Author: Foot, Daniel
Biography:
FOOT, Daniel (1749-76: findmypast.com)
A young gentleman of Chichester whose mourning friends arranged a subscription edition of some of his prose and verse. He was baptised on 13 Jul. 1749, the son of Daniel and Ann (Hatch) Foot, who had married at Chichester in 1747. His father is said to have been a respectable tradesman who was able to give his son a grammar-school education. (The collection includes one poem each in Latin and French.) The subscribers are nearly all residents of the town, including the mayor and recorder, with the addition of a few members of the Queen's Regiment of Dragoons, who must have been stationed in the area. There is no evidence that Foot himself was a soldier. The poems are very local, lamenting deaths, hailing friendships, praising the ladies, expressing admiration for a preacher at the cathedral. Both poems and prose are pious but not exclusively so; the letters, dating from 1771, consist of advice to a younger brother. Two friends contributed elegies under their initials. His death must have been unexpected, for he died on 26 Oct. 1776 having written an elegy for an artist friend who had died on 7 Sept. without alluding to health concerns of his own. The historian of Chichester records that he died of a "stoppage . . . in the intestines" after eating too many wild "hedge-picks" (blackthorn berries) on a walk with friends. His father died in 1783 and was also buried at St. Pancras, Chichester. (Foot, Poems on Various Occasions [1777]; findmypast.com 27 Sept. 2021; Alexander Hay, History of Chichester [1804] 537-8) HJ
Other Names:
- D. Foot