11.7 A dynasty of William Moorhouse Stoneys: Credit Drapers and money lenders

My 3x great grandmother Catherine Alice Stoney had only one full sibling as far as I know: William Moorhouse Stoney, born 9^th January 1828, baptised 27^th April 1828 at St Mary Newington. He is shown as the son of William Moorhouse Stoney and his wife Mary Ann.

William Moorhouse Stoney II b1828

He appears aged 13 with his parents, 12-year old sister and (it turns out) his maternal grandmother Alice Pearce on the 1841 census, at Sion Place, Newington. Eight years later he married spinster Elizabeth Bridget Kennedy at St Giles Camberwell, naming his father as William Moorhouse Stoney, a Commercial Traveller like himself.

By the time the 1851 census was taken, he appears to have stopped work as a Commercial Traveller – perhaps for a more settled family life – and is working as a Draper, aged 23, with his Irish wife Elizabeth, an upholstress. They have two children, William Henry (aged 1) - later known by his father’s names, William Moorhouse - and Mary Ann (3). Elizabeth’s mother and sister, both from Ireland, are with them on census night.

He is listed at 12 Southwark Bridge Road as a linen draper in the London City Directory at Ancestry and is still living there a year later. In the 1861 census, he is described as a Draper (Woollen), aged 32, with wife Elizabeth and six children aged 2-13 years old. In the 1871 census, they are still at Southwark Bridge Road, this time at no.251, where William is still working as a Draper. They have four children still at home, William Moorhouse Stoney junior (21) and Archibald (15) working as Draper’s Assistants, presumably for their father. They also have a servant in the house, 26 year old Isabella Parker. By the 1881 census they are at the same address, and William is specifically a Credit Draper. Daughter Eliza, 29, is a barmaid, and sons Archibald and George are both assisting in their father’s business.

Their daughter Eliza Stoney died later that year, on 8th September 1881, at 251 Southwark Bridge Road. The probate records show that administration of her estate was granted to her father ‘William Moorhouse Stoney, Draper of 251 Southwark Bridge Road, the Father’. Her estate amounted to £211 (worth about £24k in today’s money … quite a sum for an unmarried barmaid).

In the 1891 census, William is shown as 63, a Credit Draper and Money Lender, with wife Elizabeth, son Walter (17, a Draper’s Assistant) and daughter Grace M, 15. William’s wife Elizabeth died on 10^th August 1892 of a strangulated umbilical hernia, aged 67, wife of William Moorhouse Stoney, Draper, at 251 Southwark Bridge Road. William is still at that address in the 1901 census, described as a Credit Draper and Money Lender, an ‘employer at home’. Son Walter, now 27, is in the same profession, but additionally is a ‘traveller’. Daughter Grace is still at home with them, but has no given occupation.

What were credit drapers?

Sometimes also called ‘Scotch Drapers’, tallymen or collectors, Credit Drapers sold goods, usually clothing or cloth, on credit. They may have started selling door-to-door then, when they had made enough money, could set up in business selling from their own shop, and employing travellers to continue to doorstep sales, and collectors to collect the monies owed by instalments.

William Moorhouse Stoney (the second, b1828), died at 251 Southwark Bridge Road on 27 February 1905 aged 77 years, of senile decay.

His death certificate shows his occupation as Draper (Master), and the informant was his son, William Moorhouse Stoney (the third), of 245 Southwark Bridge Road. 

William Moorhouse Stoney II left a considerable legacy: he died intestate, but administration of his estate was granted to his son William, amounting to £945 7/2 (after taxes). Taking inflation into account, this would be the equivalent of £117,865 in 2021. 

Money lending was clearly a lucrative occupation and it is strange that he didn’t make a will; perhaps, like many people, he was suspicious of doing so or, given the cause of death, by the time he needed to, he was no longer of ‘sound mind’.

251 Southwark Bridge Road was – with much of the surrounding area – part of the property portfolio of the Bridge House Estates (London City Bridge Estates), a trust that built several London bridges, including Tower Bridge and Blackfriars, and which took on Southwark Bridge from its original private ownership. The area was developed in 2017 as ‘Two fifty one’, a 41-storey mixed-use building; nothing remains of the old buildings in the street where the Stoney family ran their draper’s business and made their homes in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any old images of this part of Southwark Bridge Road, but Ancestry has land tax records showing the families of William Moorhouse Stoney (II and III) at 245 and 251 Southwark Bridge Road from the early 1890s to 1907. The example below is from 1895, showing several houses occupied by William Stoney (but with no house number in this case, it’s not clear if this is William Stoney II or III).

William Moorhouse Stoney III b1850

The Stoney credit draper dynasty continued with William’s son, William Moorhouse Stoney III, b.1850. He married at St John’s Walworth on 30^th May 1883, described as a Draper’s Traveller – presumably selling and/or collecting monies for his father’s wares. His bride was Eliza Vasselin, and both give their address as The Palatinate.

British History Online notes that: “Adjacent to Gurney Street are two six-storey blocks called The Palatinate, erected in 1875, and designed "to provide convenient and healthy dwellings at moderate rents" to enable those "of a grade higher in the social scale" than the working class to live near their work … At the time they were put up they were a progressive experiment in housing, and the shops on the ground floor facing New Kent Road were an unusual feature.”

The London Picture Archive has an image of the rear of these blocks from the 1960s. Part of the site was destroyed in the Blitz, while the rest have since been demolished.

William Moorhouse Stoney III’s wife ‘Eliza Vasselin’ was actually Elisabeth Desirée Vasselin, born in St Saviour, Jersey, in 1850. Her parents were Jean-Baptiste Vasselin (shown as John, deceased, on the marriage record) and Julie (formerly Vibert). She must have moved to London in the previous ten years, as she is still shown with her family in St Helier in the 1871 census.

The couple had four children. The first-born was William Moorhouse Stoney (IV), born in 1886. As far as I can tell, none of the other three survived infancy. Eliza died on 25^th April 1892, shortly after giving birth to their daughter Annie, her death certificate showing the cause as ‘pneumonia 7 days, parturition four days’. She was 42 years old. Annie’s death was registered around the same time. Husband William Moorhouse Stoney is described as a Draper’s Collector on her death certificate.

William Moorhouse Stoney III married for a second time in 1903 to Florence Nancy Hand at St John Walworth. Their marriage certificate describes him as aged 53, a Traveller, father William Moorhouse Stoney, Draper. Florence is 34, a domestic servant, daughter of John Dominic Hand, Portrait painter. They appear to have been living as man and wife for several years before their marriage. In the 1901 census, they are living at 245 Southwark Bridge Road and Florence is listed as ‘wife’ of William Stoney, ‘Traveller’, aged 51. They have four children, including William and Eliza’s son William (Moorhouse Stoney IV), a Telegraph Messenger aged 14, and John D. (7), Claude (4) and Florence (1). John’s birth was registered in 1893, a year after Eliza’s death. The GRO shows his full name as John Dominic Hand Stoney, mother’s maiden name Gothorp. As Florence Hand’s father was John Dominic Hand, it seems likely that she was John’s mother. I’m not sure where the maiden name Gothorp comes from!

The 1911 census finds them at 99 Church Street, Walworth, where William Moorhouse Stoney III is described as a Credit Draper. He claims that he and wife Florence have been married for 19 years – ie 1892 – whereas they actually only married eight years before the census was taken. William Moorhouse Stoney IV is still living at home, but has finally broken the Credit Draper dynasty – he is working as a bus conductor!  Their son Claude, though, aged 14, is working as a warehouse boy at a Drapers, so possibly still keeping the business in the family.

John Dominic Hand Stoney, born 30^th June 1893, was an Assistant Waiter in a Hotel in 1911. Three years later he signs a declaration as a Steward of his intention of becoming a naturalised US Citizen in New York. In 1916, he signs up in London to serve in WWI, giving William Moorhouse Stoney as his next of kin (father), subsequently crossed out with the addition of his new wife Daisy Trepte, who he married in July that year. His occupation by then is Electrician. He also fought in WWII as a Merchant Seaman, receiving a medal for service. He appears on the SS Queen Mary as a Steward in December 1943 travelling between Scotland and New York. He died in Ipswich, Suffolk, in January 1980.

His father, William Moorhouse Stoney III, died on 13^th March 1937, aged 87, at New End Hospital, Middlesex. Probate was granted to his daughter Florence Grace Rossiter, wife of John Carl Rossiter, ‘one of the parties entitled to share in the estate’.

William Moorhouse Stoney IV b1886

Having worked as a Telegraph Messenger (1901 census) and Bus Conductor (1911 census), William Moorhouse Stoney IV served in WW1 and married widow Margaret O’Hare in Liverpool on 21^st July 1918, when he is described as a Soldier. His father, William Moorhouse Stoney III, is described as a Post Office Official, so the credit drapery business seems finally to have ended sometime between 1911 and the War. By the outbreak of WWII, he and Margaret are living in Islington, where his occupation is described as ‘TMC Clerk Ministry of Labour’. He died aged 72 in 1958. The couple had two daughters, so William Moorhouse Stoney IV was the last named direct descendent of William Moorhouse Stoney I, born around 1776, my 4xgreat-grandfather.

For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view