Author: Hume, Joseph
Biography:
HUME, Joseph (1777-1855: ODNB)
In 1829 the reconstruction of Buckingham Palace by John Nash was already a source of public outrage for over-running schedule and cost estimates. The clever political satire The Palace that N—h Built, with lively illustrations, which must have appeared shortly before Mar. 1829, took pains to conceal all evidence of responsibility for publication (no printer is named, no publisher, no graphic artist, no place of publication) except for authorship, which is boldly announced on the title-page as “I. [= J.] Hume.” Although Joseph Hume, a reforming politician with a well known interest in public finances, appears to be designated, this public naming was almost certainly part of the satire and Hume not the actual author, who remains unknown. Since Hume did publish some verse in the period, however, a brief biography follows. He was born in Montrose, Scotland, to Mary (Allan) and James Hume. His father, a shipmaster, died when he was a child and his mother supported the family by selling crockery. He was apprenticed to a surgeon in 1790, then studied medicine at Aberdeen and Edinburgh. In 1799 when he was fully qualified as a physician and surgeon, he enlisted in the EIC and went to India where he served as a doctor and as an administrator, but also engaged with distinction in military action. He amassed a small fortune there, “probably legally” (ODNB). After returning to Scotland in 1808 and undertaking business travel in Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Turkey, and Gibraltar, he purchased a seat in Parliament as MP for Weymouth in 1812. (In the same year he published his only known work in verse, a translation of Dante’s Inferno.) His politics and his working-class sympathies inclined him to radical causes, especially electoral reform, religious toleration, prison reform, and opposition to government waste. He remained in parliament for the rest of his life with few periods out of office, occupying seats as he could secure them—in England, Scotland, or Ireland, but predominantly in the Aberdeen district that included Montrose. His alliances were typically not by party but by principle; he became a leader among the radicals. For that reason, he was normally in the minority but is thought to have furthered causes that were successful over time. On 17 Aug. 1815 he married Maria Burnley (1786-1871), the daughter of an EIC shareholder and sister of William Hardin Burnley, who owned extensive plantations with slaves in Trinidad. The couple had seven children. He died at their country home, Burnley Hall, Norfolk, on 20 Feb. 1855, of heart failure, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery, London. (ODNB 4 Jan. 2023; LBS; M. Dorothy George, Catalogue of Personal and Political Satires . . . in the British Museum 11 [1954], entries 15668-15676)
Other Names:
- I. Hume