Deeper Research Into Thomas Paine In Upper Marylebone Street Confirms The “154 New Cavendish Street” Theory

Now 154 New Cavendish Street – formerly 7 Upper Marylebone Street

Thomas Paine really did stay and write at The Rickman’s house between 1791 and 1792. That house is now 154 New Cavendish Street. Following the Thomas Paine Historical Association & English Heritage’s rigorous examination of my previously posted theory, my further research has proved the theory beyond doubt. Here is the story of that further research.

Readers might remember my open letter to the Thomas Paine Historical Association and English Heritage in July 2025:

Thomas Paine Lived & Wrote At 154 New Cavendish Street: Evidenced

In late January 2026, Adrian F Tawfik from the Thomas Paine Historical Association (TPHA) placed a comment on the above piece, suggesting that we liaise over this matter. We exchanged correspondence and had an interesting, collegiate-style Zoom.

The upshot was, the TPHA was willing – keen even – to support my bid for an English Heritage Blue Plaque, as long as we could uncover enough evidence to prove my theory categorically. The notion that “the Horwood Plan must contain an error” seemed insufficient to the TPHA without more evidence.

Through my miniscule network of archivists (I’m not a seasoned historian), I was put in touch with the Howard de Walden Estate archive, where I found a warm welcome, plus a cornucopia of interesting documentary evidence from the late 18th century.

Not least, plans drawn up by John White, c1800, for The Portland Estate (subsequently Howard de Walden Estate) as the basis of lease books. The numbering in these “John White Plans” accords with the numbering from the early 20th century (when my family lived at No 4 – the house shaded red and white), including the period in the 1930s when Upper Marylebone Street was absorbed into New Cavendish Street.

Thomas Clio Rickman’s Publications All Show The Address As “7 Upper Marylebone Street” Or Simply “Upper Marylebone Street”…But…

The mystery started to unravel when I decided to search the British Newspapers Archive for Thomas Clio Rickman’s name and did not restrict the date range to the late 18th century.

I found an article in the Worthing Herald of 26 October 1926, which republished an historical extract from the paper June/July 1791, including:

A Poet’s Advertisement (July 4th 1791), THOMAS CLIO RICKMAN

Takes this method, respectfully to inform his numerous friends, acquaintances and the public that he has entered into business, and to hand them his card…

….No. 4, Upper Marylebone-Street, London, Thomas Clio Rickman, Bookseller and Stationer…

Not No. 7 – No. 4.

Something twigged in my distant memory. I’d seen reference to Clio at No. 4 before. My slightly lazy gene kicked in and I asked Claude (other AI agents are available) to seek out other references to Thomas Clio Rickman at No. 4 Upper Marylebone Street.

ME: Can you find any additional references to Thomas Clio Rickman living at No 4 Upper Marylebone Street for me to delve – I have only found one.

CLAUDE: I have to be candid with you: the online sources are not yielding any additional references to Rickman at No. 4. The searches keep returning the same body of material, and the No. 4 reference appears only in the Barb Jacobson Fitzrovia News article — which is, of course, precisely your problem, since she uses it to argue the wrong conclusion. Your 4 July 1791 advertisement appears to be a genuinely rare primary source with very little online echo.

This was a eureka moment for me. Of course Barb Jacobson’s 2010 article mentions No. 4 Upper Marylebone Street- it was precisely because I was searching for information about No. 4, the house in which my father was born – that I found Barb’s article and started on this Thomas Paine journey of my own. To quote from that Barb Jacobson article:

The mis-identification of 154 New Cavendish may have come about because there is one letter from Rickman published in Joshua Reynold’s correspondence which gives his address as No. 4 Upper Marylebone St, the present 154, one of the three original Georgian terrace houses left. This is, however, the only document among dozens of others which gives Rickman’s address as No 7.

I needed to delve into that Joshua Reynolds reference. A bit of searching and I find the relevant book on the Internet Archive – here’s a link to the reference:

• From Thomas Rickman
• No. 4 Upper Marylebone Street
• July 19 – 1791

Bingo! Both of the No 4 Upper Marylebone Street references were in July 1791. All subsequent written references to the exact address (October 1792 being the earliest) say No 7.

I took a deeper look at the history of the Horwood Plan. Matthew Sangster’s fascinating article about it is linked here and below:

Introducing Horwood’s Plan (1792-99)

In short, for our purposes, the first page of the Horwood Plan was mapped between October 1790, when Horwood published his prospectus-type small sample – the area around Leicester Square – and June 1792 when he published the first full page of the plan. Part of Upper Marylebone Street is at the very top right hand corner of that first page. Horwood must have done the mapping (including the house numbering) of Upper Marylebone Street during that period.

Not a mistake then, just a diligent record of the state of affairs at a particular date in the very early 1790s. The three un-numbered units on the north-east corner of that street were presumably still under construction. Renumbering will have occurred in the aftermath of that completion.

A visit to the Westminster Archive to examine the rates books for the Parish of St Marylebone confirmed my theory. To summarise:

• 1788 – Upper Marylebone Street is not listed;
• 1789 – Upper Marylebone Street is listed but no-one with a Rickman connection is shown;
• 1790 – No 4. Upper Marylebone Street’s rates are attributed to Sarah Wall, Jane Greetham Rickman (née Wall)’s mother. The first five listed for that street are as follows: No. 1 – John Higgs, No. 2 – Samuel Harper, No. 3- Joseph Kendrick, No. 4 – Sarah Wall, No. 5 – Joanna Boyle…
• 1792 – Upper Marylebone Street appears on a surcharge page with the following entries: 1- Benjamin Williams, 2 – Joseph Moby, 3 – John Crooks, 56 – John Higgs
• 1793 & 1794 – Upper Marylebone Street listings show the first three entries with blobs rather than numbers. here is the 1794 extract: * – William Goundry, * – Joseph Mobey, * – John Crooks, No. 1- John Edwards, No. 2 – Thomas Higgs, No. 3 – Joseph Kendrick, No. 4 – Sarah Wall, No. 5 – Joanna Boyle…
• 1795 – Upper Marylebone Street listings settle into the house numbering system that prevailed until the 1937 change to New Cavendish Street: No. 1 – J. Hickery, No. 2 – John Wingh, No. 3 – John Crooks, No. 4 – John Edwards, No. 5 – Thomas Higgs, No. 6 – Joseph Kendrick, No. 7 – Sarah Wall, No. 8 – Joanna Boyle…
• 1800, similarly: No. 3 – John Crooks, No. 4 – Richard Quash, No. 5 – Thomas Higgs, No. 6 – Joseph Kendrick, No. 7 – Sarah Wall, No. 8 – Joanna Boyle…

Just in case the reader is baffled by the Sarah Wall connection, here is a link to the Family Search record for Jane – Thomas Clio Rickman’s second wife, who died in 1811. One charming factoid about the Rickman children is that Clio and Jane named each of their children after a well-known radical, revolutionary or anti-slavery campaigner, apart from one later child whom they simply named Thomas:

• Maria Jane Paine Rickman, b 1791
• Clio Alfred Washington Rickman, b 1793
• Eloisa Franklin Rickman, b 1794
• Rousseau Loft Rickman, b 1796
• Volney Rickman, b 1797
• Petrarch Rickman, b 1799
• Thomas Rickman, b 1801
• Stanhope Rickman, b 1803
• Eloisa Rickman, b 1807.

The senior historian at English Heritage has been delightfully challenging yet open-minded to all of this. Fascinatingly, the original application for a Blue Plaque, in 1983, was not rejected because of the confusing changes to house numbering in that street, but because the applicant couldn’t provide evidence that Thomas Paine had stayed and written in Upper Marylebone Street at all, nor even that Thomas Clio Rickman had lived there, as they seemed unable to connect the name Wall in the rate books with the Rickman family. On-line genealogy websites had not been invented in 1983.

The Thomas Paine Historical Association had a plethora of references to Thomas Clio Rickman and Thomas Paine at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street and I was able to add to those. In addition to several mentions in contemporaneous biographies to the fact that Thomas Paine had stayed at that house, one delicious piece of evidence, very much in the public domain, is the self-indicting testimony that Thomas and Jane gave in the famous Old Bailey High Treason Trials of 1794, while Thomas Hardy was in the dock for the first of the trials.

Here is an extract from Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 1 November 1794, reporting on the events of Thursday 30 October:

Old Bailey High Treason 30 October 1794 1 Nov 1794 Jackson’s Oxford Journal (Oxford, Oxfordshire, England) Newspapers.com

Both Clio and Jane must have been incredibly brave to give this testimony, although under English law, with no Bill of Rights / Fifth Amendment type protection, silence would have been even more self-incriminating. As we now know, Thomas Erskine‘s smart defence prevailed.

So there you have it – sufficiently evidenced. The house that was briefly No. 4 but soon became No 7. Upper Marylebone Street for nearly 150 years, before becoming 154 New Cavendish Street today, is the very house where:

THOMAS PAINE 1737–1809 Political writer and radical wrote Rights of Man in 1791–92 while lodging with his friends THOMAS ‘CLIO’ RICKMAN 1761–1834 and JANE GREETHAM RICKMAN NÉE WALL 1764-1811, booksellers, publishers, and reformers, who lived there from 1791 and c.1790 respectively, and both died in that house.

That was not easy. I could do with a coffee.

Aha!

Cracked Coffee – 154 Upper Marylebone Street