1800. Sir William Staines, mayor. He began life as a bricklayer's labourer, and by persevering steadily in the pursuit of one object, accumulated a large fortune, and rose to the state coach and the Mansion House. He was Alderman of Cripplegate Ward, where his memory is much respected. In Jacob's Well Passage, in 1786, he built nine houses for the reception of his aged and indigent friends. They are erected on both sides of the court, with nothing to distinguish them from the other dwelling-houses, and without ostentatious display of stone or other inscription to denote the poverty of the inhabitants. The early tenants were aged workmen, tradesmen, &c., several of whom Staines had personally esteemed as his neighbours. One, a peruke-maker, had shaved the worthy alderman during forty years. Staines also built Barbican Chapel, and rebuilt the "Jacob's Well" public-house, noted for dramatic representations. The alderman was an illiterate man, and was a sort of butt amongst his brethren. At one of the Old Bailey dinners, after a sumptuous repast of turtle and venison, Sir William was eating a great quantity of butter with his cheese. "Why, brother," said Wilkes, "you lay it on with a trowel!" A son of Sir William Staines, who worked at his father's business (a builder), fell from a lofty ladder, and was killed; when the father, on being fetched to the spot, broke through the crowd, exclaiming, "See that the poor fellow's watch is safe!" His manners may be judged from the following anecdote. At a City feast, when sheriff, sitting by General Tarleton, he thus addressed him, "Eat away at the pines, General; for we must pay, eat or not eat."
In 1806, Sir James Shaw (Scrivener), afterwards Chamberlain, was a native of Kilmarnock, where a marble statue of him has been erected. He was of the humblest birth, but amassed a fortune as a merchant, and sat in three parliaments for the City. He was extremely charitable, and was one of the first to assist the children of Burns. At one of his mayoralty dinners, seven sons of George III. were guests.
Sir William Domville (Stationer), mayor in 1814, gave the great Guildhall banquet to the Prince Regent and the Allied Sovereigns during the short and fallacious peace before Waterloo. The dinner was served on plate valued at £200,000, and the entire entertainment cost nearly £25,000. The mayor was made baronet for this.
In 1815 reigned Alderman Birch, the celebrated Cornhill confectioner. The business at No. 15, Cornhill was established by Mr. Horton, in the reign of George I. Samuel Birch, born in 1787, was for many years a member of the Common Council, a City orator, an Alderman of the Ward of Candlewick, a poet, a dramatic writer, and Colonel of the City Militia. His pastry was, after all, the best thing he did, though he laid the first stone of the London Institution, and wrote the inscription to Chantrey's statue of George III., now in the Council Chamber, Guildhall. "Mr. Patty-pan" was Birch's nickname.
Theodore Hook, or some clever versifier of the day, wrote an amusing skit on the vain, fussy, good-natured Jack-of-all-trades, beginning—
"Monsieur grown tired of fricassee,
Resolved Old England now to see,
The country where their roasted beef
And puddings large pass all belief."
Wherever this inquisitive foreigner goes he find Monsieur Birch—
"Guildhall at length in sight appears,
An orator is hailed with cheers.
'Zat orator, vat is hees name?'
'Birch the pastrycook—the very same.'"
He meets him again as militia colonel, poet, &c. &c., till he returns to France believing Birch Emperor of London.
Birch possessed considerable literary taste, and wrote poems and musical dramas, of which "The Adopted Child" remained a stock piece to our own time. The alderman used annually to send, as a present, a Twelfth-cake to the Mansion House. The upper portion of the house in Cornhill has been rebuilt, but the ground-floor remains intact, a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of the last century; and here are preserved two doorplates, inscribed "Birch, successor to Mr. Horton," which are 140 years old. Alderman Birch died in 1840, having been succeeded in the business in Cornhill in 1836, by Ring and Brymer.