Uriah here is the son of Uriah snr of Cheshunt in my post of 10th November 2019 . I did not know he even existed until late 2021 (no baptism record survives - he was born during the Commonwealth in circa 1658) and this research is a work in progress. He does not have any descendants and you may think that this will be a boring post - but you would be wrong - Uriah was a Stationer - ie a Bookseller, unique in this blog.
A local man called Robert Dewhurst had a charity school built in Cheshunt in 1640. The original building still stands (below) and is used as the dining room for the now much larger and modern Dewhurst Primary School . It is now part of a State School, a school that my father (I come from Cheshunt) attended in the 1920s, my Dad and Uriah played in the same playground, 250 years apart. So Uriah and I come from the same town and have a personal link.
Originally the school was set up for "poor boys" ie those whose parents could not afford schooling for their children. It was as stated in its constitution "for the teaching of them to read English so that they may know God the better and also to write and cast accounts so that they may be better able to be apprenticed to some honest trade or mystery"
Most of the boys went to manual trades, but the more academic went elsewhere and in early 1674 Uriah was apprenticed to a Thomas Harris a Stationer of London "he dwelleth in Camomile Street within Bishopsgate" (De/Ds/8/1 Herts Archives)
Camomile Street is still there but bears no resemblance to what it looked like in 1674. It had escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666 and was a short street of less than forty buildings off of Bishopsgate Street - a map of 1682 shows it below.
It is apparent that Uriah finished his apprenticeship and continued as a Stationer the rest of his life.Stationers of this period were not what we think of. It is true that they sold paper and pens, copy and memorandum books - but they were mainly publishers, printers and booksellers. Thomas Harris was not a member of the Stationers Company and this is important, he was a bit of a pirate.
As a lawyer and collector of antiquarian books this interests me. You see today we can access any book we wish to read, but this was not true in the 1600s. The Stationers Company in the City of London had a monopoly on the publishing of books and were able to censor those that were published. No book could be published without it being exclusively licensed to a particular stationer, and that licence was in perpetuity - ie for ever. The book and pamphlets that were published were devoured by the literate public and were the internet of the day. The Stationers Company controlled it all. This applied even to classical, long dead authors - no licence - no book - and if the stationer with the licence refused to publish a new edition you could probably not get access to the book as there were no public libraries. End of.
Daniel Defoe
So, in 1710 they passed the Copyright Act, which was so revolutionary (the British were the first to make copyright law) that it is still quoted in British and American courts as the foundation of copyright today. There were two basic rules- living authors could have exclusive rights to the income from their labours and could choose their own publisher for a period of 28 years from when the book was published, and there needed to be libraries and a copy of every published book deposited within. Private libraries sprang up everywhere. The author had protection and the public who might not be able to buy a book, would still be able to access it.
In 1989 (when I started this research) it was unthinkable to me that one day I might be able to post my research online and within a second it could be read around the world ! Uriah lived through such an information revolution. It must have been quite exciting.
Now there were two types of stationers, those who worked in shops and what our ancestors called Walking Stationers, and they were what it says on the tin. Walking Stationers (in an age of pedlars and hawkers) would walk around London, particularly the City and near St Pauls where booksellers congregated, with a basket, a trestle table or mobile booth that they could set up - selling books, prints, pamphlets, notebooks - you name it. Think of the print and booksellers in Paris beside the Seine and you get the idea. Some of these men were blind and one or two of them depicted in engravings as below - you can see St Pauls in the background.
I think that there is no question that Uriah was both sorts of stationer. We know that he operated out of a shop, and the records suggest that he looked a good deal older than his years, which would accord with an outdoor life.
On a personal note, he married a lady called Ann, likely in about 1690. There is no marriage entry I can find and it may be that like a lot of people at the time they simply too oaths to each other rather than formally marry in Church. They appear to have lived in a rented room in St Giles, Cripplegate. This was a populous parish (three Ginn men and their families in this blog lived in that parish between 1710 and 1730 - they may came across one another as one was a churchwarden).
In 1695 for a few years they introduced a tax on christening, marriages and burial in church. The aim was to raise money and men to fight for the Protestant cause in the Nine Years War (don't ask) another one of the religious wars on the Continent of the 17th century.
To back this up the government took a form of census of householders and their families. The vast majority of these records sadly do not survive. But for Londoners (Inside the [City] Walls and Outside they do) and from these, now indexed on British History Online, I know that Uriah, wife Ann and son were already in St Giles Cripplegate in 1695, so they were there for at least twenty years. The amazing thing is that they lived in Grub Street Precinct, Grub Street being the place of origin of what we might call the tabloid press. Books, leaflets and news sheets, poetry, travel, amusing, serious, informative, often bawdy or downright pornographic were all produced there.. A living was to be made out of these and the British Press was born !
Ann Ginn "wife of Uriah Ginn, Stationer" took a fever (in an age without antibiotics it could have been anything) and died at St Giles Cripplegate in 1714. The parish officials kept wonderful records (they had three burial grounds and access to three more) and she was buried in the Lower burial ground+ - that is the churchyard. Uriah was said to have died "aged" (he could not have been 60) in 1715. He was buried in the Upper Burial Ground in Whitecross Street in Islington no less, sometimes referred to as the burial ground of "The Bear and Ragged Staff" which was an Inn close by+.
Their children
Charles - there are no baptism records, but, amazingly, the 1695 Tax records denoted a son Charles (5-10 years old I would guess) alive at this time. There is no further record of a Charles Ginn in the London or Middlesex records before the 19th century. But the St Giles records are very accurate and complete, so Charlie seems to have survived to at least his teens. Where he went, as yet, I have no idea.
+ The church and the Lower burial ground were blitzed in WW2. Ann now lies under paving - the area was flattened. Uriah met a worse fate, the Upper burial ground is covered by the Peabody Estate, and most of the human remains found at the time of the excavation were removed and buried elsewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment