Joseph Vickers - his indentured apprenticeship as a patten-maker, his marriages (and terrible loss of children), his work and his property dealing

Mary Randall Philipps’ second marriage was to Joseph Vickers at St Peter’s church, Leeds on Sunday 12th March 1797, just weeks after the deaths of her mother and one of her younger brothers. She wrote in her journal “…present [were] my dear affectionate sister Smalpage, my beloved faithful friend Sidney Clifton, and Mr William Richardson … of Leeds, a long and intimate friend of my husband’s.” 

Joseph Vickers had been born in Marr, near Doncaster, in 1753. Marr is an ancient village, mentioned in the Domesday Book and marked by an Iron Age barrow on its outskirts.

  

Joseph was the third son of William Vickers & Martha Oxley. In his last will and testament shown below, in 1790, William Vickers described himself as a Yeoman, ie a man who owned some land and worked it himself. William identifies his beneficiaries: his wife, Martha (his sole executrix); and their five children Martha, William (junior), Thomas, Joseph and Sarah (married to Revd Richard Thompson, Vicar of Hemsworth, a nearby parish) 

Copy of Will of William Vickers of Marr, 12 January 1790

William owned five cottages in Bolton-on-Dearne, west of Marr, which are mentioned in his will made in 1790. Joseph’s inherited one-third share of that property was sold in 1845, twenty-seven years after Joseph’s death, and the proceeds were divided equally between his children from both his marriages. 

Receipt for the sale of Joseph Vickers' property, 1845

We know little about Joseph’s education. But as a third son he may have been expected to make his own way in the world, rather than stay and work on the family property.  It is established that in 1771, aged 18, he moved to Leeds where on 13th July he was indentured to a relation, John Ash and his son John Ash the younger (the “Masters”), who were in business as patten-makers in Leeds. The 1798 Directory describes John Ash as a “patten-ring maker” on “Lowerhead-row”.  

Pattens, as shown in the image below, are a type of outdoor shoe, comprising a raised wooden sole with a thick leather strap (like a modern sandal), set on an iron ring, which raised one’s feet above damp or dirty ground.  Patten-making was a long-established trade: the Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers, one of the City of London Livery Companies, is first recorded, as a trade association for the makers of pattens, as far back as 1379. 

 

The terms of the Joseph Vickers’ Indenture are, to modern eyes, eye-watering. The term is four years during which the Masters will “Teach, Learn and Inform him in the Trade Art of a Patten Maker” and will provide him “sufficient Meat, Drink, Washing and Lodging” and shall also pay him a Stipendiary Wage, annually on the commencement of the apprenticeship, the sum of One Shilling and four pence” (roughly £10 in 2026 value). 

Indenture of Apprenticeship of Joseph Vickers, 16 July 1771

On his side, Joseph Vickers was obliged to: faithfully serve his masters, keep their secrets, obey their lawful commands, neither hurt them not do injury to them, and present a true and just account of all their goods, chattels and money, and hand these over when required.  Moreover he was prohibited from the following “vices”: formication, adultery, frequenting taverns and ale houses (“except on his Masters’ business”!), dice, cards, (gaming) tables or bowls; and finally was not allowed to absent himself from his Masters’ service at any time, nor was he allowed to contract matrimony. 

Joseph would have completed (perhaps with a sigh of relief?) his four-year indentured apprenticeship in 1775.  He made a successful career as a patten-maker for the next thirty years. Joseph (incorrectly identified as John) Vickers is listed as “patten-maker, Briggate” in Wright’s 1797 Leeds Directory; Binns & Brown’s 1800 Leeds Directory extends this to as “patten and patten-ring maker, Briggate”.  

Two years after completing his apprenticeship, on 30 August 1777, aged 24, Joseph married his first wife, Mercy Carr of Leeds, who had just had her 20th birthday on 29 July that year. Mercy had grown up on Meadow Lane and had family connections to what would later become a well-known Leeds cloth partnership, Ikin, Cockell & Carr, from which some of her children would ultimately benefit.  

From the baptismal records for their children, it seems clear that Joseph and Mercy Vickers lived in Briggate. Between 1778 and 1795, they had eleven children, of whom seven died as infants or as children (Mary, Elizabeth, Frederick, Ann, Mercy, Mercy Matilda & an unnamed stillborn).  The four who survived to adulthood were Sarah (baptised 11 May 1786), Harriet (baptised 6 April 1788), John Ash (baptised 7 April 1791) and Joseph Cockell (baptised 26 May 1796). All of them had Briggate as the registered address at baptism. 

Handwritten notes relating to Joseph Vickers' life and family, 1777-1797

Mary Randall Vickers Family Tree

Mercy herself died, aged 38, less than a month after Joseph Cockell’s baptism.  She was buried on 15 June 1796, leaving Joseph – then 43 - with two daughters aged 10 and 8, one son aged 5 and an infant son just a few weeks old. 

It is not known when Joseph Vickers and Mary (Randall) Philipps got to know each other seriously.  Moses Randall’s letter of 24 November 1796, coming as it did from his remote parish in Norfolk and stating that he knew Joseph Vickers “by sight”, suggests that the Randalls and Vickers may have known each other for some time.   

Correspondence from Moses Randall to Mary Vickers, 1796 (click on image to read)

They might have been neighbours at work: the 1798 Directory lists both “Randal & Co, grocers” and “John (sic) Vickers, patten-maker” on Briggate. (There is no other record of a John Vickers, patten-maker, so it is a fair assumption that this is a recording or transcription error – “John” instead of “Joseph”.  In other records, both “John” and “Joseph” are abbreviated to “Jo.” So there is scope for error.) 

In any event, Mary and Joseph wed on 12 March 1797, less than nine months after Mercy’s passing (and even sooner after the deaths of Mary’s own mother and sister). Perhaps both Mary and Joseph, having suffered the deaths of so many family members between them, had a sense of “carpe diem”. Since they were both over 40 when they married in March 1797, perhaps they were also conscious of time passing if they wished to have children together. Not least, Joseph may have needed help with his four young children! 

But it was certainly a love match.  Mary wrote in her private journal “The Lord in tender mercy gave us that [carton] of union and perfect good will mixed with the best ingredient - love for each other that we know of no jarring things”. 

Account of Mary Vickers' marriage to Joseph Vickers from her private journal (click on image to read)

It is also likely that Joseph brought not only income but also more properties, especially on Briggate.  In 1817, whilst contesting a claim in the High Court of Chancery, by Chapman Marshall and others, against Joseph’s estate, Mary made a full declaration of all the properties belonging to Joseph, and their rental income; by then there was eleven properties on Briggate in addition to the eight in St Peter’s Square.   

Mary and Joseph Vickers had three sons, all of whom had “Randall” as their second name: Benjamin (b 11 April 1798), Edward (b 20 April 1799) and William (b 21 February 1801).   

It seems that both spouses began to be interested in and involved with the other’s business interests: Joseph certainly got involved with the Randall grocery business (he and Joseph Randall went into formal partnership between 1801 and 1804), whilst Mary learnt enough about patten making to keep the business going after Joseph’s death. 

After their marriage, Joseph continued to deal in property, as well as being a patten-maker. Deeds at the West Yorkshire Register (Wakefield) reveal several transactions. Firstly, in 1798, Joseph was part of a consortium (also including his brothers-in-law and sister-in-law Joseph Randall, Moses Randall, John & Miriam Smalpage and John Carr) which purchased five dwellings on the west side of St

Peter’s Square, Leeds.  

Then in May 1801, he bought a property on Briggate from Henry Shute, a cabinet maker who was (like Robert Randall) a member of the Boggart Close Greater Building Society; assuming that he lived in St Peter’s Square, the Shute and Randall / Vickers families may have known each other socially. This property comprised a “yard situate in Briggate and extending into a street called Call Lane, consisting of all those several messuages, cottages, dwelling houses, warehouses, shops and other buildings (lately the property of the said John Shute, deceased), and late in the social occupations of” multiple listed individual tenants including “Joseph Randall”…”and all other buildings in the same yard.” Presumably this yard is what became known as “Vickers’ Yard”, which appears as the address of the tailor and draper, David Bellhouse who became one of the co-defendants, with Mary and her children and step-children, in the later legal dispute in Chancery.   

Later that same year, in November, Joseph V purchased some property in Uppertown, Oxenhope from a Mr Mears; and in 1806 sold to a Mr Hodgson some dwellings, giving rental income, in St Peter’s Square – presumably these latter properties may have been ones which Mary brought into their marriage.   

So Joseph had multiple irons in the fire – his own trade as a patten and patten-ring maker; his growing involvement in the Randall grocery and tea making trade; and his (and Mary’s) steadily increasing property “portfolio” – as well as his role as father to his own seven children and one stepson (Robert H Philipps, who lived with family until he moved to London in 1806 to join the East India Company). 

However, Joseph and Mary’s marriage lasted only eleven years, until June 1808, when Joseph himself died, aged 55, leaving Mary with eight children, two trading businesses and a substantial property portfolio – many of which would bring her heartache over the next decade.