BROCKWELL, William (Grimwade p.450)

[MCB]

Born 1749.
Christening record for St Sepulchre, Holborn dated 27th February 1749 shows date of birth as 5th February 1749, father William and mother Mary, both of Aldersgate.
Grimwade records Brockwell's last address as Hoxton sometime after 1825. London Death & Burial Index 1813-1980 for St John, Hoxton records the burial of a William Brockwell on 26th October 1830 aged 81 years. His last address was Haberdashers' Alms Houses, Hoxton.

[MCB]

The christening record at St Sepulchre, Holborn in 1749 appears to correlate with William, son of William Brockwell, a maker of ivory pocket books who signed indentures in 1763 to be the apprentice of George Giles (Grimwade p.522, 749) of the Haberdashers Company. If the correlation is correct he was the brother of John Brockwell (Grimwade p.450) also identified by Grimwade as a son of William the maker of ivory pocket books. Also the brother of Henry Brockwell, a silversmith and a son of the same parents, christened at St Giles, Cripplegate in 1763 and the father of Henry (William) Brockwell Grimwade (p. 450, 739).
He appears to have married Ann Brown at St Leonard, Shoreditch on 8th July 1775; both were from that parish.
The christening of William Henry, the son of William and Ann, was recorded at St Augustine’s in 1779.
In 1799 William Brockwell, a silversmith then from Portsmouth, applied for Letters of Administration in respect of the estate of Ann Brockwell (nee Brown) on the grounds that she had been his lawful wedded wife. She was said to have died on 7th August 1775 in Old Change, St Augustine parish. He had entered a mark at Goldsmiths Hall from Old Change in 1776. His co-applicant for Letters of Administration was William Elliott (Grimwade p.503), silversmith of Warwick Lane.

[silverly]

7 April 1766 (William Brockwell) by consent of the parties turned over to George Love of the same trade (see viewtopic.php?f=74&t=23447 for details of George Love

[dognose]

Committee, 19th October 1780

The Clerk informs the Committee that at the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace holden for the City of London at Guildhall, London, on Monday the 16th instant, William Brockwell was tried and convicted upon the indictment against him for a fraud in making silver tea tongs of silver worse than standard, and was sentenced to pay a fine of forty shillings, and to be imprisoned in Wood Street Compter for the space of one week ; the Court at the same time informing him that the mildness of the sentence was on account only of his offence being the first of the kind punished by indictment; but that it was, under the circumstances of the case, clearly an offence within the meaning of the Act of Parliament, and that every person in future who should be convicted of a like offence would receive a much heavier punishment.

Source: Memorials of the Goldsmiths' Company; Being Gleanings from their Records Between the Years 1335 and 1815 - by Walter Sherburne Prideaux - 1896

[buckler]

Thanks Trevor this is an interesting post for me. There are many WB marked buckles of his period , which I have tended to regard as probably by William Ballantine.
But looking at the names in this account of William Brockwell, I'm struck by the number of known bucklemakers, - George Giles, George Love and Henry Bickerton (master of his brother John) are all involved. Being now known to be a maker of sub-standard tea tong, makes me think he could well be another bucklemaker. Like Samuel Cooke, his name does not appear in the PR1773.