PLYMOUTH |
The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History |
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Thomas Nicholson was born in Plymouth Dock on March 14th 1803. He was the son of Mr Benjamin and Mrs Ann Nicholson, a watch maker turned grocer. With his brothers, the eldest of which was the Reverend Samuel Nicholson of How Street and George Street Baptist Chapels, Thomas was educated at the Quaker's School in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. Upon leaving school he started an apprenticeship with an ironmonger in Exeter. When he had completed that he went to work at an ironmonger's in Southwark, London. He left that job and became a cashier at the offices of the London Morning Chronicle newspaper, which Mr Charles Dickens was editing at the time. In 1842 Mr Nicholson returned to Plymouth and joined the British and Irish Sugar Refinery in Mill Street. His business qualities were soon recognised and the directors offered him their agency at Cork, in Ireland. After three or four years there he returned to Plymouth as the agent for the City of Cork Steam Packet Company and soon gained the agency for the Bristol Steam Navigation Company as well. This business he ran on his own until 1888/1889, when he took Mr W H Webb as a partner and the business became Messrs Thomas Nicholson and Company. Mr Nicholson's energy was still not fully exploited, however, and in 1846 he became a partner with Mr John Burnell and Mr Eldred Roberts Brown in a wholesale grocery and tea dealers business that had been running at number 4 Bilbury Street since 1797. The firm became known as Messrs Burnell, Brown and Nicholson. Mr Burnell retired in 1853 and twelve months later the two remaining partners amalgamated with Messrs Daniel Millward and Joseph Wills at the Abbey Stores, Finewell Street, and continued as Messrs Brown, Wills and Nicholson. In 1859 he was elected to the Town Council to represent Charles Ward and in 1868 he was elevated to Alderman. He helped to found the Catte Street Ragged School and was one of 45 residents summoned for not paying their School Board rate because he objected to the money being used to fund denominational schools. Mr Thomas Nicholson died at his home, number 7 Alfred Place, Plymouth, at 10am on the morning of Friday January 30th 1891. Some weeks earlier he had sustained a fall while descending the stairs at the Victoria Soap Works, of which he was a director, and his condition had steadily worsened. He was buried at the George Street Baptist Chapel burial ground. He had been married twice, first to a Miss Martha Mursell and later to Miss Louisa Treby, the daughter of a Plymouth shipbroker. He was survived only by one of his sisters, Mrs Tucker, of Totnes.
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