Author: Smith, Thomas
Biography:
SMITH, Thomas (1788-1856: findmypast.com)
Thomas Smith’s Horae Poeticae, a collection of translated and original poetry, was reviewed in MR as the work of a discontented and underpaid schoolmaster—the reviewer’s inference, not personal acquaintance—with the tepid compliment of its offering “plain good sense” that would perhaps have been better conveyed in prose. Very little is known about the author apart from his having been a resident of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, at the time of publication. He was most probably the Thomas Smith, “teacher of classics and mathematics,” included in the 1851 census as living in Ledgers Row, Gainsborough, with his wife Mary Ann, “School master’s wife.” He gave his birthplace as Marwood House, Yorkshire, in 1788; she had been born in Middlesex in 1789. There are too many candidates to give a marriage date with confidence and his place of birth is uncertain but if it refers to the Marwood estate at Busby Hall in North Yorkshire, public records yield no good matches. The couple do not appear to have baptised any children at Gainsborough. He died there in 1856 and was buried on 16 Apr. at the North Marsh Cemetery. (findmypast.com 9 Nov. 2024; MR 6 [1827], 278) HJ