| Description | Bills, Expenses Notes, Wages Notes etc.
Sundries viz. notes of time, petty account, Pallas advices, cement orders etc.
Two large bundles dating from 1835 and 1836. The 1835 bundle still has its wrapper.
The bundles contain vouchers and receipts for stores, stationery etc., notes from customers of the amount of time engine erectors have spent on their engines, orders for cement, paint and other supplies, and lists of items delivered to the Pallas hulk for various steam boats. Many of the items in these bundles are smaller bundles of receipts and bills. This series was presumably originally much larger.
Other notes of time and wages.
Bundles of notes of men’s time and wages working on various engines in London. These bundles are survivors from what were originally much larger series.
Expenses and bills at Thames Place.
James Watt & Co. rented premises at Thames Place in addition to the main office, which was at 90 Leadenhall Street by the time of these bills. Thames Place appears to have been used as a store and as a base for engine erectors and workmen, and the building also contained a workshop. These bundles mainly contain notes of wages of men working at Thames Place, and a few bills of supplies and items of equipment. Again these two bundles are survivors from what was originally a much larger series.
Miscellaneous Accounts.
Various stray financial records from the London office were found scattered through the collection. The pro forma account of 1850 and the account with Thomas Vernon had probably been removed from other bundles or series which are now missing. The bundle of accounts of the steam ship Zingari is made up of several smaller bundles. |
| Arrangement | The London office financial records are arranged in two groups. The first group contains series of bundles of bills and notes, and the second contains other items, as follows:
Bills, Expenses, Wage Notes etc.
Miscellaneous Accounts
More detailed information on each series is given in the Description field, while reference numbers and covering dates of the actual records, and a list of the old reference numbers will be found in the pdf of the full series list attached. Item level lists are available in the searchroom of Birmingham Archives and Heritage. |
| AdminHistory | The records listed here are the surviving financial records of the London engine business office. The staff of the London office such as James Brown and William Langdon generally dealt with petty financial matters within London and the south, such as the payment of wages of engine erectors in the London area or the ordering of spares and stores. The firm’s high-level accounting was done by the Chief Cashier and Bookkeeper and the clerks at Soho.
The London office generated a large amount of financial records, such as bills, receipts, accounts of wages and so on. It is assumed that the London office staff also kept some form of books of account, such as cash books and wages books. Certainly William Langdon was capable of managing accounting records, as he later took over the cash agency of M. R. Boulton J. Watt & Co. from R. F. Davis. However no volumes have survived. |