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Author: Cort, C. F.

Biography:

CORT, Coningsby Francis (1770-1846: ancestry.co.uk)

He was born on 12 Nov. 1770 in the Strand, Westminster, London, and baptised on 14 Jan. 1771 at St. Olave, Hart Street, City of London, one of at least eleven children of Henry Cort (1741-1800) and Elizabeth Haysham (1745-1816), who had married in 1764. His father, originally a naval agent, inherited an ironworks in 1774 and developed important new processes and products in the production of bar iron. He never benefitted financially and at his death his wife was left destitute with ten surviving children until Henry Dundas, Treasurer of the Navy, authorised a pension of £100 a year for her. On 20 Feb. 1788, Coningsby was articled to Joseph Allen, attorney, Furnival’s Inn, London, and then qualified as a solicitor. He briefly went to India (1796-7) as a writer, but soon returned to London. He married Ann Hannam (1783-1837) on 7 May 1805 at Odiham, Hampshire. They went on to have at least six children. In 1812 he petitioned parliament unsuccessfully for compensation but his father’s annuity of £200 and his mother’s of £125 were confirmed. They lived initially in Lambeth, now south London but he seems to have practised in the Strand, Westminster. For many years they lived in West Ham, now East London, from where he wrote the work listed here. He died on 28 Apr. 1846 at Upper Seymour Street, Euston Square, and was later interred, on 25 May 1846, at All Saints, West Ham, Essex, where his wife had been buried. In the early twentieth century, Charles Whitwell, the librarian of the Central Library, Stratford (which holds a copy of the work listed here), made various enquiries about him without success. The libraries of the Middle Temple and the Law Society also hold copies. (ancestry.co.uk 6 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 6 Mar. 2023; London Courier 9 May 1805; Monthly Magazine June 1805, 526; Essex Herald 26 May 1846; GM July 1846, 104; Richard Cort, Remarks on the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Petition of Mr. Coningsby Cort [1855]; Hansard; N&Q 27 July 1912, 68; Central Library Chronicle [1914] 1: 48) AA

 

Books written (1):

London/ Stratford: [no publisher: printed "for the author" by Teape/ sold by Crick], 1834