Redmayne, Leonard

Lancaster and London; cabinet maker, upholsterer, book keeper and Director of Gillow & Co. (b.1781–d.1869).

Son of Joseph Redmayne, house joiner of Lancaster. Apprenticed to Richard Gillow, Robert Gillow the elder and younger, and George Gillow of Oxford Street, London, on 6 May 1795, as an upholsterer. Admitted freeman of Lancaster with Joseph Redmayne, victualler, by invitation, 1799–1800. By 1800 he was one of Gillows' clerks His wage account was recorded in Gillow’s Petty Ledger for 1802-04. He was married on 18 December 1802 to Miss Treasure, daughter of Captain Treasure, reported in Billinge’s Liverpool Advertiser, 20 December. In 1809, when he acted as witness to the indentures of Thomas Leeming, he was described as a book-keeper.

Leonard Redmayne was the Lancaster partner in the firm of Redmayne, Whitesides & Ferguson who purchased the Gillow business in 1813, and he remained a partner for over fifty years. In 1816 he was elected a Common Councillor of Lancaster. In the same year his testimonial was used on a circular by James Carter Moon, who was apprentcied to him on 14 August 1817 as a cabinet maker. Directories list Redmayne, Whitesides & Ferguson (late Gillow) at the top of Church St, 1814–17; also Redmayne & Co., Castle Hill, 1814–25, and Church St, 1834. Redmayne was elected Mayor of Lancaster in 1824, and in 1826 became Chairman of the Directors of Lancaster Joint Stock Banking Company established as a result of Worswick Bank's failure during the 1820s. Redmayne outlived his co-directors; Henry Whiteside died in October 1832, Edward Whiteside in 1834 and William James Ferguson in 1835. Redmayne admitted to a customer that the extra work had ‘...brought upon the writer more business in the way of accounts than he has been able very satisfactorily to attend to...’. He was the first Lancaster partner to be a Protestant and had a family pew in the Priory Church of St. Mary. Redmayne lived for many years at Madix Hall, near London, supervising the London end of the Gillow & Co. business. Took out a Sun Insurance policy on 176 Oxford St, London, in 1840 [Sun MS 1339076]. He retired from Gillows in 1862, dying seven years later on 12 July 1869, aged eighty-eight.

He told a customer in the 1830s that the firm's apprentices were bound to the senior partner and he took on forty-four apprentices from 1809-39: John Cooper 1809, Thomas Alston 1812, John Dixon and Richard Whiteside 1814, John Miller 1815, Robert Russell, Thomas Tasker and Thomas Whiteside 1818, James Carter Moon 1817, Thomas Earl Kilner 1818, Christopher Thornton and Thomas Whiteside 1819, John Herbert 1820, John Barber, William Gray and Edward Whiteside 1822, Robert Holme, Benson Harrison Ireland and John Leak 1823, Thomas Moon and Thomas Walmsley Rothwell 1821, William Clemmy, Thomas Hargreaves, Edward Whiteside, Joseph Wilcock and Richard Woodhouse 1825, Peter Booth Bell, Peter Dixon, Carruthers Hardy, James Leak, Robert Wilson and John Barrow 1826, William Moon and James Towers Thompson 1827, Edward Cooper the Younger and James Tennant 1828, William Barrow and Robert Johnson 1829, Samuel Gray, Joseph and Thomas Wilcock 1830, Christopher Robinson 1831, Robert Wilcock 1832, William Dunderdale 1835 and Joseph Whiteside the Younger in 1839.

Sources: DEFM; Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London (2008), II, p.273