Author: Latey, John Lash
Biography:
LATEY, John Lash (1808-91: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 14 June 1808 and baptised on 10 July at Tiverton, Devon, the fourth of six children of Thomas Latey, a bread baker, and his wife Elizabeth Lash, who had married at South Moulton in 1798. Originally destined for the church--his uncle, the Rev. John Latey, was a canon at Bristol Cathedral--he showed an early interest in literature and trained as a printer / compositor. While still in Tiverton, he published The Earthquake, and Other Poems (1830). He later moved to Barnstaple and contributed verse and prose to the North Devon Journal. He married Eliza[beth] Bentley on 12 May 1839 at Barnstaple. They had at least six children but only two daughters and a son survived infancy. They moved to London and from late 1841 he was a compositor on the Illustrated London News and became its editor in 1858, a post he held for over thirty years, retiring only a few days before his death. His only other publications of note were a well-written attack on opposition to the newly-emerging Chartist demands for secret ballots, The Ballot. A Letter to the Rev. Sidney Smith. By a Working Man (1839), and an original manual-cum-conduct book, The Pattern Book of Letters for Working People (1842). In London the family lived in the St. Pancras area before finally settling at 16 Lawford Road, Camden. He died from pneumonia on 6 Jan. 1891, aged 82, at 11 North Villas, Camden Square, and was buried in Camden Cemetery, leaving a small estate of just under £400. His wife died two months later. (ancestry.co.uk 23 Jan. 2022; J. R. Chanter, Sketches of the Literary History of Barnstaple [1866], 58; West Country Poets, 307-8; Western Times 18 May 1839; Morning Post 7 Jan. 1891; Illustrated London News 10 Jan. 1891; North Devon Gazette 13 Jan. 1891) AA
Other Names:
- John Latey