Author: Hume, Alexander
Biography:
HUME, Alexander (1809-51: ODNB)
Not to be confused with the Scottish singer and composer of the same name (1811-59: ODNB), Alexander Hume was born in Kelso, Scotland, on 1 Feb. 1809, the son of a merchant, Walter Hume, and his wife Janet Edington. Little is known of his education but he was apparently raised in the expectation that he would go into business like his father. The family moved to London when he was still a child. In his teens he ran away and joined a group of travelling players for a few months, but settled to work in London as the agent for an Edinburgh brewer from 1827 to 1840, and later for an Irish firm. His songs, composed to familiar Scottish airs, were initially a form of recreation after work. On 31 Aug. 1836 he and Elizabeth Scott secured a marriage licence; according to ODNB the marriage took place in 1837, but a family tree on Ancestry gives a date of 22 Sept. 1836, in Islington, London (marriage record not seen). They had at least six children, aged between 1 and 12 at the time of the 1851 Census, who survived him. His collection of Scottish Songs, modelled on Burns and dedicated to Allan Cunningham (qq.v.), is dated from his London address on St. Martin-le-Grand Street; it went into a second expanded edition as Songs and Poems, Chiefly Scottish in 1845. He followed up on its success with English Songs and Ballads in 1838. Later the family lived on Shooter’s Hill in Kent. Hume left his position temporarily on account of ill health and made two trips to America (1840, 1847) but he died on 24 May 1851 at the Northampton Lunatic Asylum, where he had been admitted as a private patient on 26 Mar. and where he was buried in June. The precise circumstances of his final illness are not known. (ODNB 2 Jan. 2023; ancestry.com 2 Jan. 2023; findmypast.com 2 Jan. 2023)