Author: BETHNAL GREEN
Title: A List of the Churchwardens, Overseers, Select-Vestrymen-Governors, and other Officers of the Parish of Saint Matthew, Bethnal Green, in the County of Middlesex, for the Year 1826. Robert Brutton, Vestry-Clerk.
Description: Bethnal Green: Bertrand, Printer, 1826. Broadside, 445 x 280 mm. rather ragged, with a horizontal tear. One of the named Guardians of the Parish Poor Children is Joseph Merceron, a businessman, property developer, parochial politician and magistrate notorious for his corrupt practices.> another his loyal henchman Peter Renvoize. The story of Bethnal Green under the malign control of Merceron is told by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in The Rule of the Boss in their book "English local government, from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act." [1906] For a brief period, following an audit of the parish accounts, Merceron resigned his position, only to be re-elected. Following further attempts against him, led by the Rector Joshua King, here named, he was eventually imprisoned for fraud. Within a month of his release from prison he had again regained control of the vestry, and with his son in law as vestry clerk, the open vestry was abolished. His control of the vestry was now absolute. At the time of his death he had amassed £300,000, though he always appeared in poor circumstances, and his funeral established a template for East End gangsters with 20,000 attending. Merceron's Bethnal Green was chosen by Dickens as the home of Bill Sikes and his prostitute partner Nancy in Oliver Twist. In a bizarre twist of fate, although the church itself has been destroyed twice in the intervening years, by fire in 1859 and enemy action in 1940, the only graves in the churchyard to survive the bombing of 1940 are those of the Merceron family, and that of his accomplice Peter Renvoize.

Keywords: Ephemera


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