Author: Moore, Jane Elizabeth
Biography:
MOORE, Jane Elizabeth (1738-1809: ancestry.co.uk) formerly GOBEIL
She was born in London on 30 Sept. 1738 to French parents, Abraam and Jeanne Marie Gobeil, and was baptised at the St Martin Orgar Huguenot church on 15 Oct. Her mother was unhappy in her marriage and died when Moore was very young; Abraam Gobeil remarried but his second wife left him when Moore was just ten. She was educated first by her stepmother and then in various girls’ schools until she was fifteen. Her father was a leather manufacturer and through working with him she met Richard Moore, a leather dealer. They married at St Andrew’s, Holborn, on 10 Oct. 1761; a son was born in 1762 and a daughter in 1764 but both died in infancy. Richard Moore died in 1782 leaving her with debts for which she was imprisoned in 1784. Although she continued working in the leather industry, she began writing as a way of supporting herself. Her Genuine Memoirs were published in three volumes in 1786 and some of her poetry was printed in the Sentimental and Masonic Magazine (1792-95). In 1795 she visited Dublin where she met Henrietta Battier and Thomas Moore (q.v.). Biographical accounts of her usually end with the visit to Dublin but records show that she returned to England where she lived in Bermondsey, Surrey, and worked as a leather dealer. In 1802 she was listed in newspapers as bankrupt. She died sometime before 31 Oct. 1809, the date of her burial and her will was proved on 10 Nov. 1809. The will requests that she be buried with Richard Moore in the family vault of St Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey. Curiously, it also asks her executors to keep her death a secret if her recipe for an ointment had not been advertised beforehand; the executors are instructed to share between them one half of the profits from the ointment and to use the remainder to pay Moore’s debts. (ODNB 27 Sept. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 27 Sept. 2021; IWP 27 Sept. 2021; Bell’s Weekly Messenger 11 Apr. 1802)