 |
The Worshipful Company of Cutlers |
|
|
Members of the Company who served as Lord Mayor Alderman
William Bridgen
(1709-1779) - Lord Mayor 1763-4. Bridgen served as Junior Warden in
1744 and Senior Warden in 1745. He never served as Master. Alderman Henry Winchester (died in 1838) - Lord Mayor 1834-5. Master in 1829. Alderman
Sir Robert Walter Carden Bt MP JP
(1801-1888) - Lord Mayor 1857-8. Master in 1855, 1866 and 1876.
A stockbroker by profession, Carden was a noted
philanthropist, a Member of Parliament and a highly regarded member
of the Court of the Company. Alderman
Sir Walter Vaughan Morgan Bt
(1831-1916) - Lord Mayor 1906-7. Master 1911. Morgan was also a
liveryman of the Loriners’ Company.
He was a banker and was noted for his generosity to
charities. He gave
particularly long and valuable service to Christ’s Hospital. Alderman
Sir Samuel George Joseph
Bt (1888-1944) - Lord Mayor 1942-3.
Joseph was a Lloyds’ underwriter and father of the late the
Rt Hon Sir Keith Joseph Bt MP, one time Secretary of State for
Education and Science. Alderman
The Rt Hon Lord Mais of Walbrook GBE
(1911-1993) - Lord Mayor 1972-3. Master 1968. Lord Mais was a civil
engineer and, following distinguished military service during the
Second World War, became Chairman of Peachey Property Corporation. He was responsible for redeveloping Craythorne House in
Newgate Street when it
had been acquired by the Company.
He was also a liveryman of the Paviors’ Company and
founder member of the World Traders’ Company. Alderman
Sir Alan Traill GBE QSO
- Lord Mayor 1984. Master 1979. Sir
Alan Traill followed his father, the late George Traill (Master 1955),
in the insurance industry. He
is also a
Past Master of the Musicians
Company. ____________________ Other notable members of the Company John Torr Foulds John
Torr Foulds became Master of the Company in 1801. He had become a
Liveryman in 1782 and must rank as one of its more distinguished
members. Born in
Derbyshire in 1742 Foulds began work as a young millwright at London
Bridge Water Works in 1763 and remained to become its chief
millwright, surveyor and engineer until his death in 1815.
Old London Bridge had narrow arches which provided a
considerable force of water.
The first two arches of the bridge were originally fitted with
water wheels to provide power to pump water for domestic and
industrial purposes in 1582,
but by private enterprise. In 1701 London Bridge Waterworks
Company was formed as a statutory company and rapidly improved the
machinery. It was described in 1745 as follows: “in the first,
second and fourth arches of the north end of London Bridge are fixed
the water works commonly called London Bridge Water Works, which are
worked by the common tide water of the River Thames; the works consist
of five large water wheels and Sixteen Engines for raising of water.
The several wheels and cranks are uniform and so regularly fixed so
that their motion is continual either by day or night, upon the Flood
as well as upon the Ebb-Tides without the least assistance from any
person or shifting or altering any one individual link. At high and
low water only they stand still near three quarters of an hour more or
less according to the return of tides, their motion increasing or
decreasing in proportion to the velocity of the water ...” The
growing demands of navigation increasingly conflicted with the
obstructions required by the waterworks, and in 1761/2 the Corporation
agreed to open a larger waterway for vessels in the centre of the
bridge. To assist the Waterworks Company, two further arches were
leased to it.
Foulds’ first task was to assist in the installation of a
32-foot waterwheel in the fifth arch. By 1779 he had become chief
millwright, and proved his ability in fire fighting when the tower
into which the water was pumped caught fire. He then devised an
apparatus for direct pumping to the mains to avoid rebuilding the
tower. He
was then involved in a wide variety of activity in maintaining the
output of the machinery. In 1782 a steam engine was installed to
supplement the water power, and all five wheels were renovated. He
installed a sixth wheel in the fourth arch in 1795, having previously
been promoted to senior staff. Continuing in office until his death,
he was consulted about the deteriorating condition of one of the
wheels only a few weeks before he died. The water wheels did not long
survive him, since the Company was wound up in 1822 prior to the
rebuilding of the Bridge and the machinery was transferred to the New
River Company. Foulds
received the silver medal of the Society of Arts in 1780, and the gold
in 1795. He was a leading figure in the Master Millwrights’
Association and a member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.
In 1791 he was appointed Assistant Engineer in the Surveyor’s
Office of the Corporation of London. Thereafter he was heavily engaged
in design of the new docks on the Isle of Dogs, and also became
engineer to the Shadwell Waterworks Company along the river.
Sir John Hall John
Hall was the son of the Rev John Hall of Stannington, Yorkshire,
where he was born in 1779. He became a freeman and liveryman of the
Company in 1806, and in the following year was appointed consul and
agent for the maritime seigneury of Papenburgh in East Friesland.
Thereafter he was consul general for Hanover in the United Kingdom
from 1816 to 1854, served as Sheriff of Essex in 1817, and was
secretary to St Katherine’s Dock Company from 1824 to 1853. He was
knighted in 1831, and died in 1861. He
joined the Court in 1839 and was successively fined for the offices
of each Warden and Master from 1843 to 1845. The reason for his
joining the Company is unknown, hut he was most probably introduced
by John Foulds in view of the connection of both with London Docks.
His attendance at Court meetings seems to have been negligible. Henry
Graves Henry
Graves was born in 1806 and became a freeman of the Company by
redemption in 1835, and an Assistant in 1863. He served as Master in
1868/69, from November 1874 to July 1875 following the death of the
Master, Mr. J. L. Evans, and again in 1877/78. Besides
a gilt rose-water bowl and a marble bust of Apollo, he gave numerous
portraits and prints to the Company including those of William III
and Queen Anne, as well as two of himself. This is unsurprising in
that he was a dealer in pictures and engravings so well known that,
upon his death, The Times not only printed an obituary, but also
carried a very long editorial upon his influence upon the Art World.
His gallery at 6 Pall Mall was a major centre for the artistic world
of his time. As a record of influence the following extracts from
that editorial are illuminating:- “The
death of Mr Henry Graves, for so long a time a conspicuous figure in
the world of art, breaks a link with a distant and interesting past
... he had known Wilkie, had published for Constable, and had for
years had Turner to sup with him every Sunday, and had contributed
more, perhaps, than any other man to the fame and fortune of
Landseer ... he had been a pushing and successful man of business
before he was 21. His great time was from 1830 to 1870, and during
those 40 years it is not
too much to say that no man was more closely connected with the
movement of the arts in England, so far, at least, as native
painters and engravers were concerned ... His talent was that of
judging the market with curious precision; of knowing what would
take the public taste, and of sparing neither money nor pains in
bringing such work before the public. He
helped to enrich many artists ... he paid Flatow, the dealer, the
vast price of £20,000 for Mr Frith’s “Railway Station” and
the copyright ... so with Landseer who became rich not by the sale
of his pictures, but by that of the engravings from them. Another
matter which is likely to be a good deal discussed on the occasion
of Mr Grave’s death is the present and future position of
engraving as an art. As he was by far the largest publisher of
prints that ever lived, he must be held in a measure responsible for
the present state of the art, be it satisfactory or the reverse. It is eminently desirable that the
great traditional excellence of English engraving should he
maintained, and that the men of today and tomorrow should not fall
below the standard set by the old mezzotinters”. Henry
Graves died on 23rd August 1892 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. Sir
Horace Louis Petit Boot Sir
Horace was admitted to the Livery on the 13th August 1897 and became
Master on the 1st July 1936. He
was a man of diverse interests. By profession a civil engineer, he
was the founder and Chairman of the Eastwood Group of Companies.
Amongst those interests were, Presidency of the Institute of
Arbitrators and the Institute of Municipal Engineers, and of the
Royal East Berkshire Agricultural Society. He was a Life Member of
the National Trust and interested in and a great supporter of the
Clay Industries. He was a Governor of Sheffield University and also
a Liveryman of the Loriner’s Company.
It is noteworthy that in “Who’s Who”, his primary
recreation was listed as “work”.
He was distinguished also in the City of London and in 1940
was elected a Sheriff, being subsequently knighted for his services.
The portrait by A E Cooper now hanging in the entrance to
Cutlers Hall shows Sir Horace in shrieval robe wearing the chain of
office which was a gift by his many friends in the City.
The Right Hon Sir John Beaumont PC, QC John
William Fisher Beaumont (1877-1974) was the son of Edward Beaumont
(Master 1900) and grandson of James (Clerk 1835-1870). He was
educated at Winchester College and Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Called to the Bar in 1901, he served as Chief Justice of Bombay
1930-43 and became a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in 1944. He was Master in 1951.
Charles
Welch FSA If
the Company has only contained one pre-eminent historian amongst its
ranks, it can be particularly proud of his distinction. Charles
Welch was born in 1848, son of Dr Charles Welch (liveryman 1840,
fined for Master 1887 and who died in 1895). He became a freeman in
1869, joined the Court in 1901 and served as Master in 1907. Upon
leaving the City of London School in 1866, he joined the staff of
Guildhall Library and served there for 40 years, being librarian
from 1888 until 1906. An obituary in the Antiquaries Journal states
“under his guidance the Library increased both in size and
usefulness, and on his retirement it was in London second only to
the British Museum”. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of
Antiquaries in 1890, and served on its Council in 1894. He died on
14th January 1924. His
publications upon the history of London and its Guilds were
numerous. As early as 1880 he produced a short history of the
Stationers Company, followed in 1890 by another on the Gardeners
Company. There followed a massive history of Tower Bridge in 1894 to
mark the opening of the present bridge; ‘Numismata Londinensia’
(an account of medals struck by the Corporation) in the same year;
and ‘A Modem History of London’ in 1896. Histories
of the Pewterers Company in 1902 and the Paviors Company in 1909
served as preparations for his monumental history of the Cutlers
Company in two volumes,
published in 1916
and 1923. During the same period, he wrote ‘London at the opening
of the twentieth century - contemporary biographies’ 1905; ‘A
History of the Monument and Great Fire of London’ 1907; ‘a
History of the Royal Exchange’ 1913; and ‘The Coat Armour of the
City Livery Companies’ 1914. In 1911 he joined with Canon Benham
to write a work on Medieval London. In addition he edited the
Churchwarden’s accounts of All Hallows, London Wall, the Register
of Freemen under Henry VIII, and produced numerous papers on various
aspects of City history. |
|
