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Edward Thomas West  DENNIS: (“ETWD”)

Biographical details

(Note: the information in blue type comes from his obituary in the Scarborough Mercury Nov 23rd, 1923)

• The world of gambling as the world of art always brings pleasure both materially and morally. All this can be felt with aristocrat free download pokies 50 lions with just a couple of clicks on your device. ETWDs father was Jeffrey Dennis. He was a manager for 50 years at Nories , a London firm famous  for supplying books, charts, instruments etc for navigation Jeffrey married three times and his third wife Jemima West (b.1811) bore him 4 children    Ebenezer Henry West (b Jun 1841,Stepney, d 1898).( Ebenezer remained in London , but ETWD’s  sister, younger brother and his mother remained in touch ) Jemima Ellen West (b Dec 1844),  ETWDennis himself (1847) and  Frederick (1850). His father Jeffrey died in March 1850 (in Hackney.London)

• His obituary says that Edward Thomas West Dennis was born on September 4th 1847 in Stoke Newington. London. ( Birth certificate shows neighbouring West Hackney)

• In the 1851 Census Jeffrey’s widow Jemima was living with a Thomas West with ETWD and Frederick. There is no mention of ETWDs sister Jemima Ellen West

• His younger brother Frederick Gregory West Dennis was born in 1850 and later was a stationer in Scarborough with the firm of Dennis & Holloway. (see 1851 census entry for Thomas West)
• He was apprenticed for 7 years  to a bookseller stationer and printer in Ramsgate
• After his apprenticeship he was a librarian at Leamington for a couple of years (say 1868 to 1869), In late 1870 he  married his wife, Emily Jane Willifer , stated in the 1901 and 1911 censuses to have been born in Leamington
• In March 1870 he moved to Scarborough. In partnership with his brother-in-law Mr.Thomas.W.Case he bought the library and business of a Mr George Crosby. This included “The Scarborough Mercury” Later he bought out his partner and disposed of  “The Scarborough Mercury  (Thomas Wythe Case is listed in the 1851 and 1871 Censuses, he was married to Jemima, the sister of ETWD  She gives her first name in 1871 Census  as Ellen ,born in Islington, Mx. In the 1861 Census she was still living with her uncle Thomas West in Deptford)
• I  have an 1871 copy of “Dennis & Case’s”  Scarborough Guide.  (Excerpts below) . In it they mention  their shop at 83 Newborough St for books and fancy stationery. They also ran the Dennis & Case Bar Lending Library at 82 Newborough St. They also mention , “Dennis & Case’s  photographic views in great variety”.
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• Dennis later  ran a library, retail shop and branch shop at the Spa.
•  In the 1883 Dennis Guide to Scarborough a full page was given to  photographs for sale , for all GB locations. ( photographs with ETWD on them denote his copyright ownership). Given this photo trade background , it was  natural for Dennis to take up postcards, when they started in 1894. He did simple “Dainty” folded Easter cards and Xmas cards ,in 1892 certainly , they were reviewed in the stationers trade press.  This side of the business was minor.
• Dennis  greatly expanded the printing side of the business to such an extent that he needed new larger premises. Printing  became  his firm’s major occupation
•   In the London Gazette of Oct 17th 1893, notice is given of the partnership dissolution with his brother Frederick and it was stated that his printing business at Westmount was exclusively his. 1893 marks the start of ETWD’s  printing full time and the end of bookselling/libraries etc.
• In 1904 he had an office in London at Cheapside
•  His business became a Limited Company in April 1905

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• Up to 1914 , Dennis’s  premises were at Westmount, off Westborough.  (This Westmount Mews has long since disappeared, the remains of the old road entrance to it  is down below between Boots and Waterstones) . Where Westmount used to be, is now  a fire exit yard  from the back of Mecca Bingo, formerly the Capitol Cinema..

•    He was also at  the nearby 24 Vernon Road , the left hand part of No 24  is pictured in close up below .(Photo by permission of Cathy McBurney, Nekoglyph on Flickr).  The picture  shows that his name, painted on the left hand side brickwork of 24 Vernon Road , was still visible there in Dec 2013,  before its demolition. Clearly, the central part of this “ghost” painted logo had been protected from the weather by a hoarding.
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•   <<<Close up, on left…………..General view of No 24 on the right>>>

• The Logo on the left hand side of  No 24 (See close up picture) reads “ The / Dainty Series / E T W Dennis / &Sons Ltd / Printers &Publishers / Westmount/   Doorway   / Westborough / Press ”  The last word “Press”  on this logo is very faint and easy to miss.

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•    Probably Westborough Press, Westmount would have been the main  office/reception /printing part of the business, and with additional  printing done at  24 Vernon Road. The “& Sons Ltd” is  for the  Ltd company formed  in 1905). “The Dainty Series” name  was first used in 1903, for picture cards and was well established by 1904/05. The Edwardian craze for sending/receiving picture postcards exploded in 1903/04/05 and extra printing capacity would certainly have been needed then. Dating the sign to before 1903 makes no sense as the “Dainty Series”  trade name did not exist then. ( For post 1900 postcard details  on this  Dainty Series click on following link Post1900Dennis.htm. ) My best guess for date of this logo is 1905/1906, his firm was working flat out at that time  to satisfy domestic demand as well as exporting to Australia and New Zealand. At the least he would have needed extra storage space, in 1905/06
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•  Kelly’s  Directories shows that his address was Westborough Press, Westmount for 1897, 1909 and 1913. By 1914 he had moved to Printing House Square, Melrose Street where the firm stayed until 2000, when the business finished. By 1914 the business was a national one with offices in London & Scarborough. The Melrose Street premises were bombed and burnt out in March 1941 (rebuilt in the same year)
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•  He was enrolled as a Congregationalist, but in 1897 he joined The Society of Friends (Quakers). His sons all went to the Quaker School at Great Ayton. (His son, Herbert, became the headmaster there). He was a secretary to at least two Quaker Summer Schools, the 1903 one  in Scarborough and the Kirbymoorside  one in 1904.
•  (For a photographic souvenir of the 1904 Quaker Summer School  search for “Buttercross” Kirbymoorside 1904 in the web site  Flickr. This was attended by Joseph Rowntree and also ETWD)
•  He was a Gladstonian Liberal and contested a North Ward Municipal Election in 1905, which he won. (his opponent was Mr .S.C.Platts)
•  He died on 19th  November 1923, leaving his sons to run the business.( The 1881 Census shows that he had five sons in 1881, Edward.Willifer (aged 9),Frederick.Willfer (8), Ebenezer.Henry (6), Arthur.Meridew (4), Herbert  (less than one year) .His last (sixth) son Arnold was born in Sept 1885.. ETWDs  son’s name of  “Ebeneezer Henry”  is  possibly  a reminder of ETWDs elder brother, who had remained in London.
•  The 1911 Census reports  ETWD and his wife and his son Arnold (a Clerk of Works) in the same household in Scarborough
• His printing business in the 1890’s  concentrated on the cheaper end of the market. Helmfried Luers has found  a reference to him in a German  trade magazine for the art book trade, “Journal fur Buchdruckerkunst”, March 22, 1894. Dennis had submitted some examples of his colour printing to them.  They were  below the German standards of chromo lithography,  but they were  cheaper and quite pleasing . The Journal suggested that  German art printers  take note.
•  It would be good to have examples of his commercial art printing in the 1890’s. This clear connection with the German printing trade probably inspired him to produce British  PPC’s in 1894, a trade which was  developing fast in Germany at that time.
•  An example of Dennis’s cheap simple  limited colour printing is  the 1895 Whitby card, illustrated (somewhat faded, I regret)  . Link to firstgb.   Also  Dennis colour printed the Dennis&Holloway court cards
•  As well as printing his own PPC’s  in 1894 he also printed artist drawn PPC’s  for Cassell , of which a couple of examples for 1894 have survived.
•   In early 1898 he started publishing an extensive series of GB court cards with printed pictures  from photographs that he had taken (His initials ETWD  are on a lot of them). As an aside,  he must have also gone to the Sudan with the British forces for the 1898 Sudan campaign, Collectors of Sudanese cards have found some Sudanese PPCs published about 1902, with his initials in the photograph and published with the same style features as his 1902 UK PPCs. It is clear that a number of his Sudan photos used,  were taken in 1898., (one of them certainly the day after the battle of Omdurman.)
• He was printing and publishing greetings cards before 1894. I have seen a  trade magazine  reference to an Easter greetings card, pre 1894
• In the  1901 UK Census his age is given as 53, born in London and working as a printer and publisher. His son Edward was 29 ,born in Scarborough and working as a printer . Another son Ebeneezer was 26 and working as a printer and printer’s traveller (the description “jeweller” in the 1901 Census is definitely a mistake, it should be “traveller”!)
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•  The firm was always a national one and would always have been in any top ten list by size of GB PPC publishers
• There is a brief obituary in the “British Stationer” of December 1923. It finished “he leaves two sons to carry on” (these were Ebenezer Henry and Arthur Meridew)
• His son Ebenezer Henry became the head of the business when ETWD died in 1923.
• Most unfortunately the firms records were destroyed in a WW2 air raid

  There was a very close link between the British North East and Germany in the late 19th century, both for ship building and agricultural produce imports

  Hartlepool was a major port for the importation of German  foodstuffs. This 1885 postcard is typical of these links showing  twice a week direct sailings between Hartlepool and Hamburg. Picture cards were  well established in Germany by 1894 and this would have encouraged ETWD to produce picture cards for the UK

What would we like to know about ETWD?

• Photographs of E.T.W. Dennis would be very welcome,
• Details of his other printing activities would be interesting.

• Obviously any drawings or any other memorabilia would be interesting

                         Any further information welcome,  especially a good photograph and/or  examples of his 1890’s printing.     

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