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Author: Hanway, Jonas

Biography:

HANWAY, Jonas (1712-86: ODNB)

He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and baptised on 9 Aug. 1712 according to the record from St. Thomas’s Church. His father Thomas Hanway (Hanaway, by error, in that record), who was the navy’s agent victualler, had married a widow with two children, Mary (Hoghen) Worlidge, about 1710, but he died in Jul. 1714 and the last of their four children was a posthumous child. Jonas was educated for a commercial career which began with an apprenticeship in the English factory at Lisbon, Portugal, where he lived from 1729 to 1741. Back in London, he joined the Russia Company as a junior partner in 1743 and set out for Russia on a mission to build up trading links with Russia and Persia; although the mission was in some respects unsuccessful, his adventures over the next seven years formed the substance of his first book, An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea (4 vols. 1753), and the Russia Company itself continued to prosper. As its business tapered off, in 1762 Hanway was able to secure a paid position as one of the navy victualling commissioners. Having settled in London, Hanway—who remained a bachelor--used his wealth, his connections, his pen, and his inexhaustible energy on behalf of many philanthropic schemes that came to his attention, some of them reinforced by his Christian faith. He became a tireless pamphleteer, notably for campaigns to aid poor children in the city. He was on the governing board of the Foundling Hospital, supported the establishment of a Magdalen Hospital for repentant prostitutes, and founded the Marine Society that recruited boys and men for the navy. A law requiring parishes to record the placement of infants in care came to be known as “Hanway’s Act.” He died at his home in Red Lion Square on 5 Sept. 1786 and was buried in the crypt of St. Mary’s, Hanwell, London, on 13 Sept. after a grand funeral. There was immediately a call for a public tribute, which was answered with a monument in Westminster Abbey in 1788. He did not die a wealthy man: his will consists of relatively small bequests to friends and relatives. (ODNB 29 Jan. 2022; ancestry.com 29 Jan. 2022; Daily Universal Register 14 Sept. 1786) 

 

Books written (3):