| Description | Bundles of vouchers, order notes etc.
Yearly bundles of vouchers, recording various transactions including the purchase and sale of exchequer bills by a broker called William Knight, items bought for the upkeep of 13 London St. by John Mosley; purchase of wine by Mosley, stores for the Pallas hulk, and so on. The vouchers were filed under the year they were paid, which is not necessarilty the same year that the goods were supplied or the work done. The bundles from 1830 onwards also contain small notes ordering cement and paint from Boulton Watt & Co. – these mainly come from steam packet companies.
Statements and Documents of Account.
These bundles contain accounts and balance sheets showing the balance of the banking firm’s books, debts owing, commissions, general charges, discounts, and so on. Each bundle also contains letters from the agents sending the accounts to the partners at Soho and discussing any matters arising. Therefore each bundle contains letters dated from the year following that shown in the statements, for example the statements and documents for the year ending 1820 were sent to Soho accompanied by various letters in 1821.
The final bundle contains documents dealing with the settlement of the books in 1833, when the concern ceased to be a banking agency in its own right following the opening of an account with the Bank of England the previous year.
Miscellaneous Financial Records.
Bill of sale. Sale of 2/64th shares of the Ship William the Fourth – Francis Bigg to John Fothergill. 5 January 1831.
A standard form of a bill of sale, printed on parchment. The bill was witnessed by Squire Knight and John Miller. The text of the bill includes a transcript of the ship’s Certificate of Registration, which lists all the shareholders.
Allied Marine Assurance Co. certificates, 1834-1835.
Five printed assurance certifcates issued by the Alliance Marine Assurance Co. of London. They are all certificates of assurance taken out by Matthew Robinson Boulton for casks of copper planchets for the United States Mint, being shipped from Liverpool to Philadelphia, except for one certificate which is for assurance taken out by Boulton Watt & Co. for a case of machinery going from London to Hamburg. The shipping agent was Robert Cooper, except for the final certificate of 1835, when the agents were Carruthers & Budd. The dates and vessels are as follows:
23 January 1834 - 29 casks of copper planchets aboard the Napier.
10 April 1834 - 29 casks of copper planchets aboard the Montizuma.
10 May 1834 - 29 casks of copper planchets aboard the Monongahela.
13 November 1834 - a case of machinery aboard the City of Hambro’.
9 September 1835 - 29 casks of copper planchets aboard the Monongahela.
Pocket book recording deliveries, 25 March 1835-22 July 1836.
The purpose of this small pocket book is unclear. It appears to note who items were being sent to (mainly Matthew Robinson Boulton), who was doing the sending, and when, but not what was being sent. The address of the London office is inside the front cover.
Cheques, 1816.
The cheques are signed by John Mosley and drawn on Sir Peter Pole Bart., Thornton, Free, Donn & Scott of 1 Bartholomew Lane, the London firm’s bankers. Some of the cheques merely note the payee – for example ‘Messrs. Raikes & Co.’ or ‘W. Blagg’. Others advise whose account the money is being paid from, in the form of ‘X [account being debited] per Y [person receiving the payment]’, so for example ‘Boulton Watt & Co. p. Wright’ or ‘M.R. Boulton p. Fulljames’. Some of the cheques are marked with what may be the the house where the cheque was to be presented for payment, either as an endorsement or written across the actual cheque.
There are 548 cheques, arranged into bundles of 50 and numbered through. However when they were originally numbered, they appear to have been numbered in reverse, so Nos. 501-548 date from January-February, while Nos. 1-50 date from November-December. Also the order within the bundles was not strictly chronological. They have now been re-arranged into chronological order and renumbered, as follows:
1-50: 1-30 January
51-100: 30 January-7 March
101-150: 8 March-16 April
151-200: 17 April-17 May
201-250: 17 May-20 June
251-300: 22 June-25 July
301-350: 25 July-29 August
351-400: 30 August-28 September
401-450: 1 October-5 November
451-500: 5-28 November
501-548: 30 November-31 December
Letter of Attorney.
This letter of attorney dates from 1804, soon after the establishment of the firm. It was then called M. & R. Boulton J. & G. Watt & Co. The letter empowers the London agents John Woodward and John Mosley to act for the Soho partners. |
| AdminHistory | The records listed here are the surviving financial and legal records of the London banking house established in 1802 and known during the period that these records cover as M. R. Boulton J. Watt & Co. The bank agents, mainly John Mosley and A. F. Stonebridge for the period covered by these records, kept a full range of accounting records, from high level books such as ledgers and journals down to bills and vouchers and the like. They also issued regular statements of account to the members of the Boulton and Watt families and the various firms at Soho. Unfortunately the records that have survived here are somewhat miscellaneous in nature, and from the lower levels of the accounting process.
A wide of legal documents must also have been generated by the banking agents and the partners in the firm. However only one has survived, a letter of attorney from the partners to the agents, dating from not long after the firm was established. |