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Author: Malkin, Benjamin Heath

Biography:

MALKIN, Benjamin Heath (1770-1842: ODNB)

He was born in Hackney, London, on 23 Mar. 1770, the only son of Mary (Heath) and Thomas Malkin, and educated at Harrow, where he was the head boy in 1787. He then went on to Trinity College, Cambridge (Pensioner 1788, matric 1792, BA 1792, MA 1802); he was also admitted to Lincoln’s Inn (1791) and worked for some time as a lawyer in London, where he was acquainted with William Blake (q.v.) and some of his circle. His first book identifies him as LLD by 1795. On 4 Mar. 1793 at Cowgate, Glamorgan, Wales, he married, by licence, Charlotte Williams (b 1772), daughter of Rev. Thomas Williams, who was the curate at Cowgate and master of the grammar school there. Malkin had a range of interests and talents. His first publications were Essays on Subjects concerned with Civilization (1795) and The Scenery, Antiquities, and Biography of South Wales (1803, 2nd edn. 1807), along with the tragedy listed here. He and his wife had five sons, but two of them died young and for the first, Thomas William (1795-1803), Malkin wrote A Father’s Memoir of his Child (1806), with a frontispiece portrait designed by Blake and a few of Blake’s poems (under ten pages) included. Malkin spent much of his adult life (1809-28) as headmaster of the grammar school at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where he was a popular teacher, successful in sending many pupils on to distinguished careers. His gifts were recognized with an Oxford DCL (1810) and with the appointment as the first Professor of History, ancient and modern, at the University of London in 1829: he delivered and published his inaugural lecture but did not stay on in the post, instead retiring to Cowbridge where he founded a society “for the Improvement of the Working Population.” He died at Cowbridge on 26 May 1842 and was buried there. His former pupils erected a monument to his memory at St. James, Bury, with a medallion by Francis Chantrey. (ODNB 26 Feb. 2023; ACAD; findmypast.com 26 Feb. 2023; GM 172 [1842] 211)

 

Books written (1):

London: Longman and Rees, 1804