William Miller Christy (1778–1858) was an English

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

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, England, which is designated the A1213. It is home to a number of shops, restaurants, and offices and has an entrance to Leadenhall Market, ...

, 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, ...

and

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

, 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 originated in the Bank of England, arising partly from speculative investments in Latin America, including the fictitious country of Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in Britain, where it led ...

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 (), first recorded in ancient India, 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 ...

business, in Stockport and then

Droylsden Droylsden is a town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England, east of Manchester 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 mid-19th cen ...

. The enterprise later made a major success of the

Christy towel Christy (also known as Christy UK and Christy Towels) is a manufacturer of household linens and is known as the inventor of the first industrially produced looped cotton (terrycloth) towel. It was founded in 1850 in the English mill town of Droyls ...

. 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 top ...

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 Woodb ...

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 Victorian era, late-Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to t ...

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Christy, William Miller 1778 births 1858 deaths 19th-century English businesspeople English bankers English Quakers British milliners