Receipts From London’s Oldest Ironmonger
June 29, 2021
As any accountant will tell you – you must always keep your receipts. It was a dictum adopted religiously by the staff at London oldest ironmongers R. M. Presland & Sons in the Hackney Rd from 1797-2013, where this cache of receipts from the eighteen-eighties and nineties was discovered. All these years later, they may no longer be of interest to the tax man, but they serve to illustrate the utilitarian beauty of nineteenth-century typographic design and tell us a lot about the diverse interrelated trades which once filled this particular corner of the East End.
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I am sure Mr Presland was a law abiding citizen, but I was slightly alarmed to see a receipt for the conversion of two guns and two separate receipts for thumbscrews. Hopefully these were not used on his customers to deter tardy payment. I wil be paying closer attention the next time I visit my local fishmonger.
looks like they were put on a spike, I remember my parents putting their receipts on a spike.
Love the word wickerer, not come across that before
Wonderful! A small glimpse at Social History of the 19th Century.
So glad they were kept.
Beautiful.
Thank you
Best wishesSara
25 yds Duck! I am intrigued.
A wonderful collection of receipts and just the sort of glimpse into the past that I enjoy. When growing up in London during the 1950s, my mother also put all receipts on a spike stuck in a round wooden base that no doubt my engineer father had made.
wickerer !!!
wonderful word