INDUSTRIES 



river Wandle. The brazil mill at Wands- 

 worth is incidentally referred to in the church- 

 wardens' accounts for that parish as early as 

 1571.^ The mill existed down to our own 

 times, when it was known as the Middle Mill 

 and has only been pulled down in recent 

 years.^ Adjoining to the same river in 

 Wimbledon were some lands at one time in 

 the possession of Ellis Crispe, on which was 

 a mill which was once used for a fulling mill 

 and a brazil mill. It had however been con- 

 verted into a colour mill for grinding colours 

 for the glazing of white ware, when on 10 

 March 1690-1 it was conveyed by Crispe's 

 widow Mary and his son Samuel of the Inner 

 Temple to William Knight, an Aldgate pot- 

 maker.^ Ellis Crispe had also been the owner 

 of the Merton mills, of which we hear some- 

 thing in 1693, when they were the subject 

 of an appeal action in the House of Lords.* 

 One of these three mills was a brazil mill, 

 and they had all been let by Crispe to one 

 Jonathan Welch. Subsequently when the 

 reversion had been conveyed hy Crispe to 

 Thomas Pepys, the latter had induced Welch 

 to surrender his old lease and take out a new 

 one for fifty-one years at a yearly rental of 

 j^50. The property afterwards came into 

 the possession of Sir Edward Smith, bart., and 

 he was accused by the sons, Jonathan and 

 Joseph Welch, of the then deceased lessee, of 

 making preparations, under pretence of erect- 

 ing a small eel-gin, for building a fulling or 

 other mill which would obstruct the stream 

 to their prejudice. They had brought ac- 

 cordingly an action in the Exchequer against 

 Smith, and by an order of that court of 30 

 May 1692, the issue as to whether the plain- 

 tiffs had suffered damage had been ordered to 

 be tried at the Surrey assizes. The Welches 

 gave evidence that in consequence of the new 

 mill they could not grind so much by at least 

 7 cwt. of logwood a week, at 5^. the cwt., as 

 they did before. They had obtained a ver- 

 dict with damages to the amount of £^0 

 against Smith, who by a decree of 26 January 

 1692-3 had been commanded to pull down 

 the new mill. Sir Edward Smith appealed 

 against this decree, but it was upheld by the 

 House of Lords on 3 March 1692-3. 



Probably at this time and certainly later 

 the brazil and logwood mills in this neigh- 

 bourhood were worked chiefly for the needs 



» Surr. Arch. Coll. xvii. 168. 



2 C. T. Davis, Industries of Wandsworth (1898), 

 II. 



^ Jewett, Ceramic Art in Great Britain, i. 157 

 seq. 



* House of Lords MSS. {Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. 

 xiv. App. pt. 6), 347 seq. 



of the important calico printing works there- 

 abouts, and we shall have occasion to refer 

 to them again in our account of the latter 

 industry. 



Resuming our account of the Southwark 

 dyers we may note that in 1748 George 

 Spence of St. Olave's was one of the paten- 

 tees of an invention, the secret of which was 

 stated to have been purchased from a foreigner, 

 for procuring green and blue Saxon colours in 

 worsted, woollen and silk goods.° From the 

 dyeing of textile fabrics the Southwark dyers 

 seem to have turned their attention to that of 

 the leather goods which were manufactured 

 to so great an extent in their neighbourhood. 

 In this connection we find that George Shep- 

 ley, a leather-dresser of Horsleydown, obtained 

 a patent on 27 June 1774, for his 'new dis- 

 covered and introduced millstones, which 

 placed horizontally and worked with wind or 

 water will reduce to powder bark for tanning 

 leather and brazil-wood, logwood, fustick, 

 madder, indigo, saltpetre, and all other woods, 

 drugs, roots, minerals, and colours used in 

 dyeing, in a quicker, less expensive, and bet- 

 ter manner than the present method.' * Of 

 Mr. Roberts, who had carried on the separate 

 business of a dyer until in 1841 he combined 

 with Messrs. Learmouth, tanners of Ber- 

 mondsey, we have already spoken in our ac- 

 count of the leather industry of Surrey. 



During the eighteenth century two Acts 

 were passed which were calculated to have 

 considerable effect on the Surrey dyers. The 

 first of these, passed in 1726-7, was called 

 into being by the unsatisfactory results 

 attending the use of logwood instead of woad 

 in producing certain dyes, and its efi^ect was 

 to subject a very considerable area round the 

 metropolis to the right of search enjoyed by 

 the Dyers' Company.'' The second of the 

 two Acts was passed in 1777, and permitted 

 the master dyers in the counties of Middle- 

 sex, Essex, Surrey, and Kent to employ 

 journeymen in their trade who had not 

 served an apprenticeship therein.* It was 

 stated in the preamble that the laws relating 

 to apprentices as laid down by the statute of 

 5 Elizabeth had much injured and obstructed 

 the trade of a dyer in regard that there were 

 not a sufficient number of persons who had 

 served an apprenticeship in that trade. 



A considerable dyeing business was carried 

 on at Wandsworth probably as early as the 

 seventeenth century. The existence of the 



s Pat. of Invention, No. 635. 

 « Ibid. No. 1074. 



' Stat. 1 3 Geo. I. cap. 24 ; Cunningham, Growth 

 of English Industry and Commerce, ii. 353, 354. 

 8 Stat. 17 Geo. III. cap. 33. 



367 



