ZAPP, Frederick William (1842-1897) — London
Lithographer & printer. As ‘Zapp & Bennett’ produced George Washington Bacon (see BME 2011), New map of London & suburbs, showing main thoroughfares, railway stations &c. 1887, “prepared expressly for the ‘Intelligence Quarterly’”. Also known for portraits and commercial work.
Born 15 Oct 1842, at 8 Rupert Street, Whitechapel, and baptised Friederich Wilhelm Zapp at the Lutheran church of St. George, Little Alie Street, Goodman’s Fields, the son of Frederick William Zapp (1806-1860), grocer’s porter, and later a tea dealer, and his wife Jane Margaret Fiddes (1804-1860). Apprenticed without fee (Stationers) to the printer Matthew Collis of Bow Lane 13 Jan 1857. Zapp later became manager both for Collis and his successor Edmund Albert Reeves (1842-1896), a son of James Reeves (see BME 2011). He married Elizabeth Ubly (b.1844), the daughter of a Kensington fishmonger, at St. Anne Limehouse 14 Oct 1865. Reeves transferred the Bow Lane business to ‘Zapp & Bennett’ — Zapp and another former employee, John Bennett (b.1843) — in 1880, with a £1,000 final instalment of the purchase price being paid in April 1886. Zapp was resident in Bow with his wife, seven children, and his mother-in-law in 1881. Describing themselves as “printers to the trade”, the partners were advertising both for experienced hands and boys to work for them, as well as for small second-hand lithographic stones in 1882. A fire at the premises of ‘Zapp & Bennett’ in Rose Court, Bow Lane, causing considerable damage was reported in the London Evening Standard 1 Oct 1886. The ‘Zapp & Bennett’ partnership with John Bennett (b.1843) was formally dissolved 31 Jul 1890. Bennett has not been further traced and by 1891 Zapp was recorded as a toy and fancy dealer, living in Leyton with his wife and nine children. His son Frederick Henry Zapp (1867-1891) had become a printer. Zapp died in the second half of 1897.
13 Newbolt Street, Commercial Road (home) — 1870-1871
62 Eglinton Road, Bow (home) — 1876-1888
52a Bow Lane, City — 1880-1890
— and 61 Cheapside — 1888
11 Station Road, Leyton (home) — 1891
377 Commercial Road (home) — 1893
47 East India Dock Road (home) — 1894
BNA. Census 1871-1891. Hyde. LG. ROLLCO. Tooley.