord Mayor of London and the presiding judge, as well as many other gentlemen of conditiondied of the fever. In addition to several jury members, at least 40 other people who attended the trial were fatally infected. The incident set off a reaction of panic, and there are reports, some greatly exaggerated, that many Londoners fled the city to escape infection. Evidence indicates, however, that the fever affected only those who had attended the assize.” Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence: from ancient times to the present by George C. Kohn 1751 Scarlatina (Plymouth, London, Kidderminster epidemic) http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1752 April 22 Poor-House St. Paul's Covent Garden Burial of Betsy Careless, once reputated for her beauty and disguised innocence, but notorious courtesan and later bagnio-owner of Covent Garden Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruickshank 1752 July 31 London, England Waterspout Lifted 2 boats from Thames, Vauxhall http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1752 Smallpox http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1754 May 30 End of the trial of Elizabeth Canning, a fascinating, extraordinary & never solved case Wikipedia 1755 Measles epidemic http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1758 Influenza type epidemic http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1760 February 15 England Gale With lightning; 'terrible effects' http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1760 December 30 London Mild winter Pear trees & primroses in bloom http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1760 Measles epidemic; Influenza type epidemic recorded in horses http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1761 September 22 king Georges III coronation at Westminster Abbey 1762 February 21 England Blizzard Snow & gale k. many http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1762 September 27 London River disturbance Thames rose suddenly; ships driven on wharfs http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1762 December 25 England Cold Severe frost with E’ly wind http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1762 London Westminster Paving Act « Hitherto it had been the obligation of householders to keep the street in front of their house in good repair. Now paving commissioners were appointed, with paid staffs ; gutters were built on either side of the road, and in main streets Purbeck paving-stones replaced pebbles. » London A Social History by Roy Porter 1763 January 13 England Meteor Bright as Moon, Reading http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1763 August 19 Kent, England Hailstorm Track 40 miles long, great damage http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1763 December 2 England Gale Several k., London, many shipwrecks http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1763 Smallpox http://www.genealogyforum.co.uk 1764 January 13 Europe Gale & floods England http://www.phenomena.org.uk 1765 March 11 Snow & floods England Great snow all over England; many lives lost. Floods after sudden thaw http://www.phenomena.org.uk