Description: Thomas William Hammond 1854-1935. Born in Philadelphia of Nottingham emigres, and orphaned at the age of four, he came to England with his younger sister Maria and lived for a short while with his grandparents in Mount Street. In 1868 age 14 he enrolled in the Government School of Art. On the 1871 census he is described as a lace curtain designer, and in 1872 he was awarded the 'Queen's Prize for a Design of a Lace Curtain'. Other prizes followed and in 1877 he was again awarded the Queen's Prize, this time for the design for a damask table Cloth. Hammond was an indefatigable worker, and soon began to use his skills as a draftsman to record aspects of the changing town. He began showing his work at local venues in 1882 and in 1890 exhibited for the first time at the Royal academy. His real hobby was black and white sketching in charcoal. He drew about 350 pictures all together mainly scenes of a Nottingham he knew but which has largely passed away today. Extracted from 'The Changing Face of Tom Hammond's Nottingham' by John Beckett which is the introductory essay in 'A City in the Making Drawings of Tom Hammond'. J. Leavers' house which is shown on the right of the drawing is situated in an unimportant street between Derby Road and Ilkeston Road, and is little more than a cottage, but from such small beginnings has grown the great lace trade; for it was within the walls of this house that Leavers set up his first lace machine. He was a frame-smith setter up, and was born in Sutton-in-Ashfield in 1786; he must have been a man of a very secretive nature; for two years he shut himself up in this house experimenting in the construction of machinery for making point, net and warp lace, and so taciturn was he that even his own family had but slight knowledge of his work. Although his inventions have been of the utmost importance to the lace trade they do not appear to have benefited him financially to a very great extent. His life closed in voluntary exile at Rouen in the year 1848, and he lies buried in that ancient city. Image and descriptive text taken from 'Nottingham Past and Present', published in 1926.