Hobourn solicitors archive
A very large collection of solicitors' papers from the firm of Hobourn of Woburn was received by Bedfordshire Archives when the firm ceased business in 1977. The records were received in a state of disarray and were sorted to a minimal level and boxed into 189 large boxes. Since then some material has been fully listed but the majority of the collection remains uncatalogued and accessible only from a very basic box list.
The firm was in business from at least the early 1820s, when John Green qualified as a solicitor. It provided services for people in the area around Woburn, including clients as far away as Ampthill and Flitwick and across the border into Buckinghamshire. John Green acted as clerk to the magistrates and, for many years, as the coroner for the Honour of Ampthill. John was succeeded in the business first by his son John Thomas Green and then by his nephew by marriage, Frederick Thomas Tanqueray. In 1928 Frederick Tanqueray retired and was succeeded by Robert Hobourn, who may in turn have been succeeded by his son, Robert Bernard Cubitt Hobourn.
Robert Hobourn the elder was born in Wisbech in 1870. He was a law clerk in Wisbech in 1891. He married Sarah Bell Andes in 1894 and their first two children were born in Wisbech. Robert appears to have first moved to Woburn in 1897 or 1898 as his third child was born there. He is listed on the 1901 census as a Solicitor’s Managing Clerk. He is still working as a solicitor in 1939. He left the area in about 1948 and died in 1956 in Eastbourne. Robert B C Hobourn was Robert’s fourth and youngest child being born on the 12th September 1904. Robert B C Hobourn married Evelyn Wright in Ampthill in 1933. In 1939 his occupation is given as Solicitors managing clerk. In about 1969/70 he moved to Oxfordshire where he died in 1971. The collection was deposited by Mr Ormsby Issard-Davies who presumably carried on the business after Robert Hobourn retired until deciding to close the business. Mr Ormsby Issard-Davies lived in Bedfordshire from about 1935; as well as being a solicitor he raced cars during the early 1950s. He died in Truro in 2001.
The collection is rich in information about local families, businesses and local government. Below are a few examples of the human stories that are waiting to be discovered.
A lot of the firm's business involved preparing people's wills and it is noticeable how often elderly Victorian ladies of a certain class made changes to them, almost as a hobby. Sometimes there are copious notes around the bequests of quite small things. Amongst the various draft wills of Elizabeth Seabrook of Maulden one finds this written in 1895: "I have this morning been putting away my Winter Stockings. There are 6 pairs of my knitting and if I should not be living to want them another Winter I wish them to be given to my good Servant Sarah Harris also the two pink pairs of Woollen Knickers. I have told her about them" [Ref.HN10/267/Seabrook5]. On a sadder note Caroline Cooper Cooper of Toddington Manor was thinking about the fate of her pet dogs after her death and in 1887 noted: "My dear little dogs to any one who will take care of them & pet them if not to ask Dr. Waugh to poison them & to be buried with Tiny & Baly" [Ref.HN10/270/Cooper5].
Legal action could result from a deceased person's estate, usually quite soon after the death of the testator. This was not the case with the estate of Thomas Paxton of Milton Bryan. The records around this man are quite tantalising. Milton Bryan was the birthplace of the famous Sir Joseph Paxton, the landscape gardener and architect who did much work for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth and who designed the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851. His father William is variously described as a gardener and farmer. Thomas, by contrast was a publican and draper, he kept the Red Lion in the village. Interestingly at his death in 1823 he was owed money by Sir Gregory Page Turner for supplying beer to the men constructing a lake in the grounds of Page Turner's extravagant new Battlesden House. The design of this water feature was Joseph Paxton's first piece of landscaping work. Given the small size of Milton Bryan it seems quite possible that Thomas was some relation to Joseph. In 1886, 63 years after Thomas' death his daughter Mary Ann Ricketts began an action against John Thomas Green, son of the Woburn solicitor John Green, for recovery of her share in her father's estate. The papers do not reveal the outcome of the action but do reveal that John Green was asked to be an executor of Paxton's will by Sir Richard Inglis, who was Lord of the Manor at Milton Bryan and concerned that the elderly Paxton was being taken in by a man named Philpot, who was suspected of carrying on with Paxton's young Irish wife. There are all the makings of a lurid novel of suspense and romance in this case!
When John Thomas Green was called on in 1886 to find evidence to back his case that his, now dead, father never gave Paxton's children their legacies because Paxton's estate was insolvent, he had great difficulty finding any. Green senior had destroyed most of the papers. An exasperated John Thomas says at one point, in some notes on the case " [I] have spent 3 days already over the papers in the office and am sick of it. I cannot search every bundle of papers but I feel sure that the working papers relating to the matter are either mislaid or destroyed before 1857." [Ref.HN10/273/Paxton7]
Finally, some light relief. Frederick John Coleman was the proprietor of the George Hotel in Luton. In 1888 he was threatened with an action for slander. John Thomas Green's notes tell the tale admirably. "Harris, Sworder, Percival, Wright, Coleman & others drinking about together. Wright when drinking has a mania for breaking other people's hats after a little horse play. Coleman gets home and finds his Hat smashed – he instantly concluded Wright had done it 2 hours before when all up at his place. He sends the hat done up in paper up to Wright's House with a note something like this written on one of his Bill papers "I never play practical jokes and I shall not allow you to so perform on me or my property" Coleman thinks the wife got hold of it and this has put the fat in the fire". [HN10/271/Coleman2] Clearly Wright's wife gave him a sore ear on the subject and insisted he establish his (and her) good name by legal action!
It may be worth investigating this collection if you think, or have evidence, that the firm may have represented a person, family or business you are interested in.