john jaffray: victorian bookbinder, chartist and trade ... · 3 john jaffray: victorian bookbinder,...

1 eBLJ 2014, Article 16

John Jaffray: Victorian Bookbinder, Chartist and Trade Unionist

P. J. M. Marks

Life and work

John Jaffray, journeyman bookbinder, was born at Stirling in Scotland on 31 October 18111 and died at Cromer Street, London, on 25 July 1869. A memorial card relating to his grave plot in St Pancras cemetery tells us this, together with the information that he was interred there on 1 August 1869.2 However, researching this intriguing character is not always straightforward, partly owing to the numerous variant spellings of his name, and also to curious coincidences.

The 1851 Census lists a John Jeffery (born c. 1812 in Scotland) as a bookbinder living at 27 John Street (with two other families at that address) in the St Pancras, Tottenham district (then in the county of Middlesex). The death records knew him as John Jeffray. Care must also be taken not to confuse him with the other Stirling-born man of the same name, Sir John Jaffray, 1st Baronet (11 October 1818 – 4 January 1901), a Scottish journalist and newspaper proprietor

1 There is a date discrepancy but John Jaffray may have been the ‘lawful son’ baptized on 17 January 1811 in Stirling by his father Joseph Jaffray (no mother’s name is recorded). See Scotland’s People website < http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/>, reference O.P.R. Births 190/00 0010 0221 DYCE.

2 Staff reference copy of Ellic Howe, A List of London Bookbinders 1648-1815 (London, 1950), interleaved copy, facing p. xxi.

Fig. 1. John Jaffray from The British Bookmaker.

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eBLJ 2014, Article 16

who lived in Birmingham. The most problematic issue is the presence of a John Jeffrey in the association to which Jaffray belonged, the Day-Working Bookbinders’ Society (founded 1850) and who was also active in other binding groups (notably the Bookbinders’ Pension Society). Both names appear in official printed election forms for several years (1851-1853) and both are also listed as members of a committee convened to consider honouring past President Joseph Hendley (the surnames are correct but they are both erroneously given the initial T).3

Presumably this binder is the John Jeffery listed in The London Book Trades (an online biographical and documentary resource) as having been born on 9 September 1805 at Berwick-on-Tweed.4 To add to the potential traps for the unwary researcher, Jeffery and Jaffray contrived to live near to each other in Marylebone but fortunately the Jaffray Collection contains contextual information which enables the reader to distinguish between the two (for those intrigued by Jaffray’s alter ego, Jeffery lived longer than Jaffray and appeared with members of his family in censuses up to and including 1881.5 His son, John George, and more unusually, his daughter, Eleanor Jane, also joined the family business.)6

Jaffray was a bookbinder who specialized in ‘finishing’ (that is, ornamenting the covers of a hand bound book using decorative tools) although the training he had been given would also have involved ‘forwarding’ (fabricating the structure of a book). He was essentially a journeyman – a qualified binder – who did not own his own business but worked for others. According to Esther Potter, Jaffray ‘came to London in 1836, not long after he had completed his apprenticeship, and worked as a finisher for several West End binders, notably John Adlard, A. H. Lovett, Henry Hering and John Wickwar.7 He had an absorbing interest in the history of the trade; he collected all the information he could; he preserved every last scrap of paper; he tracked down men long since retired, whose memories stretched back to the famous strike of 1786. He has left fascinating vignettes of shop floor politics, and he inspired his friends to add to the archive after his death.’8 The ephemera thus collected were bound into a series of scrapbooks which comprise part of the collection now in the British Library.

Information about Jaffray’s home life is patchy. The 1851 Census lists him as living with a wife, Sarah, who was born c. 1823 in Gloucestershire. There is a record of the marriage of a Sarah Tilley at Dursley in March 1851 but the name of the husband is illegible. The 1861 Census describes him as a ‘leather gilder’ living at 2 North Street (in the parish of St Pancras, in the administrative district Pancras, Tottenham Court) with Sarah S. Jaffray (this time born c. 1819 in Dersley [Dursley] Gloucestershire), her mother, Caroline Tilley (a widow aged 69) and a niece, Emma Barrows, born c. 1858 in Lambeth. Seven families comprising twenty-six people appear to have been living at this address in what must have been a state of extreme poverty.

3 Jaff 161, items 15, 24, 30 for the election forms and item 28 for the committee. Jeffery appeared in Jaff 162, item 122, Printed list of binders wishing to form a new society.

4 Reference number LBT/01338. <http://w01.lbt.wf.ulcc.ac.uk/index.php/LBT/01338> accessed January 2012.

5 The census district was Marylebone All Souls.6 Maurice Packer, Bookbinders of Victorian London (London, 1991), p. 81.7 Jaff 151, item 97 is a letter addressed by T. J. Dunning to John Jaffray at ‘Mr Hering’s, Newman street’ (dated

?Feb 5 1839).8 ‘The London Bookbinding Trade: From Craft to Industry’, The Library, 6th series, vol. xv, no. 4 (December

1993), pp. 259-80 (p. 260). A newspaper account of 1831 which included Jaffray’s name implies that he arrived in London earlier than was once thought (although the problem with the Jaffray name means one cannot be certain). It seems likely that Jaffray also worked for T. Lea of 27 Clarenden Street Somers Town: Jaff 156, item 301 is a letter postmarked 29 Nov. 1848 addressed to Jaffray at that address, which was Lea’s workshop. Lea’s trade cards can be found in Jaff 156, items 227 and 228. It is a wonder that employment could be found here at all since all of Thomas Lea’s family worked in the trade, including his wife, four sons and a daughter in law! Information comes from the 1851 Census, H107 1496 pp. 1104 and 1105.

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During the 1860s, Jaffray was frequently out of work through ill health (bronchitis and gout).9 His situation was made more acute because he was the sole bread-winner (his mother-in-law and niece could not work, and there is no record of his wife being employed). A pitiful series of documents preserved in a scrapbook records Jaffray’s pleas for employment (he could no longer practise finishing but was able to undertake other tasks) and his distress at being offered nothing, despite all the help he had given to the trade. ‘I foresee destitution’ was his comment.10

Few London binders could be considered to be wealthy, but Jaffray was poorer than a good many of his fellow workers whose wives or children contributed wages to the household (as Jeffery’s did) or who had other sources of income like the binder T. J. Dunning, who received a salary for his trade society posts (although Jaffray felt he did little to earn it) and wrote newspaper articles and pamphlets.11 It is heart-warming to learn that Charles Dent (see below) – friend – was able to raise a subscription for him, and in September 1863 Jaffray was the recipient of the useful sum of £24 10s. In thanking his friends for their generosity, he used the occasion to ask once more for work.12

In February 1867, Jaffray was a signatory to a notice calling upon fellow workers to a meeting to support Mr Walker, so by then he was fit enough at least to undertake his charitable activities again. In a letter dated 22 April 1869 (the last year of his life), we find him writing to apply for a job as an assistant following the deterioration of his eyesight (blindness in one eye caused by cataracts). Some aid may have been available from the charitable funds of the trade societies but he comments that he will not apply for these since older men and women who were unable to work at all were more deserving.13

Why did Jaffray preserve this material?

There seem to be several reasons. In the opinion of some of Jaffray’s friends and colleagues, he was ‘a most zealous collector of materials for a history of the Art and Trade of Bookbindings, as also a devoted advocate of trade rights and privileges; and his remains now before us testify to his unwearied researches into the early movements towards a Bookbinders’ Union in London, at a period when the Combination Laws were severely enforced against all such attempts at association amongst working men.’14

Jaffray’s interest in preserving trade records is indicated by the first page of Add. MS. 57623, dated July 1847, which relates that ‘the Chairman of the late trade anniversary [dinner] at Highbury’ requested that Jaffray record the events of the binders’ strike of 1786, and he was scrupulous in carrying out this charge. Naturally, he was also careful to document the significant events in which he was himself involved, in an effort to set the record straight, and to correct distortions. The binders of London were by no means a unified body and the existence of a number of different trade groups inevitably gave rise to factionalism. Jaffray was very much aware of the currents of conflicting and sometimes malicious opinion. He wrote of one of his manuscripts that: ‘Considerable labour having been expended on the production thereof, the writer rather than destroy it preferred the preservation of the narrative for the use of such guilds as may desire to peruse it. He is moreover impelled to adopt this course in consequence

9 Jaff 162, item 106.10 Jaff 162, items 103-107.11 The best-known of Dunning’s publications was Trades Unions and Strikes; Their Philosophy and Intention

(1806). According to DNB, his wealth at death was under £100 0s 0d. In the 1879s when Dunning died, that sum equates with £4,570.00 in 2005 (using TNA’s site <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/results.asp#mid>. The Jaffray typescript, pp. 277-79, noted Dunning’s wages for official posts.

12 Jaff 161, item 53, single printed sheet ‘On behalf of John Jaffray’ thanking contributors (21Sept. 1863).13 British Library, Add. MS. 57624, item 6. It is the final item in the book.14 Day-Working Bookbinders’ Society of London, Report of the Advising Committee copy of the pamphlet

(Bodleian Library, 25897.e.40), p.1.

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of his conviction that many honest members of the trade have for the last eight years been believing a lie’.15 He may also have felt that the trade was undergoing momentous change, and that ephemera should be preserved to remind binders of their roots and earlier practices. An example was the notice headed Corrected List of Prices as Agreed on by the booksellers and bookbinders of London and Westminster – July 1 1808 (a rare survival).16

A tradesman’s life in Victorian London

Jaffray lived in turbulent times. There was a major shift in population from countryside to towns, the centres of the industrial revolution. Jaffray himself moved from Scotland to London, the world’s largest city. The population of Europe doubled but there was still the risk of death due to poverty and famine (for example that caused by the failure of the Irish potato harvest from 1845 to 1849). Cholera and typhoid epidemics recurred due to poor sanitation, crowded living conditions and the contamination of drinking water. One of Jaffray’s employers, John Wickwar of Poland Street, died of cholera in the summer of 1854 ‘along with his brother, the foreman and one female worker during the … outbreak that ravaged Soho and whose source was traced to the public water-pump in Broad Street.’17 Most people were only a step away from the breadline and a misfortune like losing one’s job (as happened to Jaffray when he became ill) meant destitution, imprisonment for debt or being sent to the workhouse (owing to the draconian Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834).

Novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and journalist and social reformer Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) publicized the appalling conditions in which Londoners lived and worked. Most people had little control over their lives, and periodic down-turns in trade, for example in 1848 and 1855, caused widespread unemployment.18 From the late eighteenth century, tradesmen with communal interests had begun to meet together and these groups gradually formed what would later be regarded as unions. Successive governments made this illegal via a series of Combination Acts. Workers who broke these laws could be and were imprisoned or transported to Australia (including the Tolpuddle Martyrs of 1834). There were many who fought against this type of legislation, notably Francis Place (1771-1854), who became a member of the Chartists (see below). A collection of newspaper cuttings and pamphlets formed by Place is held by the British Library.

The Great Reform Act of 1832 saw the beginning of attempts to end corrupt election practices and the extension of the franchise to men who owned property worth £10 (thus excluding the working classes). New political and social ideas (including Socialism, Chartism and Communism) which challenged the established order began to emerge and the popular press extended awareness of these views to the lower levels of society. The desire for political change (combined with other elements) triggered revolutions throughout Europe in 1848 including France, the Italian states, the German territories and the Hapsburg Empire.

Improving life in Victorian London

Jaffray was extremely active in the social reform movement. As a member of the London Working Men’s Association, which was established in 1836 by the cabinet-maker William Lovett (see below) and others, he did his best to improve the situation of workers and to campaign for the extension of social and political rights to all. His Association subscription payment card can be found in the collection.19

15 Add. MS. 57623 f.1. 16 Jaff 165, item 5, conserved and stored separately from the main scrapbook. 17 See online British Book Trade Index <http://www.bbti.bham.ac.uk/search.htm>. Trade cards and material

relating to John Wickwar can be found in Jaff 156. Maurice Packer outlined Wickwar’s career in his Bookbinders of Victorian London, p. 163.

18 Ellic Howe and John Child, The Society of London Bookbinders 1780-1951 (London, 1952), p.176. 19 Jaff 156, item 198.

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The influence of the LWMA was extensive, considering its limited membership of 279 working men and 35 honorary members for the period 1836-39. It initiated the famous People’s Charter, which called for the vote for all men over 21, annual parliaments, payment of a salary for MPs and reformed constituencies. Jaffray’s name was the first to appear in the list of those who had drawn it up and so proud was he of the cause that he sent an inscribed first edition of the Charter to his friend Dent in 1848 (this was probably the bookbinder Charles Dent, who also contributed to the Jaffray Collection and whose trade card appears in it). This first edition is held in the Chartist collection of The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University Libraries, Ontario.20

Jaffray was also on the management board of the newspaper founded to publicize the Chartist agenda (The Charter, first published on 27 January 1839), along with T[homas]. J[oseph]. Dunning (1799-1873), another London bookbinder and an energetic union organizer and writer with whom Jaffray was later to cross swords.21 However, political involvement of this kind was not without risk. William Lovett (see fig. 2) was imprisoned for his activities in 1839 and Jaffray (who was hardly a prosperous man himself) made efforts to support his family from the proceeds of the sale of a pamphlet.

Jaffray devoted a whole scrapbook (Jaff 153) to the contentious role of the Irish political activist Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) in opposing Chartism (O’Connell’s supporters wrecked a Chartist meeting in Dublin in 1839 as well as subsequent protests in England). Newspaper cuttings describing O’Connell’s speeches were collected as well as cuttings of letters to the editor refuting the Irishman’s ideas. Item 7, signed ‘A Journeyman Bookbinder’ and dated 4 November 1837, objected to O’Connell’s theory that journeyman wages would return to their natural level if trade societies were abolished. The writer (possibly Jaffray himself) demands a definition of the phrase ‘natural level’, points out that workhouse wages are one shilling one and a half pence per week, and that a bare 3 shillings and four pence serves as an income for many families.

Jaffray was also a member of the Combination Committee established by William Lovett to safeguard the interests of the trades in the light of O’Connell’s attacks. A pamphlet published by the London Trades Combination Committee entitled Combinations defended: evidence to a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into combinations of employers and workmen is the first entry in the scrapbook. Item 118 is a letter dated 13 August 1839, to Mr Jaffray of 40 Gower Place, Euston Square (the workshop of Manderson the bookbinder) requesting his attendance at a meeting of the committee23 and Jaffray’s detailed accounts of these meetings are also included. The fact that Jaffray’s interest did not revolve around bookbinders alone is shown by the inclusion in this scrapbook of newspaper accounts of the struggle of the Glasgow Cotton Spinners to defend their wages in 1838.

Jaffray’s character was a combative one and he was not afraid to stand up for his principles. In May 1832 he was called before the Court of King’s Bench, accused, with others, of causing a disturbance in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The skirmish in which he had been involved had occurred in July 1831 at a parish meeting called to determine a new poor rate. Those attending considered the sum announced by the chairman to be too high, accusations flew about misappropriation of funds, and demands were made for an examination of the figures recorded in the official registers. A scuffle ensued over possession of the registers, with Jaffray and his friends being charged with assault and with an attempt to steal them. Accused of being the ringleader, Jaffray was portrayed as attending the meeting with the express purpose of rioting. However, an independent witness provided a colourful statement which gave a different perspective, reporting that the principal accuser, Mr Taylor, ‘also collared Mr Jaffray, supposing that he had taken his books, which were tied up in a handkerchief. Mr Jaffray had

20 See Jaff 162. Dent’s trade card is in Jaff 155, item 137 and his address is No. 1, Spencer Place, Edmund Street, King’s Cross. The pamphlet is item 4 in the Chartist Collection.

21 An illustration of Dunning can be found in The British Bookmaker, vol. iv, no. 37 (July 1890), p. 15.22 Jaff 153.23 Packer, Bookbinders of Victorian London, p. 216.

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Fig. 2. A newspaper illustration of William Lovett, with Jaffray’s additional caption. Jaff 151, item 209.

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not taken them but [Taylor] called him a rascal and a scoundrel, and said he would have him taken into custody for stealing his handkerchief’.24 This sums up the tone of the case, and it is hardly surprising that the jury was discharged and the case dismissed.

Contemporary interest in bookbindings

Interest in bookbinding was not confined to Jaffray and his circle. Wealthy English book collectors were enthusiastic purchasers of beautifully bound books and could afford to buy the work of the finest practitioners. In 1809, Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s Bibliomania: or book madness; a bibliographical romance, described the collecting activities of the aristocracy, many of whom patronized London bookbinders. These patrons were interested in the unique bespoke bindings produced by workshops in the West End of London rather than the mass-produced machine-made books which were to dominate the market later in the nineteenth century, and which appealed to the newly literate and to those with modest incomes.25

The craft of bookbinding was becoming an increasingly technical one: manuals on binding were being published, including Cowie’s Bookbinder’s Manual (1829) and John Hannett’s Bibliopegia or, the art of bookbinding in all its branches (1835) and the Great Exhibition of 1851 featured a number of new products designed for use in all parts of the trade, such as the hand press and stationery sides (the latter being blank books, including ledgers, made for writing in) as well as a variety of new machines for the mass production of books. Traditional bookbinders would not have welcomed the latter. There were also displays of the finest bindings from Britain and abroad, with prizes awarded for the best exhibits. These were eagerly competed for, and an article from the Publishers’ Circular which ‘reviewed the judges’ awards in Class XXVIII Section D, Bookbinding’ can be found in Jaff 161.26 Many of the items on display found a place in the illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, reaching a still wider audience. It is not known whether Jaffray visited the Great Exhibition, but one of his scrapbooks included two items which suggest that he, or a friend, did so. These were ‘An envelope printed in green; machine folded and gummed by Thomas De La Rue & Co at the Great Exhibition 1851’ and a second envelope which had just been machine folded by the same printing and stationery company.27

Binding trade history

The space Jaffray devoted in the scrapbooks to the history of his trade (in both Britain and abroad) and particularly to the early unionization of its practitioners in London, indicates his interest in the subject,28 and he felt keenly the debt owed by the binders of his day to those who had gone before. Such was the strength of his feelings that he was moved in August 1852 to write some lyrics entitled: ‘The bookbinders’ song of gratitude’ which was sung to the tune of the folk ditty intriguingly entitled ‘Black Jock with his belly so white.’29

The strike of London journeymen bookbinders in 1786 provided an opportunity for Jaffray to collect more union-related materials. The main aim of those taking part had been to effect the reduction of the working day from fourteen hours to thirteen (in due course, the binding workshop established by King George III in Buckingham House was one of the first to grant

24 Morning Chronicle, Thursday 17 May 1832, page 4. See <http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/> 25 Potter, ‘The London Bookbinding Trade’. 26 Item 151, dated 15 August 1862, p. 581. 27 Jaff 156, items 92, 93 28 The Marx Memorial Library website hosts a useful description of the unionization of the bookbinding trade,

http://www.printerscollection.org.uk/menuprinters-unions?showall=1. The Jaffray typescript recorded extensive information about binding practices in Europe.

29 Jaff 161, item 101.

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this concession). However, in the course of the strike five of its ringleaders were arrested and tried for conspiracy. They were each given two years’ imprisonment and one, William Wood, died after a year in gaol. Jaffray took pains to acquire the last book which he bound (see fig. 3).

Jaffray recorded the progress of the strike with concern, and questioned older binders (including William Hall, see below) for their views and observations, as he did with subsequent strikes.30 His findings were preserved and then disseminated in the publication which he edited: Book Finishers’ Friendly Circular (London, 1845-51). His reward was to be congratulated for his research at the anniversary dinner of 1846, with the chairman offering him ‘the thanks of the trade… for his untiring and indefatigable endeavors to enlighten his fellow men on these subjects.’31

The frontispiece of Jaffray’s Circular featured a photograph of himself, an early example of a salt print (see fig. 1). Such an innovation would have been of particular interest to him, as his collection included cuttings about other inventions, notably the ‘Patent Vellum Cloth’ and the ‘new gas stove for economically heating ornamental tools and glue; specially adapted for dressing and fancy leather case makers’.32 A copy of a letter recommending the ‘very steady, reputable and honest’ Jaffray for a reader’s ticket for the British Museum Library in 1842 also points to an enquiring mind and a desire for self-improvement.33 Indeed, his own writings celebrated the Library’s collection, in the form of lyrics which appear in verse four of ‘Hooray for a Dayworkers’ Supper’. Among the lines we find a list of binders’ styles:

Then there were some fine exhibitionsWhich served as a School of Design.Thro the eye in definitions of styles which were on the decline‘Groliers’, ‘Maolis’, ‘Monastics’‘Dianas’ ‘Aldines’ & ‘Dentelles’Roger Payne and the Modern fantastics& ---dy to finish for swells.34

Jaffray’s concern for the preservation of trade history led him in 1856 to propose the establishment of a bookbinders’ professional club and museum, in the pursuit of which he compiled lists of questions with which to elicit information from older members of the trade organizations.35 As a finisher, it also seems likely that he participated in exhibitions of binding designs held at the Plough Tavern (a pub in Museum Street which still exists today). Jaffray may even have had a hand in the decoration of a leather presentation case containing a set of The Book-Finishers’ Friendly Circular which was presented to the book collector, J. W. King-Eyton (see fig. 4).36 The workshop of one of Jaffray’s employers, John Wickwar, was known to produce a range of items including albums, account books, pocket books, and leather cases, and it is possible that the ornamented leather case given to King-Eyton was made here.

Other trade members were clearly aware of his interests: a letter to Jaffray from John Jackson agreed to give receipts and documents to add to ‘your collection of our trade antiquities’;37 and

30 The letters can be found in Add. MS. 57626, John Jaffray, London bookbinders’ papers, vol. lxv, item 3, ff. 51-66.31 Add. MS. 57624, item 1, f. 67.32 Jaff 166, item 81(f) and Jaff 161, item 44.33 Jaff 161, item 50, Ms letter of recommendation by John Adlard (probably Jaffray’s employer) to enable John

Jaffray to use the collection of the British Museum library (14 Nov. 1842).34 Jaff 161, item 97-99.35 A Collection of Manuscripts relating to the Art and Trade of Bookbinding. [A transcript of the fourth of a series

of manuscript volumes compiled by J. Jaffray, dated London, 1864.] ([London, c. 1945.]) typescript, pp.233, 236-244. Quoted as ‘Jaffray transcript’.

36 Jaff 166, item 85(b). The case is now at the British Library, shelfmark C.108.b.11. An image can be found in the online image database of British Library bookbindings, <http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/bookbindings/Default.aspx> by entering the shelfmark minus punctuation in the Quick Search box.

37 Jaff 161, item 146.

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Fig. 3. Pencil note on upper paste down of Jaff 147.

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Fig. 4. Presentation binding on the copy of The Friendly Finishers’ Circular given to Eyeton. C.108.b.11.

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it appears that his enthusiasm was contagious: displays were held regularly by the Day-Working Bookbinders’ Society and a statement by the committee in August 1851 promises that this exhibition will ‘surpass all its predecessors in richness and rarity.’ 38

Disputes in the binding trade

Jaffray had decided opinions about the latest developments in the binding trade, where increasing industrialization and innovations such as book cloth were beginning to have an impact. A division was growing up between the ‘bespoke’ hand-bound book market and that of mass-produced machine-bound books. There continued to be a huge demand for bound books, from organizations such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the British and Foreign Bible Society which provided copies of the Bible for non-Christians abroad as part of their missionary activities. Several disputes arose in this part of the trade: one example occurred in 1833 when the owners of the Bible-binding workshops insisted upon lower quality binding and the reduction of wages. There were numerous other conflicts between workers and masters (the latter had meanwhile formed their own associations) revolving around issues such as wages, hours and the employment of apprentices.

There were tensions amongst the workers themselves, too, and it was sometimes difficult for all the bookbinding trade associations to form a united front against employers who formed their own trade groups (see fig. 5). The interests of several subgroups — for example finishers, day-working forwarders, women workers and piece-workers (who tended to be the most frequent strikers with the poorest industrial relations) — did not always coincide. Such problems were assiduously noted by Jaffray and later discussed in 1952 by Howe and Child.39 At the time, the various conflicts were covered by the newspapers, which became increasingly more popular and numerous as the century progressed. Increased literacy and the affordability of newspapers meant that many workers could have an informed opinion of events in the binding trade, as well as events in the wider world.

It is clear that Jaffray was a self-motivated, confident man, interested in politics and social change and not afraid to work actively towards it. On other issues, he was more conservative and failed to embrace the wider picture. Thus, when the Chartist and union leader T. J. Dunning, a member of the Society of Journeymen Bookbinders of London, suggested that the trade society members should meet in a coffee house, rather than a public house where their money would be wasted on liquor, Esther Potter noted ‘There was some opposition to this, not least from John Jaffray, who was a traditionalist and who no doubt recognized that the solidarity which had won their early battles owed much to those convivial meetings at the Plough in Museum Street and other friendly pubs.’40 Jaffray himself mentioned the ‘pleasant nights spent in the Plough’ and made references to ‘vile coffee’ although his friendship with the teetotal Chartist Lovett indicates that he had no objections to abstinence.41 In the event, Dunning’s suggestion was accepted, and in 1840 he became the full-time secretary of the London Consolidated Society of Journeymen Bookbinders, which replaced the former journeymen bookbinders’ societies. Ellic Howe described Dunning as a ‘professional organizer. He was, in addition, an able radical political publicist. He was also, I presume, something of a puritan. Trade Union meetings were no longer to be held in the comfortable squalor of public houses. He established his headquarters at the Magnet Coffee Shop in Drury Lane. It was a far cry from the ‘One Tun’ in the Strand, where The Friends used to meet,

38 Jaff 161, item 13. 39 Howe and Child, The Society of London Bookbinders 1780-1951. 40 Potter, ‘The London Bookbinding Trade’, p. 279. 41 Jaff 161, items 97 and 124.

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Fig. 5. Jaffray preserved material whatever his sympathy with the contents, although the verses added leave the reader in no doubt about his views. Jaff 151, item 7.

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sixty years before. A trade poet, who regretted the passing of the old days, plaintively wrote the following lines:

Oh, what are poor Bookbinder[s] come to?Stop a bit, and we shall see!Consolidated, and undone, too:With nought to drink but vile coffee.’42

Jaffray’s dislike of this change and of subsequent actions by Dunning resulted in his highly critical paper, ‘Testimonial to T. J. Dunning by a former admirer’.43 What followed amounted to a feud between them, with Dunning emerging from the scrapbooks as an unscrupulous bully although talented not withal. (Dunning was described by Sydney and Beatrice Webb as ‘one of the ablest trade unionists of his time.’)44

The rights and wrongs of the dispute are arguable. An article in The British Bookmaker, while striving to be impartial by praising Jaffray elsewhere, laid the blame at his door, maintaining that he had masterminded a coup against Dunning which had resulted in the split between the binding societies.45 What is more, this was no isolated incident but a continuation of earlier anti-Dunning sentiment stirred up during a struggle between tradesmen and masters in 1839. Dunning, a leading member of the London Consolidated Society of Journeymen Bookbinders, wanted an agreement on this occasion with the employers but resigned from the committee when his view was opposed by the majority (he later became one of the negotiators of the final settlement). The anonymous author of The British Bookmaker article suggested that ‘of Atkins, Jaffray and Russell the least that can be said was that they were bitter personal antagonists of Dunning, and not over scrupulous of the means they adopted, Jaffray being the leader and the others the obliging tools.’46 Alas, the events described were long in the past and neither Jaffray nor Dunning were alive to comment.47 The Dictionary of National Biography later added another note of controversy, remarking on Dunning’s ‘domineering and sometimes unscrupulous behaviour at meetings’ and pointing out the anomaly that ‘while being a constant advocate of conciliation with employers and a Chartist who opposed trade society involvement in political questions and campaigns to secure legal status for trade unions, he nevertheless opposed the new amalgamated forms of trade unionism’.48 It is telling, however, that notwithstanding his private views, Jaffray continued to preserve Dunning’s correspondence and articles in his scrapbooks, including Dunning’s account of the struggle between journeymen and masters.49

According to Esther Potter, ‘the split was not just part of the feud between Jaffray and Dunning; it underlines the fact that bookbinding was now two different trades calling for different skills, equipment, and methods’ (that is ‘bespoke’ binding versus mass production). 50

42 Ellic Howe, ‘London Bookbinders: Masters and Men, 1780-1840’, The Library, 5th series, vol. i, no. 1 (June 1946), 28-38.

43 Jaffray transcript, p. 250.44 Lawrence Goldman, Science, Reform, and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857-1886

(London, 2002), p. 68.45 The British Bookmaker, vol. iv, no. 37 (July 1890) - vol. vii, no. 81 (Mar. 1894) was a trade journal edited

by Robert Hilton which began its life with the title The Bookbinder: an illustrated journal for binders, librarians, and all lovers of books, vol. i (1887) - iii (1889). Online extracts from this journal can be found at <www.mccunecollection.org> . The history of the trade societies can be found in vols v-vii (1891-94).

46 The British Bookmaker, vol. vii, no. 78 (Dec. 1893), p. 152.47 ‘An anonymous contributor to The British Bookmaker published some thirty articles on The Bookbinders’

Trade Societies’ in vols v-vii (1891-4)’ quoted by Ellic Howe, ‘London Bookbinders: Masters and Men, 1780-1840’, p. 28.

48 Article written by Iorwerth Prothero see Online ODNB <http://www.oxforddnb.com/> 49 Jaff 151, item 364.50 Esther Potter, ‘The London Bookbinding Trade’, p. 280.

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Jaffray was by no means alone in his dislike of Dunning’s regime (see fig. 6), and Dunning’s attitudes were sometimes equivocal: he was not in sympathy with the majority of journeymen (particularly over the 1839 strike) and it was under his aegis that the trade society which he had reorganized, the unitary London Consolidated Lodge of Journeymen Bookbinders, was forced to leave the London Trades Council owing to Dunning’s belief that it was too political.51

In 1850, Jaffray joined former members of the London Consolidated Society in founding a new trade organization with the Forwarders’ Friendly Association called the Society of Day-Working Bookbinders of London and Westminster. ‘Ostensibly the purpose was watchfulness over the interests of the finishers and support in the maintenance of their price for their labour, and so far as this intention was carried out, the Association undoubtedly exercised a beneficial influence during the few years of its acrimonious life.’52 The British Bookmaker commended the educational aspirations of the Society and the setting up of The Finishers’ Friendly Circular, but condemned the publication in the latter of ‘a series of splenetic but abortive attacks’ upon Dunning’s character ‘which were alike devoid of generosity, impartiality, or even common decency and thus became the immediate and direct cause of the great split of 1850.’53 Dunning himself edited a trade journal, The Bookbinders’ Trade Circular (from the first issue in October 1850 to 1870).

How contemporaries may have seen Jaffray

Apart from this significant falling out with Dunning, Jaffray appears to been a good colleague and a sociable and convivial companion. In matters of business, however, he proved to be more fluent as a writer than as a speaker. He is not often quoted in newspaper reports, unlike Dunning, or other binders. In an account in The Charter (Sunday 24 Feb. 1839) headed ‘Journeymen Bookbinders Meeting’, the spoken contributions of binders including Dunning, Russell, Boteler, Calvert, Crawford, Guy and Cooney (depicted in fig. 7) are listed; Jaffray apparently did not speak despite the fact that he had signed the ‘Address from the Journeymen Bookbinders of London and Westminster to the Trade Societies of Great Britain and Ireland’ included at the end of the article.54 His name does appear on a printed play bill in bold, large letters advertising a benefit for the bookbinders’ struggle, to be held at the Eagle, City road, 17 July 1839.55

Where Jaffray is reported in print, it is to ‘superintend the arrangements’ for an evening to honour the Manchester tradesmen who had supported the London bookbinders’ strike.56 He was clearly very sociable: the scrapbooks contain many invitations to celebratory dinners, menus and notes of toasts, songs and poems with which the guests were entertained. Jaffray made a personal contribution to these in the form of a manuscript sheet entitled ‘Prosperity to the Bookbinders’ Pension Society’ by ‘J.J.’ dated March 1853, sung by M. T. Brown at Highbury Lane [28 June] 1853, and a Bookbinders’ Feast Day Song, by J.J., 31 July 1853.57 Unfortunately, ‘JJ’ cannot have been much of a singer himself: he wrote a number of lyrics but never actually sang any (or at least was not reported as so doing). His skills may have tended towards the artistic, however, as a pencil sketch entitled ‘Strand District Auxiliary Committee’ demonstrates.58 It seems likely that this particular drawing was made during one of the hundreds of trade meetings Jaffray attended, and demonstrates that he must have suffered a lapse in concentration, resulting in a doodle of binder George Pymm and his colleagues (see fig. 7). The design and arrangement of the scrapbooks also points to a certain flair for design, which would have been essential for a finisher.

51 DNB article by Iorwerth Prothero. 52 The British Bookmaker, vol. vii, no. 81 (Mar. 1894), p. 202. 53 The British Bookmaker, vol. vii, no. 81 (Mar. 1894), p. 203. 54 See <http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/> 55 Jaff 150, item 123. 56 The Charter, Sunday 15 Dec. 1839, p. 7. 57 Jaff 161, items 122-127. There are many more songs in this scrapbook and also in the Additional Manuscripts. 58 Jaff 147, items not yet listed.

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Fig. 6. A letter from Jaffray’s friend Mr Yorke [?] of Cambridge including a sketch describing Dunning as a ‘Humbug’. Jaff 147.

Fig. 7. Pencil drawing (probably by Jaffray) of Chittenden, Cooney, G. Pymm, Bulek and Haynes, all bookbinders. Jaff 147.

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Fig. 8. Jaffray has changed the caption on Mr Punch’s notice board to ‘Look Here, Look Here! The Binder’s Crisis.’ He used the cartoon as a frontispiece to the scrapbook covering the strife between masters and journeymen added the heading ‘Introduction to the Struggle’. Jaff 151, item 3.

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Jaffray was not lacking in a sense of humour: cartoons and annotations abound and certain items are obviously placed together for effect. Scrapbook 151 includes a letter from Francis Westley to James England ‘lamenting the suspension of our former mutual good feeling and hope that the period is not distant when it will be fully and sincerely restored’. Next to this, Jaffray has pasted the headline from a newspaper cutting which reads ‘THE FORLORN HOPE.’59 He also relished anecdotes about the numerous personalities in the trade and their various adventures. One of these was Wattie Nimmo, whom the Master binders accused of taking part in a strike in 1786. When the case came to trial, Wattie set up a nut-selling business outside the court to augment his income and threatened to drop a heavy beating hammer on the foot of the judge if he was called to give evidence!60 Another snippet of gossip recorded by Jaffray described several binders taking part in amateur dramatics in a theatre in Berwick Street from 1810 to 1814. The play entitled ‘The Mountaineers’ (probably written by George Colman) was a favourite piece.61

Was Jaffray appreciated in his own lifetime? There is evidence that he was: the pamphlet A statement of the acts and proceedings which led to the formation of the Day-Working Bookbinders’ Society in July 1850 (London, September 1867) includes a special commendation of him, and it is clear that he served his fellow trade unionists in a variety of practical ways, joining working committees, and showing much organizational ability. In 1839, for example, a plan for the union of the whole trade in Great Britain and Ireland was proposed and Jaffray did his utmost to make this a reality. His efforts were described thus: ‘It was owing to the large and generous assistance received from the country societies during the struggle of 1839 … that the reciprocity of sympathy began to grow up in London which brought the question of a general amalgamation or federation rapidly to the front, and, at last, into favour. This was largely due to the influence and efforts of Mr John Jaffray, who had for some years previously been in constant communication with the prominent binders in various parts of the country, and had become the best known London man.’ It is recorded that he was offered a special vote of thanks and the grant of the sum of £2 ‘as a slight acknowledgment of the services rendered by him to the committee and the trade in general’. The two pounds Mr Jaffray very generously declined, owing to the depressed state of trade.62 Interestingly this was at a time when Dunning and Jaffray were particularly out of sympathy.

Despite his hard work, Jaffray was not always successful in obtaining formal posts within the trade society. He failed to carry the election for the presidency of the Day-Workers’ Society on several occasions including October 1853 and April 1856 when George Pymm (see fig. 7) won with 80 votes, and Jaffray trailed in with only 43. Again, in May 1851 in the vice presidential election, Pymm carried it with 44 votes and Jaffray came last with 9.63 He was similarly unsuccessful in his application for membership of the January 1851 advising committee. However, Jaffray was voted into the post of Auditor several times, including the elections of May 1851, May 1853 and resoundingly in May 1855 when he gained 90 votes to James Sharp’s 86.64 April 1857 saw his election to the post of Steward to the Anniversary Dinner, an event which was of paramount importance to the trade since it celebrated the bookbinders who were imprisoned for striking in 1796.65 All of which suggests that Jaffray was not regarded as an obvious candidate for high office, but was seen as honest (a prerequisite for the auditor post) efficient and sociable (traits useful for a steward) and hard working. He was certainly assiduous: the scrapbooks contain many receipts which show that he regularly collected money for the trade society and kept careful track of it (see fig. 9).66

59 Jaff 151, item 180. 60 Jaffray typescript, p. 210. 61 Jaffray typescript, p. 142. 62 The British Bookmaker, vol. vii, no. 80 (Feb. 1894), p. 186. 63 Jaff 161, items 30, 17, 61. 64 Jaff 161, items 41, 54, 62. 65 Jaff 161, item 70. 66 Examples include Jaff 151, item 34, Printed receipt from Society of Bookbinders acknowledging receipt of £5 from

J. Jaffray, 1839 and item 35, Printed receipt from Society of Bookbinders (completed in ink ms.) acknowledging receipt of £10 from J. Jaffray, 1839.

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Fig. 9. Card provided to record subscriptions collected to aid journeymen bookbinders. Jaffray suggested that considerable sums were embezzled. Jaff 151, item 126.

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Jaffray was undoubtedly seen as proactive, as indicated by the number of requests for information sent to him (and which are preserved in the scrapbooks). A letter from Birmingham dated 5 July 1839 contains a report from the famous Chartist, William Lovett, to ‘My dear Jaffray’ asking him to pass a document on to the [trade society] Secretary because Lovett did not know who he was.67

Pensions for bookbinders

Jaffray worked hard to ameliorate the lot of ailing bookbinders, but it was his near namesake, Jeffery, who attracted most of the headlines where employees’ welfare was concerned. Elected Secretary of the Bookbinders’ Pension Society in October 1852, Jeffery may eventually have considered the post more trouble than it was worth, given that his election coincided with a period of friction between the two institutions concerned with bookbinders’ pensions; the Pension Society and the Asylum Society. The previous long-term Secretary of the Asylum Society, James England (b. 1797), had begun by disputing Jeffery’s appointment and refusing to give up the official records.68 He was eventually confirmed in post, but only after a series of damaging mutual recriminations and much lobbying of the membership.69 In the enclosed world of the trade societies routine issues quickly became contentious and strong emotions were aroused.

Jaffray was as passionate about welfare as any of his colleagues, and his diligent and proactive personality earned him a special position in this regard. His personal attributes are frequently displayed, not least in his activities to promote the establishment of asylums for infirm binders in 1843 (which resulted in the building of a series of cottages in the Balls Pond Road). An account in The British Bookmaker describes some of his efforts: ‘in order to meet the expenses required, a special and urgent appeal was sent out all over the provinces, and Mr. John Jaffray undertook a journey through many of the large towns on his way to Dublin in order to back it up by his personal influence, which was not slight.’ (These journeys furnished Jaffray with much material for his scrapbooks.) It adds that Jaffray ‘was passionately fond of walking’ which was just as well, since ‘this journey was almost wholly performed on foot’.70 It was on a country walk in 1855 that Jaffray and his friend Dent began to devise a plan to provide supplementary grants for pensioners, initially by means of a raffle.71

An unidentified contemporary recorded his opinion of Jaffray’s generosity thus: ‘no man in any trade could have been more earnest in his Endeavour to impress his convictions upon his fellows, nor more self-sacrificing and disinterested in the promotion of the trade’s welfare; none more successful in his efforts to improve the institutions connected with the trade; of an unquenchable thirst for trade knowledge, a spendthrift in acquiring it and a prodigal in dispensing it, quick of wit yet slow of speech, his shrewd observations were imported mostly to others for oral delivery … No man living amongst us ever so much directed the current of events into a channel of improvement in trade matters as Mr Jaffray.’72

This devotion to the welfare of bookbinders applied in both a collective and an individual sense. Jaffray personally drew the attention of the committee of the London Consolidated Society of Journeymen Bookbinders to the needs of William Hall, a member of the 1786 Strike

67 Jaff 151, item 210. 68 For information on England, see the British Book Trades Index online. 69 Jaff 148, items 25-9. 70 The British Bookmaker, vol. iv, no. 40 (Oct. 1890), p. 17. 71 The British Bookmaker, vol. iv, no. 45 (Jan. 1891), p. 16. 72 The British Bookmaker, vol. iv, no. 40 (Oct. 1890), p. 17.

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Committee, and moved it to grant the elderly Hall a pension of 2s 6d a week.73 There were few means at this time by which indigent binders (and their dependents) could be rescued from poverty, but the trade itself had its own benefit societies, such as the Amicable Society of Bookbinders (founded in 1792) which provided sick pay, death grants and pensions. There was also the Bookbinders’ Pension and Asylum Society which was established in 1830 to ‘provide a weekly pension of 6s. to 12s. and an asylum for aged and incapacitated members and their widows; and also females who have worked at the business for at least ten years.’74 Jaffray was clearly interested in such arrangements, and ensured that his collection included information about such establishments. The success of pension societies, however, depended upon the workers themselves being able to pay their dues. Often, they could not and Jaffray himself experienced the despair of those unable to earn a living because of illness and forced to rely upon the charity of friends.

The survival of the collection

Jaffray presented his scrapbook collection to the Society in 1864, and other materials were added thereafter, notably scrapbooks compiled by William Walker (1805-1897), a fellow Society member and known to Jaffray himself.76 The fate of the latter’s collection was finally addressed by a special committee in a report (together with a list of the volumes) to the Day-Working Bookbinders’ Society of London in July 1883. The recommendation of the Advising Committee was for ‘a suitable Box to be provided for their [the contents of the collection] safe keeping, and in the custody of the Secretary at the house of call, and whose extra duties in connection wherewith shall be compensated in some way by the Society’.77 The question of how Jaffray managed to keep such a large collection for so long is an interesting one: given his relative poverty, his various lodgings would have been modest and the problems of storage immense.

Various binding trade societies combined to form the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers in 1921.78 The London Bookbinders’ Branch of the union kept the Jaffray Collection until 1965 (when the branch combined with print unions to form the Society of Graphic & Allied Trades), and it was then sold to the British Museum Library (purchased jointly by the Departments of Printed Books and Manuscripts). In 1970, the papers (comprising small notebooks) were transferred to Manuscripts to become Add. MSS. 57562-57635 and were transcribed as A Collection of Manuscripts relating to the Art and Trade of Bookbinding.79 The scrapbook material was initially kept in the Official Publications Library until it passed into the care of Dr Mirjam Foot, under whose aegis the remaining collection was listed.

The manuscripts and scrapbooks have been consulted by a number of bookbinding historians including Ellic Howe, John Childe, Charles Ramsden and Esther Potter (who submitted much biographical data to Michael Turner’s London Book Trade Biography Database during

73 Howe and Child, The Society of London Bookbinders 1780-1951, p. 9. 74 John Lane (ed.), Herbert Fry’s Royal Guide to the London Charities, The First London Annual Charity Guide

(London, 1917), p. 22. 75 Jaff 147. Items not yet listed. A photograph of Richard Stagg is printed in The British Bookmaker, vol. iv, no. 42

(Dec. 1890), p. 17. 76 Listed in British Book Trades Index online. 77 Pamphlet (Bodleian Library, 25897.e.40), p. 2. 78 Charles Ramsden made good use of the resource in ‘Bookbinders to George III and his Immediate Descendants

and Collaterals’, The Library, 5th ser., xiii (1958), pp. 186-93. 79 A transcript of the fourth of a series of manuscript volumes compiled by J. Jaffray, dated London, 1864 (London,

c. 1945) (667.r.19), available on microfilm in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room.

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Fig. 10. Jaffray preserved printed applications (including the above for the April 1864 election) submitted to the Pension Society by infirm binders. Note that Stagg and Hogg have applied twice before, and Susannah Whiting was on her fourth application after having worked in the trade for forty years and having subscribed to the society for nineteen years. Jaff 147.

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the 1990s).80 More recently, the fragile condition of most of the scrapbooks has meant that access today is strictly limited, until a programme of conservation can be undertaken. In these circumstances, a thorough examination of the contents of the scrapbooks has not been possible. There is surely much more to be discovered.

In July 1890, The British Bookmaker noted that ‘had it not been for the love of antiquarian research displayed by Mr. John Jaffray’ and his energetic acquisition of material, any attempt to investigate the bookbinding trade would have been futile since few contemporary documents remained; ‘some were not to be found even in that great store-house of treasures, the British Museum’.81 It would surely have pleased Jaffray that the library where he once studied (the Library of the British Museum, now known as the British Library) acquired his collection and now provides researchers with such a valuable insight into British bookbinding trade history.82

80 See website <http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/290/ >. 81 The British Bookmaker, vol. iv, no. 37 (July 1890), p. 11. 82 I would like to thank colleges Gill Ridgley of Social Sciences, and John Goldfinch of History and Classics, for their

help which has been indispensable.

john jaffray: victorian bookbinder, chartist and trade ... · 3 john jaffray: victorian bookbinder,...

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