With the difficulties caused by Hinck settled satisfactorily, Henry's business recovered and went from strength to strength. We are able to follow the family's fortunes through Eliza's diary, which she continued for the rest of her long life.

In June 1848 their last child, a daughter, Anna, was born and the older children began their schooling at Mrs Smallwood's Academy in North End.

Henry's reading rooms flourished, moving in 1849 to new and presumably larger premises in Heath Street, which they shared with the library. He kept on the old rooms at New End for the younger boys, many of whom came to him in the evenings at home, and he continued with the Latin classes. Their annual parties for the reading room members were a regular fixture.

Their social life was as lively as ever. Eliza records an amusing encounter at one of their dinner parties in October 1849: ‘Harriett Martineau with the Gibsons, Sam and Dan, dined here, a very pleasant dinner till HM got to clairvoyance, when finding we none of us agreed with her she got rather hot. Is not it incredible how clever people can believe such nonsense.’

THE 1850s – YEARS OF LOSS

The 1850s were years of bereavement. When the duke of Wellington died in 1852, Cockerell gave them tickets for the lying in state and Eliza went to see his funeral. On the domestic front, Samuel Rogers had a terrible accident in 1850, aged eighty-seven, being knocked down by a coach in Berkeley Square and breaking his hip.