Author: Piggott, Solomon
Biography:
PIGGOTT, Solomon (1779-1845: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 20 Nov. 1779 at Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, the son of John Piggott and his wife Mary Boddington. He was educated at St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford (MA 1803). He married Jane Rotton on 11 Jan. 1802 at High Wycombe. They had at least eight children. The deaths from consumption of two of his daughters, Mary (1804-22) and Elizabeth (1811-27), together with that of Elizabeth Brown (1800-22), form the basis of his A Father’s Recollections of Three Pious Young Ladies (1831), a series of sermons, reflections and poems on their deaths. All the girls were active readers of contemporary literature and also wrote poetry. Solomon Piggott produced many other works, mostly sermons and theological essays, but is now remembered for his contribution to the suicide debate in the early nineteenth century, Suicide and its Antidotes (1824), with its dire warning (obviously true) that “It is of importance, in the present infidel age, to guard and restrict the study of the Greek and Roman classics. These elements of a learned and elegant education contain in them the seeds of poison; they convey the most dangerous notions of honour, and false glory, and imaginary greatness” (18). He held various appointments in the Church, ran a school in Northampton Square, Clerkenwell, in 1817, and was Rector of the Priory Church of St. Peter, Dunstable, from 1824 until his death, aged 66, on 5 May 1845. (ancestry.co.uk 12 Oct. 2020; CCEd; GM Oct. 1845, 431) AA