John Aylward Southwell

John Aylward Southwell (1763–1847): A Timeline

1763	John Aylward Southwell son of John Southwell, peruke maker and his wife Jane Butler of St. Nicholas-lane, Lombard-street, London, was born. He was baptised at the church of St. Martin Orgar, 16 January 1763.
1778	He was apprenticed to Joseph Read of Fleet Market (a City of London liveryman of the Upholders Company) on 6 May 1778.1
1785	He completed his apprenticeship and was accepted into that company on 3 August 1785.
1792	By 1792 he had become foreman to George Oakley, a prominent London Upholder – as is evidenced by his testimony as a witness in a court case against two defendants, John Matthews and Samuel Larter in their trial at the Old Bailey.2 Southwell affirmed that he was Mr Oakley’s foreman and had three persons employed under him, besides several workmen.
1793	A ‘J Southwell’ subscribed to Sheraton’s The Cabinet-makers-Drawing-Book in this year, which seems likely to be John Aylward Southwell.
1801	When a widower, he married an eighteen year old, Amy Hope Wagner on 24 December at the church of St Mary Lambeth.
1822	Amy died when matron of the Liberty of the Rolls workhouse and was buried at St Dunstan in the West on 4 July. Less than three months later, he remarried for a third time, to a widow Jane Taylor, at the same church.
1847	John Aylward Southwell died in the first quarter of 1847. He had fathered two children by his first wife (whose identity remains unknown), Valentine (1796– ) and Sabina, who married John Whittaker in 1820.3

1 Dictionary of English Furniture Makers (1660–1840)(Leeds: Furniture History Society and Maney & Son, 1986), 840.
2 Old Bailey on-line. John Matthews, Samuel Larter, theft from a specified place 13th January 1792, ref. no.: t17920113-36 http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17920113-36&div=t17920113-36&terms=Oakley ;, retrieved 4 February 2010.
3 Identified through the will of his sister, Jane, who left them bequests in 1832 (The National Archives, Kew, PROB 11/1800).