Author: Leech, Margaret
Biography:
LEECH, Margaret (d 1837: ancestry.com)
“Miss Leech” published only one book, a project of her retirement. Poems on Various Subjects is dedicated to “the several ladies, formerly of my family,” who pressed her to make a collection of her poems. She is referring to the women who had attended her boarding school on Great Cumberland St. in London and to whom she had given “the greater part of my life.” The poems are generally pious and sombre: “The Lover’s Grave,” “The Death of my Mother,” “Resignation,” “On Seeing the Corpse of a Very Beautiful Young Woman.” The preface is dated from Rookley Cottage, Isle of Wight. Her death there on 22 Jan. 1837 was reported in MH (with “Rockley” for “Rookley”), but no record of burial which might have provided further details has been found. Her will, leaving the whole of her personal estate to her unmarried niece Emma, was proved on 25 Apr. 1837. If she came from a London family, she might be the Margaret Leech baptised at St. Clement Danes on 29 Oct. 1766; her parents Richard Leech and Elizabeth Merryman had married at the same church in Aug. 1765. (ancestry.com 25 Dec. 2023; findmypast.com 25 Dec. 2023; MH 25 Jan. 1837)
Other Names:
- Miss Leech