Author: Prattent, Thomas
Biography:
PRATTENT, Thomas (1765-1841: ancestry.co.uk)
His birth, baptism, and parentage cannot be established with any certainty. Various family trees on Ancestry give a birth/baptism of 1768 and multiple marriages, and confuse him with a Greenwich sailmaker of the same name. In his RLF applications of 1826-30 he gave an age consistent with a 1765 birth three times and his burial record supports this date. He also stated that he had been married 40 years. It is possible he was the Thomas Prattent, son of Thomas Prattent, bricklayer, of the parish of St. Luke’s Old Street, London, who was apprenticed to a wood-turner in 1778--but this requires corroboration or explanation. He himself took on apprentices as engravers from 1786 at Cloth Fair, Spitalfields, and would later live in Clerkenwell, parishes close to Old Street. He married Ann Graves on 8 Dec. 1787 at St. Michael Paternoster Royal. They lived in Spitalfields until at least 1800 before moving to Clerkenwell. He collaborated with the Spitalfields coin-dealer Matthew Denton, providing the engravings for The Virtuoso’s Companion and Coin Collector’s Guide (8 vols. 1795-97). He was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for debt (July-Aug. 1804) and engraved the prison (GM May 1804, 401). In 1826 he applied to the RLF several times from various addresses around the St. John’s Street area of Clerkenwell (1826-30) and claimed he had “for the last Twenty years been struggling against the tide of fortune.” He received three small awards of £10 and £5 (twice). He stated that for forty years he had contributed, mostly engravings, to the Gentleman’s, Lady’s, European and Universal Magazines. Many of these were of antiquarian interest with old regional churches and London buildings featuring prominently and may explain why his application was supported by the antiquarian scholar William Upcott, of the London Institution. He also seems to have been on good terms with other antiquarians and topographers: Martin Colnaghi, John Britton, and Edward Wedlake Brayley. He died on 16 Feb. 1841, in obscurity, at Clerkenwell Close, aged 76, and was buried at St. James on 25 Feb. His wife Ann died on 1 Nov. 1846 at Jerusalem Court in Clerkenwell, aged 82, and was also buried at St. James. (ancestry.co.uk 8 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 8 Mar. 2023; RLF, 1/557; GRO death certs.) AA
Other Names:
- T. Prattent