Thank you Mike, Thank you Shera, Thank You Alberta.
Helping a friend out down sarfffffff
He has all his details, it appears he passed away in 1868 in Thomas Road, Aston, his occupation was given a clerks assistant, this somewhat puzzles my friend because Joseph was quite well off, must have had financial problems methinks.
I checked out the Coroners Rolls 1839/1875 in Birmingham last week but he was not on there alas.
There were death notices in two of the Birmingham Papers, the Arris's Gazzette and Post though.
Many thanks for your valued input, appreciated.
This is my friends input into Joseph.
My niggling doubt has always been the occupation on the death certificate “clerk to fishmonger” but then he was always been something of an enigma. He seems to have been from a fairly well-off family in Nottinghamshire but I am fairly sure he must have been orphaned. I know that he was born in Bulcote, near Nottingham about 1814 and was bought up by his aunt, Sarah Beecroft – the wife of a substantial Nottingham hosier called Nathan Hurst, a partner in a firm called Heard & Hurst of Nottingham, London and Brooklyn, NY. Nathan Hurst was also a Baptist preacher, which I suspect is why that I haven’t found a record of Joseph in the C of E parish baptism registers. Nathan seemed to have used his influence to get Joseph apprenticed to local provisions merchant and tallow chandler and presumably helped set him up in business in West Bromwich. Joseph’s cousin, Nathan Hurst Junior, was Sheriff of Nottingham in 1845-6, and travelled to West Bromwich the following year to act as witness at Joseph’s wedding. In 1851, Joseph was doing well employing 2 assistants, a porter, 2 house servants and an apprentice – this was his cousin, Charles Beecroft who later founded the Nottingham firm of Beecroft’s Toys (which still exists as an Internet business). I know that Joseph had moved to Birmingham by 1858 but I suspect that he ran into difficulties because by 1859 he was back in Nottingham with a smaller scale business and then moved to Aston around 1863. Whether these moves were as a result his business going down I don’t know but perhaps he eventually did end up working for someone else.
Dibs.