Author: Harral, Thomas
Biography:
HARRAL, Thomas (1774-1853: ancestry.co.uk)
In 1845, in his application to the RLF, he gave his birth date as 18 Nov. 1779, his place of birth as London, and his age as 65. This does not match the burial record or death certificate which both give 79/80 so he was probably the Thomas Harrell (sic) born 18 Nov. 1774, the son of James and Susannah Harrell, baptised on 25 Dec. at St. George’s, Bloomsbury. He married Anna Empson on 21 June 1801 at St Dunstan’s, Stepney. They had at least three children. She may have died in Nov. 1808 when she gave birth to a still-born child, or possibly later. He then married Frances Williams on 31 Jan. 1812 at St. Mary Le Tower, Ipswich. They had six children, five of whom survived. He began by writing poetry, mostly sonnets, for the Monthly Visitor in 1797 alongside Peter Lionel Courtier (a witness at his first marriage), Richard Alfred Davenport, and Anna Maria Porter (qq.v.). Thereafter he engaged in a vast range of literary activity and was staunchly Anti-Jacobin and later Anti-Reform. He published two novels: Scenes of Life (1805), an attack on “revolutionary and infidel principles”; and a satirical continuation of Godwin, Mandeville; or the Last Words of a Maniac (1818) [anonymous in EN2: 456-7]. Both works are more interesting than his irascible political pamphlets The Distresses of the Times (1817) and The Demon of the Age (1821). He also edited an array of more than seven newspapers and periodicals. For the New Monthly Magazine he wrote the memoir of his friend, fellow Anti-Jacobin, and former editor of The Flowers of Literature (1803-10), Francis William Blagdon (1778-1819), and organised the appeal for his widow and four children. In early 1832, he separated from his wife and five children. She claimed desertion and indignantly applied to the RLF in April 1833 for assistance but was rejected. In May 1845, now living in Soho and recently bankrupt, Harral protested his innocence and was awarded £50. He died on 31 Jan. 1853 at 23 Dorset Street, Portman Square, and was buried at All Souls, Kensal Green. His poem Claremont (1817) appeared first as a broadside and then in a second edition of 16 pages in 1818, but no copy appears to have survived. (ancestry.co.uk 14 Feb. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 14 Feb. 2021; RLF 1/761; The Parnassian Garland [1797] 140; EM Feb. 1812, 156; Bury and Norwich Post 2 Feb. 1853; GM Mar. 1853, 333; Boyle 116; Copsey 1:245; E. L. de Montluzin, The Anti-Jacobins 1798-1800 [1988] 104-5) AA
Other Names:
- T. Harral