Author: Townsend, William Charles
Biography:
TOWNSEND, William Charles (1804-50: ODNB)
He was born on 27 Jan. 1804 and baptised on 26 Sept. at St. James, Liverpool, the second son of William Townsend, merchant, of Walton, Lancashire, and his wife Mary Lateward, who married in 1793 at Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire. He contributed some youthful poems (signed W. C. T., Toxteth Park) to the Imperial Magazine: “For the Tomb of Niobe,” Sept. 1820, 739; “The Reveries of Youth,” Nov. 1820, 938-42. He was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford, (matric. 1820, BA 1824, MA 1827) and was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1828. He practised on the northern and north Wales circuits and at the Chester and Manchester assizes. In 1833 he was elected Recorder at Macclesfield, where he met Frances (Fanny) Wood. They married on 4 Dec. 1834 at Prestbury, Cheshire. There was no issue. He maintained a London residence at Torrington Square, Bloomsbury. In 1850 he was appointed QC and became a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. He died of heart disease at Burntwood Lodge, the house of his brother, Rev. Richard Lateward Townsend, Vicar of All Saints, Wandsworth, on 8 May 1850, and was buried at Lincoln’s Inn. He was much better known for his works of legal history: The History and Memoirs of the House of Commons (1843-4), The Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges of the Last and Present Century (1846), and Modern State Trials (1850). (ODNB 15 Jul. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 15 Jul. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 15 Jul. 2022; Liverpool Albion 15 Dec. 1834; Liverpool Mercury 18 May 1850; GM Jan. 1835, 85, and Aug. 1850, 218) AA
Other Names:
- William C. Townsend