INDUSTRIES 



hats, tropical hats and helmets, Terai hats, 

 ladies' silk, felt, and straw hats, and tweed 

 hats and caps ; Messrs. John Ellwood & Sons, 

 hat and helmet manufacturers and patentees 

 of the air chamber hat for India ; Messrs. 

 Albert Edwards & Co. and Messrs. Hope 

 Brothers. 



In all there are in Southwark and Ber- 

 mondsey close upon twenty firms devoted to 

 the manufacture of hats, the majority of them 

 having large businesses. 



Hat-making has also been carried on in 

 other Surrey places in the neighbourhood of 

 London — in Lambeth and Battersea for 

 instance ; but of these other places it is only 

 at Wandsworth that the manufacture calls for 

 special notice here. 



After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes 

 a colony of Huguenots established themselves 

 at Wandsworth. They were chiefly drawn 

 from the little town of Caudebec in Nor- 

 mandy, which had been a centre for furriers 

 and the manufacture of felt and beaver hats. 

 They are said to have had the secret of some 

 liquid compound which served for the pre- 

 paration of the rabbit and hare skins, as well 

 as of the fur of the beaver. They kept their 

 secret imtil the middle of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury so well that up to that time, we are told, 

 the French nobility and all who prided them- 



selves on their elegance, wore no hats but 

 those of English make, and even the cardinals 

 of Rome ordered their liats from the Wands- 

 worth manufactory. The secret was brought 

 back to France by Mathieu, a French hatter, 

 who set up a large factory in Paris about 

 1730.* 



Of the French hat-makers of Wandsworth, 

 Daniel Torin on his tomb in Mount Nod 

 cemetery is described as a master felt-maker. 

 He died 7 April 1700, and in the same vault 

 is buried John Malegue, his son-in-law, who 

 describes himself as a hat-maker in his appli- 

 cation for a licence to marry Elizabeth Torin. 

 Peter Ruffe, also buried in Mount Nod, is 

 styled in his will dated 20 July 1742, a 

 master-hatter." 



Lysons in 1792 speaks of the manufacture 

 as still existing at Wandsworth, though much 

 diminished in its extent. Mr, Chatting, a 

 grandson of one of the refugees, was then a 

 hatter in Wandsworth, but most of the 

 descendants of the refugees are said to have 

 so Anglicized their names that the memory of 

 their extraction was almost lost.^ In 1823 

 we find one George Burley carrying on 

 business as a hat manufacturer in Wands- 

 worth.* The manufacture is now extinct in 

 this riverside suburb, the last maker there 

 being a Mr. Crook.* 



DYEING, BLEACHING, CALICO PRINTING 



The history of the dyer's art and of the 

 gradual introduction of new found dye-stuffs 

 forms one of the most interesting chapters in 

 the history of English industries. To its 

 earlier stages Surrey contributes some valu- 

 able illustrations. Two chief centres for the 

 industry seem to have existed in the county 

 from an early period. One of them was in 

 the clothmaking district about Guildford and 

 Godalming. The other and the more in- 

 teresting one, in that it better exemplifies the 

 progress of the art, was about Southwark, 

 whence the industry afterwards extended to 

 other places along the south bank of the 

 Thames, and became established on the 

 Wandle, reaching to Mitcham and Carshal- 

 ton. 



We may take the dyers in the former of 

 these two districts first and consider their 

 industry apart, because the notices we have 

 of it in the sixteenth and early years of the 

 seventeenth centuries bear little on those 

 innovations which were then giving a special 

 interest to the art in other quarters. Inci- 

 dental reference to the dyeing industry in 



south-west Surrey has already been made in 

 the account of the cloth manufacture in those 

 parts. We have seen that several of the 

 clothiers had their own dye-houses and 

 materials for dyeing, and perhaps the industry 

 was little specialized in this neighbourhood. 

 On the other hand some are particularly 

 described as dyers, and one at least of them, 

 as we shall see, must have been in the enjoy- 

 ment of a very considerable business. 



William Redman of Godalming, who 

 directed in his will dated 17 July 1535,° that 

 his son-in-law Robert Parkest should have 

 the occupancy of his dyeing-house, was pro- 

 bably a clothier as well as a dyer. Robert's 

 son Richard describes himself as ' Richard 

 Parkhurst of Godalming, shearman,' and 



1 Weiss, Hilt, of the Trench Protestant Refugees 

 (trans. Hardman, 1854), 259. 



^ C. T. Davis, Industries if Wandsworth, 21, 22. 



' Lysons, Environs of London (ed. l), i. 503. 



* Pigot & Co.'i London and Provincial Commercial 

 Directory (1823-4). 



^ C. T. Davis, op. cit. 22. 



Prob. Archd. Ct. Surr. 16 Nov. 1535. 



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