Alderman Samuel Birch (1787–1840) was Lord Mayor of London in 1815. He ran a celebrated confectionery business at No 15 Cornhill, producing cakes, pastries and the like, which gave him the nickname "Mr Pattypan". The shop was founded in the reign of George I by a Mr Horton, and was continued after 1836 by Messrs Ring and Brymer. By the 1870s the upper portion of the house in Cornhill had been rebuilt, but the ground-floor remained intact, "a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of the last century", including two preserved doorplates inscribed "Birch, successor to Mr. Horton".