Author: BILBY, Thomas
Biography:
BILBY, Thomas (1794-1872: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born at Southampton, Hampshire, to John and Rebecca Bilby and was baptised on 21 Apr. 1794. In 1809 he joined the army and served in the 12th Regiment of Foot for eight years; in the 1851 Census he is identified as a Chelsea Pensioner. On 3 Feb. 1817 he married Frances Kent at St. Martin in the Fields, London; they had at least one son and two daughters. Bilby’s interests shifted to education and he trained with James Buchanan at the first infants’ school in England, established in 1819 by social reformers and evangelicals in Brewer’s Green, Westminster. In 1822 the school moved to a purpose-built building in Vincent Square, Westminster, funded by the radical politician Benjamin Leigh Smith. In 1825 Bilby moved to the newly-opened Chelsea infant school (located off the King’s Road) and it was while there that he, with R. B. Ridgway, wrote The Infant Teacher’s Assistant. He also collaborated with Ridgway in writing The Book of Quadrupeds, for the Instruction of Young People (1838). In 1835 or later he moved to the West Indies where he was a teacher and teacher-trainer in the network of infant schools funded by a bequest from Lady Jane Mico (d 1670). By 1841 Bilby was back in England where he became an inspector for the Home and Colonial Infant School Society. Census records in 1851, 1861, and 1871 show him living with Frances at 14 Sebbon Street, Finsbury, London; his occupation is given as “parish clerk.” In 1861 a daughter, Rebecca Bicknell, and her husband, a teacher, lived with them. Bilby died at home on 14 Sept. 1872; his will distributed effects of under £450. His other publications include A Course of Lessons, Together with the Tunes…Suitable for Infant Instruction (1828), Hints for the Formation of Infant Schools (1834), and The Book of Animals (1850). (ancestry.co.uk 5 Sept. 2023; Charles Rogers, Lyra Britannica [1867]; Journal of the Statistical Society of London 1 [1839], 313; H. May, B. Kaur, and L. Prochner, Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods [2016]; ODNB [for Jane Mico] 5 Sept. 2023)