Author: Lyon, Emma
Biography:
LYON, Emma, later HENRY (1788-1870: ODNB)
The year of 1812 saw perhaps the lowest and the highest points of Emma Lyon’s life. She was the second of at least eleven children born to Rachel (Hart) and Solomon Lyon in Portsmouth, Hampshire, on 17 Dec. 1788. Her father, an educated Jewish immigrant from Bohemia, made his living as a teacher of Hebrew; the family moved several times in the hope of his finding better opportunities. In Cambridge from 1789 to 1806, in London from 1806 to 1810, and later in Oxford and Eton, he worked as a private tutor, published a Hebrew grammar, and attempted without lasting success to establish a Jewish school. (He is often referred to as “Rev.,” a courtesy title; he was not a Christian convert.) Emma had herself been taught by him and had taken pleasure in poetry from childhood. In 1812 when he lost his sight to cataracts (he regained it about 1815), she was driven to publish her poems by subscription and attracted 360 subscribers as well as mainly positive reviews. She also applied to the RLF on the strength of that publication, seeking support for her family in their trouble, and was awarded £10. But at her lodgings in London she was insulted and struck by her landlord and when another tenant, a retired barrister whom she was instructing in Hebrew, went to complain to him, he too was attacked. He knew the law, however, and eventually had his attackers sentenced to six months in the house of detention. Emma Lyon married a merchant, Abraham Henry, at the Hambro Synagogue in London in 1816. They lived in London and had ten children. He died in 1840 at Ramsgate, Thanet, Kent, where the family had moved for his health. They returned to London: the census of 1861 shows Emma Henry, widow, living at 9, Burton St., St Pancras, as the head of a household that included a married daughter and her husband and two unmarried sons. She died on 30 Dec. 1870 at 6, Argyle Square, leaving effects valued at under £100. (ODNB 8 Feb. 2024; RLF #292; findmypast.com 8 Feb. 2024; ancestry.com 8 Feb. 2024; SJC 17 Sept. 1812; Naomi Cream, “Revd. Solomon Lyon of Cambridge, 1755-1820,” Jewish Historical Studies 36 [1999-2001], 31-69; Karen A. Weisman, Singing in a Foreign Land [2018])
Other Names:
- Miss Emma Lyon