Frequent contributors, Peter Williams and Mark Gorman share some interesting Forest Gate discoveries from their recent work within Newham Archives.
In the Newham council archives, there are extensive records for what was called the “West Ham Burial Board”.[1] These Boards were a response to the crisis of overflowing cemeteries in central London from the 1850s onwards and the Boards managed local public/council cemeteries.
The West Ham Board secretary was a Mr Self, and he seems to have kept meticulous records of all the Board’s activities. The archive boxes contain neat bundles of correspondence on a whole range of matters.
The present article concentrates on the letterheads and details of small firms in Forest Gate and Stratford who supplied the Burial Board. It gives an insight into both the lovely artwork of this business correspondence, as well as the range of businesses locally around 1900. There are the obvious suppliers to a cemetery, such as monumental masons, but also more obscure businesses.
Newham Volunteer Kathleen Partington has been cataloguing these papers, and I am grateful to her for drawing these items to my attention.
We start with the monumental masons, the first one, WT Sumpter, based in what is now Cemetery Road E7.
Cosburn was another mason in the area of West Ham cemetery in Odessa Road, E7. He had been born in Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire in the mid 1840s and migrated to London as a young man, married young, and was living in Chatsworth Rd off Forest Lane with his young family by his mid twenties. Hundreds of thousands of people moved from the English countryside to London in the Victorian era to make their fortunes. His wife was a Londoner, born in Chelsea.
The West Ham Cemetery Board clearly needed many other kinds of supplies, most notably ironwork of various kinds. Here we have Henry Freund, based in Tower Hamlets Road off Forest Lane.
In 1862, Freund had been an ironmonger in Bethnal Green and then had opened a branch in Forest Gate, no doubt as it developed rapidly from the 1860s, with a massive demand for building materials. This newspaper advert shows his business had several branches by the mid-1890s.
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| Tower Hamlets Independent and East End Advertiser - 29 August 1896 |
There are several letterheads in the collection for a firm called Venables, who were based close to the Holly Tree pub in Dames Road. They were shoeing smiths, a reminder that in Victorian and early Edwardian times, London was entirely dependent on horses for road transport, and there were places to get horseshoes done everywhere. There were serious predictions at that time that central London was going to grind to a halt soon due to the sheer amount of horse manure. But then the car came along!
Notice Venables also had a branch at Forest Gate station.
Oddly, the following crime report, which discusses Venables, also mentions Mr. Freund being cheated. Notice that the Venables business is described as being on Leyton Rd, because what is now known as Dames Rd was formerly part of Leyton Rd until the 1890s.
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| Leytonstone Express and Independent - 21 November 1885 |
Later Bayliss’s lamp depot was at 96 Woodgrange Rd. Today, those premises are occupied by a highly skilled plaster moulder, Louis, who hails from Malta. By coincidence, he also carves grave stones!
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| West Ham and South Essex Mail - 05 February 1937 |
Henry Stanley Bayliss lived above the shop at 96 Woodgrange Road, according to the 1911 census. He was then described as a gas fitter. He still lived there in 1921. Like many shopkeepers, he lived upstairs with his wife and children.
He had moved to a farm at Abridge in Essex before he died in 1944, and called it Woodgrange.
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| Probate records via Ancestry |
He died wealthy, with an estate worth £5,000, which is equivalent to approximately £250,000 today. This wealth allowed skilled craftsmen/shopkeepers to earn a good living, reminding us that Forest Gate was an affluent suburb. He is buried in West Ham cemetery, where he had provided goods and services whilst trading.
Another small business person in this area was Arthur Bignell, an ironmonger.
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| West Ham and South Essex Mail - 31 March 1900 |
He seems to have been involved in local politics, standing for the West Ham School Board in 1895.
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| West Ham and South Essex Mail - 02 March 1895 |
Conclusion
Newham Archives holds extensive records of the West Ham Burial Board, which are currently being catalogued by a volunteer. Amongst the records are invoices from suppliers to the Board. As well as being attractive Victorian letterheads in their own right, we can, by using other sources, like online newspapers and Ancestry.com build up a picture of local businesses and businessmen in the Forest Gate area 120 years ago. It was a thriving new suburb with many small businesses, some of which left their owners wealthy.
Thanks to Jess Conway, Newham Council archivist, for permission to photograph the letterheads.
1. The Burial Acts of 1852 and 1853 placed all decisions initially with local vestries. In the mid-19th century, vestries played a central role in the collection and distribution of local rates. The Burial Acts permitted each vestry, using a strictly framed democratic process, to vote to establish a burial board. Each board would then be able to raise funding to establish a new cemetery. Burial board cemeteries were laid out in their many hundreds, paid for through loans secured from the Public Works Loan Board and repaid out of the rates. Burial boards were composed of elected ratepayers who managed the cemetery in accordance with government guidelines.
2. West Ham council had its own electricity department at this time, and indeed generated and sold electricity for profit from a major power station in Bidder Street, Canning Town. This was nationalised after 1948.
