Author: LEACH, Stephen
Biography:
LEACH, Stephen (fl 1800)
The Gospel Versified, by “Stephen Leach” (not Rev., MA, Esq. etc.), was published in Southampton, Hampshire, in 1800, with the author’s preface signed from Romsey on 13 Mar. The author was certainly a local businessman, either Stephen Leach Sen., a corset-maker who went into partnership with a gentleman’s tailor in 1807, or Stephen Leach Jun., an ironmonger who was still advertising his wares in Romsey in 1805. At least one of them was also an auctioneer active in Hampshire and neighbouring counties: his name appears in newspapers in this context as early as 1800 but in 1825 “Stephen Leach, late of Romsey Infra,” innkeeper and auctioneer, was imprisoned in London for a month as an insolvent debtor. No birth record has been found for either man in Hampshire. It seems likely that they moved to Hampshire from Rochdale, Lancashire, where the first Stephen Leach was baptised in 1746. He married Mary Dixon at Rochdale in 1768 and their son Stephen was baptised there in 1780. It was presumably Stephen Leach Jun. who married Harriett Blake, “both of this parish,” at Romsey on 14 Nov. 1805. It is not clear how many children they had but there probably were some, without records of parish baptisms. An “eldest daughter,” Elizabeth, probably theirs, died aged 20 in 1828; a son, Stephen Walter Leach, apparently born to Stephen Leach, ironmonger, and his wife Harriett, baptised in Winchester in 1846 (sic), is surely either a clerical error or the record of a birth a generation later. It is unlikely though not impossible that a 20-year-old should have produced The Gospel Versified; therefore the odds are in favour of the father. Dates of death are uncertain for both. A Stephen Leach of Whitchurch, Hampshire, who wrote a pamphlet against duelling in 1822, is in the 1841 Census and died in 1850, but other details do not match: he married Ann Cook in 1811, is recorded as a butcher in 1815, and by 1818 had turned conveyancer. (ancestry.com 20 Dec. 2023; findmypast.com 20 Dec. 2023; Reading Mercury 19 May 1800; Salisbury and Winchester Journal 8 Apr. 1805; Sun [London] 16 Mar. 1807; Hampshire Chronicle 24 Oct. 1825, 21 Nov. 1825, 1 Sept. 1828) HJ