Arthur Ginn of St Lukes, London d. 1740

When I first researched papers in the Public Records Office (as it then was) in 1990 or so in dusty Chancery Lane I first came across the will of an Arthur Ginn, who instinct told me connected to the Hertfordshire family but I had no idea how.  Many years passed, then in 2009 or so I had enough circumstantial evidence to connect the man to Navestock and Shenfield, but persistence finally paid off in 2011 when definitive evidence as to the link finally turned up by way of the Essex Beneficiaries Index.

Arthur Ginn was born in 1682.  The evidence suggests that his father was not prosperous, but Elizabeth Turnage seems clearly to have come from a respectable family of yeomen and it is likely that Arthur’s grandmother’s family may have been able to help him financially. It is also possible that his future wife brought a little money to the marriage and, obviously, Arthur may well have been an enterprising man and made money himself.

He was the only surviving son from this family, certainly by the 1720s, and Arthur jnr decided to seek his fortune in London.

By 1712 Arthur was living in St Andrews Undershaft (near modern Liverpool Street Station) when that year he, (with a quoted age of 30) applied for a marriage licence to marry Dorothy Bednall aged 25 (St Pauls-Guildhall Library) at St Pancras Church – they duly married shortly afterwards.

Arthur and Dorothy lived in the London Wall area for the whole of their married life, roughly the environs of the current Barbican and not far from the offices of the Society of Genealogists.  This was Hogarth’s London.  So far as I know they were childless – certainly no child survived them.

London had experienced the Great Plague and subsequently the Great Fire of London in the 1660s and a huge rebuilding effort had followed.  The City was expanding and the area in which Arthur and Dorothy were living was expanding along with it.

By the 1720s the couple were living in St Giles, Cripplegate, near Old Street.

In 1720 a map (below) clearly shows the west side of Old Street was mainly fields.  By the 1740s there had been rapid expansion and by the 1780s the whole area was completely urbanized.

By 1729, it is known that Arthur was one of the churchwardens of that famous old church, St Giles without  (below) as he is mentioned in Berneaux’s Index (Society of Genealogists) concerning a court action of that year (Bundle 1258 suit 14 year 1729).   He must have been a fairly solid local citizen to have been made churchwarden of what was a significant church.

Between 1720 and 1740 the area west of Old Street became built up and a road called Noble Street was constructed.  Arthur bought a home there, near the corner with Brick Lane and such richly named alehouses as the “Dog’s Head and Pottage Pot” and the “Bag & Bottle” which were likely his locals and may even have been run by him (see below).

 In 1733, St Luke’s Old Street Church was built to try and relieve some of the population pressure on St Giles brought about by the people now pouring into London and the building in the area.  You can see from the 1740s map (below) how close that church was to Arthur.

We know from Arthur’s Aunt Ann (Sach) that Arthur Ginn was a Victualler, at least in the 1730s, so he obviously had some tavern in the area, and without yet having consulted the local ratebooks I am speculating as to which (see below)

In 1735 (Londonlives.org) Arthur was a juror in an assault and grievous bodily harm case at the Old Bailey.  He little thought that in a few years he would be going back as a victim.

 In 1738 (Old Bailey records) he was the recipient of a threatening letter,  I will let Arthur tell us the story:-

On 17^th March between 4 and 5 in the evening the Postman brought me a letter from the General Post office with the town mark upon it, demanding £10 to be laid at a certain place by 6pm that same evening

Arthur then produced the letter which was read out

To Mr Ginn in Noble Street nr Brick Lane – we are 10 in a gang and desire you’ll lay £10 in  a corner of the Old House in Brick Lane …..else we will set fire to your house and burn you alive in your beds.  The money you shall have again in a month

BR

Arthur and a couple of acquaintances went at 6pm to the Old House (whose location I cannot find) and found a certain James Taylor leaning against the house and “kicking brickbats” ie loitering,  and assumed that James was the criminal.

James was strongarmed to the Cock Inn in Old Street (shown on the east side of Old Street in the 1720 and 1740s maps - by 1780 it was a brewery) which was only a short walk from where Arthur lived, to be questioned. Given what his Aunt Ann tells us it is perfectly possible that Arthur was the landlord of the Cock Inn at this time.  James Taylor denied having any involvement in the plot and he had many solid citizens to speak well of him both before and during the trial and was discharged.  Presumably Arthur never got to the bottom of the mystery, but it must have worried him and Dorothy more than a little.

  St Giles w/o Cripplegate record of 1729 with Arthur’s signature

It was in 1738 that Arthur made his will.  He tells us that he was a yeoman and had aquired several properties, gardens and a summerhouse as investments, mostly near Goswell Street.  These were left  to  his wife for life and then to his six sisters who were, or he assumed to be living , with a guinea for each of them in the meantime. 

Arthur died at St Lukes in 1740 (will National Archives) – he was 58.  Dorothy Ginn widow of  St Lukes remarried Thomas Baynes widower of St Clement Danes by licence at Clerkenwell in 1742 (Guildhall Library)