CROYDON CHRONICLES: Trades and professions come and go with the passing years, as fashions ebb and flow. Using the Minster’s archive records, DAVID MORGAN discovers another skill, common in Victorian times and used by a local family firm, but which barely exists today
Ward’s Directory of Croydon for 1884 listed three people who were plumassiers.
There was Mrs Rose at 39 Parson’s Mead and Misses A and E Whybrew in Northcote Road.
A plumassier was a person with very special skills. They worked with feathers, cutting, snipping and colouring them, creating gorgeous feathery hats as well as ensuring that military headwear for officers in their dress uniforms had all the correct plumage.
Both of these 1884 Croydon plumassier businesses were more engaged with the millinery aspects of the job rather than military ones.
The Whybrew sisters were Annie and Ellen. They were daughters of James and Lydia Whybrew. The family name appeared several times in the Parish Church registers, which, together with census returns, has helped to uncover their story.
Get ahead: the fashion for feathers in ladies’ extravagant hats extended into the Edwardian era. The feathers will have been prepared by plumassiers
James and Lydia, née Stevens, were married on April 20 1845, at St John’s, Waterloo, one of the “Victory Churches”, including All Soul’s at Langham Place, St Mark’s in Kennington and churches at Clapham, Brixton and West Norwood that were built following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
They were also known as “Waterloo Churches”, and St John’s, designed by Francis Bedford, was the first, completed in 1829 – 14 years after Wellington’s famous victory at the Battle of Waterloo.
In the mid-1800s, St John’s would have been a prestigious place to be married, as it remained more than a century later, when the church was restored after being bombed in the Blitz and re-dedicated as the Festival of Britain Church in 1951.
By 1871, James, aged 52, and Lydia, 49, were living at 2 Bridge Terrace, by Pitlake Bridge. Daughters Ellen, 12, and Annie, 10, were the youngest of the four children listed in the census living at that address. Lydia and the eldest of the girls living at home, 17-year-old Hephzibah, were dyers. James, the head of the household, had his profession listed as a builder.
There was a long-established industry in Croydon at that time of tanners and dyers. Janner’s Brothers, based in Surrey Street, were well-known as dyers and cleaners at the time.
William Whybrew, aged 15, the only son living at home, worked in an office.
The Whybrews were not originally a Croydon family. They had had 10 children in all, all born and registered in Bermondsey. At least two died as infants. In the previous, 1861 census, the family had an address on Grange Road, off Tower Bridge Road, with James listed as a “master bricklayer”. The mother and father and four of their children were first listed as living in Croydon in 1871. The family may have moved to Croydon because of the job opportunities in a town which was rapidly expanding.
The first Whybrew entry in the records of Croydon Parish Church – what we know today as Croydon Minster – was in the marriage register on Tuesday June 10 1879. This was Annie and Ellen’s older sister, Hephzibah, or “Epsey”, who got married to George Yeatman, a hairdresser.
Marriage certificate: Hephzibah, or “Epsey”, Whybrew married George Yeatman at Croydon Parish Church in June 1879
The Rev CH Grundy, the former Chaplain of New College, Oxford, conducted the service. The marriage register shows that the groom lived in South End, and Hephzibah at 1 West Street.
The Whybrews must have moved from their house on Bridge Terrace between the census of 1871 and Hephzibah’s wedding.
By 1891, Hephzibah and her husband had moved out of Croydon and were living in Reigate with three children – Rhoda aged 11, David 8 and John 3. George Yeatman was still hairdressing while Hephzibah had no occupation registered.
The next Whybrew wedding was in June 1884. It wasn’t held in the Parish Church but in the Baptist Chapel just round the corner in Tamworth Road.
Ellen was married to Arthur Polhill, a butcher of Church Street, by Mr Willis, the minister, who was assisted by Mr CT Keen, the baptist minister of Redhill.
The Whybrew family home was given as Crescent House, Croydon.
Business directory: James Whybrew’s builder’s firm is registered in the same building as daughter Annie’s ‘feather dressers’
Ellen’s marriage resulted in changes to the plumassier business. The 1886 Croydon directory listed Annie running the business in Northcote Road on her own, with the shop described as: “Miss A Whybrew, Feather dresser etc”.
Interestingly, her father is listed above her name, with his building business, so it would seem he was using the premises, too. Was it he who had put the capital up in the first place to help his daughters get started in business? How did they learn their skills?
The 1887 directory showed more changes. The Whybrew name had completely gone from Northcote Road. Annie’s feather dresser shop was now being run as a millinery by Philip and Cash.
The 1886 directory, though, provided an important clue in Annie’s timeline. Living at 1 Northcote Villas, next door to Annie’s plumassier business, was Charles Arthur Morris. Annie and Charles were wed at the end of the year.
Second marriage: Annie remarried in 1892 to police sergeant Thomas Stemp, at a ceremony conducted at the Croydon registry office
The marriage did not last long. Annie, with her young son Ernest, were back living with her parents in 1891, at No2, Grange Park Road, Thornton Heath. Annie’s occupation was given at this time as a dressmaker.
When Annie Morris remarried in November 1892, to Thomas Stemp, a police sergeant, the word “widow” described her status. Annie’s father was described as “builder, retired” – James Whybrew was by now 73 years old.
James Whybrew lived to be 79, dying in July 1898. Records say he was buried in Croydon. His wife of 53 years, Lydia, lived until she was 86, in May 1908. Family records say she is buried in Grave 30129 in Croydon.
Sergeant Stemp was 43 and his new wife 30 when they were married at Croydon’s Register Office. The registrar was Edwin Bailey, with the couple both stating that they lived in Grange Park Road.
Annie and Ellen were not the only two skilled artisans in the family. In the 1901 census Hephzibah, with her children now grown up, now had time to work. Her occupation given in the census was “ostrich feather dresser”. Another plumassier in the family.
Ellen and Arthur Polhill had eight children.
Height of fashion: Arthur Polhill, from a family of Surrey Street buthcers, and plumassier Ellen had eight children
Arthur’s family had been tradespeople for many years in Croydon. Charlotte Polhill, Arthur’s grandmother, was a maker of stays in Surrey Street and Arthur inherited the butcher’s business from his father. The Polhill name is still visible in the Minster today. Two of Ellen and Arthur’s sons, William and Herbert, who had emigrated to Australia, were killed in the First World War and are listed on the Roll of Honour which hangs in the church.
Even when the two Whybrew sisters were practising their plumassier arts, questions were being asked, nationally, about the ethics of using real bird feathers to decorate hats.
When Scottish landlord of a single rock in the Firth of Clyde signed a contract to supply a leading London plumassier with 1,000 gulls each week, people were shocked to discover that many young chicks were starved to death because their parents were netted or trapped. The Seabirds Protection Act of 1869 is widely regarded as Britain’s first wildlife protection Act. Certainly, it was the first step in the process in caring fully for birdlife, with the campaign against using plumes in high fashion hats leading eventually to the formation of what we know today as the RSPB.
Philips was responding to the terrible toll being taken on certain species, whose feathers were so prized by the milinary trade, to the point where egrets and grebes were driven to the point of extinction. Today, real ostrich feathers are still used by military plumassiers, with feathers are taken from birds which have been reared on farms.
As use of real birds’ feathers declined, so demand for the work of plumassiers, like Croydon sisters Annie and Ellen Whybrew, diminished, too. What might be the trade or profession in 2026 that people in 150 years’ time might discover in their digital dictionaries to be arcane or out of use?
David Morgan, pictured right, has been chronicling Croydon’s history for Inside Croydon for a decade. Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Pioneer of sociology whose book called for an evolution
- After eight years, Bishop prepares for his final Minster service
- The weather warnings from history: thunderbolts and lightning
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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Such an interesting piece of social history!