Georgian London: Into the Streets Read Free

Jean Tijou was responsible for the ironwork. The south-west tower holds a brass pineapple at the very top. It was made by iron foundress Jane Brewer in 1708, by which time the cathedral had been conducting services for almost a decade. Brewer was not the only woman to work on the cathedral; theaccounts record ‘ Sarah Freeman, Plumber’, ‘Widdow Pearce, Painter’ and ‘Anne Brooks, Smith ’. They were not labourers but businesswomen, working at the top of their professions.
    The final bill for St Paul’s was £736,752 2s 3¼d, putting over 75 million modern pounds into the pockets of London manufacturers and workmen and women.
PATERNOSTER ROW: THE LIBRARY OF THE CITY
     
    Crouched on the north side of St Paul’s churchyard was Paternoster Row. It was the bookselling centre of London from the Middle Ages to the Blitz of 1940–41 when it was bombed out of existence with the loss of more than one million volumes. With only literature and music available for home entertainment, books and publishing were lucrative businesses for those who had an eye for what would sell. Start-up costs were relatively low, and a small efficient business could do well. As literacy spread during the late seventeenth century, and as trade became more international in the eighteenth, the ability to read – if not to write – became far more important.
    Printing shops were family affairs, like most eighteenth-century businesses. Two presses in each shop were standard. Each press took two people to work it. A compositor handled the typesetting, working alongside the master and often his wife, apprentices and servants. A handbook designed to help parents choose a career for their child shows the variety of work available, and also the high standards of language skill required in a ‘youth’ who might do well in the book trade.
     
A Youth designed for a Compositor ought to have a tolerable Genius for Letters, an apt Memory to learn the Languages: He must understand Grammar perfectly; and will find great Advantage in the course of his Business if he understands
Latin
and
Greek
 … The Spirit of Writing that prevails now in England, and the Liberty of the Press, has given Employment to a great Number of Hands in this Branch of Business, which had arrived of late Years to a great Perfection.
     
    Masons, carpenters and manual labourers were all respected as core workers, but at the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a rapid increase in demand for literate young men of all classes to serve as apprentices. Nor was any of the work in a printing shop too physically demanding for women, provided they had the skill with language. Unlike most of the other London trades, women were not barred from becoming ‘freemen’ of their chosen trade, so they could work within the City walls without prejudice. Elinor James was the widow of printer Thomas James but published a broadside under her own name circa 1715, titled
Mrs. James’s Advice to All Printers in General
and stating, ‘I have been in the element of Printing above forty years, and I have a great love for it.’ During her printing career Elinor published around fifty pamphlets. Some transcripts of speeches she gave, including
Mrs. Elinor James’s Speech to the Citizens of London at Guild-Hall
(1705), show that she was not only politically active as a publisher, but also as a speaker. She addressed everyone from the King down with what she believed was the correct way to carry on. More than once, Elinor’s efforts would land her in Newgate ‘ for dispersing scandalous and reflecting papers’.
    Elinor’s achievements as a polemicist pamphleteer mean that her fame was relatively short-lived, but other City printers are still with us. Thomas Longman, founder of today’s educational publisher Pearson Longman, had a keen eye for new literature, an acute business sense and the ability to handle tricky authors. Born in Bristol, Longman was apprenticed in the City and married his