Philip Rundell

Background

He was the son of Richard Rundell and his wife Ann Ditcher, born into a large family, and baptised at Norton St Philip, near Bath, Somerset. His siblings included Francis Rundell the actor-manager, a sister who married a Mr Harpur and was the mother of Elizabeth Bannister the actress, Thomas Rundell of Bath the surgeon who married Maria Ketelby the writer, and Elizabeth who married the mercer Thomas Bigge (the elder, died 1791). His great-nephew Joseph Neeld, who inherited more than half his fortune, was grandson of Susannah Rundell who married John Bond.

Business life

Rundell was apprenticed, and went into the London goldsmith's business Theed & Pickett. It became Pickett & Rundell in 1781. The firm had a major showroom at 32 Ludgate Hill, "at the sign of the Golden Salmon", in the period around 1768 to 1785. They retailed goods made by others such as John Emes. They had manufacturing subsidiaries, one run by Benjamin Smith (and for some years Digby Scott) in Greenwich, and another by Paul Storr in Dean Street.

Retirement, death and legacy

Philip Rundell withdrew capital from the firm in 1823. He died in 1827, leaving a fortune that went off the probate scale, which stopped at £1,000,000. The residual estate, after bequests to the sum of £500,000, went to Joseph Neeld, about £800,000.

Money left to the Bigge family was reported to have exceeded £100,000; according to James Losh, writing in his diary after news of the death, the bequests were some compensation for having had to put up with a "tyrannical miser". The Gentleman's Magazine reported that Rundell, unmarried and without a home, liked to spend his time with his Brompton niece (i.e. Maria Bigge, who had married Thomas Bigge) or Elizabeth Bannister, another niece.