Author: Hague, Thomas
Biography:
HAGUE, Thomas (fl 1808-31)
A disreputable London lawyer and Grub Street writer, he may have been the child of that name born to John and Mary Hague of Smithfield who was baptised at St. Botolph without Aldgate on 21 May 1775. (His enemies later said his father was a cheesemonger.) In 1793 he was apprenticed to John A. Bonney, an attorney in St. Pancras, and by 1800 he had married the daughter of a barrister named Lowes and set up as an attorney at a good address in Cannon Row, Westminster. No record of the marriage has been found, but they had at least one child. In 1804 he declared bankruptcy for the first time. Between 1808 and 1810 Hague conducted an energetic campaign of pamphlet attacks on aspects of the legal system (capital punishment, cross-examination, the criminal code) and on members of the government and the royal family. In the context of Georgian satire, his one poem The Royal Urinead "dedicated to the Duke of Sussex" and in the tradition of Wolcot's Lousiad (q.v.) was not exceptionally indecent but it was libellous and his printer was sentenced to a month in prison for it. Two hostile monthlies counter-attacked with lurid insinuations about his background and marriage. After a flurry of publication activity and the ensuing consequences, little more is heard of Hague until in 1819 he went bankrupt again and was revealed to have been concealing a part of his assets, namely an annuity of £200 that he had been receiving as a price for his silence for nine years from the Prince Regent (Examiner). It is not known where or when he died. He published his last pamphlet as "an Observing Englishman," First Letter to His Majesty on the Public Distress in 1831. When he was indicted for fraud in 1833 (attempted extortion of the Athenaeum management) he was described as lacking a left hand "above the wrist." The Satirist reported his death on 30 Dec. 1834 in their issue of 4 Jan. 1835 but a week later recanted after several sightings of him. (findmypast.com 17 Dec. 2021; ancestry.com 16 Dec. 2021; The Satirist Dec. 1808, 518-24, Aug. 1809, 186-8, 17 June 1832, 31 Mar. 1833, 4 and 11 Jan. 1835; The Scourge 1 [Mar. 1811], 179-91; oldbaileyonline 18 Dec. 2021; theprintshopwindow.wordpress.com 16 Dec. 2021; The Examiner 24 Jan. 1819; Imperial Weekly Gazette 23 Jan. 1819 information from AA) HJ