A HISTORY OF SURREY 



furriers, hatters' kiln and tool makers and 

 hatters' trimming makers, that the hatting 

 industry remains to the present day one of 

 the most important in this busy quarter of 

 the ancient county of Surrey. But many 

 causes, it has been recently said, have com- 

 bined to deprive Bermondsey, and we pre- 

 sume we are to include Southwark, of its 

 pre-eminence in this branch of trade.' 



Perhaps the most potent of these causes 

 was the change in the fashion of male head- 

 gear which had set in well before the end of 

 the first half of the last century, and which 

 led to the complete disuse of beaver hats, 

 made we are told chiefly of a mixture of 

 wool and rabbits', hares', neuters' and other 

 furs, which the Southwark and Bermondsey 

 felt-makers knew well how to treat, with a 

 last coating of beaver, in favour of the now 

 long popular silk hats, the tissue of which is 

 chiefly made in Lancashire.* Hats of cloth 

 felt are still of course very generally worn, 

 and it is doubtless in a great measure to the 

 necessity of their manufacture that we have 

 no cause as yet to regard hat-making in South- 

 wark as a moribund industry. 



At the present day one of the largest and 

 probably the oldest established firm of hat- 

 makers in Surrey is that of Messrs. Christy 

 & Co., Ltd., of Bermondsey Street. In 

 1 84 1 Messrs. Christy were supposed to be 

 the largest manufacturers of hats in the world. 

 Their extensive factory occupied two ranges 

 of building on each side of Bermondsey 

 Street. Steam at this date was employed to 

 drive machinery with which certain operations 

 such as fiir cutting, logwood cutting, and the 

 sawing of timber for the packing cases, were 

 performed, and a conspicuous object of the 

 eastern range of buildings was the lofty 

 chimney 160 feet high. On the same side 

 of the street were the warehouses for wool 

 and other articles, the buildings occupied by 

 the cloth cap makers, hat trimmers and 

 packers, a fireproof varnish store-room, the 

 silk hat workshops, and the shops wherein the 

 early stages of beaver hatting were carried on. 

 Here too were made the common black 

 glazed or japanned hats, and a further range 

 of buildings comprised a turner's shop where 

 the hat blocks were made, a shellac store 

 where the lac was ground and prepared for 

 use, a blacksmith's shop, a saw-mill, a log- 

 wood warehouse and cutting room, fur cutting 

 rooms and rooms in which the coarse hairs 

 were pulled firom the skins, a wool-carding 

 room, and a blowing room for separating the 



different qualities of beaver, fur or hair. The 

 western range of buildings was less extensive 

 and consisted of a beaver store-room, the 

 dye-house, stoving, shaping and finishing 

 rooms and the like. The firm at that time 

 had a factory in Lancashire for weaving plush 

 hats. The number of persons employed at 

 the Bermondsey factory was about 500, of 

 whom nearly 200 were women with wages 

 varying from Ss. to 14J. per week.' 



An account published in 1850 gives a 

 somewhat minute description of the process of 

 beaver hat making as carried on by Messrs. 

 Christy at Bermondsey.* During the inter- 

 val however between these two accounts the 

 beaver hat had been very generally superseded 

 by the silk one, and of the total number of 

 240,000 hats yearly said to have been made 

 in this establishment at the later date, two- 

 thirds were silk and the remaining one-third 

 beavers. Four hundred and fifty men and 

 women were employed at Bermondsey, and 

 about twice that number at the same firm's 

 manufactory at Stockport, Cheshire, where 

 then, as now, the silk covering was made. 

 The various departments of the factory 

 described in the earlier account of 1841 

 sufficiently indicate the nature of the different 

 processes necessary for the felting of the skins 

 and wool that went to the making of the 

 beaver hat. Special notice however is taken 

 in the later account of the beautifully con- 

 trived engines for the clipping of the fur, of 

 which eight were then employed in this 

 factory, the knife being so regulated as to cut 

 the hair close off without touching the skin ; 

 and also of the flannel-lined galleries, 30 or 

 40 feet long by 3 or 4 feet square, through 

 which the fur was blown by a fly-fan revolv- 

 ing 1,500 to 1,800 times per minute, the 

 coarse hair being driven through, whilst the 

 fine fur clung to the flannel lining, 



Beaver hats are now a thing of the past, 

 but amongst the articles still extensively made 

 by this firm are silk hats, hard, soft and zephyr 

 felt hats, tweed and cloth caps, and cork and 

 felt helmets for the army, volunteers and 

 police. 



Messrs. Lincoln, Bennett & Co., Ltd., the 

 well known hatters of Piccadilly, have a large 

 factory in Nelson Square, Southwark. To 

 Mr. John Fletcher Bennett of this firm is 

 attributed the first introduction of the silk hat 

 into this country in the early years of the last 

 century. Amongst other Southwark hat 

 makers at the present time are Messrs. Tress 

 & Co., who make silk hats, stiff and soft felt 



• E. T. Clarke, op. cit. 238. 

 2 Brayley and Britton, loc. cit. 



3^2 



" G. W. Phillips, WiV/. 0/ Bermondsey, 105-7. 

 * Brayley and Britton, op. cit. v. App. 27, 2 i 



