Sheppard family (clothiers)
[1] First names of the Sheppard family occur again and again down the centuries: John, Edward, William, Thomas, Eleanor, Walter, George.
[2] Edward's eldest son, John, who as a minor inherited most of his father's property, became a cloth merchant in turn.
He built tenements on his land as well as being a substantial subscriber to the costs of building Sheppards Barton Baptist Church of 1707.
There is a tradition that before the completion Baptists met in his house at No 13 Catherine Hill (beside the steps coming down from Sheppards Barton).
He was a signatory to the successful Petition of 1713, in which Frome and other cloth towns protested about changes in duty brought about by the Peace of Utrecht that would have given French clothiers the edge.
[3] He died in 1720, leaving the greatest part of his property to his wife and four trustees to manage in trust for his eldest son, William.
[7]By the 1760s, a number of cottages[8][9] had been built to house weavers on land first leased to John Sheppard (c1614-1675) by the Champneys, part of his Catherine Hill complex.
[10] The word Barton derives from Old English bere (barley) and ton (enclosure) and is connected to Demesne, land belonging to the Lord of the manor.
In 1795 he expanded the factory at Rodden, introducing scribbling engines; these replaced the first process of hand-carding in sorting out wool fibres.
[23][24] In 1803 William complained to government commissioners of the difficulty of introducing a gig mill for treating the nap of cloth.
At a time of rising unemployment, in part because of the increasing mechanisation of cloth production, the price of potatoes provoked a riot in Frome in 1816.
Magistrates read the Riot Act and suppressed the trouble with local militia and dragoons, preventing an attack on a Sheppard factory.
He built two dozen cottages on Innox Hill for his workers, close enough for them to work irregular hours when required.
[32] In the same year he was one of those, alongside Thomas Bunn, who supported financially the emigration of Frome inhabitants to Canada as part of the work of a 'Committee for the Relief and Employment of the Poor'.
[33] His youngest sons, Walter and Alfred Byard never entered the family trade, the latter becoming an attorney and solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
At her death in 1838, he commented: "At our visit she received us in her garden with such kindness sweetness and affability that a friendship commenced without the shadow of a cloud from thence to the day.
Changes in fashion in part had caused the decline: the black shiny broadcloth which was their speciality was replaced by checked and patterned cloths.
His uncle Walter (1735-1814) bequeathed him his share of the cloth business (£30,000)[37] and he was able to become a man of independent means, finishing his education at Edinburgh University and taking up life as a writer and unpaid preacher.
[40] In 1871 John Sheppard made an address at the installation of the fountain in the Market Place, along with the donor Rev Boyle.
In 1848, by which time she had seven children, they moved into Fromefield House with George Sheppard senior, some ten years after the death of his wife, Mary Ann Stuart Byard.
The Temperance Hotel in the Market Place agreed to supply twopence of hot drink and bread and butter for a ticket-card given to local beggars; Emma reimbursed the costs.
This was circulated privately and gained so much attention that in 1859 as Mrs George Wood Sheppard, she expanded it into a book, "Sunshine in the Workhouse".
"[50] She noted the extreme cleanliness of existing workhouses, but astutely commented that they were ‘painfully spotless, making one almost shudder to think of daily scouring under the beds and feet of the sick and rheumatic’.
[51] She was distressed by "the monotonous rituals of cleaning.... which both disturb the bedridden inmates and potentially increase their rheumatic pain."
She proposed that a simple thing, such as replacing the tin mug used for drinking tea with a cup and saucer, would improve the comfort and dignity of the aged.
[55] In 1882 evidence from her writings were given before a Select Committee of the House of Lords on the law relating to the Protection of Young Girls.
He and his wife were frequently visited by Thomas Bunn, who was a fellow trustee of the Almhouses, Blue School, and Keyford Asylum.
[58] In 1852 the Reverend Wiliam James Early Bennett was installed as the vicar of St John's Church, Frome.
He soon upset many of his new congregation with the vehemence of his views, provoking many led by Edward Cockey, a local industrialist, to attend the Trinity Church instead.
In 1870 Thomas Byard Sheppard accused the vicar of heresy, charging him for maintaining and publishing doctrines contrary to the Articles and Formularies of the Church, regarding the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and other elements of Anglican theology, again in conflict with his bishop.
