Author: Wilmot, John Bury
Biography:
WILMOT, John Bury (c. 1786-1853: ancestry.com)
On the strength probably of a broadside publication entitled Anti-Orangeism (n.d.), O’Donoghue included Wilmot in his bibliography of Irish poets, but Wilmot appears to have spent his whole life in London and most if not all of it in the central London parishes of St. George Bloomsbury and St. Giles-in-the-Fields. “Anti-Orangeism” is included in his first Poetical Nosegay (1825). The second, shorter Nosegay (1826) received a long front-page review in the Morning Advertiser in 1829 which was unfortunately sarcastic from start to finish. No birth record has been located and nothing is known about Wilmot’s education. In the 1841 and 1851 censuses, John Bury Wilmot—with variant spellings Bery and Wilmott or Wilmet—gave his birthplace as Middlesex, his year of birth as 1786, and his occupation as “Clerk.” On 11 Nov. 1811 he and Elizabeth Heelas were married by licence, the location of the wedding not being specified. They had two sons, Edwin and John. His address on the title-page of the 1825 Nosegay is 7 Thorney St., Bloomsbury, corresponding to one of the addresses given for him as an insolvent debtor in 1829 (and also on the 1841 census). While living there he had been employed as an Inspector of Pavements for the two parishes; he had also been a partner in an ironmongers’ business on Great Russell St. The insolvency order notes that his wife Elizabeth was permitted to continue her work as a milliner and dressmaker. He died in Oct. 1853 and was buried at St. Luke’s, Finsbury, Islington on 14 Oct., his age at death registered as 69. His wife Elizabeth is probably the widow living in Islington at the time of the 1861 census, who died there in 1862. (ancestry.com 27 June 2024; findmypast.com 27 June 2024; O’Donoghue; Morning Advertiser 27 Mar. 1829; London Gazette 1829) HJ
Other Names:
- J. B. Wilmot