The Diary of Nathaniel Bryceson Revisited

[avm228]

avm, I'm  a bit ignorant about how land tax works...does that mean that they owned their rooms? Or did they pay tax for rented rooms? Great find however it works.

I have to admit I don't know either. The whole of Richmond Buildings is listed as Crown Land so they were clearly tenants but whether that meant the Crown paid the tax or the tenant did I have no idea

[deb usa]

Hummm ...Edward GullaM, of Richmond Buildings was buried Dec 18, 1851 (St George Bloomsbury) ...must have been a sad time at no. 9 that year.  

[deb usa]

Doesn't it seem strange that Ann G would be the informant when Uncle John and Nat were living at No. 9? Maybe they were both at work at the time Matthew died.

I wonder if they were all living in the same 'room' ... imagine Nat with his Uncle and Step father all under the same roof!

[avm228]

Doesn't it seem strange that Ann G would be the informant when Uncle John and Nat were living at No. 9? Maybe they were both at work at the time Matthew died.

Or maybe tending to the dying was "women's work"? (Whilst the men went down to the pub...)

[deb usa]

ahhhh That would explain it! 

[alpinecottage]

some info on land tax;  looks like tenants were listed, though I suspect the owner was responsible for payment and clawed the tax back in the rent.

Land Tax Records (1692-1963)
     

    Land Tax was introduced in 1692 and lasted until 1963
    This tax was administered at local level and based on a tax quota for each parish which did not vary
    Land tax assessments annually list property owners and their tenants
    Most of the surviving land tax assessment records in Record Offices relate to the period 1780 to 1832
    Land tax assessment records for the whole of England and Wales (apart from Flintshire) for the year 1798 can be viewed at the National Archives at Kew

[deb usa]

The Land Tax records are very interesting ... I have been going through them as Dean Street seems to be on the same pages as Richmond Buildings ... No siting of the Shepards yet. Where is Mary (Shepard) Bryceson in 1841? ... the census was taken 20 days before she married Matthew ...she has to be somewhere. 

[Aniseed]

Thanks very much for that, alpinecottage, that's very interesting. I'd never heard of it before. Are there any land tax records online? What a wealth of information.

Presumably Mary Shepard can't be too far away if she's met Matthew. Unless she'd gone to visit country relatives before her wedding (although I don't think people had much free time for holidays in those days).

[alpinecottage]

Thanks very much for that, alpinecottage, that's very interesting. I'd never heard of it before. Are there any land tax records online? What a wealth of information.

Apparently  Ancestry and Findmypast and possibly familysearch (to name just a few) have some records online, but only for specific years and/or places.  Looks like there is much potential for more records to be included in the paying sites' record sets.  I also read that most of the tenants named are male, though I don't know about widows, single women etc.  Perhaps women don't usually feature because they didn't usually live alone