Author: Smith, John Arnold
Biography:
SMITH, John Arnold (1810-33: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 7 Jan. 1810 at Hornsey (North London), the only son of John Hood Smith, a wine merchant, and his wife Mary Harriet Goodchild, who had married at St. Andrew, Holborn, on 24 Oct. 1807. His father experienced the usual brushes with bankruptcy (including one six months before his marriage) but continued to trade with varying success until his death in 1855. John Arnold Smith probably entered his father’s business. On 18 Oct. 1833 he was seriously injured in a carriage accident on Cumnor Hill just outside Oxford after hunting with one of his father’s business friends. He died the following day and was buried on 23 Oct. 1833 at St. Martin’s Oxford. His sister Harriet Sophia Smith (as H. S. S.) edited his Poetical Thoughts (1834) and, after her father’s death in 1855, lived with her mother in reduced circumstances, working as a governess in Hackney. She died on 27 Sept. 1882 at Castlethorpe, Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire. (ancestry.co.uk 30 Sept. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 30 Sept. 2021; Oxford Journal 26 Oct. 1833; Morning Herald 24 Jan. 1855; London Evening Standard 5 Oct. 1882) AA