Author: Christian, T. P.
Biography:
CHRISTIAN, T. P. (1755-1832: ancestry.co.uk)
Thomas Page Christian was the eldest of seven children born to John Christian (1727-88) and his wife Elizabeth Page (1720-88); they had married in St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, on 9 Mar. 1755. Thomas was born in Calthorpe, Norwich, on 19 Dec. 1755 and baptised on 21 Dec. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, Robert Scott, in Norwich on 23 Jan. 1769. It is not known exactly when he joined the armed forces but by 1776 he was a lieutenant serving as acting surgeon on board an armed schooner, the Lawrence, off New York. The ship was under the command of Lieutenant John Graves who had brought his cat on board with him. According to admiralty records, Christian deliberately released a dog into the ship’s steerage where it killed the cat. The two men quarrelled and, resolving on a duel, left the schooner in a boat. On their return, only Lieutenant Graves had been wounded. Both were court martialled on 16 Dec. 1776: Graves was relieved of his command for conduct unbecoming an officer but Christian was fined a year’s pay and dismissed from service. He returned to England and likely it was then that he wrote and published The Progress of War “by an officer.” The poem is dedicated to George III and may have been an attempt to reinstate his good name after the court martial. The Bodley Catalogue dating of 1770 for the first edition is certainly too early. The book was first noticed in reviews in 1786 but these were not flattering; the Critical Review in 1787 dismissed it as “alike destitute of the ardor [sic] of the soldier and the enthusiasm of the bard.” By 1802 Christian was living in Calthorpe where the tax records show him as a freeholder who worked as a carpenter. No record of a marriage has been located. Likely he was the Thomas Page Christian who died in the King’s Bench prison in London in 1832; however, the burial record, from 12 Oct., gives his age as 78. There is no record of The Revolution, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, being performed. (ancestry.co.uk 8 Jan. 2024; Critical Review 63 [1787], 157; John McArthur, Principles and Practice of Naval and Military Courts Martial [1813]; Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story [2004])
Other Names:
- An officer