The late 18th Century: John Ingram and Charles Hunt

Image: A dome-lidded quart (left) and dome-lidded bellied quart (right), made by Ingram and Hunt, Bewdley pewterers in the late 18th century.

[Image from: Bewdley Museum]

The firm’s Order Books for 1803 to 1805 show that the business manufactured hundreds of different products and are listed in Homer and Hall’s study of the industry (p86 – 87). The range of items included chamber pots, bracket candlesticks, ink stands, shaving cans, ear syringes, fifty different type of spoon, soup ladles, ice moulds, candle moulds, mustard pots, butter boats, pepper boxes, tooth powder boxes, wine strainers, diddy bottles and urinals!

Much of the trade passed through major wholesalers. Links with Birmingham were important where one man, William Wallis, took 10% of the firm’s output. Items also went to Ireland and the USA and in 1806, 50 gross of spoons were dispatched to Smyrna, in the Turkish part of the Ottoman Empire. The diversity of product and range of customers indicate that the firm of Ingram and Hunt was highly sophisticated. By 1800 turnover was £6,000 a year, evidence that Bewdley continued to operate a highly successful pewter industry, despite a decline in parts of the industry elsewhere in Britain.