One of Theatronomics’s key tasks is to catalogue all of the expenses recorded in Covent Garden and Drury Lane’s account books. We are currently in the process of transcribing each entry verbatim, grouping them into general categories (e.g. Music, Clothing) and more specific sub-categories (e.g. Kettle Drums, Footwear), and attaching individual People IDs to them. Once completed, all of this information will be fully searchable in our database and users will be able to trace how expenditure on various facets of theatre production waxed and waned over the period.
Many different types of people were paid by the theatres, from proprietors and investors to landlords and collectors of parish rates. But the groups that loom largest (after the theatres’ own employees, of course) are tradespeople. Each season’s account book includes dozens of references to timber merchants, glaziers, ironmongers, plumbers, tailors, milliners, furriers, feathermen, peruke makers, sword cutlers, organ builders, stationers, printers, vintners and many more. And whereas our list of theatrical employees is largely comprised of the data we received from The London Stage Database and the information in the multi-volume Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses…, we have no such secondary sources to draw upon for our list of tradespeople. Instead, we are creating that list on the basis of the payments found in the account books.
However, the account books are not always the clearest source when it comes to identifying tradespeople. They usually give only titles and surnames; are inconsistent in the names that they use; and sometimes do not give a name or a trade at all. Therefore, when it comes to creating discrete People records, we often need help from other sources, which help has largely come from the London trade directories published over the course of our period. Series like Kent’s Directory (commencing 1736), A Complete Guide (1740), and London Directory (1768) were published over many decades, sometimes on an annual or quasi-annual basis, and were supplemented by more occasional publications. Although no single directory records all of the tradespeople paid by Covent Garden and Drury Lane in any given season, most tradespeople can be found in at least one directory. The directories normally provide first names, business addresses, and presumably the most reliable renderings of trade partnerships’ names. Thus, not only do these directories allow us to create more accurate and properly delineated People records for our tradespeople, they also provide material for deeper analytical work on the nature of the theatres’ imbrication in the economic geography of London.
A few examples from Covent Garden’s account books will illustrate these points. Between at least 1766 and 1808, Covent Garden procured most of its oil from a partnership that the 1766-67 account book dubbed both “Messrs. Buxton & Enderby” and “Messrs. Buxtons & Co.” Already this raises questions over which name is to be preferred, and over how to spell “Buxton(s)”. A trade directory of 1766 helps, identifying a “Buxtons, Sims & Enderby” located at Paul’s Wharf, Thames Street; and the Old Bailey Online database reveals that “Buxtons” was in fact two men, Charles and Isaac Buxton, who, along with Sims and Enderby, were the victims of an oil heist in 1765. Although this raises the further question of why Sims is not recorded in the account book, his name also disappears from later trade directories, suggesting that he had slipped oleaginously out of the partnership before the 1766-67 theatrical season. However, that was only the first of many changes to this fluid partnership. A decade later, the account books record payments to “Mr. Enderby Oil Merchant”, and directories confirm that an “Enderby Samuel” now operated alone from Paul’s Wharf. The Buxtons, once apparently the key figures in handling the oil, had sunk without a trace, and three had become one.
But solitude seems not to have suited Samuel Enderby. Ten years later, the account books record payments to “Messrs. Enderby”, and the directories list “Enderby Samuel & Sons”. Eventually, in the early nineteenth century, Samuel seems to have retired, and his sons to have taken over the business entirely. Yet throughout all these fluctuations, the partnership continued supplying Covent Garden with its oil. Thus by scrutinising the account books and directories, we are able to create a People record for a single partnership, give it multiple variant names to encompass the changes in personnel, and attach that record to all of the relevant payments. At the same time, we are presented with an interesting case study in just how durable a theatre’s relationship with a trade partnership could be.
Similarly, between at least 1767 and 1786, Covent Garden dealt with a merciless mercer named Mr Bellamy, who chopped and changed his partners on a regular basis: in account books and directories alike, he is variously recorded as “Bellamy & Setree”, “Bellamy, Setree and Lane”, “Bellamy & Roberts”, “Bellamy & Co.”, and eventually just “Mr Bellamy”. Maybe not such a bel ami after all. Meanwhile, Covent Garden bought its iron from a partnership of Mary Mist and sons, ironmongers. Yet at some point this touching family business seems to have fragmented: Mist & Sons became Mist & Son; James Mist appears separately in the directories; and the theatre redirected its custom to “Mr Mist” – perhaps James Mist, perhaps Mary’s other son, who had perhaps supplanted her as the leader of the family business. Whether any warmongering was involved in all this, or whether the family ever ironed out its differences, is not recorded.
Lastly, it is worth drawing attention to the Hawkes family of coal merchants and the various Barretts with whom Covent Garden operated, because both cases present difficulties. Covent Garden began purchasing coal from a Jeremiah Hawkes many years before trade directories record his forename amongst the Hawkes family partnership, and also seem to have been buying tallow candles from a W. Hawkes, who seems to have been separate from the Hawkes coal merchants. They bought wax candles from a John Barrett, but also paid him as a renter (a sort of investor), while apparently paying a B. Barrett for unspecified reasons; but a 1794 directory lists a “Barrett J. B. 4, Haymarket, [chandler] to the K[ing].” Could it have been that John and B. Barrett were the same person – a wax chandler who supplied both the theatre and the royal family? Such a figure would have needed more than one B. to get his hands on all that wax.
Exploring the theatres’ payments to tradespeople, and the piecing together the identities of those tradespeople, is therefore a fascinating project. It will allow us to present a rich, detailed record of how the theatres fitted into the economic landscape of the metropolis.
