Thursday, 22 October 2009

Francis Hammond - Related Trials

By carefully reading of the trials (trial 2) associated with Francis Hammond I have been able to identify the location of his rented shop in Oxford Street: 'I am waterman (who waters horses, not to be confused with a man who works on the river) of the coach-stand in Oxford Street, at the corner of Argyle Street (spelt 'Argyll' on Google Maps), opposite the prosecutor's shop'. We also know that his 'shop-woman' was called Mrs Bean. In 1856 he was 'in partnership with Mr. Middlemist as lightermen, (see also Watermen) at No. 82 Lower Thames Street', near Billingsgate Market (wiki). Francis Hammond would have known the area before the first Billingsgate Market building was built on Lower Thames Street in 1850. According to the Billingsgate website this proved to be inadequate and was demolished in 1873 to make way for the building which still stands in Lower Thames Street today. The current market is at Trafalgar Way, London, E14.
See Lee Jackson's page on Billingsgate at his VictorianLondon.org . Mogg's Strangers Guide To London 1834 shows the area that Hammond could have passed through to reach his shop, and Billingsgate.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home