Author: Ham, Elizabeth
Biography:
HAM, Elizabeth (1783-1859: ODNB)
From early childhood, Elizabeth Ham was repeatedly displaced and obliged to make her way in someone else's household. In her sixties, when she worked as a housekeeper in Brislington, she began to write memoirs describing her experiences; although not published until 1945, Elizabeth Ham by Herself forms the basis of biographical accounts of her. She was born on 30 Nov. 1783 at North Perrott, Somerset, the third of seven children of a yeoman farmer, Thomas Ham, and his wife Elizabeth Pope, who had been married there on 16 Mar. 1780. She was sent away as a toddler to live with relatives, returning occasionally to her own family. Her education was spotty but she attended several West-country schools, including two years at a boarding school, and continued reading after she had left them. Between 1804 and 1809 she lived in Ireland, first acting as a housekeeper for one of her brothers and then staying with the family as her father tried without success to establish a malting business. Back in England, she stayed with relatives making herself useful; for a time she taught school in Fordington, near Dorchester. She converted to Unitarianism and about 1820 found work as a governess to the children of Charles Abraham Elton (q.v.) at Clifton. She had already begun to write, her first publication being a grammar for children. Elton assisted her with revisions to Elgiva (1824), which received respectable but condescending reviews. (The Monthly Critical Gazette identifies her as "the authoress of Wallace," probably confusing her with Margaret Holford the younger, q.v.) After leaving the Eltons she found employment with other families in the area but published no more verse and only one more book, The Ford Family in Ireland (1845). From about 1844 until her death, of heart disease, on 1 Mar. 1859, she worked as a housekeeper at Wick House, Brislington. She left effects worth under £1500 to a sister and a niece. (ODNB 15 Jan. 2022; Orlando 15 Jan. 2022; findmypast.com 15 Jan. 2022; Monthly Critical Gazette 1 [1824] 459-60; Elizabeth Ham by Herself [1945])