Author: Christie, Albany Henry
Biography:
CHRISTIE, Albany Henry (1782-1821: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 15 Sept. 1782 and baptised 25 Oct. at St. James, Piccadilly, London, one of at least eleven children of James Christie and Isabella Chapman, who had married in the same church in 1772. Details of his early education are unknown. In 1801 he was articled to George Tennyson of Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, attorney of the King’s Bench, who was Alfred Tennyson’s (q.v.) grandfather. After qualifying he practised as an insolvency attorney at New Boswell Court, Carey Street, London, and from about 1818 at Serle’s Place, Lincoln’s Inn. Around 1821 he moved to Paradise Row, Chelsea. He married Sarah Mary Knight on 19 Apr. 1817 at St. Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, London. They had two sons, with the elder, Albany James Christie (1817-91), having a distinguished academic career before allying himself with John Henry Newman (q.v.) and formally converting to Catholicism in 1845. His commemorative poem, listed here, on the death of Princess Charlotte, one of many such poems, is perhaps most notable for its animadversions on “rendering assistance to the lying-in poor.” The poem and many others are discussed in Stephen Behrendt, Royal Mourning and Regency Culture (1997). He died at Clarendon Square, Somers Town, and was buried at St. James, Hampstead Road, on 10 Oct. 1821, aged 40. (ancestry.co.uk 10 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 10 Mar. 2023; Robson’s London Directory [1820], 111; “Christie, Albany James,” Wikipedia 10 Mar. 2023; Boase Supp. 1: 659) AA