Author: Burke, Thomas Travers
Biography:
BURKE, Thomas Travers (1786-1849: RLF, irishgenealogy.ie)
He was born In Ireland, possibly in Bandon, County Cork. In an application to the RLF he gave his date of birth as 10 Jan. 1786. The names of his parents are not known although his RLF correspondence mentions a sister in Dublin. From 1793 to 1814 Burke served successively with the 74th (Highland) Regiment of Foot, the Royal Scots Greys, and the 11th Light Dragoons. He was awarded the army gold medal and the general service medal. After his military service he seems likely to have remained in Scotland where, in Jan. 1832, he gave up his half-pay from the army in return for a payment against his initial commission. Burke studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and received his medical degree in 1834. He returned to Ireland and established a medical practice in Dublin where he edited various periodicals (no details are known). Hoping to further his literary career, he moved to London but he suffered from increasing ill-health with attacks of hemiplegia and lingering paralysis. He published The Accoucheur’s Vademecum in 1840. Burke first applied to the RLF on 7 Nov. 1742 when he was living at 5 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. His application gives as one of the grounds of his financial distress the fraud perpetrated against him by one of his publishers, D. Morison Jr., who had pocketed all the proceeds from Temora although it had been printed at Burke's own expense. The RLF awarded him £15. He made a second application from Dublin in Nov. 1843 and was granted £10. At the time of his death he was living at 43 North Summer Street, Dublin, and he was buried in a cemetery in the parish of St. George on 5 Dec. 1849. The burial notice erroneously gives his age at death as 56. Burke never married. (RLF file 1057; irishgenealogy.ie 3 Feb. 2025; findmypast.co.uk 3 Feb. 2025; ancestry.co.uk 3 Feb. 2025; Edinburgh Gazette 27 Jan. 1832) SR