John and Mary Stephenson's last child, Maria Ann, was baptised at St Dunstan in the West, close to their house on Fleet Street, in 1741 and died within a year; but any other children they had were born elsewhere. At the time of the baptism (and burial) their address was Bolt and Tun Alley but, as this is part of Boar's Head Alley/Court/Passage, it was probably the same house they lived in later. Thomas, their only other known child, would have been about eight or nine when they moved as, in 1746, he was apprenticed to Hammond Beaumont. Nearly twenty years later, in 1765, he was granted his freedom of the city, although he would have long since finished his apprenticeship. The apprenticeship papers show that Hammond Beaumont was a freeman of the wheelwright's livery company, but this was in name only, as he was actually a surgeon, as Thomas went on to become. The papers also make to clear that, while his father, John, was described as a 'gentleman of St Dunstan in the West',  Thomas was a 'poor child' of the parish and the £20 fee was paid by a charity, which remains something of a mystery, given John's apparent later wealth. Surgeons were becoming a much more respected occupation at this time, with the surgeons breaking away from the barbers in 1745. Some fashionable surgeons charged as much as £200 when boys were apprenticed to them, but the fee paid for Thomas suggested that Hammond was not at that end of the market. Thomas would have moved in with the Beaumont family who lived very near his parents, in Fa(u)lcon Court, further along Fleet Street. In 1750, less than four years into Thomas' apprenticeship, Hammond died, so a man called Charles Maxwell took over as Thomas' master.(Note 3) Charles Maxwell lived in the same street as Hammond, so Thomas would not have had to move far, and was described as an apothecary, going on to be a Liveryman of the Society of Apothecaries. In 1749, while Thomas was his apprentice, there is a reference to Hammond Beaumont, apothecary of Audley St so, with both masters described as apothecaries, it may be that Thomas is the Thomas Stephenson, apothecary and chemist in the 1770s, whose calling card now resides in the Prints and Drawing Room of the V & A Museum. If apprentices accompanied their masters when they worked then Thomas would have witnessed a scene in 1751, shortly after he had changed masters, when Charles Maxwell was asked to attend a man who had died following an argument in King's Bench Walk, just south of where they lived. His testimony in the court case gives some idea of the level of medicine involved:

''Charles Maxwell . I am a surgeon : On Wednesday was se'night, about half an hour after ten o'clock, I was call'd to bleed the deceas'd in the Temple, where I found him lying insensible. After I had bled him I sent for another surgeon, and we agreed to lay the scull bare ; there we found a breach about an inch long above the temple bone, and likewise a depression on the right side the head. I apprehend that fracture was the cause of his death.''

 

Thomas married Deborah Coleman in 1763, witnessed by his father, John, and a Mary Stephenson, presumably his mother. He and Deborah had three children, all baptised at St Sepulchre in Holborn: Maria Ann, Elizabeth and John Gascoigne Tomlinson, but Elizabeth appears to have died as a child. As, many years later, Deborah described herself as from Holborn, we can assume they lived there for several years; but Thomas had died by the time John was apprenticed in 1781, so it was his mother who put him forward, paying £11 of the £16 fee herself, but relying on a charity to pay the rest. It is not clear why she needed this support as, when John's grandfather died two years later in 1783, he left everything to his second wife and his grandson, John Gascoigne Tomison (sic) Stephenson. John G T's share was 4 guineas as mourning and a further £100 in South Sea annuities, so the family was far from poor. Whatever the reason originally (possibly that Thomas' mother had just died) they were clearly no longer a 'poor family of the parish' if, indeed, that was any more than a technicality. As John was only about sixteen when his grandfather died, he would not have inherited the money immediately, but he would probably not have expected the tangled mess of relationships that followed. Following his father's death, his widowed mother had married a well-to-do tailor, Charles Dallman, with a number of grown up children of his own. When he died in 1798, he left money for his wife, Deborah, but passed on most to his own children. When Deborah herself died, she divided her estate between her surviving children, John and Ann Maria, as one would expect. John would probably not have lived with his mother again, but she was close enough to visit.

 

John's grandfather's death led to a more puzzling set of circumstances. He had remarried in 1778, late in life, to a younger woman, and had left her some money which would pass to John (jun) when she died. Shortly after her husband's death, in 1784, she married a 'doctor in physicke' called Augustus Frederick Ledumotte who lived in Islington. Given his occupation, it's possible that he was a friend of Thomas Stephenson, although the evidence suggests Thomas had died before Augustus moved to London. This mysterious man had previously married in Durham (Note 4) and remained a married man, having lied to his family about why he was going to London. Apart from the appearances in 1780 (Leidemit), 1781 (Leideanit), 1782 (Leidemit) and 1784 (Ledumotte) he cannot be found anywhere else in England, although he seems to have died in Berlin in 1840. In 1786, Isabel moved up to Durham where she married the widowed father of Augustus' first wife! She must, by now, have realsied that her marriage was invalid; but whether she found this out in London or Edinburgh is not known. What Isabel's marriage did mean, though, is that John had to wait until 1804 before receiving his grandfather's legacy. (Note 5)

 

In 1781, two years before his grandfather's death, John had become apprenticed to Charles Downes, a map engraver and, as his later engravings show, he was a talented engraver. Although Downes was not a sea chart specialist, that became John Stephenson's area of expertise. In 1790 he was engraving for John Hamilton Moore but two years later he had started his long relationship with William Heather and later, William's successor, John William Norie. William Heather was clearly an important figure in his life, signing his freedom papers (through the wheelwrights) and then acting as a witness to John's first marriage in 1796 in Lambeth to Ann Girton. John re-married - to Louisa Wells - in 1805 in the same parish, so had probably lived in Lambeth in the intervening years. There are two children born a John and Mary Stephenson, in Lambeth (William in Dec 1796 and Mary in 1798) but, as neither an be traced after those dates we have no way of known if they are their children; or if they survived. There is also a burial for an infant Thomas, son of John Stephenson, in 1798 in nearby Southwark, which would make sense if John was naming a child after his father. Otherwise nothing is known of John's life until he moved to Bethnal Green.