STOPFORTH, James Warner (1797-1835) — London
Playing-card maker, map printer, card & pasteboard maker. Produced a pack of New geographical cards 1828 for Charles Hodges, re-issued in 1838-1839 by William Frederick Rock & Henry Rock (see BME 2011); also for Hodges, a pack of fifty-two astronomy playing-cards, with a duty card and explanatory tract 1828 (examples in BM).
Born in London 2 Sep 1797 and baptised (James Warren Stopforth) 2 Oct 1797 at St. Anne Soho, the son of James Head Stopforth (1767-1822) and his wife Elizabeth Stopforth, née Brown, (1765?-1838). His father, “late foreman to Gibson”, had founded the business at 18 Little Newport Street, Soho, trading there from about 1800. Trading as ‘Stopforth & Son’, the business was owned and run after his death in 1822 by James Warner Stopforth and his mother. At the trial of William Conner, a sixteen-year-old apprentice, 22 Jun 1826, James Warner Stopforth testified, “I am a card-maker and printer, and live in Little Newport-street, in partnership with my mother, Elizabeth Stopforth. The prisoner was our apprentice, and employed to receive money on our account; after nine o’clock, when the shop was shut up, persons sometimes called, and he served them. In consequence of suspicion I employed an officer; I sent to Mr. Malcolm [an engraver and printer], who marked some money, and put it into the officer’s hands”. Conner was later found in possession of the marked money, found guilty of embezzlement, and sentenced to twelve months in prison. Stopforth married Ann Wynne (1799?-1838), with whom he had at least two children, at St. Pancras 3 Dec 1818. He was buried at St. Anne Soho 13 Mar 1835 aged thirty-eight. His widow, his mother, and his daughter all died in 1838, just a few weeks apart.
24 Little Newport Street, Soho — 1820-1835
Apprentices: William Conner; William Hoyton 1828 (£4) — indenture in LMA.
BBTI. BM. BNA. LMA. NA. OB.