Born at Norton Folgate in Hackney
John was a weaver and silk manufacturer of Spitalfields and Clapton
In the 3 Jan 1846 edition of the Morning Post, it was reported that a bale of orgazine silk weight 1.25 hundredweight and worth 100 pounds and destined for Messrs Ballance & Sons of Gutter Lane was stolen from GWR Paddington station.
From John Ballance . . . .
The years from 1806 to 1826 saw John and Elizabeth Ballance producing a large family, growing in wealth, and moving out, like any modern commuter, to the cows and meadows beyond Hackney, in fashionable Lower Clapton.
Although the firm continued to be known for many years as "T. Ballance & Sons", I think that Thomas had probably retired by about 1815, after which date the lessee of 37 Steward Street was John. In 1819, Thomas moved to No. 1 Providence Row, in Hackney Road, the lease of which he was to leave to his son. He and his wife later moved to Cambridge Heath. The honours of the Weavers' Company came late to him: not until 1824 did he become a member of the Court of Assistants. John was not admitted to Freedom and Livery until 1821. The workings of a mediaeval Guild were probably less and less relevant as the century progressed, and by the end of John's life they must have seemed social and ceremonial, rather than the vital part of commercial life that they had once been. By 1860, apprenticeships had almost ceased, though the charitable function of the Company was still important.
John's business interests were evidently divided into two independent but complementary parts: silk-throwing in Taunton, in association with the Heudebourcks, and weaving in Spitalfields. At some point not yet clearly determined, he took over the Heudebourck business, though it continued to trade under that name until about 1840, with John Heudebourck managing it. In 1798, William Heudebourck had paid tax on property owned by John Clitsome in "Holway extra portam", which was later called South Street, but the first trade directory I have found showing the firm, in 1822, gives it an address in Barrack Street. This might, I suppose, be the counting-house rather than the factory, which still survives as warehousing in South Street, with a prominent chimney. Barrack Street had been renamed Mount Street by 1830. It is certain that John Ballance took over and re-equipped the factory about 1813, for there exists an interesting letter (the only one about the firm's business to survive) which speaks of the consumption of coal by "the Engine", and implies that this had only recently been installed. The factory was clearly Ballance-owned, since John's examination before the Parliamentary Silk Trade Commission in 1832 includes the following answer to a question as to whether he was himself a throwster: "I had a mill, but in 1829 gave it up to the person who had superintended it for some years." [i.e. John Heudebourck]" I employ him as a throwster, but I have no interest in it." He was sorry to have given up the trade, "where my property lies."
John and Elizabeth may have spent some time at Taunton between 1806 and 1814, since their eldest son, born in 1808, is said to have lived with his paternal grand-parents (i.e. in Steward Street) in his early years. But that period ended in 1815. The business letter just quoted has a long and jocular postscript to his brother-in-law in which John Ballance describes the site has chosen in Lower Clapton for a building lease, the house to be erected for 1,200 on ground at 5/6 per foot. This was to be Stanley House. It has been pulled down. It was one of a number of large houses with long gardens behind them on the east side of Clapton Road between Lea Bridge Road and Laura Place, just to the south of the present little park with ponds. The site is now occupied by a modernistic factory building, to the south of which several remaining older houses have just been heavily restored.
According to John's statements of 1832, this period was a prosperous one in the silk-weaving industry, especially in the years after 1816. During the Napoleonic Wars there must have been problems with the supply of raw material, which came mostly from Italy. Some of it was spun there, though John thought British-spun silk was superior. By 1832, the best "Italian raw" was becoming scarce. Between 1822 and 1831, he had at least a hundred looms working, giving employment to about 300 people. In 1816, it cost him 3,362 to weave 5,000 lbs of silk. In all the London weaving area there were then about 16,000 looms active. It must have been in this period that his real fortune was made, before he was 50, and in it all but the last of his large family were born.
We know a lot about his first-born, proudly christened John Descarri res at Bethnal Green in 1808, "surrounded by numerous relations". We might know much less if he had not died at the age of nineteen, for his distracted father published in 1829 a small volume called Memoirs of John Descarrieres Ballance, using his journals and letters; a number of the latter have survived. If it is a little difficult to find this pious young manattractive, that is due as much to our shift of taste as to his character: what his parents and friends recognised as piety we can easily stigmatise as priggishness. In his early childhood he was "attached to religious subjects" and no doubt he was encouraged in this by his grandparents on both sides. He stayed at Taunton in the summer of 1821, where he recorded sermons in 40 pages of a journal. In that year he went to Mill Hill School, a suitably Low Church foundation. In the holidays he undertook visiting among the poor and taught in a Sunday school. Sixteen was the age at which his generation of hard-working merchants left school, and from 1824 to 1827 he went into the counting house at Steward Street. He was unhappy there, not finding commercial life congenial, and wished to study for the Church, which would involve going to Cambridge. He continued his work among the poor, busily distributing tracts among brickworkers in the summer of 1825. His parents were strict Sabbatarians, so he was disturbed to find how many people spent Sunday "fishing, riding or walking". By 1826 he had clearly become restless, wishing to convert relatives and discussing the benefits of "ejaculatory prayer". The nexy year we find him practising preaching to his sister Eliza. In May 1827 he was confirmed at St Paul's and determined to enter the ministry, but before he could go to Cambridge he would have to spend a year's study with a clergyman at Cromer. There we will leave him for the moment.
Two further sons followed, Thomas III and William, who were destined to be the last members of the family connected with the silk industry. They both followed their brother to Mill Hill. Thomas had been baptised at Christ Church Spitalfields. The first daughter, Eliza, was born in 1813. In a letter of 21 May that year, her mother describes her as "the quietest, happiest little creature I ever saw". She went off to boarding school at Clapham at the age of 12, and was still there in 1829. This was a sure sign of prosperity and of the age, to spend money on the daughters' education! Other children followed: Edward (the only one to die in infancy), Mary, Caroline, Harriet, Henry, Charles ... and at the birth of the last, in 1825, the family was still not complete.
For the master silk-weavers, the last thirty years in Spitalfields had been largely prosperous. Now, in 1826, a sudden recession hit masters and men. Two years before, the protective duties which guarded them against foreign competition had been lifted with effect from 1826. The result was immediately disastrous, for only by import duties could Spitalfields hope to compete with Lyon, where workers were paid less, and the raw material was closer to hand. After six months there was some recovery, but the depression returned far more drastically in 1828 and 1829, and was again severe in the winter of 1831-2. In 1826, there had been 127 manufacturers (i.e. masters), 39 of them in fancy work. John Ballance had had "rather a trade" in black satin, a third of his whole output, for "mine is considered a rich house"--that is, a firm specialising in the higher qualities. By 1832, when he gave evidence before the Parliamentary Commission on the Silk Trade, there were only 79 masters left, of whom only 13 were doing figured work. In the long run, machine-made cotton was bound to oust hand-made silk, except for the very rich or for furnishings, but to John Ballance in 1832 there was one overwhelmingly powerful reason for the trade's troubles: foreign competition. If, as he claimed, 67 masters had gone bankrupt in three years, it was because of a 4/- cut in 1829 on the duty on finished silks, coupled with a reduction of the duty upon thrown silk. French producers could undercut England once the duty fell below a certain level. The ostensible reason for the cut was to frustrate smuggling, but in fact the smugglers merely lowered their prices. Without protection, wages fell 40% in six years, as English manufacturers struggled to remain competitive. John Ballance's own costs for weaving had fallen by 1831 to little more than half of what they had been in 1825, but he was still making at a loss, and was keeping only fifty looms going instead of a hundred. As we have seen, he abandoned throwing at Taunton altogether, at least for a time. The Clapton establishment might be secure enough--but would it be, if the depression continued? In Spitalfields "families are to be found without a bed, without furniture, with scarcely any clothes to cover them, a little straw heaped up in one corner of the room for the family to lie upon." He added that recklessness of character was increasing, and sabbath-working was becoming common.
The effects were also felt at Taunton. From 1826 to 1828, The Taunton Courier was full of reports of recession and distress among the silk-weavers and throwsters. The industry was on such a large scale that in 1826 it was estimated that 4,400 persons were engaged in it. At a Committee meeting on 1 February that year, John Heudebourck spoke in favour of a petition to Parliament; the French cost for thrown silk was 40/- per pound of raw, as against 60/- in England. The industry continued in a "languid" state through 1828. On 19 February 1829, he wrote rather abruptly to John Heudebourck, wondering why he wanted raw silk "so soon" and announcing his intention of abandoning the trade altogether, and of "instantly reducing the number of my hands". On 26 February, Elizabeth Ballance wrote to her parents in Taunton that her husband was "exceedingly occupied at present about the silk business with little hopes of success, but I am thankful to say that as his day is, so is his strength." In London, he had been writing an ably argued pamphlet, pouring scorn on a free-trading opponent.
Amidst all this, he had lost his eldest son. John had gone off to study at Cromer with the Reverend T. Clowes. Several of his letters of this time show that his health was erratic, and his timetable of study sounds formidable: eight hours' reading a day, and Young's Night Thoughts in the evening, "with which I expect to be interested." On 17 October 1828, he went from Cromer straight to Queens', Cambridge, where he applied himself to study and "attended the ministry of the Reverend C. Simeon and Professor Scholefield." The former was the most famous evangelical preacher of his day, his many Cambridge followers, often from the poorer undergraduates, being known as "Sims". No Cambridge letters or journal have survived. On 17 December he left Cambridge for the Christmas vacation, to join the "beloved circle of brother, sister, cousins" at Clapton. On Christmas morning he woke early in great pain, with internal inflammation. The pain yielded to the doctor's "copious bleeding", and he seemed better, with his mother beside him most of the day. His father came to him in the evening, and when he at last rose to go out the son said: "Father, I can't see you." Next day he died, and was buried in what was to be the family vault in the churchyard of St John Hackney.
So the children were down to eight. Yet in March 1829, another son was born at Clapton. He was christened at St Matthew Bethnal Green, to which the parents had remained faithful, under the names of Josiah Descarrieres. At the age of ten, he was given a copy of the Memoirs of his late brother, and it was he who in the end entered the Ministry.
We know little or nothing of John's business career after 1832. The trade in Spitalfields could never be the same again, but he was still involved in it, with his sons Thomas and William, right up to his death in 1863. As we have seen, the Ballances became personally involved again in the throwing business at Taunton in the 1840s. What happened in Spitalfields is less clear. After surviving the 1826-32 depression, some of the more prosperous manufacturers recovered their position in a greatly contracted industry; "rationalised" would be the modern term, perhaps. Steward Street remained the business address until about 1857; at various times they also occupied property directly behind No. 37 in Duke Street. In a photo of 1911 in the Tower Hamlets Archives, the relationship between the two is well seen, though the area was then in the last stages of decay. Between 1848 and 1857 there was also a City office in Gutter Lane, which may mean that the firm was dealing generally in finished silks, including foreign imports. Some manufacturers saved their fortunes in this way. Commentators on the increasingly fearful conditions in Bethnal Green and Spitalfields in the middle of the century remarked on the great gulf between the wealthy merchants and the impoverished and decreasing labour force. |
