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Author: Harvey, George

Biography:

HARVEY, George (c. 1778-1860: ancestry.com)

He gave his age as 60 in the Census of 1841 but as 72 ten years later; the death notice of 4 May 1860 says he was in his 84th year. He was born in Birmingham. Although the names of his parents are not known, he may be the child of that name baptised on 10 Oct. 1778 at the Old Meeting House, a place of worship for non-conforming congregations, Unitarian or Presbyterian. He earned an M.D. and joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon on HMS Victorious before it was taken out of service in 1814. By that time he had set up a country practice at Castle Hedingham, Essex, where he remained for most of the rest of his life. He never married. His poem is dedicated to his mother, who was apparently widowed and living with him by that time. The subscription list consists mainly of Essex neighbours. He seems to have enjoyed a quiet life, cultivating interests in natural history and music: the list of contents that he sold by auction in 1858 included books, two pianos, and “collections of minerals, fossils, shells, etc.” In 1851, however, in a letter to the editor of the Morning Herald urging a continuation of the search for the missing members of the Franklin expedition in the Arctic, he had volunteered to go out himself as surgeon on a rescue vessel. He died at Stanton Drew, Somersetshire, on 15 Apr. 1860, leaving personal effects valued at less than 100 pounds to his unmarried niece, Anne Georgiana Harvey Hunt of Stanton Drew. (ancestry.com 15 Feb. 2022; findmypast.com 15 Feb. 2022; Essex Standard 10 Mar. 1858 and 4 May 1860;Morning Herald 3 Nov. 1851)

 

 

Books written (1):