FEATURE
A. Payne & Co Candles are now lit for the atmosphere that they create and the scents that fill the home but when Queen Victoria was contemplating her wedding in 1840, candles were a necessity. It was a tradition for every loyal household in the land to burn a candle in their front room window on the evening of the monarch’s wedding and on 20th February of that year most people would have lit a Prices candle from a newly created mix of refined tallow and coconut oil. This was a great improvement for the vast majority of the population who could not afford beeswax used in the church and by the wealthy, as most people used tallow lights made from hoarded animal fat, with rush wicks. It was Prices candles that Abraham Payne would peddle in the Deepings as an employee of John Osbourne of Daventry. It was here that he met his future wife, Mary Tomlin, daughter of Tobias, baker of 23 Bridge Street, Deeping St James. They married in 1857 when he was 26 and moved to Bourne where their son, Amos was born in 1859. They then moved to Church Street, Market Deeping, where their second son Richard Robinson was born in 1861, and Abraham set about building his own business as a candle maker, a chandler, in his own right. An ambitious man, he moved his family to larger premises in Chatteris and it was here that daughter Mary was born in 1863. The family grew along with the size of the business and there were six more
children, with a nurse and domestic employed to help. Sadly son Amos died in Chatteris at the age of 17 and by 1891 the family had returned to the Market Place, Market Deeping, where they ran a draper’s and grocery business with son Henry (26) a grocer, having trained to be a draper in Staines in Middlesex. The emporium now sustained two assistants in the grocery, Jabez Grant and Harry Seekins, and a domestic, Sarah Chesterfield. Meanwhile Richard moved to Glinton where he and his sister Mary also ran a grocery and draper’s employing Frank Wilderspin and James Beindge as grocers’ assistants. Sadly Richard died at the age of just 31 in 1892 and Frank took over the running of the business, keeping it in the Payne family with his marriage to Elizabeth Payne at St Guthlac’s Church in 1897. Not all the family stayed in the Deepings. Alwin and Ebenezer emigrated to Australia and Abraham became a tailor’ cutter in Hornsey. But father Abraham continued to build the business, adding millinery to the services he offered, employing Anne Payne from Raunds as a milliner’s assistant with Grace Freeman from Horsegate as her apprentice. Arthur Browning from Northorpe was employed in the grocery. Ever looking to diversify, Abraham had been over enthusiastic and was summoned for the keeping of gunpowder in 1904, not having registered that he held stocks, as required by the 1883 Explosives Act. The shop was getting bigger and busier and in 1905 moved to larger premises in Church Street, now occupied by the Opticians, Osteopaths and Red Cross Shop. Frank and Elizabeth took over the day-to-day running of the shop while their daughter Constance (11) was at school. Mary Harband from Yorkshire was employed as a milliner and Ethel Steed served as the domestic help. Abraham, living next door, kept a weather eye on the business; he employed Flora Green as a housekeeper and Marguerite Green as a milliner.
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Staff at Dudeney & Johnson l-r Joan Sampson, Isabel Parkinson, Percy Tilley, Winifred Roeker, Evelyn Plant
