William Postlethwaite (1790-1876)
Written by Tim Cockerill
Occupations: Banker, Shipbuilder and Merchant
Family Background
This is dealt with under William's elder brother Robert Postlethwaite (1788-1859) (q.v.) . William was baptised at Broughton-in-Furness chapel in the parish of Kirkby Ireleth on 20 January 1790, the second son of John, a mercer, and Margaret (nee Hodgshon) his wife. His younger brother Thomas (1792-1827), a merchant in London, was the grandfather of the Revd Thomas Norton Postlethwaite (1857-1926), vicar of Urswick (q.v.).
Education and Career
William presumably attended a local school before being apprenticed to a merchant of some kind, perhaps in Ulverston, the setting for his subsequent business career. Or, as his father was a mercer in Broughton-in-Furness, he may have been apprenticed to him, although this business seems to have faded away by, say, 1810-1820. In any event, no record of a formal apprenticeship can be found, which may suggest the latter.
In any event William's business career and interests can easily be traced through local directories. For example, in Parson and White's Directory of Cumberland, Westmorland with Furness and Cartmel in 1829, he is listed under Ulverston as living in Cavendish Street, as a partner in Petty and Postlethwaite, bankers and as a wine and spirit merchant, both in Queen Street. There were nine other wine and spirit merchants but the only rival to their banking business was Robert Fell, Son and Pearson. Additionally Petty and Postlethwaite were shipbuilders and timber merchants, trading under the name of George Petty, Shaw and Co, and William Postlethwaite may have been jointly responsible for the yard's inception. In 1863 Petty and Postlethwaite disposed of their ship-building yard to Brocklebanks, who built only two ships there, the last in 1878.
The history of Petty and Postlethwaite's bank in Ulverston is dealt with at some length by George Chandler in Four Centuries of Banking (1968) which contains an outline of the origins of Martins Bank Ltd, with a helpful 'family tree' at the front showing how both Petty and Postlethwaite and the lesser bank of Grice and Co. of Bootle, Cumberland were later amalgamated into larger concerns. The former, later known as the Ulverston Bank, amalgamated with Wakefield, Crewdson and Co, the Kendal Bank, in 1863, for reasons now unknown. Chandler speculated that this may have been linked to the American Civil War which brought great hardship to the North-West because of the cutting off of cotton supplies, adding.......'as a purely private bank, the Ulverston Bank did not carry very substantial reserves.'
However the bank started life in or before 1795, the brain-child of the descendants of Edmund Petty (1702-1736 ) of Urswick who was apprenticed to the mercer John Fell (1678-1724 ) of Ulverston, in 1716. A mercer is a dealer in textile fabrics, often from abroad, which seems to have been a lucrative trade at the time, the families of Petty, Fell and Postlethwaite all doing well as mercers before expanding into banking, other allied trades and with land ownership as the ultimate prize. These families started lending money to other local merchants and tradesmen at interest, were prudent in taking good security for the loans and, if necessary, foreclosing on mortgaged property and expanding their horizons. It probably helped that the Pettys also had an Ulverston attorney-at-law in the family. As Chandler explains: 'the glittering prospects of Liverpool's trade encouraged the money men of Ulverston, and particularly its mercers, to become part owners in her ships and to import in them, sugar, wine, cotton and similar products for their businesses'. Moreover, the Pettys had the additional advantage of marrying into the influential Brocklebank family of Liverpool and of being part owners of ships based on Liverpool and trading with the West Indies.
It was not until about 1820 that William Postlethwaite entered into partnership with the Petty's Bank, henceforth to be known,first, as Petty and Postlethwaite and later as the Ulverston Bank. Postlethwaite had already made his own name locally as a merchant but also as a leading public figure in Ulerston as not only one of the four on the Board of Guardians, but also as its treasurer. He was jointly responsible for launching the shipbuilding yard of Petty and Postlethwaite in about 1820. In addition the partnership had cotton concerns in Preston and links with the wine trade in both Ulverston and London. Also, the firm owned the Poaka and Oregrave Ironworks, near Dalton-in-Furness in 1862 when the Poaka Beck Reservoir was being prepared.
Mannex's 1851 History, Topography and Directory of Westmorland with Lonsdale and Amounderness in Lancashire shows that Petty and Postlethwaite were by then the only private bank in Ulverston, apart from the Lancaster Banking Company and the Savings Bank. In addition they were also timber merchants, ship-builders and wine and spirit merchants
As the Ulverston Bank's customers included businesses and individuals from as far afield as Liverpool, London and Glasgow, its local prestige also rose rapidly. Its account holders included the landed gentry and the aristocracy, notably Colonel T.R.G. Braddyll of Conishead Priory. In 1841 the Bank advanced Braddyll £10,000 and by 1846 he owed the Bank £62,000. In 1848 Braddyll was forced to sell up and the Bank was presumably repaid. He had also invested heavily in the Ulverston Canal and when that was sold in 1850 to a railway company, George Shaw Petty, a relative of the Bank's founder and then a partner, was paid £642 for his share in the canal and William Postlethwaite received £1,291 for his share. All in all, it is evident that Postlethwaite played a leading part in the commercial life of Ulverston, its hinterland and further afield, for at least fifty years. He was a vital figure in the success and expansion of the Bank, until it merged with the Kendal Bank in 1863. At this date he retired, at least from his banking interests, if not his other businesses. It comes as something of a shock, therefore, to find him in the 1871 census living as a lodger in a boarding house in Church Walk, Ulverston, aged 81, a widower and retired merchant, whose estate, when he died five years later, was evidently insufficient to justify a grant of probate or letters of administration. Of course by then he was an old man, twice widowed and with no children, so he may have simply wound down all his business interests, to live on an annuity which died with him. Maybe he had by then given away surplus money to relatives, friends or neighbours.
Family Life
William Postlethwaite married twice but there were no children of either marriage. He married firstly at Thwaites, Millom, on 30 August 1825, Mary (b.1793), eldest daughter of William Lewthwaite (1766-1845) JP,DL of Broadgate, Thwaites, whose sister Agnes had married his elder brother Robert Postlethwaite in 1823. From the Lewthwaite family papers it is evident that the two families had been close friends for some time and that John Lewthwaite, only brother of the two sisters Mary and Agnes, had planned the building of his new house at Broadgate, apparently without an architect, but with the help and advice of the Postlethwaite brothers in 1818-1819.
Mary died at Ulverston on 21 December 1853 and on 7 September 1858 he married his first cousin, Agnes Armitstead (b.1809) then of Shatton Lodge, Embleton, Cumberland, fifth daughter of the Revd Richard Armitstead JP, DL (q.v,), at Christ Church, High Harrogate, Yorkshire, who died on 2 June 1869, aged sixty, and was buried at Broughton-in-Furness
Postlethwaite himself died on 10 February 1876 at Ulverston, aged 86, and he was also buried at Broughton-in-Furness.
Sources
- Ancestry.com
- Burke, Sir Bernard, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, vol.11, p. 1114, London, 1871
- Chandler, George, Four Centuries of Banking, vol. 2, The Northern Constituent Banks, concerning the history of Martin's Bank Ltd, London, 1968
- Family information
- Mannex and Co., History, Topography and Directory of Westmorland with Lonsdale and Amounderness in Lancashire, pp.453-457, Beverley, 1851
- National Census Return 1871
- Parson, William and White, William, History, Directory and Gazetteer of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland with that part of the Lake District in Lancashire forming the lordships of Furness and Cartmel, pp.724-729, Leeds,1829
- Sandbach, Peter, Industrial History of Cumbria, the Low Furness Iron and Steel Company, www.cumbria-industries.org.uk