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Author: Hale, William

Biography:

HALE, William (c. 1769-1841: ancestry.com)

His age at death, on 20 Jan. 1841, was reported as 72 years but he might have been the boy born on 7 Aug. 1770 to William and Sarah Hale who was baptised at St. Mary-le-Strand in London on 30 Sept. (Although he later joined a dissenting congregation, he had a parish marriage and might have been raised in the Church of England.) On 27 May 1794 he married Elizabeth Everard at her church, St. Mary, Islington. They had two children born in 1797 and 1802 whom they registered at Dr. Williams's Library on 29 Oct. 1837. He was a successful silk merchant in Spitalfields. Most of his writings are pamphlets advocating reforms for the support of the poor of Spitalfields (1816); for the silk industry which was an important local business (1822); and for improvements to women's prisons and laws governing prostitution (1810, 1812). According to Watkins he was an "Overseer of the Poor of the Parish of Spitalfields." But his first known (anonymous) publication was a satire on the fall of the Grenville ministry in 1807, praised and quoted extensively by the Anti-Jacobin Review. In his later years he lived at Homerton but maintained business premises on Wood St. He died after "a long affliction, borne with great patience," leaving the bulk of his estate to his wife, and was buried in Islington. (ancestry.com 22 Dec. 2021; findmypast.com 22 Dec. 2021; Watkins; Anti-Jacobin Review 2 [1807] 66-71; LES 22 Jan. 1841; Bury and Norwich Post 27 Jan. 1841) 

 

Books written (1):

London: J. Hatchard, 1807