Author: Hackett, John Prendergast
Biography:
by
Ashfield, Andrew (AA)
HACKETT, John Prendergast (1784-1823: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born in 1784, possibly in Jamaica: his record at Lincoln's Inn identifies him as the only son of Walter Hackett of Jamaica, deceased by 1819. His education is unknown but by 1801 he was signing poems from Crown Office Row, Temple, a well-known location for attorneys, so he was probably apprenticed at that point. He was later recorded as a solicitor at his children’s baptisms. He was not admitted to Lincoln's Inn, however, until 5 Nov. 1819, at the age of 35. He contributed a number of poems to the Lady’s Monthly Museum (1801-4), several of which were revised and printed in his Poems, Elegiac and Miscellaneous (1804). David Carey anthologised a few poems in his Poetical Magazine (1804). In 1809 he is recorded as a freemason, living in Albemarle Street. He married Eliza Disney on 30 Jan. 1813, with the consent of her father Fownes Disney, at St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, and received a substantial marriage settlement. Disney was a wealthy Irish lawyer who practised in Madras and had property in Dublin and St. Marylebone, London. With Eliza Disney he had a son and three daughters. After his death, the family must have moved to Dublin where the son, Charles Prendergast Hackett, went to Trinity, became an attorney, and later emigrated to Victoria, Australia, where he became a judge. The two eldest daughters married in Dublin and the youngest, Henrietta Eliza, died aged twelve in 1833. Hackett died on 4 Jan. 1823 at his home in Stratford Place and was buried at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 10 Jan. (ancestry.co.uk 2 Sept. 2021; Spenserians; Asiatic Journal Jan. 1835, 31-32; Ross Gazette 23 Aug. 1877; Edward W. R. Pitcher, The Lady’s Monthly Museum First Series 1798-1806: An Annotated Index of Signatures and Ascriptions [1999], 116-22; information from SR) AA
Other Names:
- Mr. Hackett