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Page 34 - pp-Suter-Miscellany
P. 34

    The Royal Institution in Albermarle Street, little
                                    changed externally from when the Solomons’ lived
                                                    within a stone’s throw.

                                  Suter, born in  India in 1864, was not  yet  even in  his
                                  teens when the Solomons firm ceased to be.  He must
                                  have had his microscope by 1887, well after the demise
                                  of  the  Solomons  firm:  by  then,  and  probably  before
                                  then,  he  was  at  5  Highweek  Rd.,  Tottenham  –  still
                                  school teaching, but advertising in Science Gossip, in

                                  October, seeking specimens.

                                  So: why did he have a Solomons instrument?  I suspect
                                  the  answer  may  lie  with  Suter’s  father’s  association
                                  with  the  printer  and  lithographer  Isaac  Joseph.    Isaac
                                  moved  to  Highweek  Road,  Tottenham,  from  inner
                                  London around the same time as the Suter family, and
                                  his  daughter  was  a  bookbinder’s  apprentice  there,
                                  almost  certainly  under  Richard  Suter  senior:  I  think
                                  Isaac was the printer for our mounter’s labels at no.5,

                                  and  then  no.10,  Highweek  Road  (although  I  cannot
                                  prove  it).    While  still  in  London,  Isaac  probably
                                  acquired  Solomons  instruments  via  connections  with
                                  local Jewry, possibly from Solomons’ deceased estate:
                                  knowing  of  young  Richard  Suter’s  interest  in  things
                                  scientific, a microscope then was given or sold to him.
                                  That is speculative, of course: Richard Suter may have
                                  bought  the  instrument  in  a  second  hand  shop,  or  his

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