This weekend I have been researching the life of Thomas Salthouse who occupied property at 224 Scotland Road, Liverpool, where he traded as a leather dealer.
I can't be certain of Thomas' parentage, but he could have been the son of George Salthouse and Mary Burns and christened on the 18th August 1802 at St Nicholas, Liverpool (IGI). On the 15th January 1827 Thomas Salthouse married Elizabeth Depledge at St George, Liverpool (IGI). In 1841, when he was about 38 years old, he was living at Litherland and working as a leather tanner.
By 1851 Thomas Salthouse had moved to 224 Scotland Road, Liverpool, from where he was carrying on business as a leather dealer. I knew that Thomas died in 1859 and my particular interest was the next owner or tenant of the property or the person who took over his business.
For a long time I "lost" 224 Scotland Road at this point. On Ancestry the property disappeared - right up to the 'clearances' it appears to have been just a gap in between the houses, possibly a building that had literally fallen down and never been repaired or rebuilt but demolished instead. What happened to his business? I put the case on a back-burner for a while.
Over the weekend I had another trawl through my collection of CD books. The 1858 Post Office Directory turned up Thomas Salthouse - not at 224 Scotland Road, but just a little further along the street at 232 Scotland Road! Good news! Now that I had a new address for the business I had a chance of discovering the new owner, if any. (The directories revealed what the census did not show - 224 Scotland Road did survive for many years; after Thomas Salthouse left it was occupied by William Ashley Wilson, an engineer and shopkeeper, and in 1881 Kelly's Directory it is the Northern District Post & Money Order & Telegraph Office & Savings Bank, but I didn't have access to so many directories when I started all this!).
It is possible to walk along a street using Ancestry but (unless you have a surname to start you off) it's not always easy, especially in a city, to find the right piece and page. There is an easier way, however, with Find My Past, which has an address search facility for the 1861 census. But neither 224 or 232 were included in the addresses for Scotland Road, Liverpool. Either they had both been demolished or they could have been business accommodation only, therefore there would have been no return for them on the census.
Back to the CDs - this time to search for the new address 'Scotland Road'. Some of the trade directories had street directories which were quite easy to find, others needed a search on 'Scotland Road'. The first reference that I found to 232 Scotland Road was in the 1869 Slater's Directory of Lancashire and this gave me the all important name of the new owner - Thomas Fisher. Thomas Fisher was listed at two addresses, 137 Dale Street and 232 Scotland Road, Liverpool. A quick check through the census returns showed that Thomas Fisher was from Kendal and had been working as a currier at Dale Street since at least 1841 when he had an apprentice currier, Robert Collingwood. I wonder if Thomas Fisher had bought his leather from Thomas Salthouse and then extended his business interests by taking over the business at Scotland Road and thereby keeping control of his supplies? The 1855 directory shows two Thomas Fishers trading in Liverpool, one as a currier (Dale Street) and the other as a bootmaker, the families of these I shall sort out another night, but at least I have a means of going forward again.
And, as Thomas Salthouse does not seem to be related to my Salthouse family, why am I so interested in his business and his successors? Because my great-grandfather, William Salthouse, who left Alderley to work in Birkenhead as a nurseryman and then, when he became of age, joined the Lancashire Police Force, subsequently left the police force (having received a reward for bravery) "to go into business on his own account" - according to the police records. This was just after the 1871 census and subsequent records show him as a leather and hide warehouseman, though he always declares himself to be an employee, not the owner. If he had gone into business with Thomas Salthouse that might have led us to a connection between the two families, but in his day the Scotland Road business was owned by Thomas Fisher, later by John Fisher and I can't find a family connection there. Not yet, anyway.
