Samuel Favell
When Samuel Favell died at the age of 70 in 1830, he was a relatively rich man, and able to leave a trust worth £2,000 (£199,000 at today’s values) for his wife Elizabeth to receive a comfortable income. Elizabeth also received his leasehold house in Camberwell along with all of its’ fixtures, fittings, furniture, linen, books, pictures, wine and other chattels and effects. Also, all his ‘plate’, except for special items for his sons and daughter. His gold watch chain and seals he left to his son John, the gold snuff box presented by the Corporation of Londonderry to his son Richard, and a silver urn and silver tea pot presented by the Irish Society to his daughter Caroline.
His son John also received Samuel’s share in the London Institution, Moorfields, and ten shares in the Union Fire Office, as did Richard. There were also Freeholds in Fenchurch Street, Walworth, Southwark, Peckham Rye and Covent Garden in trust to his son John and nephew Richard Boswell Beddome, with the proceeds of all rents, after expenses, going to his wife during her natural lifetime, and then to be divided between the sons and nephew.
For his daughter Caroline there was a sum of £5,000 in trust to purchase securities that would produce a 6 monthly income. There were also sums of £400 to be paid immediately to Elizabeth to cover the periods before rents would come to her, plus £1,000 to each son, plus all the capital money and stock in trade of Favell Beddome and Company of Fenchurch Street, with further instructions regarding for settling debts and collecting credits.
At his own request Samuel was buried in Bunhill Fields graveyard in the City of London, marked by a low granite cope stone that curiously claims that he was of Flemish descent. Perhaps from a female line?
Born in 1760, as a young man Samuel was an apprentice to his father, John Favell, a ‘Slop Seller’ of Tooley Street. Slops was the general term used for lower quality ready-made clothing that also included uniforms for the Navy.
His father John had himself served a 7-year apprenticeship as a Cloth Worker, becoming a Freeman of The Clothworkers’ Company in 1737. He had been apprenticed to a Daniel Jevon, a packer living in Tower Street, London. The young John was described as the son of William Favell of Tipton in Staffordshire. His occupation at the time he became Free of the Company was as a ‘Journey man to Mr Hunter’. John went on to become Master of the Company, serving for the year 1774.
Following in his father’s footsteps Samuel was made free in 1781, eventually becoming Master of the Company himself 1813. In the meantime, Samuel had married Sarah Bardwell in 1786 and they went on to have seven children, but only the youngest, Samuel junior, survived into adulthood. Within six months Sarah also died. In 1799 Samuel married again, to Elizabeth Beddome. They were married at Bourton on the Water where Elizabeth’s father was a Baptist minister. Beddome Fish & Co. were Woolen Drapers in Fenchurch Street, so it is probable that Samuel and Elizabeth met through trade association. They went on to have three children, John, Richard and Caroline, all eventually beneficiaries in his will.
Samuel junior, the son from his first marriage, followed in the family tradition, being apprenticed to his father, Samuel senior, becoming free in 1816. However, Samuel died just two years later aged just 23, explaining why he is not mentioned in his father’s will.
Samuels’s son John followed the same path in being apprenticed to his father, by now described as a Woolen Draper of Fenchurch Street, becoming free in 1827 and presumably going into business with Samuel.
As well as his trade associations with the Cloth Workers Company, Samuel was interested in Radical Politics and held sympathies with the struggles of the French Revolution and the possibilities of a Republic as opposed to a Monarchy. These views were not popular within the City Guilds and Samuel was at one point lampooned in the Times Newspaper with satirical pieces supposedly penned by ‘Sammy Slop’ about the ‘Southwark Slop Seller’ or ‘Moden Reformer.’
Later, these frictions seem to have been overcome and from 1809 to 1829 Samuel was a member of the Common Council of the City of London, the City Corporation that governed the City of London. Not forgetting he was the Master of the Clothworkers company in 1813 and would have been involved in the City Guildhalls. His Slops business obviously enabled him to invest in freehold properties and benefit from the rents accrued, acquiring him a tidy sum over the years.
However, he was a philanthropist as well as a businessman, and was one of the Founders of Mill Hill School, involved in the foundation of the Guildhall Library, the University of London, and the Sunday School Society.
He was a Deacon of the Camberwell Congregational Church and ‘worked untiringly for Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform, and for the abolition of the Slave Trade, and slavery, and the atrocious cruelties of the Criminal Law’ according to the history of Mill Hill School 1807 – 1923.
It seems that Samuel’s son John died in 1859, leaving no heirs and making no mention of his brother or sister in his will. Samuel’s fortune being amongst cousins and friends.
In late 2025 an antique bible, containing family tree information relating to Samuel, his marriages and children, appeared for sale on the auction web site Ebay. It may be coincidental, but around the same time several Favell family wills relating to the Yorkshire family, dating back to the 1600s also came onto the market via an entirely different seller. I wonder if they originated from the same source with family records being disposed of and possibly there is some link between the London and Yorkshire family.
As well as from other sources, much additional information has been gleaned from this web site.
Samuel had a brother, by the name of John. His life could not have been more different. Having travelled to Canada he worked for the Hudson Bay company and took a local wife, a native of the Cree nation. Their children are likely to be the ancestors of the Canadian Cree / Metis Favells