Author: Brown, James Baldwin
Biography:
BROWN, James Baldwin (1790-1843: ODNB)
He was born on 6 June 1790 (baptised 7 July) at London to James and Anne Brown (his mother’s maiden name is unknown, but it was possibly Baldwin). He was admitted to the Inner Temple on 9 May 1811; the admission register states that his father, a manufacturer of crepe, was then deceased. Brown was called to the bar on 24 May 1816. He collaborated with Thomas Raffles (whose sister Mary Jane Raffles he married on 17 Sept. 1817) and Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (qq.v.) to write Poems, By Three Friends. He practised law throughout his life and was LLD although no university records have been located. He and Mary Jane had two sons; one son, James Baldwin Brown, who was born on 18 Aug. 1820 and baptised at the Carey Street Independent chapel on 8 June 1821 by Thomas Raffles, became known as a religious controversialist. Brown's other publications include historical accounts of the anti-Catholic laws in England and Ireland (1813), a study of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the crown (1815), and an edition of the memoirs of John Howard (1818). With Raffles, he edited a quarterly, The Investigator, which denounced as irreligious the writings of Byron and Shelley. He died of “paralysis” at Headington, Oxford, and was buried there on 29 Nov. 1843. (ODNB 10 May 2019; ancestry.co.uk 10 May 2019, 18 Mar. 2025; Inner Temple Registers) SR