Thomas Moves Job..

13th April 1738 - I went this day to live with Mr Thomas Hinchcliffe a the Great Wheatsheafe on Ludgate Hill - Silk Mercer. he to give me fourteen pounds a year the first year and eighteen pounds a year the next.


A little online research shows that the Great Wheatsheafe was not a pub. You remember that stuff you learned at school about pub signs being left over from when people couldn't read? As there was a Silk Mercer's shop on Ludgate Hill ten years earlier referred to in Old Bailey proceedings (shoplifting!) as "at the Wheatsheaf and Star" - Thomas Tye seems to have been at the Great Wheatsheaf. There was a Wheatsheaf yard. I think I feel a visit to the museum of London coming on!

£14 doesn't seem to be enough for Thomas Tye to live on - not when he can spend 4/6 on one day of sight seeing. I think he had money from home!

A little Googling has revealed that Thomas Hinchcliffe supplied the Queen in 1712

Thomas Hinchcliffe, mercer, for blue Florence taffeta for three window curtains for the Queen's closet, etc. £161:16s 9d

This is an entry in the Civil List for that year, found at British History on line

The Queen in question was Queen Anne who had died by the time our Thomas came to London.

Here is Ludgate - it was demolished in 1780

Thomas Finds a Job

March 29 1738 - Went to Mr Paynes Silk Mercer behind St Clements by the Strand to help him in the shop until I gott a place for my vittles and stayed with him till the 13th April.


Here is a picture of St Clements as it was that day. A few years earlier and it would have had a shorter tower. Today it is the church rebuilt after World War II, but it is still in the same place and Thomas would surely recognise it.