Author: Thomson, Spencer Madan
Biography:
THOMSON, Spencer Madan (1796-1818: ancestry.co.uk)
He may have been the son of John Thomson, of Lincoln’s Inn, and Sarah Madan, of St. Clement Danes, who married in her church on 1 May 1794. He drowned in the River Speke, near Liverpool (in unknown circumstances) and was buried on 14 April at St. Michael, Garston. His only known publication, Birkenhead Priory; A Descriptive Poem (1818) was announced in the New Monthly Magazine in February of that year so was not a posthumous publication. It stands in direct comparison to Herbert Knowles’s (1798-1817) "Stanzas in Richmond Churchyard," championed by Robert Southey (q.v.), and is much less accomplished but still worth another look. His tombstone in Garston church records his “piety and learning.” (ancestry.co.uk 13 Oct. 2020; New Monthly Magazine Feb. 1818, 46; Edward Baines, History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster [1836] 3: 738) AA