A HISTORY OF SURREY 



already attempted to show. On the whole 

 we must agree with those writers who, while 

 declaring their inability to fix a date for its 

 beginnings in Bermondsey and Southwark, 

 hold that its antiquity is remote. They point 

 to the natural advantages Bermondsey en- 

 joyed for the manufacture of leather in its 

 oak-woods and abundance of water-power 

 from the numerous tidal streams which 

 flowed through it into the Thames.' 



During the seventeenth century Ber- 

 mondsey must have maintained its pre- 

 eminence in the leather industry, and the 

 story of the terror-stricken creatures who fled 

 from the ravages of the Great Plague in the 

 city of London to the Bermondsey tan pits to 

 find strong medicinal virtues in the nauseous 

 smell may at least be cited as evidence of the 

 fame of these tan pits.* But the strongest 

 proof of the importance the industry had then 

 obtained is found in the charter granted by 

 Queen Anne on 15 July 1703, whereby the 

 Bermondsey tanners were incorporated under 

 the name of ' the Master, Wardens and 

 Commonalty of the art or mistery of tanners 

 of the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Ber- 

 mondsey, in the county of Surrey.'^ William 

 Jeffreys was appointed the first master. The 

 preamble states that the charter was granted 

 on the tanners' own petition, and that it was 

 rendered necessary by the number of those 

 who, notwithstanding the many good laws 

 provided for the well tanning of leather, had 

 taken upon themselves, especially in Ber- 

 mondsey and the adjacent places, to follow 

 the trade of a tanner though not apprenticed 

 thereto for the space of seven years or other- 

 wise duly qualified. Yet in spite of this 

 alleged necessity for the charter it appears to 

 have remained inoperative from the first.* 



The important position which the leather 

 manufacturers of Surrey have held in the his- 

 tory of the industry in this kingdom is 

 strikingly illustrated by the large proportion 

 obtained by them out of the total number of 

 patents for inventions granted for improve- 

 ments in this branch of manufacture ' during 

 the last half of the eighteenth and first half 

 of the nineteenth centuries. Nearly all these 

 Surrey inventors belonged to Bermondsey or 

 the adjacent metropolitan districts of the 

 county. It is unnecessary and hardly pos- 

 sible here to deal with all these various inven- 



' E. T. Clarke, Bermondsey (1902), pp. 194-5, 

 quoting Charles Knight and Mrs. Boger. 



» Ibid. p. 196. 



' Pat. 2 Anne, pt. 4, No. 8. 



* G. W. Phillips, Hist, of Bermondsey, p. 105. 



» See the various Indexes to Pat. of Inventions, 

 1617-1852 (London, 1854). 



336 



tions, but they have to do with all the pro- 

 cesses incident to the preparation of leather 

 from the first cutting of the skins or fiirs, the 

 removal of the wool or hairs and the tanning 

 of the hides to the final operations of dressing 

 and finishing. Thus Thomas Chapman of 

 Bermondsey, a skinner and seal wool manu- 

 facturer, took out a patent in 1799 for his 

 method of taking off the wool or fiir from 

 seals' and other skins whereby the skins or 

 pelts were less damaged than by any other 

 process yet adopted, and were kept and pre- 

 served in a perfect state for the purpose of 

 tanning into any kind of leather.* In 1 809 

 Richard Willcox,' a mechanist of Lambeth, 

 patented machinery for cutting the furs from 

 the skins of animals, and machinery for a 

 similar end was likewise patented in 1830 

 by Alexander Bell, a Southwark engineer.* 

 Amongst patents taken out for improved 

 methods of cutting, splitting, and dividing 

 hides and skins were those of the following 

 Bermondsey tanners : George Choumert • 

 in 1783, William Parr and Samuel Beving- 

 ton'° in conjunction with Richard Bevington, 

 a merchant of Gracechurch Street, in 1806, 

 and Samuel Brookes" in 1808. The latter 

 claimed for his process that it would enable 

 each side of the split hide to be manufactured 

 for the purposes for which an entire hide had 

 been before used, the grain side being suit- 

 able for coach and chaise hides and other 

 purposes, and the flesh side for losh hides, 

 white leather, vellum, tanning, and other 

 purposes. Still more numerous are the 

 patents obtained by various Surrey tanners 

 for new methods of tanning and manufac- 

 turing. Francis Brewin of Bermondsey took 

 out three several patents between the years 

 1799 and 1836 for tanning processes.'* In 

 the specification for his first patent in 1799 

 he claimed for his method the following 

 points : Firstly, that it would save much 

 labour ; secondly, that the oozes used with 

 the forward goods might be obtained of any 

 degree of strength required, and that the bark 

 would be perfectly spent before it was cast to 

 the tanhill ; and thirdly, that the leather did 

 not require one half the usual time to 

 manufacture it, and was in weight superior 

 to the best tannage and yet more elastic.'* 

 For his second patent, granted in 1801, he 

 stated that his method consisted principally in 

 consolidating floaters and taps, namely by 



• Pat. of Inventions, No. 2317. 



' Ibid. No. 3222. 8 Ibid. No. 6029. 



• Ibid. No. 1382. 10 Ibid. No. 2925. 

 »» Ibid. No. 3178. 

 " Ibid. Nos. 2319, 2550, 6977. 



Ref. Def. Keeper of the Records, vi. App. 196. 



