John Barrett was admitted as a bookseller at Oxford University in 1744. Our dates for John Barratt are 1770–1834. There is an obvious discrepancy, which affects my chart of the Barratt line. If John Barrett I was in his 20s or 30s when admitted to the university, then John Barratt II could hardly have been his son. I have made changes to the Barratt Family Tree as it appears in the GenesReunited website, introducing a hypothetical generation between the two.
My cousin Hilda wrote that our known ancestor, John Barratt, ‘appears on the scene publishing and binding 1799–1834’. Alas, we don’t know where she found this information, and it has been very difficult to track him down. However, on 3 September 2002, I received the following information from Simon Bailey, archivist at Oxford University:
The University Archives holds records relating to members of the University and, to a very limited extent, to ‘privileged persons’; the latter category including tradesmen, such as bookbinders. I have looked in Joseph Foster’s ‘Alumni Oxoniensis 1715–1886’
…There was a John Barrett, bibliopola (i.e. bookseller) who was admitted as a privileged person on 6 February 1744. A Thomas Barratt bibliopegus (bookbinder), was similarly admitted on 27 April 1798.
I think we can ignore the different spellings, Barrett and Barratt. An example of contemporary flexibility of the spelling of our name also appears in Anne Kemp’s Bible, where my great-grandfather writes his name as William Barrat and records my grandfather as William George Barret (though the latter is difficult to read).
In 1989 Tony Money, the Archivist of Radley College, Oxford, kindly provided information on Thomas Barratt, and others, who plied their craft of bookbinding in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Oxford. He quotes from several sources and describes a number of books in the great Bodleian Library.
Essays in Physiognomy, John Caspar Larater, citizen of Zurich and Minister of the Gospel. Translated from the French by Henry Hunter, D.D. London, 1789. Printed for John Murray. This book is stamped with a beaded oval and the words Barratt / Binder.
The Vicar of Wakefield, Dr Goldsmith, London, 1800. Printed by C.Whittingham, Dean Street, Fetter Lane, for T. Cadell jnr, W.Davies (etc.) The ticket in this book is Barratt / Binder / Oxford, from the middle one from the bottom row of the copperplate shown below. It is on the half-title.
Le Avventure di Saffo: Poetessa di Mitiline. Rome, 1793. Printed by Giuseppe Nave (Nare?), Mercante Librais al Corso. Various handwritten inscriptions. The ticket is the eight-sided one from the copperplate shown below.
Aristotelis Poetica (in the author’s own collection; possibly bound in morocco). Hexagonal (Money suggest octagonal more likely) ticket Barratts/Binder/Oxford.
Tighe, Psyche, 4th ed., bound in vellum, with blue silk endpapers. Plain oval ticket Black stamped oval beaded frame, Barratt. Junius, vol. 2, Russia, 1797. Ticket T.Barratt, Binder. Presumably seen at Marks, antiquarian bookseller, London.
Mr Money found references to other books with Barratt tickets or stamps in three other Oxford libraries:
The Bible in 6 vols, 1800 (New College, Wyatt).
Aristotle, De poetica, 1794 (Philosophy Faculty, Fowler). (Stamp.)
Quintilian, 1809 (Trinity College).
The Bible in 6 vols, 1800 (New College, Wyatt).
Aristotle, De poetica, 1794 (Philosophy Faculty, Fowler). (Stamp.)
Quintilian, 1809 (Trinity College).
I have a copperplate of six bookbinder’s tickets was said by my father to date from 1799. This ties in with Thomas Barratt, bookbinder at Oxford University from 1798. The admission seems to have been referred to elsewhere as a matriculation. Here is a computer scan of the copperplate, and a computer processed copy showing what the tickets would have looked like.
