Author: Luck, Charles
Biography:
LUCK, Charles (1801-66: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 16 June 1801 and baptised on 24 July at St. Peter upon Cornhill, City of London, the second of at least six children of Thomas Luck (1765-1857), wholesale haberdasher, Cornhill, City of London, and his wife Susanna Thomas (1770-1809), who had married in Dover in 1797. His father also owned Went House and Hermitage farm, West Malling, Kent. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ school and St. Catharine’s College Cambridge (matric. 1821, BA 1825, MA 1828). He was ordained deacon (1826) and priest (1827). He briefly held various curacies at Tillingham, Essex; Stockbury, Kent; and at St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, London, in the early 1840s, but seems to have abandoned a clerical career. The 1851 and 1861 Censuses record him as a clergyman “without cure of souls.” He spent some time in America and married Caroline Cardale Pyne (1814-1907) on 4 June 1835 at St. Peter’s, New York. They went on to have six children, with the eldest born in New York in 1836. The family lived at 16 Marine Square, Brighton (1844-49 and intermittently thereafter, finally giving up the house in 1860). They then lived in Harrow (1850-57) and Maidstone (1858-62) before finally settling at West Farm, East Barnet, Herts. He died on 6 Feb. 1866 at Dijon, France, on his way to Nice. He left an estate of under £60,000. His widow, Caroline, died at Cannes, France, on 16 Apr. 1907, aged 93, leaving an estate of only £452. Poems by a Country Curate (1829), written while he was curate at Stockbury, Kent, is his only known publication. (ancestry.co.uk 28 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 28 Mar. 2023; MH 1 July 1842, 13 Feb. 1866; Morning Post 27 Apr. 1907; CCEd 28 Mar. 2023; The Clergy List for 1841 [1841], 128) AA