Obituary - Derek Morris

I have just learned of the passing of the London historian, Derek Morris, on the 15th of July. He was an authority on the maritime villages of London, having written groundbreaking books on Mile End Old Town, Whitechapel and Wapping, and London's sailortown (the latter two in partnership with Ken Cozens), as well as numerous articles.

Derek also invested a great deal of his retirement in transcribing London's insurance and land tax records and adding them to online databases - I found his understanding invaluable when trying to estimate the size of the house leased by William Richards, the First Fleet contractor, at Walworth (based on the land tax valuations). He was always generous with his time and knowledge.

In April 2013, I spent a delightful morning walking around Wapping with Derek and Ken Cozens, making sense of the 18th century geography. Over lunch at one of the waterfront pubs, we debated the workings of the micro-credit system which operated out of sailors' pubs - many historians regard them solely as a source of exploitation, but my argument was that the system would not have been as widespread as it was, or persisted as long, if it did not work well enough most of the time.

The following is one of the emails Derek sent to Ken and myself afterwards, which is typical of his evidence-based approach.

Dear Gary and Ken,

Following our Wapping walk and various discussions I have now looked at over 150 wills of mariners from Shadwell and Ratcliff between 1740 and 1800.

My draft summary is as follows and I welcome any comments in due course.

Mariners and Victuallers

Shadwell was the dominant abode of mariners judging from wills between 1740 and 1800: over 500 such wills are linked to Shadwell but only a dozen or so to Ratcliff.

There has always been a close connection between mariners and the many victuallers to be found along the north Thames riverside. For a mariner returning from a long voyage overseas with his wages, and assuming that he had no family in Shadwell or Ratcliff, a tavern would be the one place where he could trust that his modest possessions and his wages might be safer than elsewhere. An example of a mariner leaving his possessions at a tavern can be found in P. D. James's The Maul and the Pear Tree, her re-telling of the Ratcliff murders. A maul identified by the initials J. P. belonged to John Peterson, a German sailor from Hamburg, who lodged with the Verrmilloes at the Pear Tree public house in Wapping and “had left his chest of tools in Vermilloes' keeping when he went to sea”. (James, p. 151)

The informal networks between mariners would have identified the victuallers who could be trusted, such as Timothy Gard at the King of Sweden in Shadwell; John Christianson, victualler and cooper, Cock Hill, Ratcliff; and Geoffery William Smith at the Black Eagle, Wapping, and their names (and those of their wives) occur as the beneficiaries in dozens of wills between 1740 and 1800. Many taverns had names which linked them to a geographical area, and there a mariner could collect messages, exchange news with men from his home port, and meet the contacts that would help him find his next voyage, or perhaps a ship to return him to his home port.

From a sample of one hundred wills of unmarried mariners from Shadwell, thirty-seven per cent left their wages to a victualler and another sixteen per cent left their wages to a tradesman in Shadwell, including John Slater, a grocer in Starr Street,and Robert Bruce a slopman. This strong linkage is a characteristic of mariners and not of other trades.

It suggests that many of these men were in transit through Shadwell, especially those with Scandinavian names such as Aasmund Aolsen of the East Indiaman Prince George, Arent Dahl and John Diericesen. There are also links through the wills to Bristol, Southampton, Kilmarnock and North Berwick but none to Scandinavia or continental ports, which indicates that the majority of mariners had little to leave except their wages from their last voyage and any bounty they were due.

The victuallers would be providing a source of safety for possessions left whilst a man was away, operating an informal poste restante system, providing micro-credit between voyages, links to masters seeking new crews as well as satisfying the demand for drink, food, a bed, entertainment and probably women. The safeguard for the victualler's provision of these services was to ensure the sailor made a will before leaving on his next voyage.

Derek Morris

20 May 2013