Author: KNIGHT, Ann
Biography:
KNIGHT, Ann, formerly WASPE (ancestry.com)
Not to be confused with the abolitionist campaigner Anne Knight (1786-1862), Ann (Waspe) Knight was a Quaker, born at Woodbridge, Suffolk, on 28 Oct. 1792, the first of the eight children of a leather-cutter, Jonathan Waspe, and his wife Phoebe Gibbs. On 21 Sept. 1818 she married her cousin James Knight of Southwark at St. Mary’s, Woodbridge; he was also a Quaker. They had a daughter, Phoebe, born on 16 Jul. 1819 at Horsleydown, Southwark, but James died on 9 Jan. 1820 and his widow returned to Woodbridge, where by 1826 she and some of her sisters had established a school, Brook House, with herself as headmistress. At the time of the 1851 census Ann was still headmistress, living with her sister Hannah as a partner in the school; her daughter Phoebe, who did not marry and taught drawing; her mother Phoebe, aged 91; three young women teachers; a housekeeper and three servants; and fourteen boarding students aged between seven and eighteen. She was a cultivated woman, a friend of Charles Lamb and Bernard Barton (qq.v.). Her publications were mostly directed to children and young people: Poetic Gleanings, with some Original Pieces (1827), Mornings in the Library (1828, with Bernard Barton), School-room Lyrics (1846), Lyriques français, pour la jeunesse (1853). She died “suddenly” at Woodbridge on 11 Dec. 1860, leaving effects valued at under £200. (ancestry.com 24 June 2025; findmypast.com 24 June 2025; Friends’ Books; ODNB 24 June 2025 [under “Knight, Anne (1786-1862)”]; Essex Standard 20 Dec. 1860) HJ