Bradshaw & Blacklock

George Bradshaw was born at Pendleton, near Salford on July 29th 1801.  He was an apprentice engraver to Thomas Tonbridge of Market Street, Manchester before spending two years in Belfast where he attempted to establish a business, returning to Manchester when this did not materialise. 

He started trading from offices in Market Place before relocating to Cope's Court in 1830, where a year later he employed William Blacklock as an apprentice.  At this stage, the business was mainly engaged in engraving maps and in 1835 a letter-press department  was established.

William Blacklock, who was born in 1817, made such an impression within the business that he was made a partner before the age of 21.  In 1839, the firm of Bradshaw & Blacklock moved to 27 Brown Street, Manchester and from there began publishing the Bradshaw's Railway Guides for which it become so well known.

Initially Bradshaw's Guides and then pocket books, albums and Baxter process prints were also sold through the offices of W. J. Adams at 59 Fleet Street, London.  Bradshaw & Blacklock purchased a license from George Baxter around 1850 and published their first Baxter process print in 'Bradshaw's Guide Through London and its Environs' in 1851.  Bradshaw travelled to Norway in connection with one of their Continental Railway Guides, in 1853, where he contracted Asiatic cholera and died on September 6th 1853. He was buried at Christiania.  The firm continued producing prints by the Baxter process until at least 1856 and produced bobbin tickets by this method for about another forty years. 

Blacklock retired from the firm in 1857.

The decoration of small boxes of needles with a print on the lid was a very fashionable form of packaging in the 1850's.

A number of small boxes, often a set of ten, each holding packets of very fine sewing needles were contained within a larger box which also had a decorative print on the lid. 

Baxter printed eleven different sets of needlebox prints, his licensee Abraham Le Blond printed two, and most of Baxter's other licensees also produced some with Kronheim and Bradshaw & Blacklock being most prolific.

This typical example of Bradshaw & Blacklock's work has their print 'To Him' on the cover of the large box and one of the ten Swiss Scenes set repeated on each of the smaller boxes.