OCCUPATION 1861 CENSUS

[Donches]

Can anyone decipher this occupaion from the 1861 census? It looks like PENSTALE MAKER - I suppose it could have been an occupation, bit I haven't found it listed.

Don

[Girl Guide]

Would you like to give us the census reference so we can have a look ourselves please?  We can then compare letters on the page.

[Donches]

Census Ref:
Archive ref. RGO9
Piece no: 242
Page: 24
John Tomkinson age 60


Don

[ShaunJ]

He's a pianoforte maker in the 1871 census - armed with that knowledge, I think that's what it says in 1861.

[shanghaipanda]

I think it might be pianoforte maker.  See http://www.lieveverbeeck.eu/Pianoforte-makers_England_t.htm

[dublin1850]

I'd agree, written Pinoforte Maker.

[Donches]

Very many thanks for the helpful replies, The link to the Piano forte Maker web site has been especially interesting. It is says that Thomas Tomkison said that his father, who told the anecdote about Turner the painter was a silversmith. I have actually by coincidence just been looking at Humphrey Tomkison, who is listed as a goldsmith and jeweler in Westminster during the 18th century and think he was most probably Thomas's father. Unfortunately I can't find a record of the baptism of Thomas, who according to the 1851 census, was born in 1763 or 4. He's recorded as Tomkinson in the censuses but I can't find him using all the usual variations of the Tomkinson name. Tomkison is a miss-spelling of Tomkinson and Humphrey seemed to stick with it for some reason.

The first child recorded of Humphrey was Mary Tomkison, baptised in 1765 and Thomas could have been the first child of Humphrey whose grand father, I think, was Thomas.

If anybody can throw any light on Thomas's baptism, I'd be very grateful.

Don

[Dean St 1799]

Yes, it is clear from a variety of other documentation that the piano maker Thomas Tomkison was indeed the son of Humphrey, the jeweller of Maiden Lane, and later Vestry Clerk of St Paul’s Covent Garden. Thomas was apprenticed (to the Cooks’s Company) in 1778, and his father’s name is there given as Humphrey. Thomas was not the first-born of the family, since there is a record of a Christopher Tomkison, son of Humphrey and Mary, baptised on 25 October 1761 at St Gregory by St Paul in the City, but this child died in 1763. I have searched this register and others in vain for the record of Thomas’ birth and Humphrey’s marriage or birth. Though Tomkison is of course a variant spelling of Tomkinson, Tomkison was the spelling adhered to by Humphrey and Thomas in all the documentation over which they had control, and in the nameboards of Thomas’ splendid pianos. Thomas’ piano making business was wound up in 1851, when he was nearly 90, and was not taken over by John Tomlinson or anyone else. Neither his wife nor his two daughters seen to have been involved in any way in the running of his business.

[Donches]

Many thanks Dean.
I think that Humphrey Tomkison the jeweller, was probably the son of Humphrey Tomkinson and Martha, née Signepole, who was baptised in Shifnall, Shropshire, in 1729. Humphrey seems to have been the family name in a line of Tomkinsons descended from Humphrey Tomkinson, who was baptised in Gnosall, Staffordshire in 1593. Several notable Tomkinson families descended from the Gnosall Tomkinsons, including those of Dorfold Hall and Winnington Hall, in Cheshire.
I was particularly intrigued that Humphrey, the jeweller, claimed to have been instrumental in starting the young Turner on his career as an artist,

Don