When I visit the parish church in our next village in north Oxfordshire, Adderbury, I always take a moment with a handsome monument in the graveyard to Jonas Griffin, “London Salesman”, who died in 1850. Judging by the number of large houses in the village, Adderbury has always been relatively prosperous.
I’m intrigued by the monument because London in the early nineteenth century was at least two days ride from our part of the world. So what could Jonas have been selling?
And intrigued by the proud description of the man as a salesman. Of course, the word has changed the nuances of its meaning in the intervening century and a half. Very few nowadays would wish to be remembered by that handle. Even in my own lifetime, the word has come to be used less and less (along with “secretary”). Yet, though we may not like it, we are all salesmen or saleswomen to a greater or lesser extent.
So what did Jonas Griffin actually do?
Having googled him, I discover that he bought and sold cattle, and that he was associated with William Welch, who owned the cattle market at Southall in Middlesex (not quite London in those days). Would the cattle have been driven on their final journey from Southall to Smithfield Market in the City of London?
Then, rather shockingly, I find that he was imprisoned at Oxford Gaol by the Court of Insolvent Debtors in 1850, the year that he died. What can have gone so wrong? Did he catch typhoid or something like it in prison? And, given the circumstances, how could his family have afforded such a fine memorial to him?
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