Author: Smart, Benjamin Humphrey
Biography:
SMART, Benjamin Humphrey (1787-1872: ODNB)
He was born on 23 Jan. 1787 at Princes Court, Leicester Square, London, and baptised on 1 Mar. at St. Anne’s, Soho, Westminster, the eldest son of Benjamin Smart (1756-1833), jeweller and later a gold refiner, and Lucy Smith (1754-1845), who had married at Beddingham, East Sussex, in 1784. His father wrote two tracts in 1811 and 1818 which criticised the government’s management of the currency. Nothing is known of his education but he worked as an elocution teacher and published a Grammar of English Pronunciation (1810) and thereafter an array of educational works which included The Theory of Elocution (1819), Practical Logic (1823), An Outline of Sematology (1831), Beginnings of a New School of Metaphysics (1839), Shakespearean Readings (1839), and A Manual of Rhetoric (1848). He married Caroline West (1792-1846) on 21 Apr. 1813 at St. Luke’s, Chelsea. They went on to have four daughters and a son. He lived and worked in London throughout his life at various addresses. For many years the family lived at 55 Connaught Terrace, Hyde Park, where his wife Caroline died on 20 June 1846. On retirement around 1859, he went to live in Pimlico at the house of his son, Leopold Smart (1816-67), who was also an elocution teacher and had earlier worked with his father at 37 Wyndham Street, Bryanston Square, Marylebone. Benjamin Smart died at 76 Charlwood Street, Pimlico, London, aged 85, on 24 Feb. 1872, leaving an estate of around £800. He was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. The work listed here was recited at the Brighton Festival on 29 Jan. 1823, and quoted extensively in the Monthly Review, but no copies have been located. (ODNB 31 Mar. 2024; DNB; Atlas 27 June 1846; ILN 7 Aug. 1852; Morning Post 18 June 1867; Globe 8 Mar. 1872; Robson’s London Directory [1830, 1840, et al.]; Post Office London Directory [1865 et al.]; GRO death cert.) AA
Other Names:
- B. H. Smart