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All kinds of liquids and a large variety of merchandise were stored and transported in kegs and barrels. These included beer, wines, spirits, vinegar, oil, water, sugar, flour, salt, bottled wines, cement, linens biscuits, gunpowder, colour, potash, mustard, candles, tallow, soap, butter, currents, raisins, figs, rice, almonds, fish and oysters. Consequently, coopers and their ancillaries the hoop benders, were needed on the spot for both new and repair work.

It is almost certain William Gander worked for the firm of Edward Eades (see Appendix II), based at Waterside, Wandsworth, between 1812 and 1819, when his children were baptised [and 2 buried] in All Saints. Precise dates of when he started, and eventually "left", are not available but the firm is recorded there as early as 1802. It probably opened up a branch in Upper Thames Street in the City sometime between 1814 and 1820 and where William and his family eventually moved to. This firm also had other premises at Hermitage, Wapping at this time.

harles Booth gives a detailed description of hoop benders and their work in his Life and Labour of the People of London published in 1903, as follows:-

'These are a very small body of men in London. There are certainly not 50 of them. The largest house in the trade has not more than 8 workmen. All those employed are men and their business is to bend split wood into hoops to put round casks or barrels either as truss hoops or to cover iron ones, or in some cases as a substitute for iron, Underwood, generally hazel or ash of ten years growth, is cut by the woodman and assorted for length and then handed over to other country labourers to split and shave. After this it is ready for the benders, and comes to London (and elsewhere) in bundles of different sizes known as "Fourteen feets,"

(CONTINUED)

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