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Joseph Austwick can be found in the 1830 edition of Pigot’s Directory for Budleigh Salterton.  He had retired to the town in June 1821 from his position in London as one of the directors of Thomas Russell & Co., the main carriers of goods between Exeter and London but, as we will see, he left under suspicion of defrauding the company (1), later proved correct.

Joseph Austwick was a Devon man who started his career as an accountant with the company in Exeter.  The brothers Thomas and Robert Russell had run a carrier company in Exeter from the 1750’s, and from 1786 Thomas Russell and Co. were offering a daily carrier service between Exeter and London and continued to do so most of the time before the railway arrived in the West Country.  Austwick was financially very astute and devised the accounting system for the firm.  The route to London was divided into three sections or districts and different directors were responsible for the horses, wagons and goods transported through their own segment of the route.  Austwick was moved to London which was the most profitable district and there he kept the books, looked after the cash payments and receipts, and organised cartage and delivery of the loads.

In July 1816 Austwick and his partner Edward Maddeford purchased the London District operation for £876 each, although initially they only advanced £500 each.  There were apparently many disputes between the directors responsible for the segments of the route to the West, one of the principle causes for dispute being what proportion of the fee for each load should be paid to the directors of each segment en route.  Austwick was known as a man determined to derive maximum profits for his District and was also known for his intemperate language and irascibility.  Gerhold tells us that Austwick was also an asthmatic who found the smoke in London bad for his health and his main aim seems to have been to make money quickly so that he could retire to the country, which he did when he moved to Budleigh Salterton, with his wife Elizabeth, in 1821.

When he left, his co-director Maddeford found that Austwick had perpetrated a fraud.  In 1817 Austwick had made two unwritten agreements with The Royal Mint to carry new silver coins to country banks and bring back the old coins.  He apparently concealed the second agreement from his partners and pocketed £1,725 of the payment made by The Mint for the service.  A Chancery suit between Maddeford and Austwick began in 1821(2) but it wasn’t until 1826 and 1827 that judgement was made against Austwick (and he even then managed to delay final resolution of the dispute).

When Austwick died in the late summer of 1838 he owned a considerable amount of property in East Budleigh and Budleigh Salterton including a house, office and garden where Palmer’s Court now stands, a house and garden at the top of Fore Street Hill beside Elvestone, a house and garden in Kersbrook which I believe to be the present Kersbrook Lodge (where his widow was living in 1842), and several fields at Vision Hill and Long Copp; he also owned property in London in Islington and St. Pancras, plus Chambers in King’s Bench Walk, Temple (3,4).  After his death he appears to have owed several people money because there was a law suit running from 1839 to 1842 involving plaintiffs “Thomas Walters and all other unsatisfied creditors of Joseph Austwick deceased” against Elizabeth Austwick and Thomas Hickman, and the Ship Inn at Tavistock is mentioned (4).

Compiled by Roger Lendon © 2009

(1) Much of the information in this article has come from the excellent book entitled “Road Transport before the Railways: Russell’s Flying Waggons” by Dorian Gerhold. Cambridge University Press 1993
(2) National Archives: Maddeford v Austwick 1823 & 1824
(3) Tithe apportionment for East Budleigh
(4) National Archives: Accounts in Walters v Austwick.
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