Author: Cramond, Hercules
Biography:
CRAMOND, Hercules (1754?-1832: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born, according to his own statements and the burial record, in 1754 (although 1749 cannot be entirely discounted), the eldest child of Robert Cramond, an unsuccessful London merchant, and Elizabeth Crilly, who had married privately in a Catholic ceremony in Soho, London, in 1752. His father was almost fifty, his mother fourteen. The family went to France where he was educated at St. Omer (1766-72). He was also unsuccessful in business in London and Paris and was forced to take clerical jobs in counting-houses. In 1778 he went out to Jamaica but was unsuccessful there. He also failed in a Classical and Commercial Seminary, along with his younger brother, Robert. Finally, in the early 1780s he removed to Edinburgh where he studied medicine. He then practiced in Paris, initially supported the revolution and with his brother wrote A Letter to the National Assembly (1789), but fled in 1792. He appears not to have established a successful practice in England. He married first Diana (or Dinah) West on 24 July 1776 at St. Pancras Old Church, London. They separated within the year with a legal agreement. Her later life is not known. He then married Alice Johnson on 25 Sept. 1780 at St. Thomas’s, Liverpool. They had at least two sons and a daughter but seem to have separated and her later life is not known. He married Sophia Thomas on 19 Sept. 1801 at St. Martin’s in the Fields, Westminster, London. The following year he went to Birmingham to avoid confinement for debt, applied to the RLF, and was awarded £10. In 1826 and 1829, now in his seventies, he received two awards of £10. In Dec. 1830 and Jan. 1831 he applied from Hoxton, London, and received two awards of £5. His widow informed the RLF that he had died in the Hoxton workhouse on 26 Mar. 1832, to where they had been forced to move at the end of 1831. He was buried the same day at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch. She was awarded £10 in June 1832. Her later life is not known. His list of published works (A Sketch, 12) is doubtful. (Outlines of Human Life[1785]; A Sketch of the Chequered and Painful Existence of Hercules Cramond, M.D. [1819]; RLF # 128; ancestry.co.uk 17 Mar. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 17 Mar. 2024) AA
Other Names:
- H. Cramond