Richard and Louisa Jane Fishenden
Richard Fishenden was born on 4 September 1838 and baptised at St Mary’s Church, Marylebone. His parents were George and Sarah Fishenden. They lived at Brown Street, near Edgware Road. George was a dairyman.
Louisa Jane was baptised at St Mary, Lambeth in February 1843. Her parents were Henry Vaughan and Ann Lee. Henry was a stationer.
In the 1851 census Richard’s family were still living in Brown Street. He was the youngest of four boys: George, 22; Thomas, 16 and Richard, 12. His father and the two older boys were pastry cooks. Thomas and Richard were scholars. By 1861 Richard and Thomas were also pastry cooks.
Recorded in the 1851 census, Louisa Jane’s family had moved to Charles Street, Bethnal Green. She was the second oldest of five girls: Eliza, Louisa, Kate, Amelia, and Isabella, 3 months. Their father’s occupation was listed as quill pen cutter and their mother was a dressmaker. Louisa Jane’s family had moved again in 1861 and lived at Patriot Square near Cambridge Heath.
On 12 November 1870, at St Peter’s, West Hackney, Louisa married John Freestone, a 27-year-old saddler from De Beauvoir Town. John died not long afterwards; his death was registered in Doncaster in the second quarter of 1877.
In the 1871 census Richard Fishenden was living with his widowed mother. His brother William was living next door with his wife and four children.
Richard and Louisa Jane’s marriage was registered in West Ham in the fourth quarter of 1879. By 1881 they were living in the parish of St George’s, Campden Hill with Louisa’s daughter Louisa Lee Freestone and their son Richard Bertram Fishenden, aged 7 months. Richard senior’s occupation was listed as an oil and colourman working in London, so he was already familiar with the technical aspects of colour mixing from basic pigments to manufacture coloured paint.
In the 1891 census Richard and Louisa Jane lived at High Road, Kensington. In the same year, their daughter Louisa Lee Freestone was a draper’s assistant living in Leyton with her mother’s sisters, Annie, a quill pen cutter, and Amelia, who was widowed with three sons. During 1891 Richard Bertram was living with his grandparents, George and Sarah, in Wandsworth.
Until the end of this century, the most commonly used 'pen' was the feathered quill pen. Quill pen cutting was a highly skilled trade, usually passed down through generations. It is interesting to note that Annie had adopted the same profession as her father. Only the feathers of large birds were used, and only primary feather molts were used, not the secondary ones. The feather was hardened with 180°F hot sand before splitting the tip. Despite ‘pen cutting kits’ being available for general use, quill pen cutting remained a skill. The cutting required a specific technique and precision cut the quill, so it could correctly catch the ink while writing. The quill needed to be held in the hand in a certain way before cutting the end of the feather several times.
By the 1901 census Richard and Louisa Jane Fishenden were living in Charnock Road, Hackney, with Richard Bertram, aged 19, who was a ‘mechanical photographer’. He was apprenticed at the age of 14 to Gee and Watson Ltd, and, aged 20, became the Works Manager of this firm of process engravers in London.
Richard Fishenden died on 2 February 1905. Probate lists his effects at £1121 4s 1d, at least £125,000 in today’s money. He was buried in Abney Park on 6 February 1905.
By 1911 Louisa Lee Freestone, her husband, Frederick Lynch, and their four children had moved in to Charnock Road with Louisa Jane. Richard Bertram was at that time lodging in Manchester, where he was a lecturer in technical subjects.
Louisa Jane and her daughter and children moved to 1 Powell Road and it was here that she died on 3 August 1916. Frederick Lynch had enlisted. He died of bronchia-pneumonia on 7 November 1918 – just days before the end of the war.
Richard Bertram Fishenden grew to have a distinguished career as a printer, no doubt influenced by his father’s work as an oilman. From 1902 – 1921, R.B Fishenden was the lecturer, and later the Head of Printing, at the Manchester College of Technology.
From 1934 until his death in 1957, R.B Fishenden was the editor of The Penrose Annual, a London-based review of graphic arts, that was in print from 1895 – 1982. Along with Nikolaus Pevsner he also edited some Penguin book publications, as well as speaking at the Royal College of Photography in 1915 and having his book ‘An Evaluation of Illustrative Processes’ printed in 1946. His Christmas cards are included in the Guildford School of Arts Archives.
Christmas card designed by R.B. Fishenden 1954, © R.B. Fishenden
R.B Fishenden was awarded an OBE in 1954 for his services to printing. It was no doubt his interest and expertise that influenced the choice of lettering on his parents’ headstone. R.B. Fishenden's life and career synchronized with one of the most momentous periods of change and development which had ever been known in the history of graphic arts. By the time of his death on 7 October 1956 the graphic arts had evolved into today's specialist practices.
Louisa Jane Fishenden died at the age of 73 and was buried in Abney Park Cemetery on 7 August 1915. The low headstone is in a section behind the chapel. It was very overgrown when uncovered by Abney Unearthed volunteers. The unusual style of the lead lettering piqued their interest and this led to the research for the article above.