View of London showing London Bridge and St Pauls, 1751

Establishing a legal career

Samuel remained on Great Eascheap, growing up there with his parents and his older half-siblings, Thomas and Maria.

At the age of 15, he began his journey toward becoming an attorney. Under the Act of 1729, aspiring attorneys were required to serve a five-year apprenticeship, known as "articles," under a practicing attorney [37]. In December 1791, Samuel was articled to Frederick Smith, an attorney of the Courts of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, and a solicitor of the High Court of Chancery. As part of the agreement, Frederick Smith pledged to instruct Samuel in legal practice, while Samuel’s father provided his son with clothing, lodging, and food throughout his apprenticeship [4].

After serving as Smith’s clerk for five years, Samuel applied to the Court of Common Pleas in January 1797 to be admitted as an attorney. His admission involved making a sworn statement, registering with court judges, and posting a public notice at Westminster Hall. After passing a required test, he was officially sworn in as an attorney of the Court of Common Pleas on the 23rd of January, 1797 [4] [37]. At the time, the distinction between "attorney" and "solicitor" was minimal, with the latter term gradually replacing the former. Throughout his career, Samuel was referred to by both titles.

The Court of Common Pleas had jurisdiction over "common pleas", where the King had no interest. In practice, it meant they handled cases between private citizens, particularly those involving debt and property disputes [38]. As an attorney of this Court, Samuel worked directly with clients and managed litigation procedures, as opposed to a barrister who presented cases in court [39]. Following his admission, Samuel established his own legal practice on Great Eastcheap [9] [10]. 

Court of Common Pleas, Westminster Hall, 1808

On the 2nd of December, 1797, he married Mary Spencer Chapman at St Giles-in-the-Fields. Present at the wedding and performing the function of official witnesses were Mary’s father, Edward Thomas Chapman, and Penelope Chapman, who appears to have been his partner (to use modern language) [5].

St Giles-in-the-Fields Church, Holborn. 19th century engraving

The couple’s first child, Edward Thomas Collyer, was born 10 months later on the 7th of October, 1798, by which time they had moved to Surrey Square in Newington, South London, although they baptised Edward in Samuel's home parish church of St Clement Eastcheap [6] [40].

It is at about this time that we have the earliest recorded case that Samuel worked on, in January 1799, where he represented a patten-maker named Mr. Bridger in a bankruptcy proceeding. Mr Bridger worked on Crooked Lane, just off Great Eastcheap, where Samuel worked. As Bridger’s solicitor, Samuel would have petitioned the bankruptcy commission to permit Mr Bridger to declare bankrupcy, unless it was a hostile bankruptcy that had initiated by Mr Bridger's creditors. Once approved by the Lord Chancellor, the bankruptcy process ("the commission") for Mr Bridger would have been run by a commissioner, an independent appointee with powers similar to a magistrate, who took executive decisions and the commission solicitor, who would have done the work in administering the process. The commission solicitor could have been the bankrupt's solicitor if it wasn't a hostile process and Samuel could certainly have acted in this capacity [41].

Bankruptcy law at the time was a notorious minefield, with complex and contradictory legislation. Samuel's duties as an attorney would have included providing legal advice to the bankrupt, managing meetings with creditors, preparing legal documents such as affidavits, corresponding with various parties of the process, and involvement in the seizure and liquidation of the bankrupt's assets [41].

Only a few months after taking the Bridger case, Samuel’s father passed away in June 1799 [42]. In his will, he left Samuel his blue lapelled coat and a silver watch [43]. The rest of Thomas’s "wearing apparel", money, household furniture and his stock in trade as a barber, were left to Samuel’s half-brother Thomas, while his mother, Sarah, inherited the remainder of the estate and continued to reside on Great Eastcheap [44].

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In 1800, Samuel and Mary had another child, Sarah Penelope, and moved to Miles’s Lane on Upper Thames Street, close to Great Eastcheap.

​Since 1785, attorneys and solicitors were required to obtain an annual certificate of admission to practice [39]. Samuel obtained such a certificate in 1799 but not for the years of 1800 and 1801 [10] [13]. 

The reasons are unclear but, by June 1801, he was imprisoned for debt at Poultry Compter, a small prison on Cheapside that was primarily used for minor criminals and debtors [8]. Ironically, given Samuel's work in helping bankrupts to avoid prison, solicitors were not considered to be traders and, so, were ineligible for bankruptcy protections, allowing them to be incarcerated for insolvency [45] [46].

Due to its size, Poultry Compter did not segregate its debtor prisoners from other prisoners, so Samuel would have been in holding with vagrants, prostitutes, drunks and men arrested for homosexuality. The prison was known for its harsh conditions and an 18th century account of the jail said, "the mixture of scents that arose from mundungus (offal), tobacco, foul feet, dirty shirts, stinking breaths, and uncleanly carcasses, poisoned our nostrils far worse than a Southwark ditch, a tanner's yard, or a tallow-chandler's melting-room. The ill-looking vermin, with long, rusty beards, swaddled up in rags, and their heads—some covered with thrum-caps, and others thrust into the tops of old stockings. Some quitted their play they were before engaged in, and came hovering round us, like so many cannibals, with such devouring countenances, as if a man had been but a morsel with 'em, all crying out, "Garnish, garnish," as a rabble in an insurrection crying, "Liberty, liberty!" We were forced to submit to the doctrine of nonresistance, and comply with their demands, which extended to the sum of two shillings each" [45]​. 

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An official report from 1804 described the jail as "in such a state of decay, as to become inadequate to the safe custody of the debtors and prisoners therein confined, and extremely dangerous, as well to the lives of the said debtors and prisoners as to other persons resorting thereto" [45].

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Samuel remained imprisoned at least until July 1801. To secure his release under the 1760 Insolvent Debtors Act, he filed the required three notices of his intent to seek discharge in the London Gazette and presented a schedule of his assets and debts in court [11] [47].

By late July or early August, he was likely released. However, his return home was met with tragedy - his two young children, Edward, 2, and Sarah, 15 months, had both died within days of each other.

Edward passed first, buried on the 12th of July, followed by his sister Sarah on the 23rd of July. We don't know the cause of death for either child but the close dates of death suggest it was illness. There were many diseases at the time that caused infant mortality, such as typhus, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and streptococcal infections [48].

Both children were buried in St Clement Eastcheap's churchyard [49]. ​It would not be until two years later, in 1803, that Samuel and Mary would welcome another child, a son they named Samuel Charles [51].