A penny for your Thoughts

The above image is of No. 4 High Street Saffron Walden. © Jamie Furlong LRPS

Re-printed from the Saffron Walden History Journal (Old Series) Volume No. 2. October 1975 with some recent updates.
© Kenneth J. Lovatt

At the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, Henry Hart, printer and bookseller, began to issue his Saffron Walden Year Books, price one penny. The earliest of these in the Town Library is dated 1853 and was the subject of an article by Mr. O’Leary, “The Middle of the Century”, written for the first number of this journal.

In passing it is perhaps worth noting that issue No. 1 has become extremely hard to find. “Preservation,” to paraphrase the opening of the Nov. 1974 editorial, “is important; it cannot be repeated often enough.”This article takes the story a little further and aims to air the thoughts and queries raised by a comparison of the 1853, 1867 and 1872 Year Books – the intervening numbers appear not to have survived. Why, for instance, should the population of the town have declined from 5912 in 1851 to 5474 ten years later? A mixture of bad harvests, emigration and cholera?

The more prudent farmers insured their crops with the County Hailstorm Insurance Company, premium 6d. an acre. From the long lists of successful claimants it is clear that damage was considerable. A good deal of money was paid out.

Emigration there certainly was. The advertisement sections are full of lists of books of suitable reading for those about to spend long years almost alone out in the wild. The only immigrant mentioned is Mr. W. B. Hill, tailor of 3, Old Bond Street, London, who set up his business in 1867 near the Rose and Crown.
As for cholera, the suggestions for curing or avoiding the disease show how little its cause was understood.

Class distinction appears on every page of advertisements:- “John Cook gasfitter, Most respectfully solicits a continuance of the favors (sic) heretofore bestowed upon his predecessor by the Nobility, Clergy, Gentry, Tradesmen and others, inhabitants of Saffron Walden and neighbourhood.” Capital letters are scattered like confetti.

Street numbers had not yet been introduced into so small a town. Advertisers assumed that a street name was sufficient, so that it is usually impossible to discover where each shop was. Photographs would have helped, but I doubt whether any work by Humphreys, Photos, of Copt Hall Terrace, Ashdon Road, or F. T. Day, Photographic Artist of Gold Street (1872) survives. The earliest photograph I have seen is a snap of Market Square, taken, I think, in 1854. But I know of nothing else covering the middle years of the century.

Occasionally a shop can be identified by an additional remark. Thus, John Burton, Saddler and T. G. Barnard, Tailor, both of High Street, “opposite the Brew House” (1853). These would therefore be somewhere between No. 4 (above image) and the end of the Saffron Hotel. (See left).

Samuel Bird, Fruiterer, High Street, opposite Church Street, “next door to Mr. Burch” (1867). Now Cole’s. Join T. Hughes, Cooper, Corner of Castle Street, and Bridge Street, J. List, Boots and Shoes, Market Hill, next door to the Green Dragon Inn (1872), G.R.Whitehead, Plumber of Church Street “in part of the old Sun Inn” (1872). Wm. Haylock, Grocer, “The Golden Canister, one door from Market St.” (1853). But even as early as 1867 the lack of street numbers was becoming a nuisance, for Mr. Burch says that, “As many persons have by mistake gone into the wrong shop….. it is necessary to observe the Address, painted in very large letters on the front of the House. ‘ESTABLISHED 1800, BURCH, DENTIST, CHEMIST, DRUGGIST’.” (Now No. 21 High Street).

Five years later he is still warning customers to see that the name is painted in large letters on the front of the House”. By 1867 he has given up his claim of fourteen years earlier of “teeth carefully extracted with instruments of modern invention” and announces that, “to insure (sic) expedition, he has made arrangements for the personal attendance of an EXPERIENCED LONDON DENTIST”. His rivals were Messrs. Jones, Surgeon Dentists of 63, Trumpington St., Cambridge who “attend as usual on the 1st and 3rd Friday in each month at the Rose and Crown Hotel”. Drinks handy at the bar for sufferers! In passing it should be mentioned that Joseph Freestone of Gold Street was selling sherry at 1/6, champagne at 2/4, brandy at 3/-, gin at 2/- and whiskey at 2/6 a bottle. And James Willis of Bridge Street corn and coal merchant and maltster stated, “Families supplied. Ales in casks from 5 gallons and upwards. 1/- to 1/8 per gallon”. And this at a time when almost every house seems to have been a pub!

The author of The Middle Years’ (Saffron Walden History, Vol. 1) is correct in saying that Smith and Gibbs Euknemidas, the agent for which was Wm. Kemp of High Street, would puzzle most of his readers. The nearest I can get is to give a literal translation from the Greek, i.e. “well greaved”. So they must have been some kind of gaiters or leggings. But what was Boramıs Tarts? None of the bakers in the town can tell me. Nor can I find a doctor who knows what Coco-bay and Chiego-foot were. But Holloway’s ointment cured them.

Both Gatward and James claimed to have the largest selection of spectacles in the town. Customers rummaged through the pile until they found what suited them. J. James, (late Jeffrey), Watch maker, moved from Cross Street to King Street in 1872, his former premises being taken over by Octavius Holgate, who himself had come from High Street. Holgate was one of those who insisted on cash. “If people have credit, they are perfectly entitled to PAY THE PIPER, but DOWN WITH THE CASH is our motto. Applicants for credit will please call after eight o’clock p.m. on Wednesdays, when we hope to be elsewhere”. R. Burch, the chemist, was of the same opinion, “thinking a nimble ninepence better than a slow shilling, determines to charge the lowest possible price for every Article consistent with the quality, for ready money”. This was in 1867. No one was insisting on ready cash in 1853. Perhaps the decline in population over fourteen years made for keener competition among shopkeepers. Remember, too, that 1867 was a year in which the average income in England was given as £18 and income tax stood at 4d. in the pound.

Respirators were on sale, Mr. Burch again, from 2s. 6d. upwards. “Persons susceptible of cold, especially during foggy weather, should never neglect wearing a respirator.” Did they cover the mouth and nose or the whole head? It would be interesting to see one.

In 1872 came the first advertisements for private schoolings: “Mrs Rayment, Young Ladies’ Boarding and Day School, King Street,” Miss Bridges of High Street, who ran a similar establishment, begins her advertisement, perhaps rather unfortunately, “In soliciting for the future, Miss Bridges begs to assure those who may become patrons ….” Schools were certainly needed. In 1867 one third of the married couples made a mark instead of writing their names in the register. See Fiona Bengtsen’s article: There was, however, a demand for knowledge. The Working Men’s Institute met in a “commodious room belonging to the Girls’ British School Formerly in Gold Street,” Where was that? The Reading Room of the Literary and Scientific” was well supplied with papers: four dailies of which the Times alone survives, two quarterlies, the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Review, ten weeklies that included the Spectator, the Illustrated London News and Punch, and five monthlies, one of which was Bradshaw. None of these five survive. The Herts and Essex Observer, price 1d., had started publication in 1861.

Travel was still a hazardous affair. The Railway Passenger Insurance Company against Accidents, for which Robert Willis of High Street was the agent, demanded a premium of 10/- for £100 and £4 for £1,000. And these were only ‘payable at death’.

That the Year Books were regarded as useful can be deduced from the number of local shops advertising: approximately 20 in 1853, 30 in 1867 an and 40 in 1872. There was also a fair sprinkling of outsiders.

We are grateful to Mr. Hart for giving us a glimpse of the town as it was a century ago at a price of a penny a year.