joseph hall
Subject Name : Joseph Hall
(b 1804 – d 1884)
Researcher : Carol Gomm
Joseph Hall followed in his father’s footsteps as a papermaker, travelling around South and East England’s paper mills before becoming a hawker in Surrey and then spending his final days in the Guildford Union Workhouse.
Joseph was born on 14th September 1804 in Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) and baptised there on 10th May 1807 at the same time as his newly-born brother William. They were the sons of Joseph Hall, a papermaker, and wife Mary née Rose.
Joseph senior and Mary had married in 1797 in the hamlet of Huxham, just to the north of Exeter in Devon. Although there were only 135 people living in Huxham in 1801, the village had two paper mills on the River Culm. Their marriage licence showed Joseph to be a ‘sojourner’ of Huxham, meaning that he was a temporary resident of the parish. Many employees at paper mills around the country were ‘journeyman paper makers’ who had served an apprenticeship in papermaking before travelling around the country to find work on a day-by-day basis wherever they could. This type of employment continued for many years – the 1841 Census for Huxham, for example, showed there were eight journeymen papermakers working at the mills.
Joseph and Mary moved on from Huxham at some stage, possibly to one or more different mills before arriving in Sutton Courtenay, some 150 miles (240km) away, where their sons 
Joseph and William were born.
Situated on the banks of the River Thames, there had been a paper mill in Sutton Courtenay since the 17th Century, and which for a time had produced the paper used to make Bank of England notes.
Joseph and William’s sister Susan was born in December 1809 here, but by the mid-1820s, the family had moved 30 miles (48km) east to Chepping Wycombe (now High Wycombe) in Buckinghamshire. This area was home to a number of mills on the River Wye, and was where Joseph junior was to work for many years.
On 23rd October 1825, 21-year-old Joseph married local girl Ann Stacey in Hughenden, just to the north of High Wycombe. One of the witnesses was William Hollis who married Joseph’s sister Susan the following year.
Joseph and Ann had two daughters in Littleworth, a small village next to Hughenden, Ellen in 1826 and Susan two years later. Their baptisms confirmed that Joseph was, like his father, a papermaker.
Riots at Paper Mills
This was proving to be a critical period for industry in general. In 1830, feelings were running high across the country about the introduction of machinery into agriculture. This spilt over into the papermaking industry where the ‘Fourdrinier Paper Machine’ was causing similar disquiet. The general unrest gave rise to what became known as the ‘Swing Riots’.
Buckinghamshire’s extensive network of paper mills did not escape. On Monday 29th November 1830, a number of rioters congregated south of Wycombe on Flackwell Heath armed with sledgehammers, crowbars, and pickaxes. They first proceeded to Ash Mill, the paper mill of Messrs Lane just to the west of High Wycombe. This was the closest mill to where Joseph Hall was living so it may well have been where he was working. The rioters, after smashing windows, eventually gained entry despite the efforts of those inside the mill. Within 15 minutes, they had destroyed the papermaking machine.
They continued their path of destruction, even at the mill of Mr. Hayes who addressed the rioters, assuring them he would take the machine down and not work it until an arrangement with the papermakers had been agreed. Despite his plea that 53 of his hands would be out of work if his property was destroyed, the rioters continued their task of destruction.
Injuries were suffered as the authorities tried to intervene but yet more mills were damaged before eventually the disturbance was brought under control with many arrests made.
It is not known what Joseph’s sympathies were regarding the rioters or what involvement he may have had, but his name did not appear in the list of those sent for trial.
A Filthy Business
What was known, however, was that the papermaking industry caused serious pollution and health problems.
Paper at that time was made from old rags and cast-off clothing, often from the poorest in society. These items were sorted and cut up by women who were likely to be confronted by filth and infection from what they were handling. Not only that, the noxious chemicals used for breaking down the materials, plus bleach and other products used in the latter part of the process, were all discharged into the rivers.
When reporting to the House of Commons in February 1834 about the supply of clean water to the London Metropolis, renowned civil engineer Thomas Telford described the River Gade at Hunton Bridge, Hertfordshire as ‘infected by the deleterious substances used for paper mills, and could not be used’.
The Paper Trail
To follow Joseph’s life is to follow a paper trail – literally, as everywhere he moved to was in pursuit of employment at a paper mill.
Joseph and his family remained in the Wycombe area after the riots, continuing to move around the small settlements just to the north including Plomer’s Green and Downley.
Joseph and Ann had three more children; Eliza in 1832, Joseph in 1837 and Ann Louisa in 1839.
Just four months after giving birth, Joseph’s wife Ann died aged 31 at their home in Downley on 12th December from ‘decline’, which showed that the reason for her death was not known.
Joseph married spinster Mary Ann Jones seven months later in July 1840 in Wycombe. By the time of the Census the following June, they were living in Downley with their daughter Sarah Elizabeth, aged three weeks, plus two of Joseph’s children from his first marriage, Susan and Joseph.
Joseph’s other children were all nearby. His eldest daughter, Ellen, was a live-in servant at a farm in Hughenden. Daughters Eliza and Ann Louisa were with their maternal grandparents at Littleworth. Joseph’s widowed mother Mary was living in Chepping Wycombe. No record has been traced for the death of his father.
Papermaker Joseph and Mary Ann’s second child, William, was born in December 1843 in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, about 15 miles (24km) east of Wycombe. The area around Rickmansworth had a number of paper mills situated on three rivers, the Chess, the Colne and the Gade, about which Thomas Telford had voiced his concerns regarding pollution a few years earlier.
However, they did not stay long. Within three years Joseph and family had moved again, this 
time 115 miles (184km) north-east to Taverham, Norfolk where their third child Charlotte was born in October 1846. Joseph would have been working at the Taverham Paper Mill, standing on the River Wensum, five miles (8km) from Norwich. This mill was re-equipped around the time of Joseph’s arrival.
Taverham was just a small village in 1851, with the Census listing 16 ‘journeymen paper makers’ including 46-year-old Joseph, plus half-a-dozen ‘journeymen carpenters’. The birthplaces of some of these men and their families showed that their lives were much like Joseph’s. One example was Robert Bryant, a 44-year-old journeyman papermaker from High Wycombe. One of his children was born in Rickmansworth in about 1846 with a second a year later in Taverham, so they may well have made that long journey from Rickmansworth at the same time as Joseph and his family.
A Change of Direction
For Joseph, the 1850s had several significant events. His married daughter Ellen died in September 1850 in Hillingdon, Middlesex, followed four years later by the death in November 1854 of his 8-year-old daughter Charlotte in Downley. Whether Joseph’s family had moved back here is not known as her death was neither registered by Joseph nor his wife.
Also in the 1850s, the family moved to Blackheath village, near Wonersh, Surrey. Joseph was probably working either at the Postford paper mill on the River Tillingbourne, just a mile or so north of Blackheath, or at the Chilworth paper mill, on the same river but a little further away.
In September 1859, Joseph’s wife Mary Ann died aged 52 from heart disease and dropsy at their home in Blackheath village.
Although Joseph was recorded as a papermaker on Mary Ann’s death certificate, the 1861 Census 18 months later showed 56-year-old Joseph to be a ‘licensed hawker’, a travelling salesman or pedlar. He was still living in Blackheath, with his daughter Sarah, aged 20, and son William, a 17-year-old labourer.
The most likely reason for Joseph seemingly leaving papermaking was that the smaller paper mills in rural areas were gradually closing down. The industry was moving away from old rags to using wood and esparto grass, with the new mills being built near to ports as the esparto grass was imported.
The Postford Paper Mills had been in trouble for some time. In 1852 they were sold off as a 
result of bankruptcy. Then, in 1857 almost 2,000 reams of paper were auctioned off ‘under distress for rent’, coinciding with the time that wholesale stationer Sir William Magnay, first Baronet of Postford House, and a former Lord Mayor of London, was declared insolvent. The mill was not working in 1861, when Joseph was a hawker, being finally auctioned off in 1865.
Chilworth paper mill, described in 1853 as ‘important and valuable … newly erected in the most substantial manner’ was sold in 1870, becoming a printing works.
The 1871 Census confirmed Joseph was a hawker. He was living with his son William, daughter-in-law Ellen and their three children at 8 Station Row, Shalford.
It is not known when Joseph entered the Guildford Union Workhouse, or how long he was there, but at the time of the 1881 Census he was listed as a 76-year-old widower inmate, a hawker.
Joseph passed away at the Workhouse on 27th July 1884 age 80 from ‘decay of age. Gangrene leg (right)’. He was described on his death certificate as a labourer of Worplesdon. As his daughter Ann was living at Broadstreet Common, Worplesdon in 1881, it seems likely he had been living with her before he entered the Workhouse. Joseph was buried on 29th July at Worplesdon’s Parish Church.
August 2022, updated January 2025
Other biographies on this site related to papermaking include the following inmates who were in the Guildford Union Workhouse at the same time as Joseph Hall, on the night of the 1881 census:
Lucy Larby: Survived on Outdoor Relief and Rag Cutting at Eashing paper mill
Jane Mitchell, Priscilla and Susan: Young family decimated by ill health
Sources
Beaconsfield Historical Society BeaconsfieldHistory.org.uk
British Association of Paper Historians baph.org.uk
British-History.ac.uk
Buckinghamshire Archives, Aylesbury
Buckinghamshire’s Heritage Portal Heritageportal.Buckinghamshire.gov.uk
Exeter Working Papers in Book Trade History
Bookhistory.blogspot.com
FindMyPast.co.uk / British Newspaper Archive
Frogmorepapermill.org.uk
General Register Office GRO.gov.uk
Genuki.org.uk
Ivybridge-Heritage.org
NorfolkMills.co.uk
Royal Berkshire Archives, Reading
Studies on the History of Papermaking in Britain, published 1993
Surrey Industrial History Group SurreyArchaeology.org.uk
Sutton Courtenay Local History Society sclhs.org.uk
The Endless Web John Dickinson & Co. Ltd. 1804-1954 published 1955
VisitThames.co.uk
Wikipedia.org
For a full list of references click here