Author: Ellis, Thomas Flower
Biography:
ELLIS, Thomas Flower (1796-1861: ODNB)
His presence in this bibliography is owing to his July 1817 poem, “Jerusalem,” which was printed in the various collections of Cambridge prize poems. He was the son of Thomas Flower Ellis (d 1844), a West Indies merchant, and his wife Frances Danvers (1770-1838); they had married in St. Peter Le Poer, London, on 23 Oct. 1790. Thomas Flower Ellis, the son, was born on 5 Dec. 1796 in Walthamstow, Essex, and baptised on 6 Jan. 1797 at St. Mary’s, Walthamstow. He was educated at Hackney school and admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on 26 June 1813 (Scholar 1816, BA 1818, Fellow 1819, MA 1821). At Trinity he met Thomas Babington Macaulay (q.v.) and the two became close friends; they often travelled together and, after Macaulay’s death in 1859, Ellis was his executor. He entered Lincoln’s Inn on 8 Apr. 1816 and was called to the bar on 5 Feb. 1824. On 5 Sept. 1821 at Leyton, Essex, he married Susan McTaggart (1797?-1839); they had five sons and two daughters. Ellis was on the northern circuit. He was politically active and served on a number of commissions; at the time of his death he was the Attorney General for Leeds (1839-61). Ellis contributed to the Edinburgh Review and, as a member of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, he wrote the first and second part of An Outline of General History (1828, 1830). He died at home in Bedford Place, London, on 5 Apr. 1861 and on 11 Apr. he was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. (ODNB 13 May 2024; ACAD; ancestry.co.uk 13 May 2024) SR