Wynmelvin » East India Company

Benjamin Coles joins the East India Company

Russell — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:27:24 +0000

Today I finally found a reference to Benjamin Coles in the records of the India Office held at the British Library. Benjamin was appointed as a labourer in the Tea Warehouse on March 10, 1802. His appointment is recorded as entry no. 292 in List of Laborers Appointed, 1801-1832 (IOR:L/AG/30/5). He was nominated by T. T. Metcalfe, Esq.; his previous occupation was recorded as servant; and he was 33 years of age at the time. This would reckon his year of birth as about 1769.

September 5th, 2009

Russell — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:41:41 +0000

LONDON — My second full day in London was spent in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room of the British Library. The object of my search was my 5 × great grandfather Benjamin Coles. Various sources have listed his occupation as a labourer, warehouseman, porter, and clerk at the East India House. The British Library is the repository for the archives of the East India Company and I was hoping that there might be something in its miles of archives that would shed some light on Benjamin’s life and career.

The staff at the enquiries desk were very helpful and got me pointed in the right direction. While waiting for some documents to be retrieved, I started trawling through a microfilm of the minutes of a pension fund. It looked like it could be a treasure trove because to qualify for a pension the prospective recipient had to supply to the trustees of the fund documentation supporting their marriage, baptisms of any children, certificate of burial, etc. After scanning three volumes totalling 35 years of minutes there was no mention of either Benjamin Coles or his widow Elizabeth, and I began to wonder whether I had missed a mention. The fourth and fifth volumes were the indexes to the first three (it would have been nice if they had been placed ahead of the minutes on the microfilm to save a lot of time) and these confirmed that I hadn’t missed anything.

By now it was early afternoon and the salary lists I had ordered were ready. They were large thick volumes detailing payments made to home staff of the East India Company. Too much information to read sequentially so I just sampled the quarterly accounts but could find no mention of Benjamin. I think he may have been too junior in the company to have been recorded in these particular documents.

Leaving the Reading Room I headed downstairs to visit the Henry VIII exhibition. Unfortunately both Saturday and Sunday were already sold out, and I discovered that the exhibition finished on Sunday. So all in all not a particularly successful day, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Elizabeth Coles, d.1849

Russell — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:23:57 +0000

Elizabeth Coles, widow of Benjamin Coles, clerk with the East India Company, died of old age at 2 Hawthorndean Place, Limehouse on November 7, 1849, aged 77 years.

The above information was provided to the registrar, Adolphus Barnett, on November 9, 1849 by M. Skene of 6 Lamberts Terrace, Poplar, who was present at the death (1).

Elizabeth is my 5 × great grandmother.
It is probable that M. Skene was Mary Amelia Coe, wife of Arthur Skene and the mother-in-law of Elizabeth’s son Henry Boyde Coles.

1. England and Wales, death certificate for Elizabeth Coles, died 7 November 1849; citing 2/357/406, December quarter 1849, Stepney registration district, Limehouse sub-district; General Register Office, Southport.

Surnames: Coles, Skene
People: Elizabeth Adam (1772-1849), Mary Amelia Coe (c.1787–c.1877)
Places: Limehouse, Middlesex, Poplar

Searching for Benjamin Coles’ family

Russell — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 06:05:20 +0000

I have recently been corresponding with a newly discovered cousin. Our common ancestors are Benjamin Coles and his wife Elizabeth. Robyn is descended from Henry Boyde Coles, Benjamin and Elizabeth’s firstborn, while I’m descended from Henry’s younger brother Joseph.

Here’s what I know so far about Benjamin and his family. His first son was baptised Henry Boyde Coles on 5 February 1797 in the parish of Mells, near Frome in Somerset, England. Joseph was baptised in the same parish the following year on July 15.
In 1813 a petition by Benjamin for an apprenticeship for Joseph was considered by the Somersetshire Society for Apprenticing the Children of the Poor. An excerpt from the petition provides the information that by this time Benjamin and Elizabeth had increased their family by a further seven children; that Benjamin was a labourer employed by the East India Company; and that he had been in the job for the last ten years. As the Society was founded to provide apprenticeships for children who were, or whose parents were, natives of Somerset residing in the metropolis, Benjamin must have moved his family to London sometime around the turn of the century.
The certificate for Joseph’s second marriage in 1842 records his father’s occupation as being a porter in the E.I. House [i.e. East India House], and the marriage certificate for Henry in 1845 shows Benjamin’s occupation as clerk, E.I. House. Neither certificates are annotated to the effect that Benjamin is deceased however the 1841 census records Elizabeth as being a widow. Elizabeth died of old age in 1849, aged 77 years.

The baptism register for the parish of St Martin in the Fields records the baptisms of six children to parents named Benjamin and Elizabeth Coles: Mary (1801), James (1802), Eliza Price (1804), Katherine (1806), John (1807) and Ann Boyd (1812). Are these children the younger siblings of Henry and Joseph?
The fact that both Henry and Ann share a second given name of Boyd gives cause to suggest that the London-born children are family, and the chronology of the baptisms give no reason to suggest otherwise. The task is to prove it one way or the other.

Surnames: Coles
People: Benjamin Coles (c.1767-1815), Elizabeth Adam (1772-1849), Henry Boyde Coles (c.1797-1861), Joseph Coles (c.1798-1869)
Places: London, Mells, Middlesex, Somerset, St Martin in the Fields

The apprenticing of Joseph Coles

Russell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:39:21 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I googled my 4 × great grandfather Joseph Coles and was pleasantly surprised to see an entry in the results that looked suspiciously like a reference to an article in a scholarly journal. Following the link proved my suspicions correct but unfortunately the full-text of the article (Keane, 1975) was not available to me online without paying a hefty fee. Luckily my local university library held the journal in print format so I was not inconvenienced too much.

The article is concerned with the history of the Somersetshire Society for Apprenticing the Children of the Poor. Joseph’s petition to be considered for an apprenticeship was used as an example:

At a meeting in 1811 the committee decided that ‘petitioners are admissible if either the father or mother, or the object for whom the application is made, be a native of the county of Somerset, and that such object be thirteen years old at least’. Being intended for boys only, with the foregoing age limitation, and with substantial premiums, these apprenticeships differed appreciably from poor-law apprenticeships, and offered substantial inducements to petitioners. The first two petitions were considered in 1813, and the content of one will serve to illustrate some of the motives involved at that time.

The humble petition of Benjamin Coles sheweth that your petitioner is a native of the parish of Mells, near to Frome in the said county, and that he has a wife and nine children, eight of which he has under the roof of his own house. Petitioner has been employed for these ten years past as a labourer in the honble, East India Company’s warehouses, with a fair and honest character as his officers will readily vouch, but through the pressure of the times and his earnings very small, barely sufficient to pay his baker’s weekly bill, and is destitute of the means of getting his children out apprentices, one of which, Joseph Coles, turned 14 years and born in the said parish of Mells, would most willingly have a trade.

We thus have the father of a large family, himself in unskilled and poorly paid employment, seeking the material benefits of an apprenticeship for one of his children. While this petition was granted, the apprentice in question was to be among those who were later considered unsatisfactory. A report of 1817 of the society on the first twelve apprenticeships, listed eight as satisfactory, and then referred to:

Joseph Coles. Very disobedient and now in St. Thomas’s Hospital with venereal disease.
William Maynard. Left his master two years since, and has not been heard of since.
James Miller Hicklebridge. Very bad. His master will give the premium he has received and 10 pounds in addition to be rid of him.
James Coles. Disobedient and struck his master.
(Keane, 1975, p. 2)

This new information opens up some potentially fruitful avenues for research. Do the Somersetshire Society archives hold more information on Joseph and his family? Do the archives of the East India Company hold information on Joseph’s father Benjamin? Will it be possible to find Joseph in patient records of St Thomas’ Hospital?

1. Keane, P. (1975). The Somersetshire Society for Apprenticing the Children of the Poor. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 7(1), 1-7.

Surnames: Coles
People: Benjamin Coles (c.1767-1815), Joseph Coles (c.1798-1869)
Places: London, Mells, Somerset