Author: Verral, Charles
Biography:
VERRAL, Charles (1778-1843: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 3 June 1778 and baptised 7 June at Lewes, Sussex, the son of Henry Verral and his wife Susannah Glasebrook, who had married in 1776. He married Clarissa King on 20 Jan. 1810 at Seaford, Lewes, Sussex. They had at least eleven children, eight daughters and three sons. He was a surgeon and general practitioner for nearly thirty years in Seaford. In 1835 he moved to London and developed an interest and practice in spinal injuries. An 1842 poem on the death of his daughter, Clarissa Anne (1812-1832), "The Night of the Burial," was possibly submitted by his son to a college magazine. Charles Fleet, in an otherwise vague account of his life, also relates the death of a younger daughter in a traffic accident in London. This was probably Rosalind (1826-36). He died at his house in Brunswick Place, Wyndham Road, Camberwell, on 20 Feb. 1843 and was buried at Nunhead cemetery. After his death, his widow lived with an unmarried daughter, Mary, a drawing teacher. She died in 1869 in Walford, South London, leaving an estate of less than £100. His two collections of poetry, Pleasures of Possession (1810) and Poems (1815) were published by his friend, the radical Paineite Thomas "Clio" Rickman (q.v.), also a native of Lewes, but it is not known if he shared his political sympathies. (ancestry.co.uk 31 May 2021; Sussex Advertiser 9 July 1832; King’s College Magazine 1 [1842] 141-2; Morning Chronicle 28 Feb. 1843; GM Apr. 1843, 441; Charles Fleet, Glimpses of Our Ancestors [1882] 127-34) AA