Here is James Archer’s standard form for customers to sign on completion of their removal.
The form is headed “Depository New Road”. So, this is, to me, an entirely unknown warehouse. New Road, Oxford links Queen Street and Park End Street, including (in my young days) County Hall and Oxford Castle (now the Malmaison Hotel) and Nuffield College (with its copper-clad roofs). And I recall that James Archer appears in several censuses at a New Road address. Need to look those details up. Need also to try to work out where on New Road, James Archer’s depository was . (7.8.17). No doubt the building may have entirely disappeared by now.
Then comes the firm’s standard “Road-Rail” logo with an ‘Archer & Co’ road-rail van (meaning a wagon suitable to be horse-drawn on the road and to stand (as it is shown doing) on a railway flat-truck for long-distance rail transport. The logo is very ‘stylised’ in a (to me) Heath-Robinson manner, showing (perhaps significantly) James Archer’s sense of humour, which might have contributed much to his success.
And the text of the form says:
“Received of Messrs Archer & Co, the carriers, in good order and condition, at….(space for manuscript entry on the removal day by the customer, in this case: (something or other - I can’t read the handwriting) House
“the whole of the General Household Furniture and Goods of which they had the charge for removal to that place from:
…..(space for manuscript entry of the name of the place from which the removal was made, and again I cannot read the writing, but it looks like: ‘Daybefored’)
“Dated:” ….(and in this case the date of April 16th 1872 has been entered);
And there is a space for the customer to sign, and in this case the signature looks like: ‘JL Winter'