Author: Lamont, Dorothea
Biography:
LAMONT, Dorothea, formerly IRELAND (1778?-1852: Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Rare Books & Newspapers)
If her death report is correct, she was probably born in 1778. She would therefore have required parental consent when she married Aeneas Lamont (1761-1803) (q.v.), a compositor at the Northern Star newspaper compositor, poet, and United Irishman, on 12 Mar. 1796. After his death in 1803 she ran a school with a Miss Fitzpatrick at 17, Donegall Street, Belfast. This partnership was dissolved in Dec. 1806 when she may have entered into a new partnership with Helena Robinson. Thomas McTear later recalled her as “a celebrated lady” and “a remarkably fine lady, and a great favourite with the children. She wrote amusing books for the young, such as Jack the Giant-killer, etc, and was very entertaining.” She also contributed poems to the Belfast Commercial Chronicle and the Belfast Monthly Magazine under the signature "Delia." Many of these were reprinted in her collection Poems, and Tales in Verse (1818), including the Cowper imitation, "My Husband," originally dated Mar. 28 1806. By 1821, she was running a Presbyterian school in a private house in Lower Arthur Street, Belfast, with Martha Lamont, who was possibly her daughter or her sister-in-law. In 1834, she may have been the Dorothea Lamont who is recorded as running a school at 2 Erskine Street, Liverpool, although it is unclear why she might have been in England. She died 24 Dec. 1852, aged 75, at Collin, Belfast, still remembered as the widow of Aeneas Lamont. (Belfast Commercial Chronicle 10 Aug. 1805, 31 Mar. 1806, 14 Jan. 1807, 11 Apr. 1808; 28 Aug. 1811, 14 and 21 Dec. 1822, 25 May 1825, 15 Oct. 1825; Thomas McTear, Ulster Journal of Archaeology [1899] 68, 74; Belfast News-Letter 29 Dec. 1852; Newry Telegraph 30 Dec. 1852; Jennifer Orr ed., The Correspondence of Samuel Thomson (1766-1816) [2012]) AA
Other Names:
- Mrs. Aeneas Lamont
- Mrs. Aeneas [Dorothea] Lamont