Updated January 2024.
John Tarrand Flint, originally of Derbyshire was an embroiderer of cambric and muslin specialising in childbed linen. He and his wife Harriet had some of their children in London but by 1829 they had moved to a cottage in Marlow High Street. A few years later they had moved into a house in Oxford Road. This was valued at £15 a year in 1833 and came with a walled garden, coach house, stable, woodhouse and yard. All the while John was maintaining premises in London too, initially in Monkwell Street and later in Basinghall Street. In the late 1830s he and Harriet returned to London first to Shoreditch and then to Crown Street Finsbury. John suffered bankruptcy in 1840 and was thrown into a debtor's prison in London.
Once John was freed it was back to Marlow for the couple. They took up residence in West Street before relocating yet again to Quoiting Square.
One of their children Charles [baptised St Luke's Finsbury in 1818] and his wife Charlotte Ann Flint [AKA just "Ann"] set up home in Marlow about 1840. Like his father Charles was an embroiderer. He himself specialised in the manufacture of fine caps for the heads of babies and toddlers. These were made for Charles by women he employed of course rather than by Charles himself. The manufacture of these caps was one of the more prominent industries in Marlow at the time but fashion could be fickle and competition fierce. The trade was beginning to falter not long after Charles began in it. He had started to suffer financial difficulties by 1856 and in 1859 he filed for bankruptcy. He specified the falling off of the infant cap wearing fashion as the primary reason for his difficulty. At one point he had employed some 200 women and girls but now every day was a struggle with the only loans he could obtain to get him by at eye watering rates if interest. His affairs took some time to sort out- all still wasn't done in 1863. Matters were not helped by a great lack of sympathy from the initial judge that granted him bankruptcy with a third class bankruptcy certificate. The judge said he disapproved of babies wearing caps. He himself appeared in court without the customary wig so it seems that he was very prejudiced against head coverings! The issue of whether they adversely affected the brain was periodically debated in Victorian England.
Charles and Ann managed to keep several domestic servants in their employ at the time of the 1861 census but in later years the household had to be smaller. In 1861 they lived in Chapel Street. Before that they had lived in Hayes Place as well as away in Wooburn for a time.
In 1859 the debts of Charles stood at £1700. Amongst the creditors was the French company, Boniface and Co, which supplied him with cambric fabric for his caps. He owed them £147. As part of the bankruptcy procedure Charles was asked why he had got into such debt. He blamed a prominent doctor for advising that babies ought not to wear caps. It is interesting to note too that according to the bankruptcy proceedings his father John was at that point financially dependent on him. In his defence he said that he had been in business for 20 years before his bankruptcy and never drank his profits away in pubs unlike most of those in similar trades! He was laughed at several times in court for statements like this. It must have been a humiliating experience for him but all credit to him (and Charlotte)- he pulled himself up from the bankruptcy eventually. There were occasional blips such as when he was summoned for not paying his poor rate taxes in 1865 but things were getting better all the time.
The family eventually moved into the comfortable Albion House in West Street by 1881. This had formerly been the home of writer Mary Shelley and her husband poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Charles died in the house in 1889. He was survived by second wife Elizabeth.
Of his large family with Charlotte their son Samuel became an embroiderer too and also lived at Albion House. He usually referred to it as Shelley House in honour of the previous famous occupants there.
Samuel and his wife Emily (née Patrick, married Whitechapel 1860) were renowned for their charity. Rattle a collecting tin in their direction and they would give you something. During the extreme winter of 1895 they gave out every day a basin of "good hot soup" to each of the women they employed. Three years earlier Samuel organised a concert in the Town Hall to raise money for a Christmas gift of coals to women employed in the embroidery and sewing trades across the town. Obviously a Christmassy sort of man Samuel also organised festive carol singers to perform around Marlow. They collected money for charity as they went.
In 1903 the South Bucks Standard said that "a more popular man than Sam Flint it would be very difficult to find". It noted too the "high esteem" felt in Marlow towards Emily [South Bucks Standard 23rd January 1903, British Library Archives]. The couple celebrated their silver wedding anniversary with a party at their home.
One day just after Shelley House for a Sunday horse ride Samuel's horse took fright and threw him off. He was badly bruised. That wasn't his only unlucky incident with a horse. In 1899 when driving a wagonette of friends home from a trip to Amersham races his horse panicked at the sight of a train and the wagonette crashed. This time nobody was much hurt [South Bucks Standard 7th April 1899, Via the BNA].
Samuel died in Shelley House in 1912 after a week long illness. He was buried in All Saints churchyard.
To read about a feud between the Flints and rival embroiders the Bartons here
Other users of Albion House (in whole or in part):
Royal Military College junior branch here
Breakaway worshippers from Congregational Church after Rev Thomas Styles marriage - here
Royal Standard public house house
Mrs Tylecote's school here
Many more to follow!
For all mentions of someone on this blog see the A-Z Person Index in the top drop down menu. See also Biographies of Families on the same menu for similar posts to this.
More West Street content can be found on the menu under "Specific Shops, Streets...Etc".
©Marlow Ancestors. You are welcome to use my research for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog and a link here.
Other Sources:
Census my transcription from microfilm, parish registers London Metropolitan Archives, 1911 Post Office Directory by Kellys Directories Limited, property records held by my family, High Wycombe Directory and Advertiser 1885 -University of Oxford Library and digitized by Google, parish registers from the originals.
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