Author: Smith, Eaglesfield
Biography:
SMITH, Eaglesfield (b c. 1770-1838: ODNB)
He may have been born at Eyam, Derbyshire, where his mother, Anna (Galliard), was from and where her family had an estate; his father, Eaglesfield Smith, had estates in Dumfriesshire. Little is known of his early life. There is a record of his apprenticeship to a grocer in London in 1788 but in the early 1790s he studied surgery at the University of Edinburgh although he did not take a degree. He enlisted in the 3rd dragoon guards as a surgeon’s mate and was sent to Flanders where he was imprisoned. Poems in his Morcar and Elfina are signed "E.S.J."; the book includes a poem about the 1793 disturbances in Edinburgh and two from 1794 about his captivity in and escape from France. By 1795 he was back in England where he briefly joined the 29th light dragoons before retiring from the army when his William and Helen was issued in 1796. He lived in London for a time, publishing in periodicals and using the initials E. S. J. His “The Sorrows of Yamba,” published in the Universal Magazine of 1797, is closely allied to Hannah More’s longer 1795 poem of the same name but the connection between the works is unclear. From about 1798 he worked as a surgeon in Scotland. His treatise Bile in Animals was published in 1805. In 1811 he married Judith Elizabeth Irving and they had four children. He died at Lochvale House, Dumfriesshire, and was buried in the churchyard of Kirkpatrick Fleming. His first name is sometimes given as Englesfield but Eaglesfield is correct. (ODNB 28 Oct. 202; ancestry.co.uk 28 Oct. 2020)
Other Names:
- E. Smith
- E. S. J.