Author: Key, David
Biography:
KEY, David (1761-1839: findmypast.com)
His one long poem, designed as a Christian alternative to popular fiction, is dated from St. John's, Southwark, the author further identifying himslf as David Key "of Horselydown" (sometimes spelled Horsleydown). Key was a surgeon. At the time of his death in 1839 he was 78 and had lived in the parish of St. John Horselydown for almost 60 years, "universally respected" according to the death notice. The parish had been carved out of the Southwark parish of St. Olave when its Hawksmoor church (since demolished) was built in 1727-33. There is a record of Key's burial at the same church on 6 Sept. 1839 but no reliable records have been found for his place of birth, parentage, or marriage. Though there are several marriage records for a groom of the same name in other London parishes in the 1780s, confirmation is wanting. The death notices do not mention family. Not to be confused with another David Key, surgeon in Brixton, who was a younger man (b 1797) whose father's name was John; if that John was a brother, both he and David may have been descended from a South London family with a medical bent. (findmypast.com 28 May 2021; Morning Chronicle 30 Aug. 1839; ancestry.com 28 May 2021