Author: Norton, Theodore
Biography:
NORTON, Theodore (1800-70: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 13 Jan. 1800 at Rye, Sussex, the eighth of ten children of John Norton, formerly Bradbury (1758-1830), and Mary Selby (1761-1824), who had married at East Barming, Kent, in 1789. Nothing is known of his early education and he did not attend Oxford or Cambridge. He entered the Inner Temple in 1818 and was called to the bar on 2 July 1824. He seems to have formed a relationship with a Sarah Shaw and they registered the baptism of a daughter, Mary Feodore / Theodore Norton (born 21 Apr. 1829) on 11 Nov. 1831 at St. Mary’s, Newington, south London. His occupation was given as barrister. He later married Hannah Shaw on 22 Aug. 1839 at St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, south London. It seems likely that Sarah was Hannah’s older sister and that they were daughters of a non-conformist farmer, Phillip Shaw of West Hoathly, Sussex. Sarah’s fate is unknown; there is no record of a marriage and it seems likely she died before his marriage to her sister in 1839 where he is described as a bachelor. A daughter, Jane, was born in 1839 in Monmouth, Wales, where they had gone--possibly as a result of his brother Bradbury’s death. In 1840 he is recorded in practise at 1 Lincoln’s Inn, New Square, London, but by 1851 he had given it up and seems to have retired first to Camberwell, south London, then to Sussex. The 1851 and 1861 censuses record him living with his wife and his two unmarried sisters, Catherine (1798-1863) and Elizabeth (1805-70). He died on 23 Sept. 1870, aged 70, at Lindfield, Sussex, leaving an estate of under £800. His widow, Hannah, died at Lindfield in 1889, aged 80. For reasons unknown, his daughter, Mary Feodore, first married in 1851 under the name Norton Shaw but on her second marriage in 1870 used Norton. His first work has been excluded for reasons of length (6 pages): The Duke of Cumberland, and A Word, By the Way, Of Cant and Slander (1832). (ancestry.co.uk 2 Oct. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 2 Oct. 2023; Cambridge Chronicle 9 July 1824; archives.innertemple.org.uk/names; Bell’s Life and Sporting Chronicle 5 Apr. 1835; Robson’s London Directory [1840]; Morning Post 28 Sept. 1870; Epsom Journal 19 Nov. 1889; GRO death and marriage certs.) AA