According
to census returns and on his naturalisation papers Otto Alexander Berens was a
native of Russia. Other sources say he was from Prussia. Burial records give
his age as 63 in the undisputed year of his death, 1860, which would mean he
was born in 1797. In the 1851 census he claimed to be 49, shaving almost five
years off his real age but we know he liked younger women and in early middle
age he was probably reluctant to own up that he was in his fifties and ageing
rapidly. We don’t know when Otto came to England but by 1827 Otto was already a
respectable merchant. We know this from newspaper reports in November of that year which recount how he
was robbed by James Campbell and George Lewis, two “well dressed young men”
according to the Morning Advertiser who almost succeeded is cheating him out of
£171 15s 9d worth of stock. The newspaper reports that for some reason Otto
told the court at the Guildhall that he was a Frenchman (neither a Prussian nor
a Russian?) who ran a French Fancy warehouse in St Paul’s Churchyard. James
Campbell had approached him in the shop and presented him with the card of a
respectable and well known warehouse and claimed to be a travelling buyer who
wished to buy stock for the company for cash. He then chose goods to the value
of just under £172 (an absolute fortune at the time, more than enough to buy a
house) and asked for them to be packed up by the next day. The following day he
returned and asked for the goods to be taken to the Swan-with-two-necks, a
public house in Lad Lane, where he would pay for them. At the public house they waited for
Campbell’s partner to appear with the money but instead a letter was delivered
by the two penny post to Campbell. He showed the letter to Otto – the missive
from Campbell’s partner begged him to come to Tom’s Coffee House in Cornhill at
7pm prompt where the cash was to be delivered. Campbell apologised to Otto for the
inconvenience and set off immediately for Cornhill. Otto went back to his
warehouse in St Paul’s Churchyard leaving his large box of valuable goods with
a clerk in the public house. Needless to say when he returned at 8.00pm to
collect his cash there was no sign of Campbell and his box French Fancies had
disappeared. The clerk told Otto that almost as soon as he had left Campbell
had returned to the pub and claimed the box. Luckily for Otto the case had been
so heavy a coachman had refused to carry it and the clerk had been asked to
assist by procuring a porter with a waggon and drays. The clerk had heard
Campbell give the address in Lambeth the box was to be delivered to, to the
porter. Otto made his way there, collecting two police officers from the Surrey
New Road on the way. Campbell and his accomplice were caught red handed in he
act of unpacking the box in their lodgings. Alderman Smith, who was hearing the
case, told Otto that he “might think himself a most fortunate man ever to have
seen his goods again.” It was indeed, the Morning Advertiser pointed out, a
very narrow escape.
Otto
went into business with another German (if he was indeed Prussian, not Russian,
nor French), Ludwig Blumberg and the firm of Berens, Blumberg and Company moved
into impressive premises at 2-6 Cannon Street in the early 1850’s. Just before
they moved premises Berens and Blumberg were the victims of another robbery,
this time by an employee, 30 year James Pope, yet another “respectable-looking
young man” according the newspaper reports. James had been helping himself to
stock, quite possibly for some time, and disposing of it to Adolph Hirshfield,
a dealer in clocks and jewellery in Bishopsgate. Otto
was suspicious of Pope and when some clocks went missing he sent one of his
clerks around to Bishiopsgate to check Hirshfield’s shop. When the clerk
reported back that the clocks were there Pope and Hirshfield were arrested and
sent for trial at the Old Bailey. The
newspaper reports concentrate on the stolen clocks but the trial records show
that Pope had not confined his thieving to timepieces. Samuel Wood, one of Otto’s
managers, told the court how he had accompanied Pope to his home in Shrubland
Road, Dalston, where there was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of stolen goods; a
clock, two groups of alabaster figures, shades, and stands, a bronze group,
three or four pair of glass vases, five glass candlesticks, a china box, a
cigar ash tray, one pair of lava vases, three paste pots, and two pair of glass
toilet bottles. Many other items had already been disposed of but the repentant
Pope made out a full list of everything he had stolen from his employers in the
18 months he had been with them. At the
trial Pope pleaded guilty and Hirshfield was acquitted of receiving stolen
goods as there was no evidence that he had any idea that the 11 clocks he had
bought from Pope were not his own
property.
Otto
had a tangled private life. In 1828 he had made a young woman called Fanny
Esser pregnant. She had a son by Otto in January 1829 who was baptised John
Samuel Berens at St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street on 24 January (though this was recorded in
the parish records of St Gregory by St Paul’s, a church which had been
destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 but which continued a sort of virtual
existence as a parish operating out of St Mary Magdalen until that church was
also gutted in a fire, which spread from a neighbouring warehouse and destroyed
its roof in 1886). There is no evidence that Otto and Fanny were ever married
even though Otto gave her name as Fanny Berens to the parish clerk when Samuel
was baptised. How long he remained with Fanny is not known but it was not long because
in 1832 Otto married 19 year old Charlotte Busby, the daughter of a farmer from
Bicester in Oxfordshire. The marriage took place at St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish
Street, and was recorded in the parish records of St Gregory by St Paul’s by
the same clerk who had recorded the baptism of his son. It was also quite
possibly the same vicar who performed both ceremonies, no doubt with raised
eyebrows. Perhaps Otto felt uncomfortable living in the same area with his new
wife as his mistress and young son. In
the 1841 census the Berens’ were recorded as living in the Paragon at Ramsgate. The
couple had one son, Alexander Augustus Berens who was born on 1st Nov 1843, was
baptised at St Marks Kennington and probably never knew he had a younger
brother. In the late 1840’s the family moved to their final
home, Raleigh House on Brixton Hill. In 1855 Charlotte’s father died in the
Oxfordshire County lunatic asylum. Charlotte may have had her own mental health
issues and perhaps took to drink; she died of cirrhosis of the liver in January
1857 at the age of 44.
In
his excellent book “The Art of Memory: Sculpture in the Cemeteries of London”,
Richard Barnes says that Otto “commissioned and completed his own memorial two
years before his own death”, but it seems unlikely that a man given to lying
about his age was thinking about or preparing for his own imminent death. He
may well have always intended to join her there, eventually, but the spectacular
mausoleum in West Norwood Cemetery was surely created for Charlotte? There is other evidence that the 61 year old
merchant was fully focussed on living following Charlotte’s death. In September
the following year he married again, a woman half his age, the 30 year old Louisa
Cooke at St Matthews, Brixton. It was not destined to be a long marriage;
barely 18 months later Otto was dead, on the 15th April 1862, “after six weeks
acute suffering from spinal disease” according to the Morning Post. The final resting place he created for himself
and Charlotte is spectacular; the architect was Edward Middleton Barry, the son
Charles Barry (who designed Parliament), and the sculptor who created the
marble columns, angels and figures of the four evangelists which stand at each
corner was Thomas Earp. The pair had previously worked together to create the Eleanor
Cross which stands on the Strand in front of Charing Cross Station. Historic England’s Official Listing describes
the mausoleum:
I'm not sure whose coffin we are looking at here, it could be Otto's or it could be Charlotte's |
Chest tomb on
tall plinth above a vault. c1858 by E.M. Barry; sculptures by Thomas Earp. Pink
granite plinth, marble superstructure and Portland stone sculpture. Medieval
Italian style. Rectangular stone base on which the battered pink marble plinth
with a top frieze of Minton tiles carrying the letter B for Berens and a bear,
in punning reference to his name; doorway on western elevation now bricked up
but originally with bronze doors manufactured by Potter who also made
surrounding cast iron railings, now gone. Free-standing, paired barley sugar
columns surround the chest and support a foliated cornice; above each pair, a
sculptured kneeling angel holding a shield. At the angles the cornice rises up
to form pointed arch aedicules for figures of the 4 evangelists. Between the
columns, panels carved in deep relief showing scenes from the life of Christ;
eastern panel an open-work cross within a roundel. A further frieze of Minton
tiles, including a Latin inscription, under the eaves cornice with antefixae. Hipped
marble roof. All in a state of considerable decay. Berens was a linen draper of
St. Paul's Churchyard who made a fortune in the "fancy trade; the tomb was
said to have cost £1,500 and was illustrated in the Builder of November 1858.
Minton tiles |
Yet again, many thanks for such an instructive entry on this utter gem of a monument. Your research always yields great nuggets which are new to me.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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