Wheatstone & Co. Concertina Ledgers
Directory
Resources in the Concertina Library
for the Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers.
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Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers on the Web
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by the Horniman Museum
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Historical business records from C. Wheatstone & Co. are held at the
Library of the Horniman Museum in London. The earliest ledgers from the Wayne Archives
contain company sales records from the late 1830s to the 1860s (though with some
large gaps) along with production records from the 1860s to the 1890s and some
early records of wages and other payments. Later ledgers from the Dickinson Archives
contain production records from 1910 to 1974, again with some gaps. All known ledgers
have been digitized (some 2,300 pages in total) and made available free on this website for
private research.
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Posted 15 April 2003; Updated 15 June 2005
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» go to website
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Serial Number Muddle in Early Wheatstone Ledgers
- by Wes Williams
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A major contribution to the muddling of serial numbers in the early ledgers is that
multiple ranges of serial numbers are in use at any one date, and this is further
complicated by instrument exchanges and hires. The multiple ranges begin as a feature of sales
before 1850, but after that the multiple range-lines dominate the structure of sales,
with many simultaneous ranges extended over longer periods. Scatter-plots of
serial numbers and dates transcribed from the Wheatstone Ledgers reveal the pattern.
This is a preliminary version dealing only with the
first four ledgers (to early 1854); the completed article will appear soon.
- Posted 15 December 2005
- » read full article
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Serial Number and Date Indexes to the Wheatstone Ledgers
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Directory
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Indexes listed on this page contain serial numbers and dates from
the Wheatstone Ledgers at the Horniman Museum, London.
Each item listed is a single index (either serial numbers or dates) to a single ledger.
Indexes lead to the ledger identification and page number as
a live link: click on it to see the colour photograph of the page from which the
information was taken. There is also an
automated lookup which finds all records for any single serial number
throughout all the indexed ledgers.
(Only indexes to nineteenth-century ledgers are yet completed. Additional indexes
to the twentieth-century ledgers will be listed here as they are published.)
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Posted 15 December 2005; updated 01 February 2006
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» go to directory
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Serial Number Lookup for Wheatstone Ledgers 1830s to 1890s
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by Robert Gaskins and Wes Williams
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A quick lookup for serial numbers in Wheatstone Ledgers covering the late 1830s to early 1890s;
type in a single number and receive a report on all its occurrences in the ledgers.
Includes ledgers C104a, C1046, C1047, C1048, C1049, C1050, C1051, C1052, C1053,
and C1054. The record for each serial number entry gives its date (if present)
and a live link to the photograph of its page in the online ledgers.
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Posted 01 February 2006
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» go to lookup
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Buy the Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers on CD
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by the Horniman Museum
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Buy a personal copy of the entire website on a single CD-ROM, including high-resolution
color photographs of every page of every ledger in the collection of the Horniman Museum,
London.
THE WAYNE CONCERTINA MUSEUM ARCHIVES (twelve ledgers):
C104a: Numbers 0001-1500 (1834-1849)
C1046: Sales 1839-1848 (0016-1495)
C1047: Sales 1851-1852 (0057-5740)
C1048: Sales 1852-1854 (0056-7089)
C1049: Sales 1854-1856 (0052-8452)
C1050: Sales 1856-1857 (0015-10416)
C1051: Sales 1857-1859 (0350-11075)
C1052: Sales 1859-1864 (0019-12152)
C1053: Sales 1864-1870 (0016-18883)
C1054: Production 1866-1891 (18061-21353)
C1055: Payments 1845-1846
C1056: Payments 1848-1849
THE DICKINSON ARCHIVES (five ledgers):
SD01: 1910-1923 (English, Duet, Anglo, 25000-29749)
SD02: 1923-1937 (English, Duet, Anglo, 29750-34449)
SD03: 1937-1974 (English, Duet, 34450-37083)
SD04: 1953-1974 (Anglo, 55492-59498)
SD05: Sid Watkins's Last Daybook (June 1972-Dec 1974)
The same material is available free on the web at www.horniman.info.
Includes an introduction to the project by Margaret Birley, Keeper of Musical Instruments at
the Horniman Museum, and an article by Robert Gaskins describing in detail how the ledgers
were digitized.
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Posted 15 June 2005
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» go to website
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Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: the Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835–1870
- by Allan W. Atlas
- This study looks at the 978 women for whom there are 1,769 transactions—about 12% of the
total—recorded in nine extant Wheatstone & Co. sales ledgers that list the firm’s day-to-day sales
from April 1835 to May 1870. It is in two parts: (1) an Introduction, which analyses the data presented
in the Inventory from a demographic-sociological point of view and places Wheatstone’s commerce
with women into the context of its business activity as a whole; and (2) the Inventory (with
three appendices), which lists every transaction for each of the 978 women, identifies as many of them
as possible, and offers a miscellany of comments about both the women and the transactions.
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle v. 39 (2006). 239 pages.
Briefly,
the roster of Wheatstone’s female customers reads like a list of Victorian England’s rich-and-famous:
the Duchess of Wellington and 146 other members of the titled aristocracy (more than twice as many
as their male counterparts), the fabulously wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts, members
of the landed gentry, and such mainstays of London’s musical life as the guitarist Madame R. Sidney
Pratten, the organist Elizabeth Mounsey, and the contralto Helen Charlotte Dolby, as well as a large
number of Professors of Concertina.
- Posted 21 March 2007
- » read full article
Do you know another resource that we should include?
Tell us about it.
Reprinted from the Concertina Library
http://www.concertina.com
© Copyright 2000– by Robert Gaskins
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Louis Lachenal signs for cash received 1849, in a Wheatstone & Co.
ledgerat the Horniman Museum.
Links to related documents
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Wheatstone English Concertina Pricelists
- collected by Chris Algar
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Most of these pricelists were found in old concertina cases. From internal evidence it is
possible to date the lists c. 1915 to c. 1965 (plus one very early pricelist dated 1848,
from the collection of the Horniman Museum, and a list published as an advertisement
in a trade directory in 1859). These lists contain information about Wheatstone
model numbers and descriptions which are useful to interpret the Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers.
See also Duet pricelists from Wheatstone.
See also Anglo pricelists from Wheatstone.
- Posted 15 May 2003
- » go to directory
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Wheatstone Anglo Concertina Pricelists
- collected by Chris Algar
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Most of these pricelists were found in old concertina cases. From internal evidence it is
possible to date the lists c. 1910 to c. 1965. These lists contain information about Wheatstone
model numbers and descriptions which are useful to interpret the Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers.
See also English pricelists from Wheatstone.
See also Duet pricelists from Wheatstone.
- Posted 15 February 2003
- » go to directory
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Wheatstone Duet Concertina Pricelists
- collected by Chris Algar
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Most of these pricelists were found in old concertina cases. From internal evidence it is
possible to date the lists c. 1910 to c. 1965 (plus one very early pricelist for Double duets c. 1850).
These lists contain information about Wheatstone
model numbers and descriptions which are useful to interpret the Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers.
See also English pricelists from Wheatstone.
See also Anglo pricelists from Wheatstone.
- Posted 15 February 2003
- » go to directory
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Calculate Modern Values of Historic Concertina Prices
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by Randall C. Merris and Robert Gaskins
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“How much would that be in new money?”
An interactive calculator to convert sterling values from any
year 1830–1999 to the equivalent value in the year 2000.
The calculation preserves the relation between the chosen value and
“average earnings” for the two dates; this method makes it
appropriate for converting wages and capital sums, and also for
expensive discretionary products such as concertinas. The calculator deals
with both “old money” (prior to 1971) and the later decimalized
currency. It is especially useful for understanding historical documents such
as old advertisements and pricelists, and the sales prices and wages
recorded in the
Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers
from the Horniman Museum.
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Posted 01 January 2005
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» read full article
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Horniman Museum
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the Horniman Museum
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The Horniman Museum in London is home to the largest collection of concertinas
(more than 600 instruments) and much related archival research material. A
photographic directory
of concertinas in the collection is available on the site.
The Wheatstone Concertina
Ledgers at the Museum have been digitized and are online
at a separate website.
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Posted 15 April 2003
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» go to website
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