Author: Payne, Joseph
Biography:
PAYNE, Joseph (1797-1870: ancestry.com)
No record has been found of his birth or baptism but other records make Boase’s birthdate of 13 Nov. 1797 seem very likely. He was the son of William Payne of the parish of St. Alphage, London, gentleman, and his wife Jane (surname not certain) who claimed descent from Oliver Cromwell. His younger brother William Payne (1799-1872) became Coroner of the City of London. Joseph matriculated at St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, aged 20, on 6 May 1818 but did not take a degree. Instead he read law and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn on 14 June 1825 and then migrated to the Middle Temple, where he kept rooms for the rest of his career. He did not marry, but he was engaged in many cultural and charitable works besides his professional interests. In the preface to his Lines celebrating the opening of London Bridge in 1831, he identifies himself as a chairman of committees for the Society of Arts and explains that he had written verses for many years on many occasions but that his poems had seldom appeared in print “and then only anonymously”; the Lines were printed at his own expense for private circulation. A later Easter Monday Ode (1837) was printed for the benefit of the Spitalfield weavers. His other publications are reports of cases in the courts. From 1859 he was deputy assistant judge in the Middlesex Assizes. He died suddenly of “apoplexy” at his home in Highgate, London, on 29 Mar. 1870 and was buried on 2 Apr. in Highgate Cemetery where a large marble column (still there) was raised to his memory by “friends of ragged schools and temperance societies” (Boase). In his will, proved on 13 Apr. 1870, he left effects valued at under £3000 with his nephew William John Payne, who was also a barrister, as sole executor. (ancestry.com 3 Sept. 2023; findmypast.com 3 Sept. 2023; Boase 2: col. 1405; ILN 9 Apr. 1870; Sheffield Independent 30 Mar. 1870) HJ