Author: Bonney, Francis A. B.
Biography:
BONNEY, Francis Augustus Burdett (1804-77: ancestry.co.uk)
The eldest son of John Augustus Bonney, a prominent lawyer and political reformer, and his second wife Elizabeth, he was born in London and baptised in St. Marylebone Parish Church in Oct. 1804. His parents had married in St. Andrew’s, Holborn, on 12 July 1804. John Bonney had spent time in prison (Newgate and the Tower of London) for defending men—including Thomas Paine (q.v.)—accused of seditious libel; during his incarceration he had written poetry although none was published in volume form. Francis Bonney was educated at Ealing School and admitted to Queen’s College, Cambridge, on 31 Oct. 1825. He studied medicine in Paris and in Edinburgh where he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1829. On 21 June 1834 he married Maria Catherine Ralfs in St. Mary’s church, Ealing. They had three sons and two daughters before Maria’s death in 1856. The 1861 Census shows him living with three of the children in Chichester, Sussex. On 20 Oct. 1862 he married Mary Theresa Elliott in Chelsea, London and he moved to Elm House, Queen’s Elm, Brompton, where she was the proprietor of a lunatic asylum. He died there on 13 Oct. 1877 and was buried in West Brompton cemetery on 18 Oct. He left an estate of under £1000 and his daughter, Maria, was his executor. She later privately published a collection of his verse, In Memoriam (1890). (ODNB [for John Augustus Bonney] 30 Jan. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 30 Jan. 2023; Boase; ACAD) SR