Author: Rhodes, Thomas
Biography:
RHODES, Thomas (c. 1760-1840: ancestry.co.uk)
He was almost certainly the T. Rhodes (q.v.) who wrote Dunstan Park; or An Evening Walk (1786). That man is identified on the title page as a journeyman ribbon weaver. In his correspondence with the RLF Thomas Rhodes, who gave his age as 78 in 1838, described himself as a journeyman weaver. If T. Rhodes was disappointed in reviews of Dunstan Park—CR concluded that the author “seems to be a good sort of man, not destitute of common sense, but he is no poet”—he was not deterred. He wrote a comedy, Marriage No Jest (1809), benefit performances of which were advertised in Coventry, Warwickshire, in Jan. 1810. The Patriot Queen and Poetical Miscellanies were both published by subscription and the lists of subscribers reveal that he was well-connected in Warwickshire—Bertie Greatheed (q.v.) subscribed to The Patriot Queen. Although it has not been possible to identify birth or marriage records for Rhodes, his letters to the RLF give some information about the last years of his life. He first wrote to the RLF on 25 Nov. 1838 when he was living on Bath St. in Shoreditch, London, and suffering from “a dangerous and painful malady” which his doctor diagnosed as “disease of the whole urinary apparatus.” On that occasion he was awarded £10 but a further application addressed from Coventry in Aug. 1839 was rejected on the grounds of his having been relieved once already within the year. Rhodes applied again in Feb. 1840 when he was staying at a boarding house run by Uriah and Elizabeth Coombs in Shoreditch; Rhodes was awarded £10, some of which was returned when he died on 13 Mar. 1840. The RLF file includes an invoice for £2-11s-9d from Elizabeth Coombs with charges for his lodging and for laying out the body. The RLF paid both Mrs. Coombs and the undertaker who billed £4-18s for Rhodes’s funeral and burial on 18 Mar. at St. Luke’s church. The final item in the file is a letter dated 20 Mar. from John Rhodes, Thomas’s son, who requested the return of any manuscripts in the possession of the RLF. A notice of Rhodes’s death in the Coventry Standard records that he was known locally as “Poet Rhodes.” (ancestry.co.uk 9 Dec. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 9 Dec. 2024; Coventry Standard 1 Jan. 1810, 20 Mar. 1840; Goodridge [for T. Rhodes]; RLF file 948; CR 61 [1787], 234; information from JC) SR