- Also known as
-
Gabriel Shire Tregear
-
primary name: Tregear, Gabriel Shire
- Details
- individual; publisher/printer; British; Male
- Other dates
- 1828-1840 (fl.)
- Address
- 123 Cheapside, London (1828 to 1833) - on the western corner of Wood Streeet
96 Cheapside, London (1834-40)
(sometimes refrred to as his 'Comic Print Shop')
- Biography
- Print publisher; specialised in social satires of hand-coloured lithographs. Christian names from Dorothy George; first recorded in her index in 1828, worked into late 1830s.
The Scotsman, 2 April 1828, p.213, reported: Crowds at Printshop Windows a Nuisance - Guildhall, March 20. - Mr Deputy Oldham addressed Mr Alderman [John] Ansley, soon after he had taken the chair, for the purpose of obtaining his assistance in preventing the inconvenience which has arisen from the establishment of a print-shop in Cheapside, at the corner of Wood-street. He said he was attended by a number of the respectable inhabitants of Cheapside, who complained that this shop had become a great nuisance. They did not complain of the nature of the prints that were exhibited, but of the selection of such a situation for the business, for the lives of not only those who stopped to gaze, but of those who had to pass the shop, were frequently in danger. As early as ten o'clock that morning he was, with Mr [Thomas] Helps of Cheapside, looking at the premises, and the crowd looking at the window in Wood-street extended one-third part over the carrieage way. The obstruction in Cheapside must be regarded as a nuisance, but in Wood-street, in and near which an immense deal of business was transacted, it was perfectly intolerable. Mr Alderman [Matthew] Wood said he frequently drove through Cheapside, and had repeatedly seen persons compelled to step off the pavement to pass the crowd about this shop. Foster, the marshalman, said, there was something worse than the obstruction going on at this shop window, which he would not speak of more directly. Mr Payne, the clerk, read a passage from the Act, that persons incommoding, or annoying, or obstructing the free passage of the foot or carriage way, subjected themselves to a fine of £5. McLean, the Cheapside, constable, was then instructed to prevent any obstruction of the footway either in Cheapside or Wood-street, where a single file of gazers would be an annoyance."
The name 'T Tregear' appears on a print in the collection (1868,0808.9033), but this is probably a mistake in the lettering.
Ann Tregear, probably his widow, was in business as a printseller in Cheapside with Thomas Crump Lewis in 1844 (bankrupt in that year).
- Bibliography
- One print refers to his catalogue of prints, but this has not yet been found
www.bbti.bham.ac.uk
Information from Helen Smailes
