This follows on from the previous piece. Remember that Edward Dollman (jr) had left London in 1836.
Seymour-Place North, Euston Square
Since about 1830 ED's father had had a house at 24 Seymour-Place, Euston (roughly the site of the Fire Station opposite Old St Pancras Church). Grandfather James Heath stayed there for time, giving that as his address in a catalogue of pictures exhibited in 1833, the year before his death. I cannot be sure but I think Edward Dollman senior assigned the lease of the house to his son. Round about the time James Heath died, Edward and Harriet, the senior Dollmans, and their elder daughter Amelia (who did not marry) went to live mainly at Lewisham. It seems that Lewisham was their “home parish” by 1836 for that was where their younger daughter Camilla got married that year.
The Seymour-place house was then let. In 1835 it was the address of a young lawyer called John Hargreaves, and in 1836 of a dealer and importer of French goods, who unfortunately had become insolvent. If the rent had been intended to support ED in his travels it may have proved an unreliable source of income. A Mr Prout lived there in 1840.
The start of the slippery slope
ED could have been back in England by the middle of 1838. He was twenty-four. A gentleman of that name was entered at Guy's Hospital that year, in the sense, I am fairly sure, of training to be a doctor. This training had to be paid for by someone. But he must have dropped out.
He married in 1839 in Berkshire. Of his and his wife's children I have only researched the one from whom I'm descended. It was not a stable household. For example in the 1851 census their two known children were in two different places, not with their parents.
In 1843 it was not ED but his wife Rosina who registered the birth of their daughter Harriet Fanny, giving his occupation as “surgeon.” Fanny was born at 8 Pickering Terrace, Bayswater, which Rosina said was her address (my emphasis). ED is seen in other records at numerous addresses, but not that one!
In 1843, and again in 1846, newspaper stories describe an Edward Dolman (sometimes one L) as a chemist or druggist at Stratford, Essex, a few miles to the north east of London. Moreover in 1845 the London Medical Directory shows him as a General Practitioner at Stratford, but the space for the nature of his qualification is blank, and in the 1846 edition he is on a list of names which had appeared the year before
who had not then, and still have not, made any return of the nature of their qualifications, in reply to repeated applications, and who we are unable to identify in the lists of…. [recognised bodies]….our regret at being compelled to omit them….. it is from their own neglect or omission…..
Charles W. Steel, who had married Camilla in 1836, was a “proper doctor,” near Lewisham, and may well have frowned on his brother-in-law's pretensions.
In fact ED was bankrupt
Proceedings continued on and off for about seven years from 1841, the notices – published in the London Gazette - detailing a number of different addresses at which he had operated. I don't know if he had been borrowing from friends but the fact is that one of the petitioning creditors in 1841 was his mother's first cousin Henry Corbould, a well known artist, whose son Francis, five years younger than ED, was then studying medicine.
Some of the notices describe ED as merchant, or merchant's clerk, but from the addresses given it must be the same person as the chemist, druggist, doctor or surgeon.
So what happened to 24 Seymour-Place, which I think he owned? In February 1842 that property, now let to a Mrs or Mr Symons at 50 guineas per annum, was for sale by order of the mortgagee and assignee (Morning Post 19/2/1842). The lease was 85 years from 1822, and the balance of this was included in the estate of the bankrupt ED in 1843. The assignees in May 1841 having been Henry Corbould and one Thomas Burn Catherwood (Perry's Bankrupt Gazette 8 May 1841).
A puzzle here: the “Royal Blue Book,” a fashionable directory for 1844, shows Edward Dollman Esq at 13 Grafton-street, Fitzroy Square. This could mean ED or more likely his father keeping a town house. It doesn't seem to be a Dollman address for very long. It had been the home of a widow called Harriet Ladbroke Thomas; she had died in 1834. Either of the Edward Dollmans could have been renting it. In 1852 it was for sale.
Lewisham & prison
ED now turns up at Lewisham, not far from his parents. A report from the Insolvent Debtors Court shows that he had claimed that after being bankrupt he had:-
been engaged in a Chancery suit, from which he expected a considerable benefit, but had been disappointed (I don't know if that was true, at all).
His furniture had been sold in the bankruptcy, and a Major R.W. Hooper of Lewisham had bought it. Hooper seems to have kindly but unwisely allowed ED the continuing use of it. The law has always found it hard to say who owns portable property other than the person in whose hands it actually is. So the issue became whether the furniture still belonged to Major Hooper at all, or to the creditors as the insolvent was the reputed owner at the time he went to prison (Morning Post 22 June 1848). Yes indeed, for Edward Dollman, late of Lewisham, Kent, Merchant's Clerk, is in the Queen's Prison (London Gazette 23 May 1848).
Major Hooper died in 1853; but the case rumbled on. I don't understand why. A confusing catalogue entry is given in the notes at the end, and the case was again listed for hearing in Chancery Lane in 1861 (Law Intelligence in Morning Post 26 April and 4 June 1861).
Meantime some news of ED's sister Camilla, and her husband Charles W. Steel, who was still in a medical partnership near Lewisham. A new partner was taken on, none other than ED and Camilla's second cousin F.J. Corbould, son of Henry Corbould who had petitioned for the bankruptcy.
ED's last appearance seems to be in the London Gazette of 14 February 1862:-
notice of the settlement of the bankruptcy of Edward Dollman the younger, gentleman, of No. 7, Retreat, Lewisham, under which creditors would get 2 shillings in the pound [ten pence].
Although there is a reference to a deed said to have been executed by the debtor on 3 February 1862, I think he had died a few months before that. I think he is the ED whose death was registered in the Holborn district in 1861. It seems very clear that the Edward Dollman who died in late 1862 was his father, of Devon Cottage, Lewisham. A notice placed in the Morning Post gives his age, seventy-seven.
Some thoughts
Even if I get the death certificate of the ED who died at Holborn, the circumstances of the end of his life may well never be clear.
Very few of the contemporary references to ED “the Scamp” distinguish him as “the younger” and I cannot help but think that his father, who comes over as a slightly dull but respectable figure, a Land Tax Commissioner, member of the Philanthropic Society and of the Russell Institution, and so on, cannot have been happy about that. Perhaps he never gave up on his wayward son.
ED's widowed mother Harriet died at Lewisham in January 1864, and the unmarried daughter Amelia got a Grant of Administration (with will annexed). Perhaps I should try and get the papers. By the way I found no mention of anyone getting a Grant in respect of either of the Edwards.
Fanny and Ethel
Soon after this ED's daughter Fanny became pregnant and gave birth to my great-grandmother Ethel in 1865. The identity of Ethel's father is not known. When she married my great-grandfather George Weeks in 1891, someone told the Registrar that Ethel's father was Thomas Dollman deceased. That was not true.
After her divorce from George Weeks, Ethel married the half Mexican bank employee Edward Heath, who was quite closely related to her and had, moreover, previously been married to her aunt Laura Rosina Dollman. In the Dollman family there are several examples of marriages with close relatives!
Addresses
Here are the addresses / places I have found associated with ED, mainly in the various newspaper and bankruptcy reports, after his return from Australia:-
Littlewick Green, Berkshire. 24 Seymour-place North, Euston, London. Church-court, Clement's Lane, London. Baldwin's Court, Cloak Lane, London. 32 Great St. Helen's, London. 13 Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, London [him or his father, c.1844]. High Street, Stratford, Essex. Horn Street, Reading, Berkshire. 7 Retreat, Lewisham, Kent.
Sources - England
Regarding when ED was back in England, we have the usual sources:- newspapers (via British Newspaper Archive); the London Gazette; Archive.org, Hathitrust, or simply Google books, census records, and BMDs.
The name “Dollman, Edward” is one of a list of Gentlemen entered at Guy's Hospital for the year 1838 (Guy's Hospital Reports, Second Series, Vol. VIII (1853)).
The National Archives online catalogue is useful in lots of ways. As regards London houses, it includes the Sun Life insurance records.
Re Hooper v Dollman:- PRO C 15/300/H263. Cause number: 1856 H263. Short title: In the matter of the estate of Richard Wheelen [read Wheeler] Hooper late of Lewisham, Kent, a Major in Her Majesty's army deceased: Hooper v Dollman. Documents: Administration summons. Plaintiffs: Richard Wheeler Hooper [but he was dead]. Defendants: Francis Dollman [this is odd] Provincial solicitor employed in Herefordshire [ED's cousin Francis 1824-1892 was a solicitor but ??this means the Hooper family lawyer?]...Details have been added from C32/154, which also gives information about further process…. 1856… National Archives, Kew. [C32/154, from Chancery Cause Books, 1856, is not summarised in the online catalogue and has not been digitised].
Thomas Burn Catherwood had been a clerk in the supply and accounting branch of the army medical department. I saw a detailed paper on him (“Medical History,” vol. 20, 1976) by Kate Crowe, a Wellcome Research Fellow. It may just be coincidence, but Mr Catherwood had experience of detecting and exposing fraud.
Thank you
I have had useful information from J.J.Heath-Caldwell, Emma Easterbrook, Guy Dollman, and my cousin Yvonne Douglas-Jones - in various forms (website, email, paper). Thanks to all of you. Some years ago Guy sent me copies of some pages from a handwritten Dollman family notebook, which I think had been compiled before the end of the nineteenth century. This says very little about ED, but gives him the nickname “Scamp.”
It is difficult to be always sure who is meant in any reference to “Edward Dollman” in the period covered. Another Edward Dollman or Dolman, a lawyer, is fairly easy to differentiate, and in any event he died in about 1841. There was a contemporary Edward Francis Dollman, a bootmaker, who seems to have led a respectable life. Also there was Edwin Dollman, who really was a doctor, at Limehouse. In 1854, aged just 38, he killed himself by jumping from a second floor window during insanity brought on by fever (it was said) (Gents Magazine, 1854); some records give him as Edward, but he was Edwin.
Much of the difficulty is to sort out ED from his father. In the end I have concluded that on balance all the bad stuff relates to the “Scamp.” But it's just hunch!
This is just what I have found so far. There is sure to be more.
Edward Beaumont April 2020 / November 2020
“One new fact can change everything.”
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