Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/455

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. 415 and who, as an instrument of the Government, had procured the execution of Hardie and his companion at Glasgow in the winter of 1819 20. Richmond laid the damages that his character had sustained at the absurd figure of five thousand pounds, but Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, to whom the defence was entrusted, so thoroughly exposed the antecedents and present means of livelihood of the plaintiff that before the trial was over he was absolutely fain to withdraw his action and elect to be non-suited. In 1837 Baldwin and Cradock failed, and handed over the country connection they had derived from Crosby, to Simpkin, Marshall and Company. This occurred on the October "Magazine day" of that year; for three days and three nights the partners and their assistants never left the establishment at Stationers' Hall Court, and Baldwin's country clients were so pleased that they had been spared so much expected delay and annoyance that one and all resolved to keep their business in the hands of their new agents ; and with this addition to their trade, the business relations of Simpkin, Marshall and Company were now infinitely beyond anything that even Crosby had before experienced. In 1855, Richard Marshall retired from the business, and consequently, the management of the concern remained almost entirely in the hands of Mr, Miles's two sons. Marshall died at the ripe age of seventy-five, on the I7th of November, 1863, In 1859 the premises were rebuilt and enlarged, and every possible improvement, to save trouble and economise time, was introduced into the new establish- ment. Among the gentlemen who had been employed in the old warehouse was Mr. F. Laurie, a barrister-at-