WELLS, Dudley (1819-1860) — London
Bookseller & stationer; globemaker; engineer, iron-founder and arms manufacturer. A partner of James Manning in the ‘Manning & Wells’ globe-making concern 1854-1855. For examples of work, see the entry for Manning.
Born at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, and baptised there 24 Mar 1819, the son of Edward Wells, innholder, and his second wife Maria Dewsnap (1786-1826), who had married in 1814. Apprenticed (Stationers) 6 May 1834 to the stationer William Farlow of Mitre Court, Temple, for a consideration of £5, paid by the charity by Christ’s Hospital, recorded as the son of the late Edward Wells, wine-merchant of Bath. In partnership with Henry Meredith as ‘Meredith & Wells’, booksellers and stationers, 1841, but imprisoned for debt in the Fleet in 1842. Papers relating to a court case brought by Wells in 1848 against William Chadwick and Ralph Patterson are in NA. Made free of the Skinners’ Company by patrimony 2 Jan 1849. He married Janet Bell (1826-1883), daughter of a City solicitor, with whom he had a number of children, at St. Matthew, Denmark Hill, 8 Oct 1852. A partner in ‘Manning & Wells’ with James Manning 1854-1855, until the partnership was formally dissolved 23 Apr 1855. Wells was already in a separate partnership with Joseph William Schlesinger at Northfleet, Kent, as an iron-founder and engineer, also manufacturing guns and ammunition, and then in much the same trade with Geoge Panton Bell, as ‘Bell, Wells & Co.’, still at Northfleet, until that partnership was dissolved 19 Aug 1857. In 1854, he applied unsuccessfully to the Gravesend magistrates to provide a special constable to guard the cartridge factory, where apparently up to 500 people, mainly young women, were employed (Maidstone Journal, 24 Oct 1854) — the factory was found to be just outside the magistrates’ area of jurisdiction. He subsequently returned to the stationery trade, recorded as a wholesale stationer in Aldermanbury towards the end of his life. He was riding with a volunteer regiment, the First Surrey Mounted Rifles, on 23 Jun 1860, when his horse reared and threw him on Westminster Bridge and then fell on him. He died of his injuries at the Westminster Hospital 28 Jun 1860, just three weeks after the birth of a son (St. James’s Chronicle, 30 Jun 1860). He was buried at Norwood Cemetery 4 Jul 1860. Probate on effects of under £9,000 was granted to his widow 13 Oct 1860.
Berwick Street, Pimlico
35 Nelson Square, Blackfriars Road (home) — 1841-1842
37 Haymarket — 1841
Nightingale Lane, Clapham Common (home) — 1852-1855
117 Goswell Road — 1855
Northfleet, Kent — 1854-1857
1 Aldermanbury — 1858-1860
Spring Lawn, Tulse Hill (home) — 1860
BNA. Census 1841-1851. LG. NA.