Henry Hobday
Henry Hobday was born at Chartham in 1838, the. youngest of three boys born to Daniel and Sarah Hobday. Like his father he proved to be something of a wanderer especially during his early years but, unlike his father, he attained. considerable success during his papermaking career. He started work at Chartham Paper Mill, where his father worked, at the age of ten for a wage of one shilling a week. Under the very strict rules of the Legal Society of Papermakers he could not be apprenticed at the mill until one of the two apprentices already there was within one year of the completion of his indentures. By the time this occurred Henry would have been over 14 years of age, too old to be taken on as an apprentice. Nevertheless, his Master at Chartham, Mr. Weatherley, kept him on and appears to have treated him as an indentured apprentice. From his one shilling earned each week Henry paid to the Vicars wife one penny to teach him to read properly and how to write letters.
In 1850 Chartham Mill suffered a serious fire and with the rebuilding of the mill a papermaking machine was installed. Daniel Hobday "turned out" with the members of the Legal Society of Papermakers in protest against the introduction of the machine and he set out for Somerset where he obtained employment. The mill he went to had a vacancy for an apprentice so he sent word to Henry to follow him to Somerset. Something appears to have gone wrong for while Henry was tramping to join his father he met him on the road returning home to Chartham. It says much for the breed of papermakers of the age to undertake a journey of this nature in search of work in their trade. Weatherley re-employed both Henry and his father.
In about 1855 Henry spent a short period at Buckland Mill working for Charles Ashdown who had purchased the mill from the Horns in 1849 when Mr Weatherley moved back to Chartham on the death of his brother. He was back at Chartham in 1857 by which time the mill was operated. by a second William Weatherley, nephew of the original owner.
William Weatherley conceived the idea of introducing straw with rags for papermaking and it is believed that a fire in 1857 was caused by experiments in the use of straw which completely destroyed the mill. After the fire Henry remained at the mill assisting with the reconstruction work. He has described the unique construction of the Air Dryer with drums placed. vertically instead horizontally and the fans placed between the drums instead of inside them. The Dryer was built by Bigglesden & Sons of Canterbury. He has told of the inventive nature of Weatherley with whom he helped to build a flash boiler under the dryer but they managed to explode it and they both suffered burns.
In about 1859 Henry Hobday moved on to McMurrays mill at Wandsworth. There he helped to rebuild the mill after a fire, painted and clothed the machine and started it up. By this time he must have been married for his first child, John, was born at East Malling in l860. This indicates that his sojourn at Wandsworth was brief. He married Hephzibah, the daughter of Isaac Tovey by his first marriage. (Isaac Tovey first wife died in 1871 and he later married Henry’s older sister, Mary Ann, who subsequently provided a home for her father, Daniel Hobday, during his widowed old age).
The marriage of Hephzibah Tovey to Henry Hobday marks still another union of papermaking families for Isaac was a papermaker. Little is known of his early activities other than that he worked as a papermaker at the time Hephzibah was born in 1854 at Lewis in Sussex. While no record of the actual mill can be traced the mill buildings were pointed out to their youngest son, Lewis, on one occasion by his mother. How Henry and Hepzibah met is not known as a common paper mill connection cannot be established. It is known that Isaac Tovey worked at a paper mill at Hampton Wick in 1852 where, according to statements made by Hepzibah, the Tower family shared a house with James Thomas who subsequently owned Temple mill at Marlow. Like the Lewis mill there is out a vague record or the paper mill at Hampton Wick but the fact that two well known papermakers such as Tovey and Thomas having lived there appears to be proof of the existence of the mill. There is also a record of the papermaking machine being purchased by Pasted paper Mill in 1872 from a paper mill at Hampton, near Hadlow in Kent and this may well have been known as Hampton Wick. Isaac Tovey subsequently worked at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, under Tom and John Hollingsworth. (These two time old gentlemen ware reputed to be models on which Charles Dickens built his Cheerible Brothers). Among Isaac’s family of nine children were four sons christened Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He was a strict Rechabite all his life. Mark married a papermaker’s daughter and was Salle foreman at Turkey Mill. Matthew succeeded his father at Turkey Mill and a son of his also worked there as an engineer. Luke also worked at the mill as an engineer and eventually became chief Engineer. To complete the Tovey ‘saga’ mention should be made to Isaac’s daughter Emma who married Tom Potter, Engineer of the two or three mills owned by the Green family at Tovel and whose two brothers were both papermakers working for Green. One of the brothers, John, became a member of Maidstone Town Council, a Magistrate and ultimately Mayor. Some special notice was given by the press at the time as he was believed to have been the first working man to rise to such high local office. He was a Conservative.
We left Henry Hobday at East Malling where he was Salle Foreman and later General Foreman under the owner George Busbridge. His stay was short for the record shows that in 1862 a daughter was born at St. Mary’ Cray and in 1864 a son was born at St. Paul's Cray. During this period he was working for William Nash as Foreman according to one family record while another speaks of his working for Joyson. When the mill changed hands is not clear but Henry leaves a memory of "old man Joyson being considered a character in the neighborhood and always wearing a top hat, a blue frock coat with gold guineas for buttons". The writer recalls visiting the mill many years later and being told the story by an old papermaker of the then ruling Joynson’s marriage. As he was driven away on his honeymoon of undetermined length with his bride in a carriage and. pair his foreman ran after him asking what he should make during his absence. He was told to keep the machine on Double Cap 32 lb. Joysons Ledger until his return!
In 1865 Henry Hobday moved to Snodland Mill to become Manager, and later General Manager, for C. Townsend Hook & Company. There is a reference to him in the mill diary shown to the original writer by Mr. Dedrick, Managing Director of the Company in the 1950s. It records the fact that in 1875 Henry Hobday received a salary of 300 per annum plus bonus with a rent free house and heating. The house was one of two standing in the mill grounds, the other being occupied by the Chief Engineer, a Mr Hyde. In this house five children were born to the family including the youngest, Lewis Hobday.
The mill at Snodland originally belonged to Charles Townsend Hook who, on his death, appears to have passed it on to his five children, Eustace and Townsend and the Misses Edith and Agnes Hook. A third daughter was married and, unlike her sisters, does not appear to have had any influence in the operation of the mill in later years. It was a large mill for those days having three machines and provided a good framework for the energy and initiative of Henry, then a young man of 27. The speed of the machines was between 80/100 feet per minute and produced newsprint, Fine Printings and Writing papers using esparto grass, rags and straw. He seems to have been conscious of the necessity to find other types of raw materials for papermaking and he experimented in the use of hop bines with moderate success although the paper he produced from them was limited. in its use to wrappings. He went even further by producing a pulp from wood. He had probably heard of the experiments of Burgess and White at Boxmoor, Herts, in 1851 using caustic alkali for chemical woodpulp production, a process which was rejected by papermakers in England but later developed successfully in the U. S. A. in about 1860 to be called the Seda Process. His sources of raw materials were mainly waste wood and it is known that he bought some of this waste from clog making factories in Lancashire. He was unable to bleach his pulp sufficiently for white papers which is understandable in view of the comparatively low pressure at which. his grass and rag boilers operated.
Henry was also something of a pioneer in the making of newsprint and claimed. to have been one of the first to make "reeled." newsprint and also to have made newsprint at a speed in excess of 200 feet per minute in 1879, a speed, he maintained, greater than any other mill in the country. He often spoke to his son Lewis of the nights he had spent at the printing offices in London trying to discover the reason for the paper breaking so frequently on the printing presses. (This trouble of the 1870s continued through to the 1950s as the original writer well knows having spent nocturnal hours at the London press rooms in search of the sane answer). The late Stanley Gillis of the worlds The Paper Trade Review, writing about press breaks expressed his opinion on these troubles thus: "It this connection I think the date would be about 1875 because at this time the Otley engineers were engaged upon speeding up the output of the newspaper presses." He mentioned also that the engineers were "distracted because the long sheet broke so frequently".
Of the two Hook brothers Eustace assumed overall control of the Company and gave their General Manager a very free band in the running of the mill. They were very good to Henry and rewarded him well to the extent that he wan able to save enough money to eventually start in business on his own. Eustace presented him with a magnificent gold watch with a heavy gold chain in 1878 just before he died. Enscribed "A token of esteem and respect". He was even allowed to employ a chemist, a circumstance almost unknown in paper mills in those days. The chemist was a Mr Catchside who subsequently became the editor of the monthly journal Papermaking. He was usually known as "The Doctor although he did not have claims to this degree.
On the death of Eustace Hook his brother Townsend took little or no interest in the running of the Company to the extent that Edith and Agnes Hook intervened end engaged a Colonel Holland to take over the control. It is believed that they met him, white travelling home from Egypt by sea. Colonel Holland knew nothing a bout papermaking and indeed does not appear to have had much means of financial support. Henry Hobday could not get on with him and resented his loss of freedom in the operation of the mill and this proved to be the deciding factor in his decision to leave Snodland in 1879 after fourteen years. In about 1877 Henry Ashdown, the eldest son of Charles Ashdown who owned Buckland Mill at Dover, died thereby depriving his father of his assistance in running the mill. Mr. Ashdown had another son Charles who was a cashier with the National Provincial, Bank at Dover and he offered Henry Hobday the opportunity of going into partnership with his son Charles on equal terms to take over the mill as a going concern. The valuation at the time was fixed, it is believed, at 6,000. Henry accepted and in this manner the firm of Ashdown & Hobday was formed. So twenty seven years after young Henry had set out to walk from Kent to Somerset to meet his father he became a mill owner.
The manner in which Charles Ashdown Sen. and Henry Hobday Came together in this matter is not known but the latter had worked at Buckland for a short period and from his success at Snodland he was probably well known in papermaking circles, Ashdown also appears to have been a close friend of Isaac Tovey, Henry’s father-in-law. A letter written to Henry Hobday regarding the proposed partnership has been preserved and is reproduced below
Buckland Mills.
May 22/79.
Dear Sir,
I am in receipt of your letter of the 21st. inst in reply to which I enclose you part of a letter that received from my two sons when dear Henry was alive only a few months before he died and I may say that I never knew a young man who understood business matters better than he did. He left his brother and sisters 1,400 when he died. Had he lived I should no doubt have given up before now.
As to the partnership it is my son’s proposition. I thought you had better come as Manager but he thought it would be better for you to have an interest in the business. I may say this for him, he is a most conscientious young man, first rate at book keeping and I think a very good salesmen. I hope that if you do go into partnership you will succeed. You Will not find it all sunshine I shall be very much surprised. If you both have health and strength With Gods messing. If you do not do much more than you name in your letter, I do not think you could consult a person better qualified to advise you than Mr. Tovey and whose judgement you may safely rely. I may first say I have been here 30 years next August and had you seen the place then and see it now. I have laid out upon the mill 5000 beside what it cost me to buy. The first year I paid 500 for rent, the next year 400 and then Mr. Weatherley failed and I paid 500 per year and then paid 25O for about 20 years and have never made more than two tons per week upon the average. I believe four or rive tons could be made by working day and night.
I must leave the matter with you hoping that you may be guided aright in this matter. The Good Old Book says "Commit thy way to the Lord and he shall direct thy steps" and if we do this we shalt not go wrong.
My kind regards to Mr. Tovey,
Yours truly,
Chas.Ashdown
Attachment to the letter written by Charles Ashdown to Henry Hobday dated 22nd. May, 1879.
This is a. correct copy of a calculation made by my son Henry in 1875 requesting me to let my two sons have the business at 250 per year.
He says run the machine day and night 45 weeks in the year, say 5 tons per week at 50 per ton,
would realise
11,250
Country business say
1,500
12,750
Net Profit on above at 7% per annum
892. 10. 0.
I may say that the country business now is about 2,300.
I hope you will destroy this when you have read it. I think you may call the profits on the country business l0%. I do not think you would want to be still 7 weeks in the year.
Lewis Hobday, in his papers, has written this about the letter.
"The letter from Ashdown to my father is interesting as showing how business men were not ashamed to bring their religion into their business. If one were negotiating such business to-day it would. indeed sound strange to advise the opposite party to "Commit thy way to the Lord and he shall direct thy steps". Yet, I have no doubt in my mind, with a close knowledge of all three parties to the transaction, that this was exactly what they all did do".
When the partnership was formed the mill was producing no more than two tons of paper per week, working day shift only. During the next eight years production rose to six to seven tons per week and. the general quality of the paper had been improved to a point where the mill became well known for high grade Writings and. Ledgers. In addition to making paper there was a good business carried on in Bag Making, General Printing and.
Account Books. There were three or four printing machines, one bag making machine and, in addition, many bags were made by hand. The Printing and. Bag Making business, rightly described as the "Country Business", was looked after by Ashdown and covered most of the towns in East Kent as well as villages. Lewis Hobday recalls the trips he made with Ashdown when he was a boy in a dog cart to Eastry, Bridge and such places taking orders for grocery wrappings, butter paper, bags and printing. In many of those shops the customer could not always pay his account in cash and they went home laden with groceries of various kinds, taken as payment. Henry Hobday always looked after the London business going There nearly every week looking for orders among his many friends in the trade. Ashdown kept the accounts and dealt with the correspondence.
The mill had a single machine making paper at 46 inches wide. This was increased in later years to 51 inches to accommodate three sheets Large Post, (16 x 21). Production slowly increased to about eight to nine tons per week and profits rose to about 4,000 a year. The Country business was eventually discontinued and the plant was taken over by the Printer, named Wild, who started a small printing business in Buckland. In l887, when business was booming, fire destroyed the mill buildings which were of timber construction with a "tar roof". The only building untouched by the fire was Charles Ashdown’s house, Buckland Bridge House. which stood on The site of the present stock room. For many years the mill had been insured with the Phoenix insurance Company but some disagreement had taken place and the insurance had been transferred to another company. Only one premium had been paid them and as a consequence settlement was not on generous terms. To add to these difficulties improvements in the mill had absorbed most of the accumulated profits and the outlook for rebuilding was not bright. The mill order book had been full and so prosperous was the paper trade at the time that it was impossible to find other mills able or willing to take over the orders and so maintain the trade. However, with the aid of good friends in the town and apparently because of confidence in both Ashdown and Hobday money and credit for rebuilding was found. As reconstruction progressed the buildings were mortgaged, the money being advanced by Dr. Astlet, a well known Dover doctor, and Sir Richard Dickeson, a Dover wholesale grocer.
The rebuilding was supervised by John, the eldest son or Henry Hobday’, then 27 years of age. He had joined his father during the previous year having served an engineering apprenticeship at Snodland mill, and later worked with Masson Scott & Co, engineers at Wandsworth. There is little on record regarding the rebuilding of the mill other than that the new buildings were constructed of brick by a local builder, W.G. Lewis. The Stock bricks were charged at 50 shillings per m dld., cement at 4 shillings per bag and bricklayers were charged at 6 pence and labourers at 5 pence per hour. The West End Engineering Works of Edinburgh, on hearing of the fire, sent a partner, Peter Menzies, immediately to Dover and were given orders for Breakers, Beaters, a Cutter and a variety of smaller items. Their prompt action end service established a relationship with the mill which continued for many years. The fire occurred in September 1887 and production at the rebuilt mill commenced in June 1880 at an increased rate of 12 tons per week. The papermaking machine was over sixty years old having been installed by George Dickinson in 1825. It was the same machine that Henry operated during his brief stay at the mill in 1857. It was reconditioned and the maximum speed increased to 60 feet per minute.
The loss of production at the mill due to the fire brought about a loss of orders which made it very difficult for Ashdown and Hobday to get back in business again. Short time was being worked, money was scarce and difficulties were experienced in meeting liabilities. Thanks, however, to good friends among suppliers substantial credit was established end supplies of raw materials were made available to the mill. It was at this point that the association of Buckland Mill with ‘Conqueror Ledger" occurred. Lewis Hobday wrote the following of the ‘birth’ of Conqueror.
"The name Conqueror was the choice of E.P. Barlow and I think his reason for using this name was that he really meant to try and produce a Ledger that, quality for price, would beat all other Ledgers on the market. He wrote out a making order for it which he fastened up on the wall in his office at 10 Aldgate, priced at 3d. per lb. It was to be principally rag, tub-sized and air dried. He had a sample for strength and appearance which was to be matched. The price was very low for what was required in the paper and for some months he was quite unable to get any Mill, to undertake the order.
This was, as far as I can remember, in 1888 when I was still at school but in my school holidays my father used to occasionally take me to London with him and I well remember our calling at 10 Aldgate one afternoon to obtain orders and Mr. Barlow pointing to his order pasted on the wall, telling him he could take it whenever he liked. He again refused it. Later in the day we called at Dunster Wakefield in Thames Street and Richard Wakefield asked my father is he would accept Mr. Barlow’s order and he replied "No". Wakefield then said he was inclined to accept it for Glory Mill, (in which he was financially interested) , as the mill was on short time. Buckland Mill was also on short time and my father was badly needing orders as the mill bad only been working a few months after being rebuilt following the fire in September 1887. He made up his mind to accept the order and hope for the best. He did not expect to make a profit but it would all help to keep the mill working. The first order was of fair size end covered all Ledger Sizes from Cap to Imperial and was made during the latter part of 1888. Mr Barlow was very pleased with it and put it on the market at, I think, 4d. per pound at which price I believe it remained until the 1914 war".
In 1890 Ashdown & Hobday sold Buckland Mill to Wiggins, Teape & Co. Ltd for 20,000 and it is of interest to note that the Mill price for Conqueror was increased to 4d per pound. The reason for the sale of Buckland Mill is not quite clear but it is thought that recovery after the fire three years earlier created financial problems and that Henry Hobday, although only 52 years of age, was feeling the strain of operating the mill. He wanted his eldest son John to take over the running of the mill but he declined, preferring to remain as the Engineer. Charles Ashdown does not appear to have played an extensive role in operating the partnership but the relations between the partners appears to have always been cordial. Ashdown, after the sale, took over Loudwater Mill in Bucks while his partner remained at Buckland to control the mill for its new owners. So, like many paper mills, Buckland passed into the hands of the Stationer and Merchant where financial risks appear to have been less than those of the producer, and profits greater.
In 1890 Wiggins Teape owned one paper mill, the Downton Mill located near Salisbury, but it is clear that the Company of London based stationers were poised for a rapid. expansion of the business for in this year they purchased Buckland. Mill and merged with Withnell Fold mill. Two years later they bought a papermaking machine from Hollingbourne mill and installed it at Buckland to be followed in 1894 by the purchase of Glory Mill at Wooburn Green for 14,000 and in 1895 by the purchase of Crabble Mill, adjacent to Buckland.
The foundation. of Wiggins Teape appears to have been prepared by three men, Richard Jones, Thomas Leventhorpe and Jeremiah James who became partners as paper dealers. As various members of the partnership died others were introduced and in 1827 the firm became known as Jones, Wiggins & Teape. In 1852 the Company’s Articles of Partnership were signed by Edward Wiggins, Hannaniali Teape, John Douding Carter and. Francis William Barlow, who carried on business as Wiggins, Teape & Co. Some time prior to 1852 the Company had. been known as Wiggins, Teape, Carter & Barlow and some ream labels used at Buckland. in the 1920s bore the printing W.T.C & B.
The Company had bought their first mill, Downton, in 1880. It was a two vat handmade paper mill. It is not known how long they operated the mill but it was let to one Mark Palmer and eventually sold to him in 1899. Palmer appears to have operated the mill for about twenty years and. in 1920 he sold. the property for use as a tannery. The equipment was bought by Dard. Hunter, all twenty tons of it, and. shipped to the United States. In 1928 the plant was installed at Lime Rock, Salisbury, Connecticut and handmade paper was produced there for about three years. The equipment was later moved from Lime Rock and presented to The Institute of Paper Chemistry at Appleton, Wisconsin, where it is preserved.
Glory Mill is one of the oldest mills in the country and, with Dartford Mill, its history reaches back to the reign of Elizabeth 1 when the mill was built in defiance of the Queen’s license giving the monopoly of papermaking to John Spilrnaa who owned Dartford.. According to Shorter, Glory Mill consisted of a paper mill and a corn mill in 1756 when they were insured by George Grove and Ralph Spicer, papermakers. In 1830 Daniel Hobday worked at the mill when it was still owned by a James Spicer. A machine had been installed at the mill by that date and Daniel Hobday spoke of the Wye Valley strikes and riots which occurred during his brief stay. The original writer saw evidence of the nature of these disturbances while on a visit to Wright’s mill at Marlow a few miles from Glory Mill, in the l930s where vicious looking mantraps used during the period. of riots were still retained in the mill office. Some time between 1864 and 1894 the mill became the property of Grosvener Chater & Co. who sold. it to the Glory Mill Paper Company. They got into financial difficulties and were financed by Dunster & Wakefield who foreclosed on the mortgage they held on the property in 1893. They eventually sold an option on the mill for 1,000 to Albert Reed who came from Northfleet Mill. He in turn sold the option to Wiggins Teape without having operated the mill. Mr. Percy Barlow was a director of Northfleet Mill at the time and it is believed that he played some part in the departure of Albert Reed from the mill. It is understood that Reed foolishly stated his intention of making tub sized papers at Glory Mill and also his intention to undercut Wiggins Teape. This was known to Mr. Barlow and also the fact that Reed could not raise the balance of the purchase price for Glory Mill. He sent for Reed and. offered him 1,000 profit on his bargain provided he did not subsequently go into the T.S. paper trade, and. this offer was accepted. Albert Reed then bought Tovil Straw Mill which was lying derelict after a fire and so founded A.E. Reed & Co. Ltd.
Wiggins Teape did not really want Glory Mill as Buckland had not enough trade to keep the two machines working. They handed Glory over to Henry Hobday to find what trade he could for it and the mill was started up in August 1894 making only five to six tons a week consisting mainly of orders from old friends of Ashdown & Hobday like Charles Morgan, Edward Lloyd, Castell Bros., R.T. Turner, Grosvenor Chater and Dunster & Wakefield and other wholesale stationers who were reluctant to do business with Wiggins Teape, feeling sore that they had. started as papermakers as well as being wholesalers. In 1900 the mill was burnt down and was rebuilt by John Hobday who was sent to Glory for this purpose. About this time Lewis Hobday had taken over many of the responsibilities of operating Buckland for his father and finally succeeded him in 1906 on. his retirement.
Henry Hobday was a great papermaker who accomplished much during his lifetime. In 1904 he was elected a. member of the Dover Town Council and later became an Alderman and a Justice of the Peace. He was a steady chapel goer and. though a somewhat stern Master he was well respected by his workers. One old machineman who worked. for him told the story of how all the workers on the machines used to disappear to the ‘backside’ when he appeared because be was always ready to find some fault. He had vision and concern about the future availability of raw materials as evidenced by his experiments in the production of wood pulp and his chase after production both at Snodland and Buckland is proven by the results obtained. His only text book was " The Manufacture of Paper" by C.P. Davis, published in l886, with the possible exception of the Bible. He was suspicious or Groundwood pulp and wrote to W.F Catchside, his old chemist at Snodland and the Editor of the journal "Paper Making" in 1891 seeking advise on how to detect its presence in samples of paper sent to him by a customer for him to match. Catchside recommended the nitric acid test in his reply. To match a sample of paper and to quote on it be relied on the scratch of a pen, a tear in both directions and a gentle separation of the fibres softened by his own spittle. This must surely be a picture of many an old papermaker in the latter part of the last century.
Henry Hobday died in 1921 at the age of 83 and is buried in Buckland churchyard just across the alley from the mill, sharing his rest with many other papermakers including the Phipps family.