Elizabeth Pallett (or Pallet)

Thomas Herbert was originally employed as an errand boy in Pallett's scale makers business in Leadenhall Street, starting in about 1825 when he was aged 14.
 
A Tavernor Pallett had been apprenticed to scalemaker John Joy (trading 1698 – 1747) on 23rd April 1730, but we assume that he remained as a journeyman all his working life, as he is not recorded as the master of any apprentices.  He married Jemima in about 1738, and they had 8 children, the eldest being Thomas born in 1740.
 
Thomas Pallett I traded between 1767 and 1805, taking at least 5 apprentices, John Clifford (1771), Moses Bourbary (1773),  John Grout (1781), William Ogier (1788) and Thomas Smith (1798).
 
Thomas married Mary in 1773, and they had 10 children.  His second son Richard, born in 1780, joined the business and he married Elizabeth Mary Charlet, of French Huguenot descent, in 1803.  Thomas died in 1813, and in his will only his son Richard was mentioned in connection with the business.
 
Richard and Elizabeth had at least 4 children, but Richard died at the age of only 40 in 1820, and his widow ran the business on her own.  It was she who in 1825 first employed Thomas Herbert, whose father had been dismissed from his job as a tidewaiter 3 years earlier for dereliction of duty.  He had been ‘absent without leave from his station on board the ship Hopewell in the West India Docks the whole night of November 8th’.
 
In 1836 Elizabeth set up a new partnership M Pallett & Son with her son Thomas, who was then 25, the same age exactly as Thomas Herbert, who had now been in the firm for 11 years.
 
The following year 1837 Thomas Pallet II married Mary Ann Rowlerson, and then took over complete control of the firm in 1838.
 
Thomas Herbert left around 1842, and later took on two ex Pallett employees.
 
Catherine Pallett (b1837) married Thomas Joseph Greatrex (b1840) in 1876, and the firm became Greatrex & Pallett, but the business ended in bankruptcy in 1882.
 
 

 
Elizabeth Pallett (or Pallet)