PETTINGELL, Joseph (1799-1859) — Sydney
Tailor; law stationer & lithographer. Produced Leitrim in the district of the city of Sydney about a quarter of a mile from the boundary stone 1843.
Joseph Pettingell is reported to have been born both at Barkway, Hertfordshire, and at Fincham, Norfolk, in either case on 3 Jul 1799. He married Marianne (Mary Ann) Jones (1800?-1890) 6 Jul 1820 at St. George Bloomsbury in London. A partnership in Mount Street, London, with Thomas Evans and William Pettingell, as tailors and breeches-makers was formally dissolved 26 Jul 1833. He journeyed to Australia, travelling under his wife’s mother’s maiden name of Linden, on the Thomas Laurie, leaving London 17 Mar 1834 and arriving in Hobart 4 Sep 1834. His illustrated journal from the voyage survives in the National Library of Australia (MS 10126) — it records other passengers, the weather, the crew, shipboard meals, life in Hobart, etc. He immediately set up a continuation of his London business as a tailor and breeches-maker, advertising his work in London for the royal family, the nobility, and officers of the Royal Horse Guards. He offered his apparently commodious premises in Campbell Street for sale in May 1835 before moving to Argyle Street. In September of that year, his wife announced the opening of her boarding school for young ladies and it was from her new address in Brisbane Street that Joseph Pettingell offered a chart of the coast of New Holland in April 1836. In August 1836 Pettingell was appointed postmaster at Evandale. By 1837, if not earlier, the Pettingells were running two separate schools for boys and girls at Evandale, but Joseph became insolvent and was imprisoned for debt at Launceston in September of that year. He lost his position as postmaster, but appears to have been released from prison by March 1838. Six months later he arrived in Sydney and in December 1838 he announced that he was to open a law stationery office there. His wife and four of their children sailed from Tasmania to join him at the end of January 1839. The Sydney Monitor 16 Aug 1839 noted that “Mr. Pettingale is a law-stationer, and emigrated to the colony recently. He cannot afford at present, to pay clerks, and his daughters, much to their credit, employ their leisure hours in engrossing for their father, and which art they perform in a masterly manner”. In the same month Pettingell added the occupation of surveyors’ draughtsman to his talents and announced with extensive advertising that he “undertakes to copy plans of estates &c., from the rough drawing or otherwise to any size, either colored or plain, equal to any done in the colony”. With a move to Pitt Street in early 1840 he was able to add lithography to his other activities, announcing that clients as far afield as New Zealand could favour him with “drawing and colouring their plans, on any scale, with neatness and expedition, as also in lithographing the same” (Sydney Monitor, 5 Feb 1840). He was bankrupted again in June 1842. He successfully sued someone who owed him a great deal of money in 1843 and in 1844 re-emerged, working for a firm of solicitors and offering evening classes in writing, engrossing, etc. He died 13 Jan 1859 and was buried 15 Jan 1859 at Camperdown Cemetery.
Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, London — 1827-1833
15 Campbell Street, Hobart — 1834-1835
Argyle Street, Hobart — 1835
16 Brisbane Street, Hobart — 1836
Prospect House, Evandale — 1836
8 Josephson’s Terrace, Elizabeth Street North, Sydney — 1839
15 Phillip Street, Sydney — 1839-1840
Pitt Street South, Sydney — 1840-1842
343 Elizabeth Street, Sydney — 1859
LG. NLA. Trove.