Author: Day, Thomas
Biography:
DAY, Thomas (1748-89: ODNB)
The only son of Thomas Day (c. 1690-1749), a customs official for the port of London, and his wife Jane Bonham (1716-96), he was born at Wellclose Square, London, on 22 June 1748 and baptised at St. George in the East, Stepney, on 8 July. His parents had married in the same church on 1 May 1746. After his father’s death, Day moved with his mother first to Stoke Newington Green and, after her marriage to Thomas Phillips, to Bear Hill (near Newbury), Berkshire. He was educated at a school in Stoke Newington until he contracted smallpox. He later attended Charterhouse School before going up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 1 June 1764 but did not take a degree. He entered the Middle Temple as a law student on 12 Feb. 1765 and was called to the bar in 1779. Friendship with Richard Lovell Edgeworth, then living near Bear Hill, led to an enthusiasm for the educational writings of Rousseau which shaped Day’s search for a wife. He adopted two orphan girls but was unable to mould them into what he considered an ideal partner. In about 1776 he met Esther Milnes (q.v. as Esther Day) and they were married on 7 Aug. 1778 in Bath; they had no children. She supported Day in his various philanthropic projects including developing an estate at Anningsley, Surrey, where they began living in 1783. Day was killed by being thrown from his horse at Bear Hill on 28 Sept. 1789 and he was buried at St. Mary’s, Wargrave, Berkshire. Day’s publications listed in this bibliography include his much-reprinted The Dying Negro which he wrote with John Bicknell (1746-87; in 1784 he married one of the two orphan girls adopted by Day). Day’s The Devoted Legions expresses support for the American side in the revolutionary war and he served Henry Laurens, one of the peace negotiators, as an unpaid secretary. It was as the author of Sandford and Merton (3 vols, 1783, 1786, 1789) that he was best remembered; intended primarily as an instructive and morally improving work for children, it remained popular through the nineteenth century. (ODNB 4 July 2024; ancestry.co.uk 4 July 2024; Alumni Oxonienses; Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple [1949]; John Blackman, A Memoir of the Life and Writings of Thomas Day [1862])