Author: Street, Thomas George
Biography:
STREET, Thomas George (1763-1845: findmypast.com)
Although he was a prominent public figure in London for at least twenty years, hard facts about Street's life are thin on the ground and there is some conflicting evidence. To begin with what is certain or almost certain, his first publication, Aura, or the Slave (1788), an attack on slavery, was dedicated to a schoolmaster to whom he expresses his gratitude and offers the "first fruits of a soil you have cultivated." The schoolmaster was John Carr LLD, master of the grammar school at Hertford, which presumably Street had attended. The Preface of Auraclaims that the author about three years earlier had travelled to Jamaica with the intention of settling as a planter, but had been so horrified by the treatment of slaves that he went home and became a campaigner against the system of slavery instead. These two facts together indicate a birthdate of 1767 or earlier. In the 1790s Street aligned himself with political reformers as a member of the Society for Constitutional Information and contributor to a pamphlet war against Burke's Reflections. He published Vol. 1 only (of the three projected) of a history of Louis XVI, dedicated to Samuel Parr. But he appears to have changed sides when he became co-proprietor (with Daniel Stuart) and Editor of the Tory Courierbetween 1799 and 1817; after being replaced as Editor, he continued as one of the proprietors until 1822. He developed a reputation as a rake. It was later said that he died in poverty and in such obscurity that even his friends could not put a date to his decease. Although no birth or baptismal record has been found, it seems likely that he was the son of Thomas Street (d c.1796), First Yeoman of Confectionery of the Royal Household, and his wife Sarah Street. He appears to have married three times and to have fathered at least four children, the first wife being a widow, Mary (Archer) Frost (d 1805); the second Jane Douglas Gardiner (married 1805); and the third Jane Franklin (married 1814, d 1822). He was surely the Thomas George Street born 1763, buried at the age of 82 in the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery in a private grave purchased in 1845 by a widow, Maria Henrietta Frost (d 1846)--his daughter-in-law. (ancestry.com 25 Oct. 2020; findmypast.com 25 Oct. 2020; N&Q 3rd ser. 7 [1865] 56; edpopehistory.co.uk 25 Oct. 2020; GRO probate [1847] 2048)