Continuing on my stories about tradesmen ancestors, this is
the tale of Nicholas Foskett*, ten generations back. In
addition to being a butcher, he had an uncommon (but difficult to spell and
transcribe) name, which has helped with uncovering the story of his life.
Nicholas Foskett was born in Whitechapel, London, England,
around 1716. In his baptism record, his
family’s address was given as “Over against the church”. I am not quite sure what this means but it
doesn’t sound very salubrious. The mentioned
church must have been St Mary’s Whitechapel, where he was baptised. Nicholas was the eighth of nine children of
John Foskett, a Throwster (silk weaver) and Isabel Mallard. The two oldest children, Samuel and Sarah
both died infancy. I am not sure what
happened to most of his other brothers and sisters: Elizabeth, John, Richard,
Thomas, Mary and George. In spite of their
unusual surname, the only one I can find record of as an adult is John, who
married Elizabeth Christian. I wonder if
Foskett might be an anglicised version of a French name. Many East End silk weavers were of French Huguenot
background.
Mother Isabel died when Nicholas was only six years old and
his father, John, remarried to Alice Cornwell with indecent haste (the likely
subject of a future story). It seems
likely that Nicholas’s childhood was not easy with his parents perhaps not
having a happy marriage and his mother being replaced when she was barely cold
in the ground. He may not have had much
education as he does not appear to have been literate; he marked rather than
signed his name on his marriage records.
Probably around the age of 14, Nicholas would have been
apprenticed as a butcher. I haven’t
found a record of this, so it seems likely that he worked for a relative,
although not his father, as more formal apprenticeships at the time were
recorded and taxed. I need to track down
a Foskett or Mallard butcher.
Apprenticeships typically lasted seven years.
At about the age of 21, presumably having just completed his
apprenticeship, Nicholas Foskett married Margaret. I haven’t found their marriage, so don’t know
Margaret’s surname. The marriage St Mary
Whitechapel registers for several years around 1737 are missing. Yes, there are some gaps in this story and I
have avenues for further research about Nicholas’s early life. Nicholas and
Margaret had four children: Samuel (my ancestor), John (who died in infancy),
Mary and Henry. Margaret then died in
1745.
Unlike his father, Nicholas didn’t rush into his second
marriage, although his third was another matter. He married Sarah Bennett in Jul 1769 by
licence. As marriage licences were
expensive, he must have been doing reasonably well in his butchery trade by then. Sarah died in August 1787, and Nicholas married
Mary Pether at the end of September the same year, weeks later, by banns. Mary outlived Nicholas by several years. I haven’t found any record of Nicholas having
children by his second or third wives.
I have found Land tax records showing that Nicholas lived in
Whitechapel for most of his adult life.
He lived in good enough circumstances to be able to pay Land tax (this
was before the days of income tax), which not everyone could manage.
Nicholas plied his trade via a butcher’s cart rather than selling
from a shop. He cart features in his grandson James’s story. Butchers took meat around to streets to
prospective customers. Butchery was (and
is) a messy business but meat was to some extent a luxury item, so while butchery was consigned to the East end and
other not so nice parts of London, a butcher could do well taking his product
to nicer parts of town. However, in
1759, I have a record of Nicholas working as a coal dealer. Maybe there was a downturn in the meat trade
so he put his cart to other uses or perhaps the work was seasonal. The butchers trade was also closely associated
with leather, for obvious reasons, and Nicholas’s son Samuel was a leather
worker. It seems likely that Nicholas
took on his grandson James as an apprentice, or at least played a role in his
career choice. However, as per James’s story, that didn’t work out so well and he disinherited James.
 |
| A butcher's cart (Public Domain via Wikipedia) |
Nicholas left a detailed will written after his marriage to
Mary Pether with a codicil added after his son Henry died around 1788. In that short time, James had caused his grandfather
enough offence to be cut out of the will.
I think knowing even a little about an ancestor’s work makes
them fell much more real than just a few dates and places can do.
Notes on lineage:
Me > Mum > John Macdonald Charley > Walter George Charley > John
Joseph Charley > Catherine Thompson > Catherine Foskett > James
Foskett > Samuel Foskett > Nicholas Foskett
*Also Fosket, Faskett, Fosset, Fosgate, plus other spellings
and poor transcriptions, including Sosket.
