Author: Hawkes, William Robert
Biography:
HAWKES, William Robert (1785-1859: ancestry.com)
He was born and died in Bishop’s Stortford, a member of a family connected with a prosperous firm of brewers, maltsters, and wine merchants established by his father in partnership with two others in 1780. His parents, Elizabeth (Flack) and William Hawkes, had married in 1783. They were dissenters: their son was baptised at Water Lane Independent on 1 Apr. 1785. He went into the family business and at his death left effects valued at under seven thousand pounds. His first publication, a “tragic drama” based on the story of Saul in the Bible, was dismissed by the reviewers and he turned to political satire in prose (A History of the Rats of Mousiana, 1815) and verse (The Midnight Intruder, 1816). On 31 Aug. 1818 he married Dorothea Johnstone at her parish church of St. John, Wakefield; they had at least five children. He seems to have been a good citizen: he was elected a Guardian of the Parish and contributed the proceeds of his last verse work, Creation’s Friend, to the local SPCA. His last known publication is A Friendly Dialogue between a Churchman and a Dissenter (1834). In the 1851 Census, by which time the household comprised himself, his wife, and three servants, he gave his occupation as “wine merchant.” He died at the Parsonage on 10 May 1859. (ancestry.com 9 Mar. 2022; findmypast.com 9 Mar. 2022; MR 72 (1813) 215-16; CR 4 (1813) 326) HJ
Other Names:
- W. R. H.
- W. R. Hawkes