A nice portrait of Thomas Britton engraved by R. Page.

Britton was a London-based charcoal merchant who became better known as a concert promoter, singer, and book collector. A lover of music, he turned the loft of his home into a tiny concert hall, replete with a harpsichord and five-stop organ. The concerts he hosted there attracted some of the city's best musicians -- including a young Handel (!) and J. C. Pepusch -- and were widely considered the finest chamber music performances in London.

Britton's concerts were also among the first to welcome audiences of varying socio-economic standing, in part because he offered them at free or little cost. One frequenter of the concerts, antiquarian Ralph Throesby, once recalled: On our way home we called at Mr. Britton's, the noted small-coal man, where we heard a noble concert of music, vocal and instrumental, the best in town, which for many years past he has had weekly for his own entertainment, and of the gentry, &c., gratis, to which most foreigners of distinction, for the fancy of it, occasionally resort.