There are multiple advertisements in “The Leeds Intelligencer” (a weekly four-page newspaper) between April 1801 and March 1804 for “Randall and Vickers, Grocers and Tea Merchants”. The advertisements are entertaining and show the changing nature of the business. It is striking that most of them are in the top left-hand corner of the newspaper, where one’s eye naturally starts to read. The first known advertisement appears in The Leeds Intelligencer, (Vol XLIX. No 2416) on Monday 27 April 1801:
Later advertisements feature “Fine Red Herrings” ie herrings that have been salted and cold-smoked, “Kent Hops”, “East India Rice”, “London Mottled and Yellow Hard Soaps”, “Best Belfast Butter” and “Lump, Loaf and Raw Sugars”.
An announcement in the Lancaster Gazette of 7 August 1802 records the arrival in Liverpool of a vessel, (believed to the vessel “MARIA”, owned by Messrs Wildman & Smith of London, captained by L James Redmayne) carrying mixed cargo from Jamaica including coffee, cotton, rum, satinwood and (especially) sugar, for various merchants. “Randall & Vickers” are noted as taking “6 hhds” (hogsheads, ie large standardised wooden barrels (each c.1,000 lbs, ie c 400 kgs) of sugar.
In the same week (August 9th, 1802) in another edition of the Leeds Intelligencer, “Randall and Vickers inform the Manufacturers and Millers of Woollen Cloth, that they have contracted for several Fullers’ Earth Pits, the Earth of which will be found to be much superior to any hitherto found in this Country”. (Fullers’ Earth is a natural, mineral-rich, cleanser which was used to remove lanolin from woollen cloths before finishing).
This is both an interesting early example of diversifying markets – adding materials for “industrial” processes, to the existing lines of food and household goods for consumers – and also the first recorded commercial offer from the Vickers family to the Yorkshire wool processing industry, decades before Mary’s son Benjamin started to sell olive oil to that sector.
But they may have been struggling. In November 1802 they advertise “WANTED, Immediately, a SHOPMAN - One who perfectly understands the Grocery business and can be well recommended, will be treated with on liberal terms”. This followed the resignation of the previous Shopman, William Birch, who in taking over the shop and stock-in-trade of one Simeon Hagen, on Lower Head-Row, both deprived them of an experienced worker and also set up a knowledgeable competitor.
Anyhow, on October 1st, 1804, “The Leeds Intelligencer” carried an announcement that the partnership “in the Trade or Business of Grocers” had been dissolved by mutual consent, with effect from 24th September 1804. Any debts due to or owing from the partnership would be received and paid by Joseph Vickers (ie he was going to take over and run the business on his own).
On 29th October 1804 the same announcement is repeated, with an additional one printed below it, proclaiming that Joseph Vickers is going to carry on the business, and once again (!) seeking a “Middle-aged MAN, who is entire Master of the Grocery business – a person of this description will be treated with on liberal terms”.
Perhaps it was this separation between her brother and her husband which caused Mary such bitter grief that, later that year, she wrote “had it not been for the 10,000 tears which I have shared during the last eight months surely my life must have left this Clay Tenement”.
Sketch of the Life of Mary Vickers
According to George Wilson’s 1807 Leeds Directory, Joseph Vickers was still trading as “Vickers, John (sic), grocer & patten maker, Briggate”. In other words, until his death the next year, Joseph Vickers was running both the grocery business and the patten business (the latter perhaps in collaboration with his second son, John Ash Vickers, who then was 17).
Joseph Randall, on the other hand, is listed in 1807 as a Grocer & Tea-Dealer in Bank Street. But he was bankrupted in 1808 (the same year that Joseph Vickers died) and eventually moved to London, where he seems to have acted as an agent for Mary, buying goods for her to sell in Leeds - see his letter to Mary dated 11th August, 1812. He died in January 1814 and was buried in Clerkenwell. But “Randall & Vickers” certainly was neither the start nor the end of tea-drinking in Yorkshire!
Correspondence from Joseph Randall to Mary Vickers, 1812-1813
In 2018, a discovery at Temple Newsam House in Leeds revealed a bill in 1644 for “four bottle of china drink” (as tea was then known):
Tea had been very highly taxed in Britain (119% duties) which had encouraged widespread smuggling. Pitt the Younger’s Commutation Act of 1784 cut the duties on tea to just 12.5%, which both effectively ended smuggling and also gave a massive boost to demand, as tea suddenly became affordable to those on lower incomes. That was the context in which the two Josephs, Randall and Vickers, started their partnership.
Tetley’s Tea business (now owned by Tata) was started in 1837 in Huddersfield, whilst Taylor’s of Harrogate commenced in 1866 – both founded in Yorkshire. Tetley’s was, and Taylor’s still is, a private family business like Vickers.
Comments