Chapter 2: Matthew Fagg

Then, we have the Hackney connection. This is documented by various land tax records available on ancestry.co.uk, which show him living in the parish of St Leonard, Shoreditch, between 1798 and 1805, and then on the Cass Estate in the parish of St John, Hackney, from 1806 to 1818, where his property evidently included a garden and stable. Further information is provided by the records of the Sun Fire Office, in which Fagg appears at various dates between 1807 and 1822. He owned properties at 13 and 17 Hackney Terrace, one of which he was renting out in 1807, and later at 10 Durham Terrace, Hackney Road.7 He also insured the contents, which is described in standard formulae in terms of apparel, books, plate, etc., except that he did have musical instruments and framed pictures, so was clearly not an unsophisticated figure.8 Frustratingly, no evidence is currently forthcoming on what he was doing in Hackney, or what was his source of livelihood. The only possible exception is that online investigation reveals that in 1814 a man named Matthew Fagg, identified as Clerk to the well-known commercial company, Fairlie, Bonham & Co., gave evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Commons concerning East-India-built shipping, as recorded in their Minutes: conceivably, this could be the same person, thus making sense both of his residence in Hackney (then a leafy village north-east of London), and of his quite lavish lifestyle there.9

7 London Metropolitan Archives, MS 11936/438/802734, MS 11936/444/830708, MS 11936/452/85653.

8 Ibid., MS 11936/452/856454, MS 11936/464/883198, MS 11936/489/93906.

9 Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Select Committee on Petitions relating to East-India-Built Shipping (London: H.M.S.O., 1814), pp. 611ff., 623ff.