Christopher Potter (died 1817)

Christopher Potter (1750–1817) was an English manufacturer and contractor, best known for introducing into France the method of printing on porcelain and glass.

Early life

Christopher Potter was born in 1750 the first son of George and Betty Potter. He was baptised on 1 January 1751; his elder sister, Philliss, was baptised in 1749 and buried in 1751; his younger sister, Mary, baptised in February 1752; and a brother, George baptised in November of the same year.[1] Nothing is known of Christopher's education. His father George was a maker of Archel dye at the Falcoln Steps, Southwark between 1749 and 1755.[2] When Christopher was four years old his father purchased the White House, Bethnal Green, a madhouse, from Eleanor Wright the widow of the original owner.[3] The family appear to have moved to live there since George and Betty appear in various records in day-to-day management of the madhouse.[4] There was a later suggestion that, in addition to running the madhouse, Betty Potter kept "a common boarding house, on Bethnal Green" and that their son Christopher "usually" ran "Errands, for" his "Mother's Boarders, for hire."[5] It is possible that one of the adjacent properties was used in this way for part of the Potter's occupation of the madhouse. His father also, at some time, set up an archel dye factory on adjacent land. Trade directories list him as an Archel maker at Bethnal Green from 1768 and going into partnership with Joseph Dent from 1771. In the year after Christopher's mother Betty's death in August 1762, his father took a partner, James Stratton, in the madhouse business.[6] Following his father's death in October 1771 it appears that Christopher sold his interest in the madhouse to Stratton but retained his partnership in the Archel dye factory.[3] He married Sarah Mills on 16 January 1773[7] and settled in Bethnal Green at some distance removed from both madhouse and factory.[8] Whilst at Bethnal Green, the couple had two children, Sarah Maria, born November 1774 and Thomas Mills, born January 1776.[9] His Bethnal Green house was put up for sale in July 1778[10] but by then the family had already moved to their new home. Great Barns, an estate near Ely, Cambridgeshire,[11] nine hundred acres of which he devoted to growing woad. At first his property was cultivated by "woadmen", who were accustomed to hiring fields for two years; but then he employed his own agricultural labourers, which he considered an innovation.[12] In 1780 the family took a house in Parliament Street, Westminster[13] where on 29 March 1782 their third child George Thomas was born.[14]

Political career

He was appointed Sheriff of the counties of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1778.[15] On 10 January 1778, Lord North, the Prime Minister wrote to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, describing Christopher Potter as “… a gentleman of business and of very fair character in the City, and a good friend to Government upon all occasions…”[16]

 In 1780 he unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary representation of Cambridge. In 1781 he was returned for Colchester, but on petition was unseated for corrupt practices.[12] 

During the final years of the American War of Independence, Potter was one of the principal victualling contractors for the British Army[12] and the principal supplier of Ship's bisket (bread), flour and many other provisions to the British Navy.[17] Together with his partner Aaron Moody he established the first steam-powered corn mill and bakery in the world in 1781 at Chapel Mill, Southampton.[18] In 1783, at the end of the war, Potter set up a chain of bakeries in London to supply the city with cheap bread.[19] much to the consternation of the Baker's Company.[20] He must have overstretched himself for on 15 April 1783 he was declared bankrupt and all of his properties were sold off to help clear his debts[21] In 1784 Potter had the support of Richard Rigby, and he was again returned for the Colchester seat, but the election was declared void, and had to be re-run. Potter this time lost.[22] It has been suggested that his candidature seems to have laid the ground for the passing of an act disqualifying government contractors.[12] but this seems unlikely as Clerks Act which restricted anyone holding a government contract from sitting as an MP was passed in 1782.

In France

In 1788 Potter left England to make a new career in France.[23] Settling in Paris, Potter in 1789 established potteries there, and assumed credit for the introduction of printing on porcelain and glass to France, acknowledging that the discovery of the technique had been made in England some 20 years before.[24] Backed by a favourable report from two members of the Academy of Sciences and by Sylvan Bailly, the mayor of Paris, he petitioned the National Assembly for a seven years' patent, promising to give a fourth of the profits to the poor, and to teach his process to French apprentices. No action was taken on his petition, but he enjoyed for years a virtual monopoly. He also reopened the Chantilly porcelain works, which had been closed through the emigration of the Condé family; he there employed five hundred men, and produced nine thousand dozen plates a month. He opened further potteries at Montereau and Forges-les-Eaux. In the autumn of 1793, when the English in France were arrested as hostages for Toulon, he was imprisoned at Beauvais and Chantilly.[12]

In 1796 he was the bearer to Lord Malmesbury at Paris of an offer from Barras to conclude peace, for a bribe of £500,000. At the industrial exhibition of 1798 on the Champ de Mars, the first held in Paris, he was awarded one of the twelve major prizes for white pottery. At the exhibition of 1802 he was one of the twenty-five gold medallists who dined with Napoleon Bonaparte. By this time he had given up all his factories except that at Montereau, which lasted through the 19th century.[12]

John Goldworth Alger, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, stated that no specimen remains of Potter's ordinary ware. The Victoria and Albert Museum, however, has Chantilly porcelain it identifies with the Potter period.[25] In the Sèvres Museum there was a cup, ornamented with designs of flowers and butterflies, with his initials, surmounted by Prince of Wales's feathers. In 1811 he advocated the cultivation of woad in France, citing his Cambridgeshire experience, and between 1794 and 1812 he took out five patents for agricultural and manufacturing processes, some of them in association with his son, Thomas Mille Potter.[12]

For Potter's life in France see also https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Potter

Death

In March 1815, when Napoleon Bonaparte returned from the island of Elba, Potter, already weakened by age and infirmities, wanted to leave France temporarily. He retired to England, where his infirmities only increased.[26] His eldest son Thomas Mills Potter, with whom he had collaborated on his later French patents, died on 19 December 1815 at Nonsuch Park, the home of their family friend Samuel Farmer.[27] On 16 June 1817 Potter failed to attend Westminster court for a Lawsuit initiated by Charles Brunsdon, a London merchant, for a debt of £1200. He was arrested by the sheriff and held in Westminster Gaol. On 14 July at a Hearing at the Court of Common Pleas he was committed to the Fleet Prison[28] where he died on 18 November 1817.[12] He was buried at St Matthew's, Bethnal Green on 24 November 1817[29] Obituaries noted that 'he could calculate by memory alone with a promptitude that astonished the beholder, and at the same time with a degree of precision, that could only be equalled by the slow and painful operations of the counting-house'[30] and 'He possessed an extensive memory .... His researches in mechanical and chemical science, if not profound, rendered the common powers of both prompt and useful for various purposes to which he skilfully applied them. He was too eccentric and speculative to hoard a fortune; and in that respect may be likened to the man who heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them.'[31]

Notes

1. London Metropolitan Archive [LMA] – Parish Registers of Christchurch, Southwark
2. London trade directories
3. Tower Hamlets Archives – Land Tax records
4. British Evening Post (London), 308, 22 February 1763 refers to " a private Mad-house at Bethnal Green, kept by one Mrs Potter."
5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Document No CW3305948978: Lord Rayleigh, SOME QUESTIONS NECESSARY TO BE ANSWERED BY SQUIRE POTTER, NOW A CANDIDATE TO REPRESENT THE BOROUGH OF COLCHESTER, IN THE ROOM OF ISAAC MARTIN REBOW, ESQ. DECEASED … Question VIII – Did your Mother keep a Common Boarding House on Bethnal Green? Question IX – Did you usually go on Errands, for your Mother’s Boarders, for hire?
6. National Archives E140/69/9 Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Exhibits : Potter V Stratten – Property leasing agreement between George Potter, plaintiff, and Elizabeth Stratten, widow, both of Bethnal Green, and with James Stratten, shipwright, of Limehouse, defendants
7. LMA – Parish registers of St Andrew's Holborn
8. Tower Hamlets Archives – Land Tax records; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 22 June 1778, 15399
9. LMA – Parish registers of St Matthew's Bethnal Green
10. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 22 June 1778, 15399
11. LMA: CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/259, Sun Fire Insurance Policy 387062
12. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1896). "Potter, Christopher (d.1817)" . Dictionary of National Biography. 46. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
13. National Maritime Museum, Caird Library, SAN/F/26/42, Sandwich MSS, Christopher Atkinson to Lord Sandwich 30 January 1781; Atkinson states "... He has taken a large House in Parliament Street & publickly declares he has done it to be near the Treasury and that no Contract shall be made there nor at any other Board in which he'll not have a share !!!-"
14. City of Westminster Archives: Parish Register of St Margaret’s, Westminster
15. London Gazette, 27 January 1778, issue 11844, p2
16. Sandwich MSS, North to Sandwich, 10 January 1778 [Quoted in Brooke, John, ‘Potter, Christopher’ in Namier, Sir Lewis & Brooke, John (eds), The House of Commons 1754–1790, 1964]
17. National Archives: ADM111/83-92 Victualling Board Minute Books
18. LMA MS11936/293 Sun Fire Insurance Policy 444034, 13 June 1781
19. Public Advertiser, 15199, 14 February 1783; Public Advertiser, 15207, 24 February 1783; National Archives :ADM111/93 Victualling Board Minute Book, 17 February 1783; Public Advertiser, 15216, 6 March 1783; Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, 4306, 6 March 1783
20. LMA: MSS 5177/10-11, Baker’s Company Court Minutes
21. London Gazette 12432:7, 15 April 1783
22. historyofparliamentonline.org, Potter, Christopher (d.1817), of Colchester, Essex.
23. Archives Nationale:F/7/4774, Letter Written by Potter dated 22 July 1793: “Je suis arrive au commencement de l’année 1788 et je suis resté jusqu’à la fin de l’année. En mars 1789, je suis revenu en France et depuis cette époque je n’ai pas été en Angleterre que pour quelque jours dans le mois de septembre 1791”. Quoted in Valfré, Patrice, C. POTTER, le potier révolutionnaire …, 2012 p35 & footnote
24. In 1751 John Brooks unsuccessfully petitioned from Birmingham for a patent for “printing, impressing, and reversing upon enamel and china from engraved, etched and mezzo-tinted plates and from cuttings on wood and mettle. He was involved in early printing on enamels at Bilston—near Birmingham using glue bat transfer following some colour pouncing. He was primarily concerned with printed decoration on enameled boxes, plaques, medallions, etc. In 1753 he moved from Birmingham to become a partner in an enameling factory of York House, Battersea in London. Here he again unsuccessfully applied for patents in both January 1754 & April 1755. He remained at York House until its closure in 1756. John Sadler registered a pre-patent affidavit on 2 August 1756 in Liverpool. Both Bow and Vauxhall took up printing on porcelain as at Birmingham and Battersea. Worcester was using glue-bat printing before 1756 and after the arrival of Hancock in 1756 switched to paper transfer.
25. collections.vam.ac.uk, Tasse et soucoupe de limonadier (?).
26. Archive Nationale, Paris: BB/11/170 : Georges Charles Potter, gentilhomme anglais, rue du Bac N° 95, demande de naturalisation lettre manuscrite du 10 mars & réponse de l’administration du 19 mars 1821. quoted in Valfré, Patrice, C.Potter, le potier révolutionnaire et ses manufactures de Paris, Chantilly, Montereau ...,Bagneaux-sur-Loing, 2012
27. The Gentleman’s magazine, vol. 86, January 1816, p.88
28. National Archives:PRIS2/119/18451, Fleet Prison – Commitment File]
29. LMA: Parish Register, St Matthew, Bethnal Green,
30. Christopher Potter Esq (1748–1817); Ex-MP for Colchester, The national biography and obituary, 1818, 2:XXXIII: 352–354
31. The Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1818, 87/2:p569

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1896). "Potter, Christopher (d.1817)". Dictionary of National Biography. 46. London: Smith, Elder & Co.