Author: Kentish, William Augustus
Biography:
KENTISH, William Augustus (d 1858)
Despite his distinctive middle name, no documentary traces of Kentish have been located before his marriage, on 22 Dec. 1808 in St Andrew’s, Holborn, to Mary Knowles (q.v. KENTISH, Mary). Possibly he was not born in the UK or “Augustus” was a later addition to his name. They had at least three sons and two daughters. The family travelled to St Salvador, Brazil, in the 1810s but it is not known what work he did there. They returned to England in the 1820s and struggled financially, with William pursuing various occupations: writing for solicitors, language teaching and translating, and accountancy work. Mary reported to the RLF in 1828 that an offer of employment as an accountant for the British-Mexican Real del Monte silver mining company fell through. Most of his publications date from the mid 1820s to the early 1830s: The Inquisitor, or. Doctor Plague’em’s Strictures on Persons and Events (1826), A Plan for the Redemption of the Public Debt (1830, 1832, 1835), Plan for re-establishing the credit of the paper circulation of the Brazils (1830?), and Plano para o establecimento de um banco nacional no Brazil (1832). Both he and Mary wrote to the RLF for assistance; his letter, dated 8 Jan. 1832 from Cold Bath Square, London, mentions his works on banking and includes pages (with poems by Mary and their eldest son, Frederick Augustus) from a weekly register he published. His application was rejected on the grounds of insufficient evidence of authorship, and soon afterwards the family moved to Birmingham. There he set up in Smallbrook Street as a stationer and publisher of a periodical, Commonwealth. However, in 1835 he was imprisoned in Warwick gaol for failing to pay the newspaper stamp duty; his case was heard and dismissed on 20 Apr. 1836. By then the family had returned to London. His next chance of employment came with the establishment in 1839 of the London, Liverpool, and Brazil Steam Packet Company, but both the employment and the company seem to have been very short-lived. He wrote again to the RLF in 1839 saying that he had a play under consideration at the Haymarket but also claiming that he had not previously applied to the RLF committee. His Hudibrastic History of Amherst’s Embassy to China was issued in about 1840 with illustrations by R. Cruikshank. After the deaths of a son in 1836 and the eldest daughter in 1839, the remaining family travelled in 1841 to New York seeking employment. Mary died during the passage, and William moved to Brazil before returning to New York where, on 22 Jan. 1847, he naturalised as an American citizen. He died at New York in 1858. Frederick Augustus died in 1845 at Liverpool; the fate (and the name) of the surviving daughter is not known. (findmypast.co.uk 4 Aug. 2020; Journal of the House of Commons 94 [1839]; RLF files 598, 720; Arris’s Birmingham Gazette 4 Apr. 1836 and 26 Apr. 1836; contributions from AA)
Other Names:
- W. A. Kentish