William Miller Christy (1778–1858) was an English

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

hat and textile manufacturer, known also as a banker. He is credited with the invention of the penny receipt-stamp.

Life

He was the second son of Miller Christy (1748–1820) and Ann Rist. The Christy family had a hat-making business at 35

Gracechurch Street Gracechurch Street is a main road in the City of London, the historic and financial centre of London, which is designated the A1213. It is home to a number of shops, restaurants, and offices and has an entrance to Leadenhall Market, a covered ...

, and Christy himself was apprenticed to a hatter.ELGAR: Electronic Gateway to Archives at Rylands, ''Papers of W. M. Christy & Sons Ltd''
/ref> The firm developed manufacturing interests in

Bermondsey Bermondsey () is a district in southeast London, part of the London Borough of Southwark, England, southeast of Charing Cross. To the west of Bermondsey lies Southwark, to the east Rotherhithe and Deptford, to the south Walworth and Peckham, a ...

and

Stockport Stockport is a town and borough in Greater Manchester, England, south-east of Manchester, south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and north of Macclesfield. The River Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. Most of the town is within ...

, and Christy was a founder of the London Joint Stock Bank. In 1824 he was a founder of Christy, Lloyd & Co, the Stockport and East Cheshire Bank, with Isaac Lloyd and two other partners. The immediate challenge of the

panic of 1825 The Panic of 1825 was a stock market crash that started in the Bank of England, arising in part out of speculative investments in Latin America, including an imaginary country: Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in Britain, where it led to ...

was handled with the support of Hanbury & Co., the bank's London associates. The bank was sold in 1829, and Christy acquired capital, with which he entered the

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus ''Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor perce ...

business, in Stockport and then

Droylsden Droylsden is a town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England, east of Manchester city centre and west of Ashton-under-Lyne, with a population at the 2011 Census of 22,689. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, in the ...

. The enterprise later made a major success of the Christy towel. In 1841 the Christy Bermondsey works was reputedly the largest manufacturer of hats in the world and had 500 employees; silk coverings for hats were made in Stockport, and the factory there had more workers. The business dropped off later in the century, as the

beaver hat A beaver hat is a hat made from felted beaver fur. They were fashionable across much of Europe during the period 1550–1850 because the soft yet resilient material could be easily combed to make a variety of hat shapes (including the familiar to ...

went out of style.

Family

Miller married Ann Fell, and they had seven sons and three daughters. The second son was

Henry Christy Henry Christy (26 July 1810 – 4 May 1865) was an English banker and collector, who left his substantial collections to the British Museum. Early life Christy was born at Kingston upon Thames, the second son of William Miller Christy of Woodbin ...

Notes

External links

Christys' London
* ttps://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/manchesteruniversity/data/gb133-wmc W. M. Christy and Sons Ltd. Archive

John Rylands Library The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a late-Victorian neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to the public in 1900, was founded by Enriquet ...

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Christy, William Miller 1778 births 1858 deaths English businesspeople English bankers English Quakers British milliners