Author: Badnall, Richard
Biography:
BADNALL, Richard (1797-1839: findmypast.co.uk)
He was born on 16 Feb. 1797 and baptised on 17 July at St. Edward’s, Leek, Staffordshire, the eldest son of Richard Badnall (1770-1838), a silk manufacturer, banker and later magistrate, and his wife Harriet Hopkins (1773-1820), who had married in 1793. He was educated at Ashbourne Grammar School, Derbyshire, and at Chaddesley, Worcestershire. He married Sarah Hand, daughter of Enoch Hand, a solicitor, at St. Mary’s, Uttoxeter, on 19 Aug. 1819. They went on to have five sons and a daughter. In 1824, as his father began to withdraw from business, Richard Badnall, junior, formed the firm of Badnall, Spilsbury & Cruso, silk-manufacturers and financiers, with his brother-in-law Henry Cruso and Francis Gybbon Spilsbury. The firm quickly became insolvent, the partnership was dissolved, and Bagnall was declared bankrupt in Dec. 1826. His father took on responsibility for much of the debt and ended up in the Fleet in London in 1827. The family was forced to sell Ashenhurst Hall, Leek, and its contents, and moved to Liverpool. Between 1827 and 1832, he lived at six different addresses in London and Liverpool and tried various schemes in an attempt to rectify his finances--most notably a patent for an undulating railway (1832), a scheme which he pursued throughout the 1830s but was ultimately unsuccessful in. The attribution of The Pirate (1816) is based on a signed copy (Pickering & Chatto 1923; Antiquates, 7), and local association copies (BL, NYPL). The attribution and dating of Zelinda (1830) was never in doubt in the nineteenth century and queries about it are a modern error. He also published a number of prose works, most notably A View of the Silk Trade (1828) and A Treatise on Railway Improvements (1833). A further work, A Treatise on the Construction and Formation of Railways (1836) was announced but seems not to have been published. He died at Westfield Villa, Weston, Bath, on 2 Aug. 1839. (findmypast.co.uk 28 Jun. 2021; Simms 35; Staffordshire Poets 146-8; Manchester Mercury 31 Aug. 1819; Morning Advertiser 4 Feb. 1836;Saint James’s Chronicle 6 Nov. 1830; Morning Chronicle 8 Aug. 1839) AA